And everywhen.
I watch a lot of History Channel shows- its amazing how often history repeats itself, especially the whole "things are crappy today, compared to way back when..." line of complaints.
MtG, D&D and Me TITLE NAME EDIT-The thread where Joe apparently offends everyone
- Thread starter joethelawyer
- Start date
And everywhen.
I watch a lot of History Channel shows- its amazing how often history repeats itself, especially the whole "things are crappy today, compared to way back when..." line of complaints.
Hairfoot
First Post
In fifteen years, 4E's young turks will be decrying whatever the new edition is and telling everyone how much better the game was back in 2009.
Only history will show if they'll be right or wrong, but either way they'll be angry that their opinions, based on long careers of gaming, are written off as worthless, baseless and purely the product of nostalgia and a fear of change.
Only history will show if they'll be right or wrong, but either way they'll be angry that their opinions, based on long careers of gaming, are written off as worthless, baseless and purely the product of nostalgia and a fear of change.
Actually, speaking of non fiction I read when I was a child because I was a huge nerd, some psychologists believe that there are certain personality templates out there into which large groups of people fall. I read this a long time ago, so I forget the terminology, but one of the templates was basically "the guy who always thinks stuff was better a generation ago." The idea was that these templates might explain why across thousands of miles, thousands of years, and vast cultural divides, "the guy who always thinks stuff was better a generation ago" sounds almost exactly the same, and usually has similar political views on certain key issues.
For full disclosure, "the guy who always thinks changes are good" was another template.
Exactly.
I'm not saying my opinions are right. Just that they're my opinions. Just like rectums, everyone's got one. I accept mine in all its irrationality and crotchity-ness. I'm not looking for anyone else to. Just letting you all know what mine is. It's not even worth arguing the merits of it because, like all opinions, its not really debatable. It just is.
Be warned though, it might change tomorrow for no good reason whatsoever.
As a fellow nerd, just to add to that, I read a book in college (when I should have been reading school books of course) called Human Ethology. Written by a guy named Ibel Ibesfeld, or something like that. He was writing about the genetic/biological roots of certain behaviors which are shared across cultures which have no cultural points of interaction.
Some examples he used were how adult men always talked in a higher pitched voice to children when trying to gain their attention and favor. That was the same no matter where they came from.
The main thrust of the approach though was to treat people as animals and their behavior as that of animals, similar to other mammals. It was a biological approach to understanding human behavior and how basically animal behavior manifests in a complex society. Very interesting stuff.
Since most biological behavior comes down to means to survive, reproduce to perpetuate your genetic line, and then secondarily the genetic line of your relatives and then your species, my gut is that the archetype of the guy who thinks it was always better in the past is that of a survival mechanism which knows that in this past I did this and survived, therefore it must be a good behavior to emulate in order for you to survive.
You may want to try concentrating more on the former than on the latter. Your own self-analysis is useful to you, maybe, but the other can come across a bit more negatively.
Might also help to take a look at how much of everything you've said has already been put forth...sometimes years ago, and the responses to it.
Oh, and you may want to look up Socio-biology.
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Aus_Snow
First Post
But you do. Well, I do. Quite a lot.
Very recently. No, I'm not just trying to be difficult here. I really do see this stuff (still) happening. All the time.
Honestly, I believe that is not an age-dependent trait, but a. . . um, 'playstyle preference-dependent' one(?) - well, that'll do anyway.
But some of what I didn't quote - yeah, I get that.
Well, I was born with a birth defect, which I've had to learn to accept over the years, as have everyone who has gotten to know me and ended up in my life. That little filter, presumably somewhere in the neck bone, between the brain and the mouth, which tells a normal person "Hey, Jackass, don't say that thought out loud, you'll probably insult or offend someone even though you don't mean it that way!" ---that filter is missing in me.
Socio-biology is interesting though. I've read a bit of it back in college.
It's not a birth defect. It's actually a highly infectious disease with an irregular pattern of presentation, it can crop up at the oddest times with no warning, or it can be almost continual!
There is no known cure or vaccination. Current prevalence is somewhere in the 99th percentile.
Treatments range from vows of silence to locking yourself in a cave.
Joe, if B&N does not have Labyrinth Lord (basically a clone of the Moldvay / Cook / Marsh Basic and Expert sets) in stock, then you can have it special-ordered.
