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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SSquirrel" data-source="post: 4990503" data-attributes="member: 5202">The amusing thing is I was hitting wikipedia and gathering the dates, then I read a bit past Erik's post and found this <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Dark Sun was Oct 91 according to wikipedia.  Seems kinda odd these days, skipping GenCon for the big release.  My experiences with the D&D to White Wolf changeover were like this.  In 1991 we put together a new gaming group to play the new edition of D&D.  A few of us were new to each other, but we had a web of friends that tied us all together.  We started playing D&D, but we were also seeing new products like RIFTS in stores and being amazed by it, as well as seeing games like Vampire advertised.  I don't think we actually bought Vampire until the 2nd ed books dropped in '92, but it definitely became something we played as well.  We didn't drop 2E completely, but there were many things about Vampire that just struck us as a plain better way to do things.By the time I got to college in 94, I was the guy in my group of friends who knew Mage and Vampire inside and out, but I was also still a big fan of D&D.  D&D was great, but at the same time, compared to games like Mage, Vampire and RIFTS (and getting introduced to Call of Cthulhu, SLA Industries and the d6 Star Wars), I had better things to do with my time.  In college we would do a quick pickup game here and there.  That was about it.  We had 2 or 3 different White Wolf games going (one crossover game, one pure mage..maybe another), a CoC game, a SLA game, Star Wars....  Why play D&D and have people fighting to be the horribly broken Bladesinger when we could play Star Wars and have people fighting to be the horribly broken Jedi <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The White Wolf games were our own world, but darker.  Mysterious elements working behind the scenes played well into popular conspiracy theories as well as that fantasy desire for something different.  The movie and music recommendations were great.  I already owned some of them, I searched many of the others out.  I hadn't bought a RPG before that gave me as many good ideas for setting a mood before.  Those movies and music certainly did too.  Songs like "Cracked" (Jesus and Mary Chain), "Inside the Termite Mound" (Killing Joke), anything by Joy Division.  One of my STs in college had me as his assistant.  I helped him with rules questions (esp the Mage ones), helped him brainstorm some occasional ideas and sat around with him for hours making mix tapes.  We would make a 90 or 120 mnute tape for a specific session, put it in an auto-reverse tape deck and turn it on quietly.  Turn up key songs for key moments, but generally just let it help infect everyone with its mood.  We might have the theme from Rob Roy on the same tape with Batdance, some Dead Kennedys, KMFDM and Messiah, but it all flowed together and generated the desired effect.  This was the kind of thing that Vampire made me want to do that D&D never did.  If anyone even bothered with music for a D&D game it was typically any random fantasy or medieval setting movie...maybe the John Williams Star Wars scores.  Especially the Imperial March for battle music <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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