D&D General Understanding History: Why Serious Scholarship of D&D Matters

[lynnfredricks]

They'd hardly be unusual in that regard. I thought D&D's 80s fad was one of the very few social trends we actually drove, tho. Sad if it was the Baby Boomers, there, too.

Why? All of the writers at that time were Boomers.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Why? All of the writers at that time were Boomers.

Gygax was even Silent Gen. So were the Rolling Stones, but Woodstock is seen as a Baby Boomer event.

D&D was very much a boys & young men phenom in the 80s, is how I always understood it. While I started just before the peak years/sales of the famed Red Box, and thus often gamed with "older" (OMG, actual adults) players, I'd always had the impression the fad was mainly among Gen X kids. If historical research shows, nope, it was just that last cohort of Baby Boomers, again, well. It's not like I'm unaccustomed to my generation not mattering.

 

[haakon1]

Gygax was Silent Generation and everyone I played with (and the kids in Stranger Things and the Cartoon and ET!) were all Gen X in the Golden Era of AD&D 1e.

But I guess Tom Hanks and the steam tunnel kid were Generation Jones, aka later years of Boomer. I did know 1 Joners player - he gave me his DMG & dice when he moved, but we’d never played together.

Now I play with Gen X, Millennials, Xennials, and Gen Z. Kinda disturbing that “generations” are 15 years long according to these categories.

 

[Mannahnin]

Gygax was even Silent Gen. So were the Rolling Stones, but Woodstock is seen as a Baby Boomer event.

D&D was a very much a boys & young men phenom in the 80s, is how I always understood it. While I started just before the peak years/sales of the famed Red Box, and thus often gamed with "older" (OMG, actual adults) players, I'd always had the impression the fad was mainly among Gen X kids. If historical research shows, nope, it was just that last cohort of Baby Boomers, again, well. It's not like I'm unaccustomed to my generation not mattering.

We know the first wave of players (prior to the fad, which started in late '79 post-Egbert) was mostly adult and college-age wargamers and science-fiction fans, the latter of whom would have been late Boomers, the older of whom Silent gen. You're correct that the age of a lot of the player base dropped in the 80s, middle schoolers and high schoolers getting into it en masse during the fad years, so that would have been us Gen Xers.

 

[lynnfredricks]

Gygax was even Silent Gen. So were the Rolling Stones, but Woodstock is seen as a Baby Boomer event.

I guess that's what happens, they were just too silent ;-)

D&D was a very much a boys & young men phenom in the 80s, is how I always understood it. While I started just before the peak years/sales of the famed Red Box, and thus often gamed with "older" (OMG, actual adults) players, I'd always had the impression the fad was mainly among Gen X kids. If historical research shows, nope, it was just that last cohort of Baby Boomers, again, well. It's not like I'm unaccustomed to my generation not mattering.

Well, sorta. It exploded among the high school and younger crowd in the 1980s but, it was more of a college age thing during the 70s. A lot of my earliest experiences gaming was around 1976-77, but there were a few instances where I was the youngest person at the table playing with a mix of high school and college age kids (my own regular group was contemporary, on the border between Boomer / GenX).