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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5654590" data-attributes="member: 59082">I'm feeling nostalgia for Mark CMG trying to, once again, push me into a position that I don't really feel all that strongly about through antagonism. Seriously though, if you're looking for "tip offs" then you're approaching posts in the argumentative way that I mentioned in the very first post. Mark, everything doesn't have to be a debate or argument - what about conversation?I hope you're right!What is "odd" about it? It is only "odd" if you think I have some hidden agenda, like trying to discredit RPGs and/or crap in your corn chip bowl. Relax, I come in peace.I'm not "closing off any discussion," I just didn't intend for the thread to about that. Feel free to start a new thread about the changing popularity of RPGs and I'll gladly participate.Back to the Nostalgiathon...Thanks for stopping by. I think you have an awfully negative perspective on "nostalgia." I mean, I get not liking when someone is trying to live in the past; I too find mullet-wearing Camaro-drivers a bit off-putting (if amusing). But nostalgia is not that far removed from Romanticism, which is key to much of fantasy, especially Tolkien. I take it you don't like Tolkien all that much? His entire work is dripping with nostalgia, albeit in its more literary Romantic form. It is a paen to yesteryear, to a long lost Golden Age. In truth, it is double-layered - the work itself (LotR) is a lost age in which the characters look back on a lost age (the First Age depicted in The Silmarillion). But I also hear you implying that the RPG experience can be fresh and not harkening back to 12-year old D&D. But what I'm talking about, mainly, is what we feel has been lost and left behind. Like, as I said, the print version of Dragon (especially the ads in the back!). Or a wider proliferation of game stores. Or even one's personal experience of first discovery. Etc.You don't mean Ral Partha's Imperial Dragon, do you?<img src="http://www.sodemons.com/bhgallery/rpimpdragonclose2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />It isn't quite "honking huge" but is pretty big, maybe eight or nine inches from tongue to tail tip (I have it, but it is not assembled and not with me right now, so I can't remember for sure). If I remember correctly, D&D became popular in the late 70s, super popular in the early 80s and maybe peaked in the Dragonlance era of 1983-85. Then the first bubble burst more in the mid-80s, with the Satanic scares, and in terms of in-house drama, Gygax leaving TSR and the rise of Lorraine Williams. But maybe the bubble bursting was a few years earlier, as you say?</blockquote>

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