MtG, D&D and Me TITLE NAME EDIT-The thread where Joe apparently offends everyone

[AllisterH]

The best thing about wearing nostalgia goggles is that you're never wrong!*

Also, Joe, maybe you can tell me as you seem to be amongst this crowd: What, exactly, is your problem with manga - and I damn well expect a problem I cannot find in fantasy books.

*So long as you never take them off

I dont think people realize to this day the breadth and width of manga title. You go from Planetes to Bleach and the only thing they have in common is that they are read right to left...

 

[Hairfoot]

Nostalgia goggles.

 

[MichaelSomething]

On the bright side, MtG and 4E are the reason RPG boards are now crawling with teenagers who care enough about a game to ferociously attack anyone with a dissenting opinion. That's a good sign for the future of a hobby which has previously been characterised by an online community of middle-aged grognards lamenting the death spiral of D&D.

So the hobby can either be dying or infested with angsty teenagers? Now that's a grognard's "pick your posion" situation if I ever saw one

 

[Mournblade94]

I wrote a big long post and then deleted it.

All I'll say is this: I suspect that your vision of How Things Used to Be, which I derive from your negative attitude about How Things Are, is largely nostalgia mixed with an assumption that your childhood experiences were far more broadly shared than they actually were. I spent my childhood in imaginative play, reading non fiction, etc, etc. Of course I also spent it playing games with rules and reading comic books from other countries, but that's beside the point. Anyways, I may have spent my childhood doing all the things you mentioned, but you know what? I was weird. Most people didn't do what I did, didn't grow up like that, and I suspect that when you were a kid it was no different. I'm sure your city now has a similar proportion of huge nerds like me as it did in the past, and I'm sure that percentage is low enough that you really shouldn't expect to encounter lots of them on a random sample in a bookstore on a Saturday afternoon.

That's about all I can write without turning this into a diatribe against old people and anyone who writes a "kids these days" essay. They're reductive, usually vaguely insulting, and typically speak much more about the author and the lens through which he views the world than about the alleged subject matter.

Actually the part where he mentions how kids these days LEARN information is all over the academic literature. D&D 4e DEFINITELY takes advantage of this. THere is plenty of fact in Joe's post when you strip the nostalgia from it.

Qualitatively it is really a matter of opinion. Any teacher will tell you the source of the post is correct.

 

[Remathilis]

Count me in as one offended.

I came to D&D from JRPGS (Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior). I got pulled in by a Tolkien aficionado. Since then, I've recruited comic-book guys, fantasy novel readers, video-game players, Harry Potter fans, history buffs, LARPers, and yes, M:TG fans. Some stay, some go. But HOW we got there wasn't as important as what we wanted.

I wanted to be able to create my own FF-inspired storylines of heroism, death, love, and tragedy. I wanted High fantasy with a hint or two of sci-fi. I though Conan was a bad 80's flick and Tolkien was the boring seminal work of a scholar more concerned with elvish moss than epic battles. Of course my opinion did change with age (and a certain trilogy of movies), but my game still leans more on the high-fantasy and epic storyline element than the "here is a deathtrap dungeon, can you survive it?"

My point is the tent is big enough to support the grognards, new gamers, cardfloppers, dicechuckers, and anime kids. Arguing superiority because you came into the game differently than I did is preposterous. We all play (abit differently) but we're all still gamers.

Lamenting D&D's demise is like lamenting the death of rock music; just because the Big Bopper gave way to the Rolling Stones which gave way to Sabbath, Motley Crue, and Korn doesn't mean Rock is dead, just different.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Actually the part where he mentions how kids these days LEARN information is all over the academic literature. D&D 4e DEFINITELY takes advantage of this. THere is plenty of fact in Joe's post when you strip the nostalgia from it.

Qualitatively it is really a matter of opinion. Any teacher will tell you the source of the post is correct.

