I want to talk a little bit about how our early experiences with D&D (and RPGs in general) including the edition or game we started with as well as major formative experiences in roleplaying games impact the way we view current trends in the game and gaming more broadly, including the various controversies.
NOTE: What I don't want to do is actually DEBATE those controversies in this thread. We will have to mention them of course, but we don't need to argue about them here. There are man, many other threads for that and I would like to keep this one focused on how gaming experiences color our viewpoints about certain topics. A part of that is taking care to remember that other people have different experiences than ourselves, and have formed different perspectives. Let's not minimize or otherwise deride other peoples' experiences or perspectives, please.
So, as a child I grew up on fantasy fiction. I was a strong reader early on and got in trouble by teachers for bringing books "too advanced" for me to school. When I was 10 (I had two older brothers, 11 and 13) my dad brought home the Metzner Red Box. Us boys went through the solo adventure together and then my Dad DMed the introductory dungeon for us (this was the first and only time my dad DMed until he was in his 70s and rediscovered tabletop RPGs). In that adventure, my cleric Clarion was killed by the carrion crawler hiding under the rotting gate at the very beginning of the dungeon. After that session, my oldest brother became defacto DM for us and a couple neighborhood friends (one of whom had to lie about what we were doing sicne he came from a strict religious family). We were able to pick up the Expert set in Waldenbooks but that was it. The only module we played was Isle of Dread and it would be years before we were able to find Dragon Magazines or the Companion and Masters sets. We invented everything. In addition, we moved and so my oldest brother and I played together, just us, a lot. Since I was a budding fiction writer, i eventually took over as DM and fell instantly in love. We moved again and I found friends in high school I played AD&D with, then 2nd Edition. When I went off to the Army after High School I made some friends and ran a 2nd Edition Campaign that lasted 20 years through different editions and evin into a new game (Mutants and Masterminds, as my campaign would had advanced to the modern day and became a supers setting). All through that time I played a lot of different games, began doing to some freelance writing and design, and vastly expanded my personal gaming community (with all the moments of drama that can imply -- not everyone is meant to play with one another, even if they are friends!).
How do these experiences color my view of things? Well, for one, I don't think PC death is a big deal and do not understand why people get so upset about the potential for characters dying without their express consent. For me, potential death (even if it is sudden and silly) is part of the game. Because I am also a writer, I don't think of play as story. Story is something else entirely. If I wanted to know how the game was going to turn out, I would writer instead. I play to see what happens. I also don't think much of "lore" or care for published adventures much. I like settings, but only insofar as I think they are interesting to explore. The only D&D setting i ever really got deeply into was Dragonlance, mainly because my most successful high school 2E campaign was DL, and the aformentioned 20 year world was homebrew but had a few elements heavily influenced by DL. I always think of D&D as a toolkit for making my own worlds and things and I don't like when the books bake too much lore or too many assumptions into the material presented. I also think books are too long and there is no reason you could not provide a complete and playable D&D in under 200 pages (and probably significantly less). Weirdly, with many non D&D games I generally prefer the opposite. Most of my favorite games from the 90s -- Earthdawn, Deadlands, etc... -- completely married setting and system. I just don't like it for D&D.
Also, i still think gnomes are useless and shouldn't be a PC race.
NOTE: What I don't want to do is actually DEBATE those controversies in this thread. We will have to mention them of course, but we don't need to argue about them here. There are man, many other threads for that and I would like to keep this one focused on how gaming experiences color our viewpoints about certain topics. A part of that is taking care to remember that other people have different experiences than ourselves, and have formed different perspectives. Let's not minimize or otherwise deride other peoples' experiences or perspectives, please.
So, as a child I grew up on fantasy fiction. I was a strong reader early on and got in trouble by teachers for bringing books "too advanced" for me to school. When I was 10 (I had two older brothers, 11 and 13) my dad brought home the Metzner Red Box. Us boys went through the solo adventure together and then my Dad DMed the introductory dungeon for us (this was the first and only time my dad DMed until he was in his 70s and rediscovered tabletop RPGs). In that adventure, my cleric Clarion was killed by the carrion crawler hiding under the rotting gate at the very beginning of the dungeon. After that session, my oldest brother became defacto DM for us and a couple neighborhood friends (one of whom had to lie about what we were doing sicne he came from a strict religious family). We were able to pick up the Expert set in Waldenbooks but that was it. The only module we played was Isle of Dread and it would be years before we were able to find Dragon Magazines or the Companion and Masters sets. We invented everything. In addition, we moved and so my oldest brother and I played together, just us, a lot. Since I was a budding fiction writer, i eventually took over as DM and fell instantly in love. We moved again and I found friends in high school I played AD&D with, then 2nd Edition. When I went off to the Army after High School I made some friends and ran a 2nd Edition Campaign that lasted 20 years through different editions and evin into a new game (Mutants and Masterminds, as my campaign would had advanced to the modern day and became a supers setting). All through that time I played a lot of different games, began doing to some freelance writing and design, and vastly expanded my personal gaming community (with all the moments of drama that can imply -- not everyone is meant to play with one another, even if they are friends!).
How do these experiences color my view of things? Well, for one, I don't think PC death is a big deal and do not understand why people get so upset about the potential for characters dying without their express consent. For me, potential death (even if it is sudden and silly) is part of the game. Because I am also a writer, I don't think of play as story. Story is something else entirely. If I wanted to know how the game was going to turn out, I would writer instead. I play to see what happens. I also don't think much of "lore" or care for published adventures much. I like settings, but only insofar as I think they are interesting to explore. The only D&D setting i ever really got deeply into was Dragonlance, mainly because my most successful high school 2E campaign was DL, and the aformentioned 20 year world was homebrew but had a few elements heavily influenced by DL. I always think of D&D as a toolkit for making my own worlds and things and I don't like when the books bake too much lore or too many assumptions into the material presented. I also think books are too long and there is no reason you could not provide a complete and playable D&D in under 200 pages (and probably significantly less). Weirdly, with many non D&D games I generally prefer the opposite. Most of my favorite games from the 90s -- Earthdawn, Deadlands, etc... -- completely married setting and system. I just don't like it for D&D.
Also, i still think gnomes are useless and shouldn't be a PC race.