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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 6258952" data-attributes="member: 14159">I have more context than you think.  I am quite aware of the strife between Basic D&D and AD&D players, of the edition war between 1e and 2e, and of the strife between White Wolf and D&D players in the early '90's.You want to know why I say that the 2000's were the golden age and not the '80's?  Personal experience of what happened when I tried to play D&D in the late '80's.I was growing up in rural Kentucky.  I had a classmate in junior high who had picked up the core 1e D&D books at a shop in Lexington, and brought them back to our small town.  Knowing that I had a lot more friends than he did, my friend asked me to see if I could recruit around to drum up interest in the game.  So, I started asking around to my friends to see if they'd like to play D&D and that me and a friend were getting a group together.  How did that go?Inside of 48 hours later I was sitting in the guidance counselors office, being told that my peers had reported that I had "suicidal tendencies" and "was recruiting for a satanic cult".  Apparently many classmates I'd talked to immediately ran and told the teacher that I was acting suicidal and trying to recruit people for some sort of mass suicide, or that I was trying to get people to join in some kind of satanic worship service.  The teachers, principal, and guidance counselor all thought D&D was all about satanism and suicide as well.  They told my parents.  My mother was level headed and thought it was absurd, but my Dad strictly forbade me from ever playing D&D while I lived under his roof.  He called my friend's parents and told them he owned D&D books and should burn them.  My friends parents didn't burn his books, but he couldn't get anybody else, not a one, to play with him, everyone thought it was an evil ritual or had been forbidden by parents who thought that.  A few years later in High School we skirted around that ban by playing the Star Wars RPG, nobody cared about some kids sitting around playing Star Wars, even if they'd freak out at "Dungeons and Dragons".Hard to see D&D as being in a "golden age" when it was basically forbidden across the entire town when I was growing up.  Now, I look at the facebook page for my old school and see pictures of their D&D club from a few years back, they started a D&D club during 2000's apparently.So, when I went to college years later, after several years there I found the local gaming club, and joined up.  I met people who still refused to play D&D because they jumped to White Wolf years prior and thought of D&D as childish, I met people who were still bitter and refused to ever play 2e AD&D and would only play 1e, I met a guy who still swore by Rules Compendium D&D and only very begrudgingly played any other edition, and I knew some people who gave up D&D in favor of GURPS because they thought the class system was too restrictive.When 3e came out, you know what happened?  They *all* moved over to playing it.  Not all as their favorite game, but some people who refused to play 2e AD&D because they were 1e loyalists switch their long running campaign to 3.5 when it came out.  I saw the people who only played GURPS at least dabble with 3e because it was more flexible, they still didn't like it, but at least said it was the best edition of D&D they knew.  Don't say I lack context, I've got context.  What I lack is belief that the '80's were this mythical golden age of D&D, because from where I sit, it was a LOUSY time to be a gamer because everybody thought you were a satanic cultist about to commit suicide if you even said the words "dungeons and dragons" in public.By the 2000's, nobody cared.  Public schools had gaming clubs, people who had given up on D&D years prior came back, and pretty much every gamer I knew, knew how to play 3.5 and was open to at least the occasional game of it.  Sounds an awful more like a Golden Age to me.</blockquote>

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