is Dungeons and Dragons still Lame

[Imaro]

No.

Not until some money is spent advertising it in places where people who aren't already the target audience can be exposed to it.

4e or 10e will not change that.

Yeah I gotta agree...I love the WoW commercial with Mr. T...

In fact take note WotC I willl only play 4e if there is a Mohawk Class. Whose with me?

 

[Mirtek]

The reason for a new edition is us, things that we gamers have requested.

The reason for a new edition is us, but not because of things we gamers have requested but because they have already sold us about anything that makes sense to produce. Now only the less profitable books are left as are the xth run of Complete [...].

So either they're stuck with producing adventures (smaller number of people per group buying them) or the xth run of Complete [...] series (which will also get less and less profitable because the people who already own Sword&Fist and Complete Warrior are less and less likely to also buy Complete Melee, Complete Frontguy and Complete Combatant on top of it).

They need a new edition to be able to once again sell us the same stuff we have already bought from them. And eventually everyone will have bought their third Compelte Warrior and they need a 5th edition to once again be able to sell us our new first Complete Warrior of the new edition because the fourth Complete Warrior of the old edition doesn't bring enough revenue

 

[adembroski]

I personally find it difficult to believe that everyone on enworld is a bonofide geek.

I have found, as I've grown older, that while D&D is not becoming appreciably more popular to play, it is becoming more accepted outside of that utterly ridiculous social setting known as "High School". Adult gamers are generally open about their own geekness, and it's often seen as an amusing eccentricity more than a defining characteristic to be a gamer once you reach adulthood.

It is, and always will be, a niche hobby. It requires imagination in an over-stimulated culture. I'm somewhat shocked people still read.

As for the survival of the hobby... this is something I often worry about. Not that I think it'll die, but that I think I'll go too far trying to rope in the WoW and EQ fans. D&D must always been something deeper and more sophisticated, otherwise it looses it's purpose and becomes nothing more than WoW for people who can't afford the monthly fee.

I have an acute hate for MMORPGs because one of the finest gamers I've ever had the pleasure to know was roped into WoW (my fault, in fact. He had no interest until I purchased it and he tried it out on my computer). That guy no longer has any patience for what he refers to as Flesh People. When I can get him to attend a regular game, he saturates it with WoW references to the point that I almost want to kick him out of the game. He was among my closest friend... he was the guy I spent 9 hours at the bar every Sunday watching every NFL game we could. Now there is not a waking hour he has off of work when he's not plugged into WoW. He keeps his computer right next to the refrigerator so he doesn't have to get up to eat. Another of my friends nearly fell into the same trap, but, thankfully, he lost his passion after a hard drive failure kept him off for a week. I had initially hoped it was a phase, that eventually he'd come back to real life. It's been years now.

Now if I'm more of a geek because I play D&D, so be it. I'll take that happily.

 

[Wolfspider]

Now if I'm more of a geek because I play D&D, so be it. I'll take that happily.

You and me both, brother.

 

[adembroski]

I forgot to mention the Chick factor... and I'm not talking about women. I don't remember his first name off hand, but a man named Chick... a religious leader, apparently, though I don't know anybody (being a Christian myself) that really knows who he is.

He's the main proponent of the Dungeons-and-Dragons-is-evil lobby. A sad hanger on to the legacy of a 1980s 60-Minutes D&D version of the fake military transcripts... like almost all mainstream media reporting, it was a study in half-truths and motivated false assumptions. Admittedly, his arguments make a tad more sense than those of Ed Bradley, and he appears to have done some research to get to his conclusions, but like all of the D&D-is-of-the-devil crowd, he mistakes the medium for the message.

While the Word-of-the-Church does not hold the sway it once did (for good or ill, I'll leave that to the read to decide), certainly, the fact that Christian opposition to Dungeons and Dragons was never really covered in mainstream media (only the "fact" that D&D was "occult"), that opposition has become a meem of sorts, infecting a large portion of the population without them really noticing. So D&D is not only geeky, but also downright weird. You have to be messed up to play this game.

And admittedly, many of our nations odder subcultures play the game. I have many friends of the Wiccan faith, virtually all of which play. I'd be willing to bet that upwards of 90% of Anton LeVay followers are gamers. There are RPGs out there (various Steam Punk games, the White Wolf line) that are based on decidedly unchristian values. But to people who use those as examples, I say that the game tends to attract the eccentric... it doesn't create them.