The core of his post is that there is one way to get into D&D, which is to be a well-read kid like he was back then, and if that group of kids is no longer available, D&D will die. Which is bunk. A majority of the people i played RPGs with in the 80s were loud-mouthed, semi-literate pricks, which incidentially were also extremely dedicated and well-versed roleplayers.

And please: if you want to use academic literature to support your argument, CITE. Otherwise, don´t mention.

 

[samursus]

Kids these days!

Why when I was young, when we wanted to learn how to do something we actually did it! We ventured out on our own two feet to find someone who knew how to make horseshoes. Then we apprenticed until we were taught what we needed to know...and we even had a trade when, after a few years, we were done. Now... kids wanting to spend all there coin on these new fangled books! No attention span... after they read one book its on to another... don't have the attention span to stick out one apprenticeship!!! Want to know whats over the next mountain? Well get on yer feet and go see it....but no, they'll just take the easy way out and read about it in these books.

(in spite of my limited writing skills, my point being....things change, but they stay the same )

 

[Invisible Stalker]

To be more accurate, Generation X are better than Generation Y.

Way better, but Generation Y is still ahead of the Baby Boomers.

Also...

On behalf of the rest of us, welcome to 39 Joe.

Death to Manga!

Normally I am to close mindedness what Tiger Woods is to golf, yet this 1e grognard still likes 4e.

 

[joethelawyer]

The core of his post is that there is one way to get into D&D, which is to be a well-read kid like he was back then, and if that group of kids is no longer available, D&D will die. Which is bunk. A majority of the people i played RPGs with in the 80s were loud-mouthed, semi-literate pricks, which incidentially were also extremely dedicated and well-versed roleplayers.

And please: if you want to use academic literature to support your argument, CITE. Otherwise, don´t mention.

Dude, when did I ever say anything like that? My post was about why D&D appealed to me---because of my interest in history which was shared with the inventor of the game, that i don't like playing games just for a game's sake---i like using my imagination and not being focused a lot on rules. I threw in there that I dont like MtG for that reason, and that I don't get manga's appeal. I posted that I thought kids don't read too much anymore, and that their influences today are way different than what mine were, and so 4e and latter 3.5 might be a better fit for them. Hence, a good marketing move by wotc, but which produces a game that doesn't appeal to me. I never said D&D would die because kids today don't read non-fiction books anymore.

Trust me. I'm blunt, inconsiderate and loud-mouthed enough that if I felt D&D is going to die because most kids today are stupid, uneducated and not intellectually curious in the slightest, I would have said it.

 

[Umbran]

Dude, when did I ever say anything like that? My post was about why D&D appealed to me---

Respectfully, Joe, much of the verbiage may have been about you, but you seem to forget that the end of a piece, the last things an audience reads, can largely set the message. You said:

I think this may be why so many (mostly older) gamers are getting into the old school gaming thing, or checking it out. We want to go back to a simpler thing which reminds us of simpler times. To a game where we can let our imaginations run free, and where the game mechanic was a means to that end, and not an end it and of itself.

That, right there, is where you set it up as generalization to a large number of older gamers, not just yourself. You continue, and it gets worse...

With so many of us being older, having grown in knowledge, maturity, and depth, we realize we have less need of rules to get us where we want to go. It’s about the fantasy, the immersion, the history and the creativity it unleashes in us. Not the mechanics---the “game” part that makes me feel like I am playing Stratego or Poker or Battleship or Monopoly or an MMORPG or Diablo 2.

You also set up what looks a lot like value judgment. "We" have the knowledge and maturity, immersion, and imaginations that run free, creativity unleashed. And the unspoken contrast is that "they" don't play the same way you do, so obviously "they" do not have any of those things.

Basically, Joe, the number of uncomplimentary things you implied about folks who don't share your tastes is simply staggering. Your denials are kind of belied by those two paragraphs. If this wasn't what you intended to say, you ought to address why those paragraphs were there.