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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6342958" data-attributes="member: 996">I think you captured what D&D means (or has meant) to the many of us who started playing the game relatively young, and back in its early days.  It was, indeed, a magical experience, because it was our first exposure to the idea of an RPG.  I'm afraid you've also captured some things about D&D that reflect very poorly on it as an FRPG.  Magic that's more like a high-school chemistry experiment and a 'fantasy world' that's more like a modern one represent a total failure to capture the fantasy genre.  I hope people don't feel inclined to blame D&D for that too harshly, though.  It was the FIRST RPG, so, of course, it had a much harder time achieving any aims of a good RPG (if, indeed, such aims could even be said to have been identified at the time!), and, it /was/ the 70s.  For those of you who don't remember the 70s, it was a crazy, iconoclastic, self-indulgent time, and the idea that you might want to 'respect' a source of inspiration would have been laughed at.  Munging together modern sensibilities, science-like-magic, magic-like-science, and home-invasion robbery as an heroic way of life, would have seemed like as good an idea as 8-track, disco, and pet rocks.  Indeed, if you read the fantasy fiction of the day, you'd find a few very similar pieces, say, like The High Crusade, or anything by Carl Edward Wagoner come to mind.  I'm sure there were others.So even an old-timer who's delved into the broader hobby, recognizes classic D&D's flaws and acknowledges modern D&D's ways of addressing them as improvements, can get a little wistful for the old stuff, no matter how silly it may seem.</blockquote>

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