D&D (2024) Understanding "nostalgia"

[DrJawaPhD]

It turns out there is a strong tendency across the population. The best music ever is whenever the listener was in their teens. There is a peak of the best music ever at age 16. Heh. Everything that happens before someone is born, sucks. Everything that happens after someone turns 35, sucks.

I'd love to see a study like this for Heavy Metal listeners only - metal just keeps getting better every year. When I go back and listen to the stuff I loved as a teen, it's so slow and boring by comparison

 

[MNblockhead]

I am quite nostalgic. Yet I certainly do not think many of the things I am most nostalgic about.

'80s music certainly makes me feel nostalgic, but I hated it at the time and while I've come to enjoy some of it as I aged, I still do not consider it "the best" time for music.

I get very nostalgic about AD&D, but I have no interest in playing that rule system again. I do like to play through some of the classic adventures updated to 5e, but I like to try new stuff.

I don't understand nostalgia to be resistant to change, just pleasant memories of things in your past that are important to you.

 

[MNblockhead]

I'd love to see a study like this for Heavy Metal listeners only - metal just keeps getting better every year. When I go back and listen to the stuff I loved as a teen, it's so slow and boring by comparison

Share some examples. I could never get into speed metal. That last metal band I got into was the Taiwanese band Chthonic. I don't listen to much metal any more, though I occasionally play Master of Puppets.

Speaking of nostalgia, I've been really into a lot of the 70s-80s Texas county/country blues singer/songwriters: Townes Van Zandt, Blaze Foley, Lucinda Williams, Guy Clark, etc.

Talking about nostalgia, what do you call music that is new to you and makes you nostalgic for things you've never experienced? Nostalgia transference?

 

[MichaelSomething]

Tradition

xkcd.com

 

[GrimCo]

'80s music certainly makes me feel nostalgic, but I hated it at the time and while I've come to enjoy some of it as I aged, I still do not consider it "the best" time for music.

2000's music makes me nostalgic, but i didn't like it then, don't like it now.

I get very nostalgic about AD&D, but I have no interest in playing that rule system again. I do like to play through some of the classic adventures updated to 5e, but I like to try new stuff.

Replace ad&d with 3.x and i feel the same. Some of my fondest d&d related memories are tied to playing 3.x, but there is no chance in hell i'm going back to playing it or worse, DMing it.

I don't understand nostalgia to be resistant to change, just pleasant memories of things in your past that are important to you.

Yup. Nostalgia is trip down memory lane to the happy place in your life.

Personally, i'm nostalgic realist. While i do think some stuff was better in my teens, i acknowledge it's mostly cause I was teen. In lot's of objective ways, present is far better than past.

 

[Ogre Mage]

These strong preferences for the music from when one was in ones teens, is also roughly true for the "best" movies ever and the "best" television shows ever.

It seems safe to say for most players, the "best" D&D edition was whichever one was happening during ones teen years.

As a corollary, for any design developments that are happening today, the ones that most resemble the "best" edition will feel like the "best" ones.

As an other corollary, the best way to ensure the success of future D&D is to look closely at whatever teens are doing now.

The rosy-colored glasses of nostalgia for ones teens, even hold true for absurd questions, like "When was the least crime?" The world as it was during the formative teen years profoundly shapes the perceptions and preferences for the rest of ones life. Statistically, speaking. There are of course individuals who prefer the newer trends and who dont self-identity with the survey results. But that people generally tend to be under the influence of nostalgia, is worth knowing.

Interestingly little of this is true for me.

2E was the edition of my teens and early 20s. It is not my favorite. My favorite is 5E -- an edition which came out when I was almost 40!

I admit I have a yen for 1990s music.

I do not consider the 1990s to be the best movies. Fantasy movies were a red-headed stepchild joke back then, nothing compared to the embarrassment of riches we've had from 2001 on.

The 1990s were certainly NOT best TV, lol. That was before the prestige TV era. And fantasy TV was not better than fantasy movies. All I remember was Hercules and Xena. Or did you watch Charmed? lol.

I am not nostalgic.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Music is an odd one. The stats suggest I should like 80s music. But I actually prefer (British) 60s music. And I know others, younger than me, who agree.

And TV. Have just rewatched the entirety of classic Doctor Who, and still am of the opinion that the show was at its best from 1971 to 1979, despite the ropey FX and being too young to remember the earliest of those episodes.

 

[Zardnaar]

Wasn't listening to to much music age 16. More 13 and 18.

For D&D I'm playing the older stuff occasionally. Playstyle is still fun, mechanics not so much.

Can't really do those all day sessions starting at 11am or so. Kinda miss that.

Spent my entire teenage years in the 90s. Music was good (currently listening to Nirvana didn't really in 90s). Movies first half was great second half not so much.

TV shows are better now or at least recently. Movies kinda worse or less variety in genres you might actually see.

I miss aspects of older D&D not the actual edition to much. B/X is a bit rough level 1-2, AD&D to messy.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I think of the past as a valuable resource to mine for things that might happen to be useful now.

Heh, but the nonuseful stuff needs to stay in the dust of history.

I for one thinks it is high time for a « My mother the car » remake.

Or how about all those awful sitcoms from the nineties where a male, unattractive comedian cosplays a working class man but has a wife that is out of his league and can get away with being a lackadaisical parent and is loved for it?

 

[TiQuinn]

The thing that I’ve noticed about nostalgia is how selective it is. For instance, nobody remembers some of the absolute dreck in music, tv or movies that came out in the 80s, for instance. People get nostalgic about the more distinctive or popular stuff from any time, and leave the rest behind. That’s creates an outsized impression of how “awesome the 80s or 90s” were.