You know, this just now came to mind: The game will never, ever die. I say this because I think it fills an important niche in our society. "In the beginning", there were storytellers. Tribal and clannish wisemen who passed history down from generation to generation. Next came the bard, who would travel from village to village, passing on tales, entertaining and educating. The Greeks had their tragedies, and the play was the thing. Eventually we had print, and the pen indeed became mightier than the sword. Eventually radio, then radio with pictures, and today we have 65" flat panel High Def plasma television with 6.1 surround sound and ambient lighting... but we all still yearn for the storyteller. That social exercise when the village came together to hear tales of the great heroes of generations past... and so today we have the Dungeon Master... for those of us who still have an attention span, anyways.

 

[Wolfspider]

I forgot to mention the Chick factor... and I'm not talking about women. I don't remember his first name off hand, but a man named Chick... a religious leader, apparently, though I don't know anybody (being a Christian myself) that really knows who he is.

He's the main proponent of the Dungeons-and-Dragons-is-evil lobby. A sad hanger on to the legacy of a 1980s 60-Minutes D&D version of the fake military transcripts... like almost all mainstream media reporting, it was a study in half-truths and motivated false assumptions. Admittedly, his arguments make a tad more sense than those of Ed Bradley, and he appears to have done some research to get to his conclusions, but like all of the D&D-is-of-the-devil crowd, he mistakes the medium for the message.

While the Word-of-the-Church does not hold the sway it once did (for good or ill, I'll leave that to the read to decide), certainly, the fact that Christian opposition to Dungeons and Dragons was never really covered in mainstream media (only the "fact" that D&D was "occult"), that opposition has become a meem of sorts, infecting a large portion of the population without them really noticing. So D&D is not only geeky, but also downright weird. You have to be messed up to play this game.

And admittedly, many of our nations odder subcultures play the game. I have many friends of the Wiccan faith, virtually all of which play. I'd be willing to bet that upwards of 90% of Anton LeVay followers are gamers. There are RPGs out there (various Steam Punk games, the White Wolf line) that are based on decidedly unchristian values. But to people who use those as examples, I say that the game tends to attract the eccentric... it doesn't create them.

Jack Chick. And he really hasn't had anything to say about gaming since Dark Dungeons came out a long time ago. He's not really at the vanguard of the anti-D&D movement. In fact, I don't think that there is an anti-D&D movement anymore.

In any case, I smell brimstone, which means that this thread of discussion is getting much too close to real world politics for the rules of this forum....

 

[Rechan]

In fact, I don't think that there is an anti-D&D movement anymore.

Yeah. With The Internet, Harry Potter, the Golden Compass, Goth Music, learning certain things in schools, Cable TV, etc etc, D&D is really on the bottom of "Things you don't want your kids doing".

The 80s was a different time.

And while adembroski may have a point, that the 80s scare is still in America's psyche, one could also say that the one short period where D&D was popular is also in the American psyche.

 

[Piratecat]

Yep. Scootch it away from religious discussion, please.

And Rechan? Good analysis. Well said.

 

[Asmor]

I have found, as I've grown older, that while D&D is not becoming appreciably more popular to play, it is becoming more accepted outside of that utterly ridiculous social setting known as "High School". Adult gamers are generally open about their own geekness, and it's often seen as an amusing eccentricity more than a defining characteristic to be a gamer once you reach adulthood.

Geekdom as a whole is more socially acceptable now than it ever was 15 or 20 years ago (or at least that's what I'm lead to believe; being 23, I don't have a whole lot of experience that far back to draw on). I know going through high school I was "out" and quite proud of my geekdom.

That said, your experience is not a universal one. It's the experience I've had in my life, but much to my surprise there have been a couple threads on the subject here on ENWorld where people said that they actively hid their hobby from their coworkers, sometimes even their friends.

 

[adembroski]

Jack Chick. And he really hasn't had anything to say about gaming since Dark Dungeons came out a long time ago. He's not really at the vanguard of the anti-D&D movement. In fact, I don't think that there is an anti-D&D movement anymore.

In any case, I smell brimstone, which means that this thread of discussion is getting much too close to real world politics for the rules of this forum....

6 Years Ago

5 years ago

He also wrote a book on the subject... he's had more to say since, but it's within other articles and I'm not going to link them all.

(BTW: A bit touchy, aren't we? I didn't start discussing the virtues of faith vs. atheism, I only mentioned Christianities traditional position toward the game... unlikely to touch off an argument considering we're all gamers here. Even if some of us are Christian (considering the demograph of the English Speaking world, I'd say that'd be the majority of us), I think our attitude toward that type of thinking would be more or less the same. I certainly didn't condemn anyone for being Christian.)