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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Storm Raven" data-source="post: 3150100" data-attributes="member: 307">First off, I suspect your assumptions concerning age to be wrong. Most of the people who started in 1982 would have probably been born in the 1966-1970 range, making them between 12 and 16 when they began playing D&D. If a player stated playing D&D at the age of 12 and was born in 1966, then he would have begun playing in 1978. When it was first marketed, D&D was a "kids" game, at least as far as the marketing of the product went. Sure, it was developed by old wargamers like Arneson, Gygax, Ward, and so on, but it was marketed to a teenage or pre-teen demographic. I, for example, started playing D&D in 1979, at the age of 10.Second, you make a hugely dubious assumption that the age ranges of ENWorld members is anything remotely resembling a representative sample of the D&D playing population. As has been noted elsewhere, the percentage of ENWorlders who are regular DMs is wildly out of proportion to anything one would reasonably expect. As a group, we seem to skew much older than the general population of D&D gamers (for example, how many 10-14 year olds frequent these boards, yet that is a significant marketing demographic for the game). Using the self-selected pool of ENWorlders as a basis for any sort of evaluation of the D&D community as a whole is likely to be an excercise in futility.</blockquote>