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

[Clavis]

Terradave - where did I make any point about quality? That one era was better than another. Your notions of judgement are your own, not mine.

As far as Rennaissance artists working in large workshops, collaborating together, it was always my understanding that the term "Renaissance man" referred to someone who could do everything himself. Who did Da Vinci work with to paint the Mona Lisa? I was unaware that Michaelangelo collaborated with other artists to create the statue of David.

I'll admit my art history is somewhat fuzzy, but, it was my understanding that art in the Renaissance was generally through patronage where a single artist would be commissioned for a work. I was completely unaware that teams of artists would work together.

It was usual for painters and other artist to have apprentices, just like any other craftsman. And just like any other craftsmen, artists would use their apprentices to do the boring work involved in creating art (prepping canvases, painting solid fields of color, sculpting rough shapes out of marble, etc.) Much of the work in a lot of Renaissance art is actually the work of apprentices. That was how they learned their craft. The master would finish the work of course.

 

[Celtavian]

re

The best D&D eras were the original advanced era with its great modules like Against the Giants and Slavelords, 2nd edition and the beginning of the Forgotten Realms, and 3E and the plethora of inspiration that poured out from it. For me 4E is a barren era of D&D that has caused me to leave . Maybe for some this is a golden era, but I consider 4E the edition that split the D&D community as it has never been split before, and that cannot even be argued by those that enjoy 4E.

In my opinion if 4E were such a great product, it wouldn't have splintered the D&D community as it has done. 3E strengthened the D&D community, 4E has weakened it.

I'm a 25 year plus D&D player. My entire group has been playing D&D since we were in our early teens through all its iterations. We have completely stopped buying or following D&D since 4E came out. I know my group is not the only one to do so. I spent thousands of dollars on 3E. I spent enough to buy the core rulebook on 4E.

Maybe 4E brought in more new players than it lost. I don't know. I'd love to see a study done to show how it affected the RPG community. To me 4E is the worst iteration of D&D and I pray to the RPG gods that someone with more creativity as well as respect for the game gets ahold of D&D for its next edition so we might see a new golden era of D&D.

 

[Garmorn]

The best D&D eras were the original advanced era with its great modules like Against the Giants and Slavelords, 2nd edition and the beginning of the Forgotten Realms, and 3E and the plethora of inspiration that poured out from it. For me 4E is a barren era of D&D that has caused me to leave . Maybe for some this is a golden era, but I consider 4E the edition that split the D&D community as it has never been split before, and that cannot even be argued by those that enjoy 4E.

Here is the problem of calling one era golden and another not. Forgotten Realms was horrible over done and poorly built for main line world. Modules are not as popular some seem to think and don't make or brake a system for most players.

In my opinion if 4E were such a great product, it wouldn't have splintered the D&D community as it has done. 3E strengthened the D&D community, 4E has weakened it.

AD&D split the game between Basic and Advance. You can still here arguments/debates over which was better.

I'm a 25 year plus D&D player. My entire group has been playing D&D since we were in our early teens through all its iterations. We have completely stopped buying or following D&D since 4E came out. I know my group is not the only one to do so. I spent thousands of dollars on 3E. I spent enough to buy the core rulebook on 4E.

Maybe 4E brought in more new players than it lost. I don't know. I'd love to see a study done to show how it affected the RPG community. To me 4E is the worst iteration of D&D and I pray to the RPG gods that someone with more creativity as well as respect for the game gets ahold of D&D for its next edition so we might see a new golden era of D&D.

I sorry that you feel that way. While I think it might not be lots of peoples style I personally thing it fixed a lot of problems with the game that drove me to try out well over a dozen other systems. I hope the next edition when it comes along improves on the new and innovative approach. I also hope the Pathfinder does the same for 3.x players.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

The '80s were the Golden Age of my Ability to Play! I was in high school at the time. I could play out in the open and never get a second glance and probably another player. Now days... not so much.

 

[catsclaw227]

The 2 boys who were suspects implicated each other. Then, while being questioned, another bomb went off.

Since they pretty solid alibis, the cops asked them why they implicated each other. Their response was that it was because they were playing D&D, and thought it would be fun to RP their way through the interrogations.

We all know that idiocy is fairly evenly distributed across culture, gender, hobby, etc... But when I hear about this stuff, it breaks my heart. Because some other (stupid?) person will point to D&D and say that it was to blame for making these kids boneheads.

 

[Derren]

2) D&D's mainstream reach could be felt in the fact that it had a toy line, and a cartoon on a major network, and it could be purchased along side boardgames in from pretty much every toy retailer for K'Bee to Toys R Us. Today, D&D doesn't even have a print magazine devoted to it.

Well, compare that to the late 2E and 3E area. While I don't know if D&D was sold alongside board games D&D back then (although the toy shop here carried the 3E core books for a time) spawned numerous spinoffs with OGL, making the system known far and wide in the RPG community. It created a live action cinema movie and a direct to DVD sequel (Not the best movies out there, but honestly, the cartoon wasn't all that good either). And D&D had huge success on the vide game market, much more so than in the 80s. The video games of that time periode are still considered the best video game rpg games (Baldurs Gate 2, Planescape Torment) by many. Neverwinter Nights started another successfull D&D video game series and, with its editor and DM mode brought RPGing to the computer. D&D even created an MMO which for years was the only PnP RPG inspired MMO on the market.

 

[Mark]

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

Nope but they came right after it.

 

[bytor4232]

Definitely the Golden Age.

In either OD&D or AD&D, all you needed was 3 books [max].
As noted in the original DMG: the printed rules are guidelines, if there isn't a rule for your situation, make it up.


Besides that, the published modules rocked, stressing story and encounter, and weren't step-by-step mechanical like the current ones.

'nuff said.

And that, sir, is why I'm going back. Getting lulu.com print versions of "Swords and Wizardry" and OSRIC for christmas.