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Message: <blockquote data-quote="painandgreed" data-source="post: 2789978" data-attributes="member: 24969">The context that I'm putting it in is similar to that of comic books. the golden age of comic books was the period in which there was a large boom in growth of the industry as well as the laying down of the foundations for that industry. For comics, it started with the arrival of Superman and continued through the 30's and 40's as comics grew in popularity and branched out into various genres, one of the last being the horror comic which caused backlash against them and cripled the industry. Then came the silver age of comics where the industry cut back and went with what worked, the superhero.In this context, and that gaming refers to tabletop RPGs and maybe some other games including wargames, I would say that the Golden Age would start with the release of one of the versions of D&D. Some would probably consider OD&D as it was the first but I'd probably go with the original blue box set as that seems to be what actually caught on. Some might consider AD&D as the start. It would continue through the various games and companies like Champions, Traveller, Palladium and their games, Steve Jackson with Illuminati and Car Wars. The list of classic games could go on and on and I would probably consider it to continue till the early 90's with the release of Vampire or perhaps even Magic considering how much you want to consider non-RPGs.After that, you had the collapse of TSR as well as other game companies and those that are left largely have settled down to what works, namely d20 and D&D plus a few other major game systems like GURPS, Palladium and WoD. I would consider this the Silver Age of games. They have hit their plateau in growth and creativity but are formig a firm fondation for what will follow. Eventually, things will change enough to make an arguement for the end of the Silver Age and the begining of Bronze or some other age and so forth until the entire period of time is far bac enough to all be grouped into one large period and only people who study the subject will argue such things as when the Golden Age was.</blockquote>

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