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

[Umbran]

What do you think? Were the 80s the Golden Age or a Golden Age?

Following on others - I think that we will quibble to death over whether it was "a" or "the", largely based on differences in what we think compromises "Golden Age". It isn't exactly a well-defined term.

Tell me first what makes an age Golden, and then we can talk. If I am speaking from my thoughts on what is Golden, and you form yours, we are not apt to agree on much of anything.

 

[jdrakeh]

To be exact, the "claim" is that 1st print run of 4e was bigger than the 1st print run of 3.5 which in turn was bigger than the 1st print run of 3.0. And the 4e one sold out faster than both the others.

Well, that was the claim about 4e, yes. Earlier WotC reps had made similar claims about 3e and prior editions (years ago now, of course).

 

[pawsplay]

Multiple WotC employees have made that claim here over the years. More recently, it was claimed that the 4e pre-order surpassed those for D&D 3.5. No figures were presented in either case, to my knowledge (nor did I claim otherwise). But, again, I don't think that Rouse, Mearls, etc would have any reason to lie about that. As for links, you'll have to search for those quotes yourself, as I don't have a CS account.

I do not claim any deception is taking place. Nonetheless, I have to counter this last assertion. They have many plausible reasons to claim 4e sold more than it did. Some obvious reasons include convincing fence-sitters to buy in, manipulating sales figures to look good to the Hasbro people, saving face, creating buzz, standing in solidarity with other employers who have already lied, and so forth. The whole reason speculation exists whether this might be the case is how obviously it would benefit them in the short run.

 

[Mercurius]

Don't forget Ars Magica which, I think innovated the simple dice roll + attribute + skill vs. difficulty number formula which is so prevalent today (Both Ars Magica and D&D 3E were designed by Jonathan Tweet...hmm).

One view I keep on hearing is the assertion that because D&D could be bought at Toys R Us and Sears, this is somehow proof that D&D was more popular in the 80s. Again, the fact that this isn't true anymore mainly has to do with the internet and not (necessarily) with decreased sales or availability. RPGs are more available than ever before; I remember reading about this or that obscure RPG product back in the 80s and having no clue where to get it.

 

[jdrakeh]

I do not claim any deception is taking place. Nonetheless, I have to counter this last assertion. They have many plausible reasons to claim 4e sold more than it did. Some obvious reasons include convincing fence-sitters to buy in, manipulating sales figures to look good to the Hasbro people, saving face, creating buzz, standing in solidarity with other employers who have already lied, and so forth. The whole reason speculation exists whether this might be the case is how obviously it would benefit them in the short run.

All of those reasons do presuppose that WotC employees are liars and willing to engage in lying in order to sell product, though. Again, I don't think there is any good reason to believe that. Or any evidence to suggest it.

 

[Mercurius]

Following on others - I think that we will quibble to death over whether it was "a" or "the", largely based on differences in what we think compromises "Golden Age". It isn't exactly a well-defined term.

Tell me first what makes an age Golden, and then we can talk. If I am speaking from my thoughts on what is Golden, and you form yours, we are not apt to agree on much of anything.

Well the point of this thread was to quibble to death over whether the 80s were "a" or "the" Golden Age--that was the point of the inquiry.

It isn't well-defined nor should it be. I fully understand and embrace that it is a subjective term with many possible meanings. But Wikipedia has a nice entry right here.

Based upon the mythological perspective, I'd have to call the '74-80ish era the Golden Age of D&D and RPGs in general (see post #18 in this thread). But I don't necessarily mean "best", but in terms of myth the Golden Age represents the first time, the period in which men were closest to the gods, with the initial inspiration and experience of life; generally there was little or no suffering in the Golden Age and life existed with a sense of timeless stability. And it invariably ends with a Fall.

But perhaps the most important aspect is that it is "lost"--and there is a sense of sadness, or at least nostalgia. It was, in a way, a perfect time--but simpler, and thus not necessarily as full as a later age. This correlates with RPGs quite well, I think, in that there was probably a great sense of excitement and growth in the 70s, but they didn't have the wealth of RPGs that we have now, nor the ease by which they are produced.

Most mythic traditions hold that the ages are cyclical, that the Golden Age comes around. There are probably numerous micro-cycles as well (e.g. the four ages within a given edition).

 

[Shemeska]

Yes and no.

In some ways I think that during the 80s the casual exposure to D&D that you had was explicitly D&D. I remember finding TSR stuff in Toys'R'Us, in Waldenbooks, on Saturday morning with the D&D cartoon, and even my local library in the kids section.

Today I think the exposure is possibly just as much, but it isn't D&D proper that the exposure is for, rather it's the themes that D&D firmly embedded in our culture that have been picked up and run with by other games and other media. Virtually any CRPG for PC or platform, tons of anime, tons of comics all have a healthy dose of the themes that D&D put into play, and in some ways they may have exceeded its success. D&D proper is still around, but it might be overshadowed by its inheritors in the marketplace.

 

[billd91]

Now, I guess if you simply dismiss Dancey as a liar, yes, it's easy to believe that D&D sold better than ever in the 1980s and 1990s, but if what he says is true (and there's no reason to believe that it isn't, so far as I can tell), then this simply wasn't the case.

That is not the only conclusion that can be made about having warehouses of old product. Sales can still be good (better than today's editions) but print run, cash flow, and inventory management abysmal. You'd get the same results - too much old product laying around, inability to pay the printer, and a company desperately in need of a white knight to bail it out.

 

[jdrakeh]

That is not the only conclusion that can be made about having warehouses of old product. Sales can still be good (better than today's editions) but print run, cash flow, and inventory management abysmal. You'd get the same results - too much old product laying around, inability to pay the printer, and a company desperately in need of a white knight to bail it out.

Granted, that's possible. But it has still been stated elsewhere by WotC reps that recent editions (3e and, later, 4e) outsold earlier editions. Again, unless one is ready to dismiss WotC employees as liars, there's no reason to believe that isn't true (and, yes, I know that there are plenty of people who do dismiss all WotC employees as liars).

 

[Bullgrit]

Regarding the warehouse full of 80s rule books:

About ten years ago, my mother called me at work to tell me that she had just come across a large collection of D&D books in a second-hand book store. She didn't know anything about D&D books, but she knew that I liked them.

She wanted to know if I wanted her to buy any of these books -- maybe they were old/valuable/collectable. She tried to tell me what the books were, and I tried to tell her what to look for (copyright dates, etc.). I couldn't get a sense of what she was looking at, and she couldn't find any names I was mentioning.

In the end, she just bought six different books that looked interesting to her. When she gave them to me a few weeks later, I was surprised. I didn't recognize a single title.

They were all TSR D&D books, copyrighted from the late 80s to the mid 90s, but they were just nothing to me. I thanked my mom for buying them (she wouldn't take money for them -- they had been cheap to buy), but I literally ended up throwing them all away.

Note that I don't generally throw books away. I had never before thrown away a single D&D book. I have not since thrown away a single D&D book. That's sacrilege. I kept these books in my collection for weeks before finally deciding that they were just taking up space -- they had no value to me or my collection.

So I can imagine what the books in that warehouse might have looked like. From the sample that I saw, there were indeed some worthless books produced in the (late) 80s and 90s.

Edit: Note that "80s D&D rule book" does not necessarily mean "Player's Handbook" or DMG or MM. There were a lot of D&D rule books in the 80s and 90s.

Bullgrit