The gaming community: online compared to the physical world

[Hussar]

The Shaman - I'm not sure your point is actually counter to what Wingsandsword is saying though. Your personal experiences are such that without the options available to you through the Internet, you likely wouldn't be playing much at all. It's only because of communities like Dragonsfoot that have kept the communities of the older versions of the game alive and viable.

I think that if you are outside of those communities, then there really can be a huge disconnect between what you see in Internet Land and in meatspace.

Like Jack said, how many OD&D gamers do you see at the local FLGS on a regular basis running games and recruiting players?

 

[haakon1]

when 3e came out, from my perspective of the offline world, it came out to save D&D from dying slowly
. . .
it brought a renaissance into the gaming world where people had drifted away from D&D and put just about everybody on the same page with regards to editions. It brought new people to D&D unlike any era before except maybe the big boom of the early 80's, it brought people from other games to play or at least try D&D, it put just about everybody on the same page with regard to editions/rules, and it got casual gamers who might not own a single other gaming book to buy a 3e PHB. . .and 10 years later that unity is shattered and more fragmented than ever it seems.

About 3e, that's precisely my view.

About the rest, well, that's the internet for you.

Crazy and/or extremist people are more visible and vocal on the internet. If a part of the internet becomes a discussion area for a passionate but tiny minority interest -- whether it be min-max builds for D&D, conspiracy theories about physics, or people who thought Star Trek: Voyager was a good show (OK, that might only exist in irony) -- it's going to draw people who support that tiny minority interest, and repell everyone else (except perhaps ironic hipsters).

BTW, I'm aware of people in suburban Seattle playing 3.5e (I run it), 4e (I play in a campaign of it and I've seen it run in a store for a WOTC promotion), and Pathfinder (seen it run in a store as an ongoing campaign).

I'm not sure any other RPG's get played much at all, as I've never seen it.

MtG though, seems to be far more popular than any RPG -- at least in the game stores.

 

[Mark CMG]

Crazy and/or extremist people are more visible and vocal on the internet.

Preceisely, and just like offline, those are often the folks you notice aside from your own personal circle. What many people, who don't think online communities as representative, don't recognize is that for every ten or hundred frequent posters there are thousands of others who post rarely or don't post at all, sometimes voting in polls or voting indirectly by reading certain threads but not reading othetrs, etc. When people describe the Internet as "the vocal minority" they are ignoring the majority of people who use the Internet quietly or silently right alongside everyone else. That's why I say that except for vocabulary choices, the online communities are quite representative of their offline counterparts (and becoming more so with each passing day).

 

[Pentius]

Yeah, I definitely see a huge disconnect in online forums and meatspace. In my experience, people online are more polite and somehow also more prone to vitriol. Yesterday, three friends and I were driving to the weekly game. One of them mentioned, in an entirely conversational tone, that he'd rather we play 3.5 because 4e is just WoW on paper. I responded, also without vitriol, that I give exactly zero ****s about 3.5. We then continued to talk, joke and laugh, no arguing, nothing. On ENworld this conversation would have never happened(not in those terms, anyway), at the WotC boards, it would have been a 40 page flame fest.

.......ok I'll say it.....

On the Internet you'll find far more Munchkins than in real life....

(...there... I said it...)

Don't get me wrong, you can find and discuss with very interesting people online... En Wolrd... whatever have you...

But Overall, CharOps are more on the web that they are in real life... perhaps it's because they are trying to find every little piece of rules-tweaking they can get their hands on...

I see this, too, but I think it happens for a different reason. I'm an optimiser. I like to make powerful characters that excel at what they do, that is a part of the game I enjoy. I have 2 friends that share this trait with me. Neither of them live in my state. Most of the gamers I game with in meatspace regard optimising as playing a race that compliments your class and maybe taking a weapon with a higher damage die. That is as far as the process goes, for them(some disdain even that much). If I want to talk about(or more often, just listen to conversations about) CharOp, I have to come online to do it. That is the only real option.

Honestly, a lot of DMing and theorycraft stuff is the same way. If I tried to talk about, say, the relative merits of narrative support for different wounds in different editions with the people I play with, I'd get blank stares. It isn't that they aren't bright, creative or thoughtful, they are(some of them more than myself, to be sure). It's just that they've not thought about theories behind the game, or considered the differing facets of it in such a light, much as I hadn't before joining messageboards.

