Mercurius
Legend
No need to come to the valiant (if misplaced) defense of the younger folks, nor to make this into something it isn't. I'm not generalizing--in any sort of definitive, concrete way, at least--about them in terms of their character, but just in terms of what I have observed, specifically in relation to the degree that the rules are set in stone vs. malleability. Thus the "I have observed."I have also observed older folks making generalizations about younger folks... and being wrong. Very wrong. Often. So, maybe such things ought to be based on more than just, "I have observed," given that our individual observations are usually not statistically relevant random samples.
That being said, "in the old days," the marketplace was not flooded with options as it is now, and players had much less ability to find out about the ones that did exist. I have the sneaking suspicion that with the stagnation of RPG prices over the years, a new ruleset is proportionally a smaller amount of the younger player's disposable resources as well.
The internet has given us the whole wealth of possibilities at the lick of a mouse - there is no need to do lots of homebrew rules when you can just pick another game that does what you want instead.
Of course your next two paragraphs provide another angle that supports the idea: which is that homebrewing is less common these days, for a multiple of reasons that I conjectured about and you added to.
What exactly do you think I'm trying to say about the younger generation that I didn't say in the paragraph that you quoted me as saying "absolutely nothing" about them? Maybe I wasn't making the kind of judgment you seem to think I was saying?. . . That says absolutely nothing about the younger generation.