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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lyxen" data-source="post: 8530220" data-attributes="member: 7032025">Age: 57, going on 58...Year Started: 1978First RPG: Holmes BasicHow many different RPGs played in first decade? I'm not sure. A lot, since I was in a club and we liked to experiment, but the first years, there were not that many on the market, and certainly not available in France for the most part. But in the early years certainly Runequest (still a favorite), Traveller, Bushido, Chivalry and Sorcery, Gamma World, Call of Cthulhu, Rolemaster, Palladium, Paranoia, etc. .Plus a number of french RPGs, some of which were really great like Reve de Dragon or Légendes Celtiques. A bit of Das Schwarze Auge as well from Germany.How did you rate D&D compared to other RPGs in that period? Honestly, it was the best to play with the most people. I absolutely loved Runequest (and still do), but it was harder to find people because of the complex system and the immersion in the world. Also loved Bushido because of the samurai vibe, but even harder to find players. D&D was simply great and simple enough to allow anyone to play almost immediately, a quality that I appreciate in 5e as well.First DM: Me, then a friend from school.First players: Friends from school, we are still friends and I see them regularly, but we stopped playing together a while ago. Some of their children play, however, I did a few introductory adventures and I play with them now and again.Reading: Could not find a lot of fantasy reading in France, and my parents thought it was a bit early to read things like Lovecraft. Still I read as much as my father's collection of Sci-Fi as early as I could, along with lots of things like Sherlock Holmes, etc. But the real revelation was the Lord of the Rings, which I was reading when going to the US, where the family, after discussing with me about that and about an article about very early D&D in a french science magazine, offered me my first D&D box. Unfortunately, my english was not good enough to run a game for the boy of the family and his french, so I came back to France. However, that trip also showed me that there was a wide fantasy section of books, so I found my way to the english bookshops in Paris, Brentano and W.H. Smith, where I could start reading all the fantasy I could find.  A lot did not leave a lasting impression, except for Moorcock, Feist, and Brust who were extremely close to the way we ended up playing D&D in spirit, but also huge classics like Earthsea, Poul Anderson. There were also some french translations, of Howard, Vance, Zelazny, Leiber, Farmer, etc.PC Death: Lots of them at the start, but during the 80s, our roleplaying got much stronger, and we shifted a lot to story-mode, which implied that death became at the very least meaningful. So lots of resurrections at first, and since we were playing at mid to really high level, it was OK. For playing at high level, Vlad Taltos was really an inspiration, about the way death and resurrection are handled (as well as teleportation, artefacts, etc.). Since then, not much has changed, I was in engineering school from 1984, met a crowd of incredible players, a few of which I'm still playing with today, so our style has not much changed. Except during 3e, when I started a mega-shared-campaign with 5 other DMs (and a few more after that), in which I wanted adventurers to be real survivors, and players to learn to have fear, and run again. It was a real success, tons of senseless deaths at first in horrible dungeons, but it worked really well. After the first 2-3 years, we had the right mood, a combination of story and carefulness that suited us, and the adventurers where higher level, so raising was introduced in the campaign, although limited (due to resources and other special campaign factors) to higher levels, characters with already a story. We ended up after more than 10 years of campaign and some of the heroes ascending (quite a few more death of high level characters this time, but meaningful sacrificing themselves to allow others to ascend).Current controversies: Summary = Really Annoying because for me it's mostly about people wanting to push their real world views (and localised one at that, there are areas in the world with many more critical problems including real survival but these are not pushed) into the game, ignoring the fact that these are purely fantasy settings for a game, as if people were not able to distinguish fantasy from reality or historical reality of the past from the present day. And forcing WotC to make changes into the game without real rhyme or reason in terms of balance, resulting in a diluted game where interesting dramatic situations are considered "offensive". So absolutely yes to inclusivity being described strongly in modules and settings, but absolutely no to reducing the scope of the game or diluting options, if I want a fantasy race like minotaurs to be stronger, or races like gully dwarves to be not as smart, what is the problem exactly ? Are all fantasy races/species to have the same stats for "equality" reasons ?Don't get me wrong, I'm all for inclusivity, but I much prefer living it by playing with people of all colors, religions, genders, etc. all around the world, real people - who, by the way, never had anything bad to say about situations presented in the game - than restricting what I can do in a game which is pure fantasy because of people imagining that it could hurt others. If I restrict things in the game (e.g. violence, or more than romantical relationships), it's for the comfort of the people around the table, and it's a table agreement.Apart from that, yes, some old D&D products are the result of their time, and people should be mature enough to understand it and see that D&D has accompanied the changes in society since these were produced.Are modern TT RPGs better or worse than older ones? That is a very difficult question to answer. Do you consider 5e a modern TTRPG ? In a sense, it is, and at the same time, it calls back to early editions. It is certainly better than very old ones like Chivalry and Sorcery or Rolemaster, way too complex and imbricated, sometimes making no more sense despite trying to be extremely simulationist. And it is the best edition of D&D, simple and streamlined, and still supporting tons of different styles of play, allowing people to jump in and play casually, as well as supporting high level play fairly well. I think the people who don't like it are more on the gamist area, clearly wanting a more technical and crunchy game, and that's fine, Level Up is there for them.As for other RPGs, well I must confess that it's been a really long while since I tried one. I don't have the luxury to play as much as I would like, and honestly I don't think I've seen a new concept that would draw me in that much. I'll see when I'm retired. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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