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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Burnside" data-source="post: 8544696" data-attributes="member: 6910340">My XPAge: 45Year started: 1986First RPG: Mentzer BECMIHow many in first decade: Probably about half a dozen. My group definitely dabbled with Runequest, Top Secret, and Shadowrun, but the only one I remember us spending any significant amount of time with other than D&D was the Marvel Superheroes TTRPG (which was dreadfully designed). My initial playing period was fall 1986 through summer 1994, so less than a decade actually. Then pretty much didn't play until 2017.My 1986-94 and 2017-present gaming periods are obviously quite different. As a kid, I really didn't know anyone outside my immediate circle of friends who played (we taught ourselves) so had no frame of reference for what anybody else was doing. Now obviously you can audit thousands of tables online and easily play with many, many different people.As a teenager, I realized that being open about the fact that I played D&D was not going to advantage me socially, so I didn't talk about it much. As an adult, I was re-introduced to it by younger actors at my theater, and no longer feel self-conscious about it. I started DMing professionally in 2020, eventually also working as an agent to help other DMs get players since I have more requests for games than I can take on myself. I am currently running 3 campaigns and playing in another, involving a total of 21 different people. A majority of my current players are women, which is a HUGE difference from the 86-94 period during which I don't think I ever had even one female player or DM.First DM: My friend Adam (age 10). Although in truth I was hooked from just playing the solo adventure in the Mentzer book (somebody owned it and we all it passed around over the course of a week or so to play the solo adventure and learn the game).First players: My 10-year-old friendsViewsPC Death:Happens, but rare. I think that's pretty consistently been the case from 1E on. For me, some risk of death adds spice. But too much death would make it too hard to invest in characters. I don't begrudge or police how anybody handles this at their own table.Alignment:Really haven't used it since 1988.Current ControversiesI find it almost impossible to discuss this without wading into real-world politics, because I feel that the issues in D&D directly reflect broader issues in society. And I know it is against the terms of this board to actually discuss those issues. D&D is art and all art is political. I will just say that I support the changes and updates to D&D in its current incarnation and think that what has been done thus far was quite necessary and warranted. My experience has been that if you are someone who is upset by things like the move away from intelligent races who have a biological imperative to be evil, you are pretty likely to be somebody with whom I have real-world political disagreements.I'll chime in on the "chain mail bikini" issue, because I actually actually happened to observe a discussion about this between three of my female players. One of the women was discussing how she liked newer minis, because the older female minis her boyfriend owned were in chainmail bikinis which she hated. The other two women immediately said, "Wait, we can have chainmail bikinis?" and demanded to know where their characters could find some to wear. So it's not necessarily an issue of "chainmail bikinis = bad". It's just that chainmail bikinis can't be the ONLY way women are portrayed.Similarly, I had an experience where a white player, in a table where slightly more than half the players are non-white, became concerned that it might be wrong for her to play a tiefling because she was essentially briefly putting on the hat of an oppressed minority race as part of a fun game, whereas other players at the table were actually living that reality away from the table. The non-white players thanked her for her concern and agreed it was a valid one, but assured her than in this particular case, at this particular table, it was not an issue because they trusted her as a player and me as a DM. But everyone agreed it was a pretty valid question to ask and not something that you'd necessarily want to just assume is okay.</blockquote>

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