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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8394141" data-attributes="member: 7023840">God points. To further elaborate-This essay is more muddled than most because it is reflecting a few conflicting thoughts; to illustrate where I was going-1. OD&D and AD&D were fundamentally weird in a way that many people today do not fully understand.2. As a subset of (1), the multiverse within the prime material plane (the Gygaxian multiverse) was part of this allowed weirdness.3. Over time, we have moved away from the multiverse / PMP theory when it comes to D&D for a multitude of reasons- emphasis on specific campaign settings, interest in the outer planes instead of alternate material planes, etc.4. I think that the explicit inclusion of the alternate Gygaxian multiverse allows for more weirdness and fun play, which I think is a good thing. More importantly, it's very much optional, given that you can have as much, or as little, as you want.However, I also wanted to make sure that the following was acknowledged-A. This isn't meant as a slam on 5e at all. I think that 5e already incorporates a lot of base-level weirdness; you list some great examples. I will return to this issue.B. In addition, there are some people who use OSR (or OD&D/1e) as a kind of reaction to modern gaming. The whole, "In the old days, we just went into dungeons, killed orcs, and were happy." I think that's an inaccurate representation of what OD&D/1e represented at their best (and weirdest), and I didn't want this to be a any kind of edition takedown.Looking back at (A)- I think that the difference is consistency; there is a premium placed on "world building" that ... well, maybe didn't exist in the earlier editions. 5e's worlds already start off plenty weird, but there is (in general) less tolerance for deviation from established D&D norms. Finally, w/r/t to the some of the specific bolded parts, I will end with an anecdote and an observation.Anecdote- as I have often remarked, I don't think many people realize how different things are today than they were in the 70s and 80s. To use an easy example- if you lived outside of major (and I mean major, as in NYC or LA) cities or certain ethnic enclaves, your options for food were American, Italian (American), and maybe Chinese (made for Americans). Maybe .... maybe texmex. In 1983, sushi was used as a punchline in a movie (Valley Girl) about foreign food- at the time, the idea of eating raw fish was bizarre. In 1988, I remember that you couldn't get bagels (BAGELS!) in large parts of the U.S. outside of, MAYBE, the frozen section with Lender's. And hummus? Forget it. America, in so many ways, was much less worldly than it is now.Anyway, the point being that while in the 70s and into the 80s, you might see kids playing "Cowboys & Indians," today you'd be much more likely to be able to learn real, relevant, and factual information about Native Americans. There is just a massive difference in actual exposure and knowledge. I didn't want to go too deeply into that since it is largely orthogonal to the main point I was making, but I also thought it was necessary to acknowledge it.</blockquote>

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