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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 8859110" data-attributes="member: 2205">That's what the redefinition of Gen Y is, yeah—"older Millennials". But when I was getting my MBA in the very late 90s, Gen Y was defined by marketing people as its own generation. I've never been clear why someone decided to change that and Gen Y was folded into Gen X or Millennials, depending on where the cutoff is pinged, because I think Gen Y as a generation cohort, has its own unique values and its own unique experience. It certainly has its own unique pop culture experience, which is what matters most for our particular discussion.As an aside, on the other end, Generation Jones is a real thing too; the Baby Boomers don't just run right up in to Gen X without a significant gap in between where people had a very different experience. These cultural generational trends tend very roughly to last about a decade; and trying to make them longer dilutes their utility because "older Millennials" (really Gen Y) have little in common in many ways with the youngest Millennials who are pushing the Gen Z boundary, because the younger ones weren't even born yet when Gen Y was having a lot of their formative experiences. I think that there's some utility on pinning these generations to playstyles. While not perfect, a lot of people who came in to the hobby at a certain point no doubt accreted a lot of habits that were current when they did so. The OSR seems to reflect a very early Gen X type of game, and it seems that a big chunk of that player base are Gen-Xers, although a lot of Millennials have been drawn into the OSR as well, and have put their own spin on it in many ways, because they don't have the context of having been taught to play with a Holmes or a Moldvay box in the early 80s while in middle school, so all that they can do is interpret what the text actually says without reference to what was actually happening "at the table" so to speak when those games that the OSR emulates were new.5e is the iconic Millennial game system, however, and as people of other generations are wont to do, it gets both praise and condemnation for filling their expectations of Millennial habits and attitudes. Gen Y and the 2e setting era tend to get forgotten, and I don't really know of very many people who talk about the influence that White Wolf's success had on the direction of D&D throughout the 90s, for instance, or if it was related to other rejections during the 90s of 80s pop cultural elements like corny action movies, synthesizer New Wave music, and D&D as something that was edgy and exciting and metal. Or maybe it's just a total coincidence that Gen Y is kind of written out and disappeared as if they never existed as a unique generational cohort, and the playstyle and product style of 2e that was prevalent during the "Gen Y years" is largely ignored and forgotten too with the exception of some occasional nods to Planescape, Spelljammer or Dark Sun, etc.</blockquote>

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