Gaming Generation Gap

[Reynard]

If you would like to find a more reasoned discussion, then perhaps couching your criticisms in forms that haven't been repeated ad nauseum for almost a decade might aid in that endevour. Instead of telling me how much better things were in the past, how they were more "pure" and "true to the roots", tell me why those roots are something I should be interested in. Instead of telling me why the things that I like suck, why not tell me why the things you like are actually good.

I double dog dare you.

I'll make you deal: we'll meet halfway. I'll make a greater effort to be explicit about the fact that I am talking about *my* preferences and *my* experiences, if you make an effort to no actively search for things to feel attacked over. Sound reasonable?

 

[Piratecat]

Meeting half-way is good, challenging people to be positive is great, being rude is bad. Try to adjust accordingly.

 

[TwinBahamut]

These 3 pages of the 1e DMG explain how to convert AD&D characters to Boot Hill and Gamma World and vice versa.

You admit it below, but I think I still need to say it. This is so far outside of what I would call "support" that it hardly bears mention. If anything, it is an explicit statement saying that if you want to combine D&D with the tropes of some other genre, you need to completely change setting via weird magical phenomenon and convert your characters over to a totally different ruleset. It is the exact opposite of what I would want to see.

Yes, you are right. D&D never directly supported bonzo Rifts like play but it certainly was not said that you couldn't add such to your D&D game should you choose to. (See also S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.)

"Bonzo Rifts-like play"? That isn't what I would want to see at all. A somewhat broader definition of the word "fantasy", perhaps, but certainly not "bonzo". That can certainly be fun (I'm fond of many of the SaGa games), but it is far from the only way to mix things like guns, technology, and fantasy.

If you don't see the influence of D&D on Final Fantasy in all its forms, you don't know D&D as well as you might.

Well, certainly D&D has some small influence on even the most recent Final Fantasy games (they still have HP, Levels, and a generic group of loosely allied heroes on a quest, after all), but that is hardly the point.

Keep in mind, what you quoted was written in response to someone putting forward the idea that D&D can be seen by fans of modern fantasy as the defining pinnacle of the kind of fantasy they have been exposed to, because videogames primarily draw inspiration from D&D. That is simply untrue, and excessively dismisses the imagination and creativity of the countless games that have been made over the years. In terms of game mechanics, the Final Fantasy series abandoned some of the basic premises of D&D (important things like characters who have set classes) in the second iteration of the series, and never looked back. In terms of "fluff", presentation, and the like, recent Final Fantasy games don't resemble the "vanilla fantasy" of D&D in the least. Final Fantasy 12 probably takes more from Star Wars than it does D&D. As for the upcoming Final Fantasy 13, well, see for yourself...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDjkGUM7skk"]Final Fantasy XIII Trailer[/ame]

Not really a lot like D&D on any significant level. And this is from a series that started as a D&D clone. Countless other videogames started even further away from the D&D baseline, and diverged just as far. The Breath of Fire series, for example (I mention this one simply because Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter has to be one of the most un-D&D-like fantasy games I have ever seen). Even though D&D may be the root of the genre, it doesn't define or embody the genre as a whole. It is the same for videogames as it is for tabletop RPGs, really, except that D&D isn't the giant gorilla of the videogame market like it is in the tabletop RPG market.

** Hey, remember when it called The Dragon.

???

The fact that your sentence is incomplete aside, I never read Dragon magazine, and 1E was before my time. Seriously, I wasn't even born yet when that was first printed.

 

[stuart]

D&D 3e and 4e undoubtedly have lots of anime influences... because there's lots of action/adventure anime movies and TV shows from the past 15 years or so. If they had been around to the same extent in the 70s in North America I guarantee they'd have been part of 1st edition. The old Kung Fu TV show with David Carradine was the inspiration for the 1e Monk. Cowboy movies and Sci Fi flicks all got their bits and pieces thrown into the D&D pot too (with rules in the DMG).

If some new style of action/adventure movie becomes really popular in the future, I'm sure it will influence future RPGs as well.

 

[amysrevenge]

D&D 3e and 4e undoubtedly have lots of anime influences... because there's lots of action/adventure anime movies and TV shows from the past 15 years or so. If they had been around to the same extent in the 70s in North America I guarantee they'd have been part of 1st edition.

Now there's a truth.

 

[Ariosto]

Objectively, "by the book", relying on the dice in "old-school" D&D is going to kill a lot of first-level characters. The effect of even a few telling dice-rolls weighs so much that the best skill can usually do is improve the odds of survival to second level from negligible to roughly even.

Still, that's a pretty significant difference. "Learning the ropes" to the extent that it takes on average only 2-3 characters to get one to 2nd is a big down-payment on the know-how it shall eventually take to get through the Tomb of Horrors or similar. Repeating the experience more than a couple of times might not (YMMV) be very entertaining, though; it may be best to start experienced players with characters of 2nd, 3rd or even 4th-5th level.

Going up to Greyhawk hit dice helps magic-users, but Greyhawk damage boosts (especially for monsters) seem to me to make the game tougher for all classes until hit dice get a further boost in AD&D ... for everyone except the m-u.

 

[Ariosto]

Twin Bahamut, the DMG references to Boot Hill and Gamma World were partly a matter of marketing. Gygax naturally was not going to write, "Interested readers should pick up Dave Hargrave's Welcome to Skull Tower for the Gunnery Charts, Star Powered Mages, Rune Singers, and other groovy goodies."

 

[Cadfan]

I'm 28.

I don't know if I have a "formative fantasy" experience or set of novels. I continue to read today, relatively voraciously, as I have since I was about 10. I started with CS Lewis and the sort of fantasy your mom might give you, moved to Anne McCaffrey, whom I found shelved in part in the children's section of the library, and then followed her into the young adult section where I found Gordon R. Dickson. But I continue to read, and to read a lot, and I continue to really enjoy finding newly published authors who do new things I haven't seen before.

And then on top of that, I like anime. Not all anime, but some. Begin with the premise that 90% of everything is crap. If you're willing to watch both english language tv AND japanese tv, you've got twice as much to sort through to find the 10% that's good. Darker than Black, for example, is as much an influence on my vision of fantasy as is Thunderer.

I do tend to find myself becoming somewhat frustrated with older (sometimes just mentally older...) gamers who look at me with my stack of novels published in the past five years, and see a threat to the way they want to game.

And I find myself incredibly frustrated with gamers who think that we really, REALLY need fifteen types of polearms with individual stat lines for each, but who also think that the addition of a katana is not only somehow bad but actually unnecessary when we have a longsword.

 

[Doug McCrae]

D&D 3e and 4e undoubtedly have lots of anime influences...

Could you give some examples? I actually think d20 D&D has fewer Eastern influences than 1e. The only one I've seen is a picture of a hair horror J-ghost in 4e's Open Grave - Secrets of the Undead, and that's pretty obscure.

 

[Reynard]

And I find myself incredibly frustrated with gamers who think that we really, REALLY need fifteen types of polearms with individual stat lines for each, but who also think that the addition of a katana is not only somehow bad but actually unnecessary when we have a longsword.

People have their preferences, to be sure, but I think generally speaking the kind of player that would enjoy really granular weapon stats would probably appreciate the inclusion of said stats for a wide variety of weapons. Even so, though, i understand where your coming from: a lot of grognardia has a particular inyterest in medieval europe and doesn't much care for other historical periods or cultures.

In the end, i think your first game experiences -- the group, the playstyle, the edition -- defines your "generation", though that can indeed change over time.