 

[haakon1]

I don't even like Eldritch War-Forged Atomic Powered Arcane Golden Battle Dwarves in Half-plate Golem Touched Ruby Red Djinni Slippers. Dwarf Paladin is about as far as I feel the need to take it.

Agree on the type of dwarf.

Thinking through the "real adventurer" versus "only in play adventurer", for the two games I run and the one I'm a player in, a lot of people have some "adventuring" in their background -- a Navy veteran, two Army Gulf War veterans (one was a tank commander who saw combat), one guy who was in briefly in law enforcement and was later a civilian expat, one guy who did two stints in Africa with the Peace Corps and was later a civilian expat, one guy who was a civlian expat in Vietnam, one guy who is the son of a State Trooper and is an avid gun collector/shooter/NRA member, two more who have been part of the "military industrial intel" complex in other ways, and two more who are civilian experts -- truly experts -- on military history (one makes his living from it).

So I'd say, in my experience, there's some correlation between being into D&D and being into "adventurous" stuff. It's by no means a complete overlap, or lack of overlap.

Oh yeah, and I think the player who's a surgeon and plays a cleric should count somehow too.

 

[Hungry Like The Wolf]

It doesn't distort my view at all. I'm pretty disturbed at what I read online most of the time. If the online communities were really a good representation, I would have stopped gaming after my first session.

The difference, as I see it, is that in person people are much more afraid of being challenged on what the say. The internet however gives people a certain level of anonymity and the ability to say things with out repercussions. Just about everything that is said about editions, social ills, play-styles etc would never be uttered if we were all face-to-face.

 

[Pentius]

Another disparity I've noticed, at least with myself, is that online, when you hear about a problem player, it's very easy to say, "No, I'd never play with him. I'd kick that player out. i'd walk away from that DM's table." But in meatspace, I tend to be very forgiving, especially if someone can be polite.

 

[Aeolius]

There is one other consideration. If I ran my current chat-based game as a face-to-face game instead, my player in Australia would have one heck of a commute!

 

[Hussar]

There is one other consideration. If I ran my current chat-based game as a face-to-face game instead, my player in Australia would have one heck of a commute!

Heh. Tell me about it. All my players are on another continent. Although, funnily enough, completely through chance, one of my players is actually from about thirty kilometers from my hometown, is close to my own age and we went to the same uni.

Never met in real life and only met online a couple of years ago. Too weird.

 

[GreyLord]

The Shaman - I'm not sure your point is actually counter to what Wingsandsword is saying though. Your personal experiences are such that without the options available to you through the Internet, you likely wouldn't be playing much at all. It's only because of communities like Dragonsfoot that have kept the communities of the older versions of the game alive and viable.

I think that if you are outside of those communities, then there really can be a huge disconnect between what you see in Internet Land and in meatspace.

Like Jack said, how many OD&D gamers do you see at the local FLGS on a regular basis running games and recruiting players?

As I said, none of the OD&D players or AD&D players that I actually play with (some who I might not but have met there may go though, but they seem few and far between) go to FLGS's at all anymore...haven't for decades. In that, even the FLGS doesn't reflect gamers outside of the FLGS. FLGS's don't offer anything they want, so they don't go there. I stand more chances of meeting them via work or other hobbies that I participate in than going to an FLGS.

A LOT of them don't even get online to even talk about RPGs or AD&D and so you wouldn't even see them online.

I know a LOT more AD&D/ex-AD&D players than I actually know of 3.X and later editions...BUT that is only from what I experience, not necessarily what is out there.

Over half have families and other things which they concentrate their time on and so don't really play AD&D on any regular basis...normally if they are at some gathering and it comes up...they may play.

Also friends of my generation are pretty easy to find RPG players occasionally. They play what they recognize, so that normally means AD&D is up there, but most never touched (if they even heard of) 3.X or 4e or anything after the 70s or 80s. That makes it pretty easy to play what they know.

As I said, that is in no-wise representative of what occurs with others in the rest of the world. I think it indicates that there is a whole audience/host of people that are not represented in any way or form on RPG message boards though.