I have been pretty impressed by the turnout for RPGA 4E relative to Magic events at the FLGS. In both, I see a wide range of ages -- but that for 4E (from elementary schoolers to half-centenarians) is notably broader.
Still, the table-top gaming scene (from what I'm able to see of it, which may not be representative) seems to skew older than it once did.
There seems to be a similar shift in the (American, anyhow) comic-book business. A lot of "geek culture" seems to me to have become even more geeky, probably chasing a narrower target demographic with more per capita to spend on it.
Adjusted for inflation, the 4E books seem about as big-ticket for a kid as the 1E volumes were in their day. Many games' rulebooks (usually saddle stapled, although 2nd ed. RuneQuest was perfect bound) were offered separately as well as in boxed sets.
My impression is that pre-teens are as avid readers as ever. The really bookish were in the minority, I think, even before television. There seems to be a special appeal in books for those who have not yet mastered the "magic" of literacy. When first that door is opened, the novelty of access to such a treasure trove tends to be intoxicating. If that's not exactly timeless, I think it has at least a few generations left! Look at how much of the Internet is textual.
I am not well versed in it, but I gather that rather free-form narrative games played online have become quite popular with the younger set. That reminds me of some games my friends and I had cobbled together and were playing at the time we first encountered D&D.
It may be less common now for kids of that age and socioeconomic class just to wander over to Buddy's house and get into some game played with paper, pencil and dice (or any of other myriad ways we found to entertain ourselves).
So, there may well be a whole new set of "grass roots" sprouting quite outside our loop. I am inclined to think that if there is, then common ground is more likely to be found in rules-lighter games akin the seminal works of our hobby than in the latest manifestations of decadence.
On the other hand, the trend away from old-style roleplaying toward a "storytelling" mode may provide more points of contact. It is not what "D&D" means to me, and I find WotC's design conflicted and cumbersome, but it seems a more sensible course than trying to ape video games.
Those, I think, answer better the needs of a demographic that in former decades played D&D simply because it was the next best thing -- what was available when the World of Warcraft program seemed even more far out than a manned mission to Mars.
I have been pretty impressed by the turnout for RPGA 4E relative to Magic events at the FLGS. In both, I see a wide range of ages -- but that for 4E (from elementary schoolers to half-centenarians) is notably broader.
Still, the table-top gaming scene (from what I'm able to see of it, which may not be representative) seems to skew older than it once did.
There seems to be a similar shift in the (American, anyhow) comic-book business. A lot of "geek culture" seems to me to have become even more geeky, probably chasing a narrower target demographic with more per capita to spend on it.
Adjusted for inflation, the 4E books seem about as big-ticket for a kid as the 1E volumes were in their day. Many games' rulebooks (usually saddle stapled, although 2nd ed. RuneQuest was perfect bound) were offered separately as well as in boxed sets.
My impression is that pre-teens are as avid readers as ever. The really bookish were in the minority, I think, even before television. There seems to be a special appeal in books for those who have not yet mastered the "magic" of literacy. When first that door is opened, the novelty of access to such a treasure trove tends to be intoxicating. If that's not exactly timeless, I think it has at least a few generations left! Look at how much of the Internet is textual.
I am not well versed in it, but I gather that rather free-form narrative games played online have become quite popular with the younger set. That reminds me of some games my friends and I had cobbled together and were playing at the time we first encountered D&D.
It may be less common now for kids of that age and socioeconomic class just to wander over to Buddy's house and get into some game played with paper, pencil and dice (or any of other myriad ways we found to entertain ourselves).
So, there may well be a whole new set of "grass roots" sprouting quite outside our loop. I am inclined to think that if there is, then common ground is more likely to be found in rules-lighter games akin the seminal works of our hobby than in the latest manifestations of decadence.
On the other hand, the trend away from old-style roleplaying toward a "storytelling" mode may provide more points of contact. It is not what "D&D" means to me, and I find WotC's design conflicted and cumbersome, but it seems a more sensible course than trying to ape video games.
Those, I think, answer better the needs of a demographic that in former decades played D&D simply because it was the next best thing -- what was available when the World of Warcraft program seemed even more far out than a manned mission to Mars.
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