What draws kids into D&D/RPGs nowadays?

johnsemlak

First Post
I come from the generation that started with the Red Box (Moldvay edition for me) or some similar version of D&D, as my entry product. It seems that lots of people who started around then started D&D with one of versions of the Basic D&D set and then moved to AD&D and/or other RPGs. (I actually stuck with D&D, and borrowed from AD&D, but that's another story).

Kids who play D&D now, what draws them into it? Do they first play one of the intro boxed sets from WotC? Do they start with FCRPGs and move over, or perhaps with CCGs?
 

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My generation was drawn in by Baldur's Gate.

The current generation, whether we like it or not, is drawn in by World of Warcraft.
 

Barsoomcore and I were talking at GenCon about this very question. He had a fantastic point.

What is it about D&D that draw us to it? Not just kids, but people in general.

Simply put, it's a game where you get to use your imagination. That's the draw of D&D or any RPG. And it continues to be the draw for all RPGs.

If World of Warcraft could completely supplant this need and make D&D truly obsolete, I would have quit D&D by now and gone into WoW full time. I'm not going to argue the point that many people have quit D&D in favor of World of Warcraft. However, has everyone done so? No, obviously not, because otherwise this website would be a ghost town.

And that's because as great as WoW is - it does not engage the imagination like D&D does.

As a school teacher, I often see my middle school students playing D&D. They come into D&D (like we did) from a variety of sources. Some are WoW players. Some are anime buffs. Some like to read a lot of fantasy. However, my students who are dedicated D&D players all have one thing in common - they all have vivid imaginations and like to engage them on a regular basis.

As far as being drawn in by the Red Box, I know students who start with AD&D 1st Edition, and then later switch to 3rd Edition. I also know many students who just pick up a D&D book from the local Barnes & Noble and start playing that way.

I often see or hear discussion about "what kids nowadays" are doing or questioning "what will draw kids nowadays to D&D"? I guess I don't understand why younger people are turned into some other species of animal that we have to speculate on or try to understand. From where I sit, the typical teen or middle schooler is very much like the teens and middle schoolers that I knew growing up. The T-shirts have changed. The music has actually not changed (many of my students listen to the same music I did). And instead of playing video games on an Apple IIe, they play them on consoles.
 


>>What draws kids into D&D/RPGs nowadays? Their parents.

My game group nearly all has kids, and they're into it because we are.

-DM Jeff
 

There's an 18 year old who wants to get into my group. I could ask her.

As someone who's just early in his twenties, who started roughly ten, eight years ago, I could tell you: the social aspects, the making of stories, and the "Doing stuff you can't do in a computer game".
 

last year knew a guy who was 21 yrs old, (l am 38) who had played every computer spawn of dnd. from balders gate to everquest to world of warcraft. he is big into anime too. he always heard of dnd. never played it. i got him into it and he liked it. he is also imaginative.

i asked him why he never played before, and he said that basically the kids in high school who played it were mosly poor kids who couldnt afford computers. he never hung with that group, and since he had a comouter he played what he thouht was essentially the same thing (until i showed him otherwise).

to him dnd was the poor man's WoW.
 

I don't know what draws kids in these days. I have a 6 year old and so I'm familiar with things that are advertised to his age bracket. I really don't see D&D as a brand advertised outside of RPG fora.

I know that I got into it after I saw the ads in comic books in the 80's. I didnt get direct exposure to it until I found a copy of Keep on the Borderlands at a friends house. It belonged to his brother who didnt want it anymore so he gave it to me. After reading it and trying to reverse engineer the rules (at 12 years of age) I finally scraped enough money together to get the Red Box from Forbidden Planet on 14th Street in Union Sq and the rest is history.

I may have seen one or two ads in comics a few years ago now that aI think about it, but they werent the evocative ads from the 80's. They were filled with hipster snark that really doenst help sell the product at all.

I cant imagine anyone being interested in getting into D&D based on the second ad.
 


evocative... 80s... hrmmm there are two things that normally don't go together... :p

Do you mean the evocative "Use your lightning bolt!" ad? :p


I think really what draws kinds in these days is the same thing that drew them in in the first place... Active imagination and interest in the genre.
 

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