D&D 5E Storm King's Thunder is someone's Demonweb Pits

[jgsugden]

I don't at all think he was saying that they were having the older-gamer's experience. He was saying, that these have the same position in their experience, as the older modules do for older players. Saying they are analogous is not suggesting they are exactly the same experience.

I began my answer with "Yes and No". What you're describing is the "yes" - they can both be an early step in a long D&D journey, taking up the same place in a D&D journey.

The "No" is what I described - that these are fundamentally and radically different journeys. They share the name of D&D, but they are such different things that taking your earliest steps on each of these paths is fundamentally different in the ways that I described. The "older-gamer's experience" is inherently part of what made Demonweb what it was, and that experience is not part of what Storm King's Thunder is.

So, superficially, yes. But when we look at whether they are actually the same type of experience in a way that allows us to say they serve the same function - not as much.

 

[Umbran]

The "No" is what I described - that these are fundamentally and radically different journeys. They share the name of D&D, but they are such different things that taking your earliest steps on each of these paths is fundamentally different in the ways that I described. The "older-gamer's experience" is inherently part of what made Demonweb what it was, and that experience is not part of what Storm King's Thunder is.

I'm going to yes and no right back at you...

The two experiences are not as radially different as all that. It is still D&D. It is still heroes on paper going through an adventure. Maybe they die, maybe thy don't. But it isn't like the two groups can't understand each other, unless they don't bother to try.

 

[jgsugden]

I'm going to yes and no right back at you...

The two experiences are not as radially different as all that. It is still D&D. It is still heroes on paper going through an adventure. Maybe they die, maybe thy don't. But it isn't like the two groups can't understand each other, unless they don't bother to try.

And we can agree to disagree on this a bit.

I don't think that people that grew up between 2000 and 2021 have the frame of reference to understand what it was like to grow up in the earlier era. Putting aside chronological distinctions, we see this in geographical distinctions and cultural distinctions.

Try as you might, you can't understand what it is like to have grown up in a place unless you can visit it and spend a lot of time there. When we try to show our understanding of other cultures and places when we have not had a chance to experience it ourselves, and rely upon hearsay for our understanding, we usually fall on our faces a bit, and risk being offensive.

Unfortunately, time travel doesn't allow us to travel to the past to experience what we did not see.

 

[Reynard]

And we can agree to disagree on this a bit.

I don't think that people that grew up between 2000 and 2021 have the frame of reference to understand what it was like to grow up in the earlier era. Putting aside chronological distinctions, we see this in geographical distinctions and cultural distinctions.

Try as you might, you can't understand what it is like to have grown up in a place unless you can visit it and spend a lot of time there. When we try to show our understanding of other cultures and places when we have not had a chance to experience it ourselves, and rely upon hearsay for our understanding, we usually fall on our faces a bit, and risk being offensive.

Unfortunately, time travel doesn't allow us to travel to the past to experience what we did not see.

I think that intentional othering of different generations is highly problematic and leads to a lot of the misunderstandings that drive much of our societal trouble. I don't think people are fundamentally different from one generation to the next or even from one cultural context to another. We are not fundamentally different than the folks who first put down seed and walls 12000 years ago, even if our contexts are. The fact that we still tell the same stories proves that.

So I think a millenial who discovered D&D through Critical Role and played through Out of the Abyss can certainly talk about the game with a GenXer that taught himself and his siblings to play by way of the Red Box. They aren't separate species.

 

[Democratus]

I think that intentional othering of different generations is highly problematic and leads to a lot of the misunderstandings that drive much of our societal trouble. I don't think people are fundamentally different from one generation to the next or even from one cultural context to another.

Anyone who had parents who grew up in the depression and WW II can tall you how wrong this is. My experience of the world growing up was fundamentally different from my parents. They survived the dustbowl and the depravations of war - losing family to both. And they developed an outlook and attitude based on that experience.

I grew up in the USA in the 70s and 80s and had a drastically different childhood, giving me a drastically different experience and outlook on life.

It's highly problematic to say that recognizing differences in generations is "othering", because that short-circuits any further discussion under the guise of avoiding transgression. It stops the exchange of ideas under the banner of virtue.

We are not fundamentally different than the folks who first put down seed and walls 12000 years ago, even if our contexts are. The fact that we still tell the same stories proves that.

So I think a millenial who discovered D&D through Critical Role and played through Out of the Abyss can certainly talk about the game with a GenXer that taught himself and his siblings to play by way of the Red Box. They aren't separate species.

People in societies are shaped by their context. Thousands of years ago slavery was perfectly fine and accepted. Killing a stranger was a minor infraction at best. Those who grew up in this world had a very different experience than we do, and one would do well not to trivialize it under the broad brush of "all folks are essentially the same".