Were the 80s really the Golden Age of D&D?

[Desdichado]

ISo, I'm sorry children, but the 80's were definitely not the Golden Age of Dungeons and Dragons. The Golden Age is the Age of Heroes, an Age of Firsts, when Man was closer to the Gods.

While you make some good points, the condescending tone and pretentious references to mythology dilute its impact significantly.

 

[rogueattorney]

For what it's worth, in a thread at K&K I broke down the "ages" of pre-WotC D&D this way:

1973-1977: Ramp-Up, moving from xeroxed copies of play test rules to the "we're in the big leagues, now" products of the Monster Manual and Basic set.

1978-1982: The Golden Age Plateau, solidifying what was achieved in the ramp up, with a nice, solid, high-quality group of consistent products.

1983-1988: The Silver Age Explosion, a huge jump in number of products, especially if you include D&D related novels. Shift in creative voice from Gygax to Hickman/Mentzer/Greenwood. Many more hardbacks. Fewer "generic" products as compared to setting specific products.

1989-1993: 2e, The First Wave, an even huger explosion of product, largely stemming from the product of the Silver Age Explosion (more FR, more RL, more DL, more NWPs with kits built around the NWPs, etc., etc., etc.) Pretty much no generic setting products. Abandonment of the traditional 24 to 32 page adventure module. Love affair with boxed sets begins.

1994-1997: 2e, The Second Wave, just as much product, but an attempt to make up new stuff... Planescape, Birthright, the Options books, etc. Retirement (temporary in some cases) of such old warhorses as Greyhawk, Dragon Lance, Mystara, etc.

1998-2000: WotC 2e, attempted revival of Greyhawk and rebirth of "the dungeon" (Return to Tomb of Horrors, etc.). Overall attempt to re-connect with and re-explore older IP (Rod of Seven Parts, Paladin in Hell, etc.) Much less product. Cordell, Monte Cook, other future "3e" designers become main contributors. Love affair with boxed sets ends.

 

[AllisterH]

While you make some good points, the condescending tone and pretentious references to mythology dilute its impact significantly.

While I do think his tone was somewhat pretenious as well (children?, really, was that needed?), the references to mythology should be acceptable since the definition of a Golden Age _comes_ from mythology

 

[Desdichado]

While I do think his tone was somewhat pretenious as well (children?, really, was that needed?), the references to mythology should be acceptable since the definition of a Golden Age _comes_ from mythology

True, but that doesn't mean that in the OD&D days of the 1970s, that any references to "walking with the Gods" is really very relevent.

 

[Mercurius]

Hobo, it is a metaphor.

 

[Garmorn]

After reading all of these post and a few articles on the meaning of "Golden Age" I would just have to say the whole concept is wrong and there is no such thing. People and things normally evolve slowing and that is just what happened to RPGs. I really don't thing any time was better then what follows for the hobby as a whole unless it becomes stagnated and fails to change to meet a changing world. The total number is continuing to climb. Sure we are not in supper market or the slowly declining department stores but we are on Amazon and other major online stores in great numbers. There is the key to any niche hobby. There are also several companies online that don't need to waste money and effort getting into stores that will have little impact on their sales.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Dannyalcatraz, yes, we have established that a little thing like A, B, C in place of 10, 11, 12 freaks you out more than an ocean of rules. I did not for a moment imagine that you really cared about the accuracy of your statement -- but I take it as my prerogative to care. In hexadecimal, 16 would be written as "10". I am pretty sure I have never seen that in Traveller, but have seen 16 written as "G". The main point was to avoid "2B" as much as "43" or "10", so that each digit in a UPP corresponds to a characteristic.

As a matter of fact, I have never encountered a Traveller player who bitched about it!

Are you nuts or did I tick you off somehow?

I took time out of my day to actually look up the quote in my old books- just to make sure I wasn't in error- and post the quote...and you say "I did not for a moment imagine that you really cared about the accuracy of your statement "?

The SOLE reason I qualified my statement about hexadecimal is because the one and only place I've ever encountered it is within the pages of the Traveller RPG.

As such, I have only the word of the game's designer that it was, indeed, hexadecimal, and not some unique artifact he himself created.

I came to the game in 1978 or so, at age 11, and as an adult, brought others into the game.

And in all the years of playing Traveller, the only people I've known who weren't thrown off by the hex were the guy who taught me the game, a guy who had seen hex before in a different context and a math major.

For everyone else besides those three, it created issues for at least a short time. For some, it was a factor in driving them from the game.

YM, clearly, has V'd.

I'm just taking a wild guess here, but maybe there are not a whole lot of World of Darkness devotees who "throw a mental wobbler" over the peculiarities of the game system and its jargon.

WoD sticks to base 10, so that's not an issue.

As for the jargon, little of it is unique to WoD. Some unusual words in the game are established RPG terms or variations upon them.

Others are interspersed in the genre fiction that gamers read. Not much of such fiction requires a basic understanding of non-decimal mathematics...not even most hard sci-fi.

I'd wager that any word you find puzzling in WoD is easily found in a RW dictionary somewhere in a given gamer's house.

Not so much with the hexadecimal.

 

[Desdichado]

Hobo, it is a metaphor.

*sigh* Yes. I know. If we could all recall for a moment, I said I thought the metaphor was pretentious.

Not to mention not very accurate. There weren't any "RPG Gods" walking the earth in the 70s.

 

[Henry]

Not to mention not very accurate. There weren't any "RPG Gods" walking the earth in the 70s.

How dare you say that about Gary and Dave!! Take that back!

 

[Storm Raven]

As such, I have only the word of the game's designer that it was, indeed, hexadecimal, and not some unique artifact he himself created.

I came to the game in 1978 or so, at age 11, and as an adult, brought others into the game.

And in all the years of playing Traveller, the only people I've known who weren't thrown off by the hex were the guy who taught me the game, a guy who had seen hex before in a different context and a math major.

For everyone else besides those three, it created issues for at least a short time. For some, it was a factor in driving them from the game.

You know, for anyone who had trouble using A-G in Traveller stats, you could always use the radical process of using the numbers 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16. That's what we did.