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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1791400" data-attributes="member: 151">I have to agree with Henry.  I knew many kids in middle school who picked up D&D because it was new and part of the zeitgeist.  Most of them bought the game and it's products for a short time, played a few times and then never played again.  a good DM or good group could certainly reverse that trend...but many of them weren't gamers to begin with, and buying the game wouldn't change that.  Many of them simply wanted an experience similar to what CRPGs and console RPGs provide now.I loved my days of AD&D, but I saw it's flaws then, and I see them now.  I went on to GURPS, becuase AD&D simply didn't meet my needs, any longer.  I avoided 2e from reviews from friends who had it and played it, and had almost dropped out of gaming entirely, when 3e pulled me back in.  Suddenly, I had plenty of people, all former players, who wanted back in.  That doesn't mean we'd turned our backs on Basic D&D or AD&D and forgotten how much fun we'd had with them...just that we recognized that, for us, 3e was a better system.  Some folks, such as diaglo, see the sparseness of 0D&D as a great benefit, as it allows complete flexibility (if there are no set rules for anything, then there are also no walls or boundaries to what you can do).  Other folks, such as myself, prefer a ruleset where most major things are either consistently defined or implied.  This can lead some gamers to view it as constricting, with the rules dictating the game, instead of the other way around.When we came to D&D in the early 1980s, we had few expectations about it.  In 1979, D&D was NOT a household word.  The original D&D booklets were rarities, seldom seen and only owned by hobbyists.  RPGs were looked upon by wargamers the same way that CCGs were looked upon by RPG players when they came upon the scene.  I still remember buying my first D&D supplement....in a PET STORE. <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=":)" />  Comic shops were a rarity, and game stores?  Fuhgeddaboutit.  That changed, of course....but to this day, I still associate certain modules with the smell of bags of wood shavings for guniea pig cages and small animal feed. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />   D&D today comes with expectations and HISTORY.  The fact is that the conditions of D&D today are different than they were then.  My big brother hadn't played D&D, and father certainly hadn't.   That isn't necessarily true, today.  Just ask my kids. All of which is a long way to go to say that D&D is still D&D.  The rules aren't irrelevant, but neither are they the be-all and end-all of the game, either.  If an individual rule is a determiner of what D&D 'is'....then to me, that rule has to be 'have fun with your friends'.  The terminology would change, but D&D would not.  Could I have my 7th level fighter jump and grab onto a giant Ice Wurm and attempt to kill it while riding through a subterannean ice tunnel in any edition I play*?  Yep.  Oh, it happened in AD&D, but it could happen in any edition....and I'd treasure the memory, no matter where it occured.* - (For the record, I had turned into a half-demon at the time and was wielding a powerful enchanted sword, fighting alongside my comrades to rid the nearby peace-loving orc kingdom of a terrible menance while slowly losing my soul...but that's a story for another time)</blockquote>

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