What I really miss from "the olden days"...

[kaomera]

re: nostalgia...

I have fond remembrances of playing in a campaign, as a member of a party of adventurers, in the person of my character(s); specifically in that order.

I admit that I have always been a DM more often than a player, but I remember being genuinely interested in what was happening in the campaign world and to the party. That's not to say that I wasn't exited by the thought of seeing what contribution my character could make, but my recollections really are that this was, at the very least, not more important to me than what any of the other PCs or even important NPCs where doing. I remember riding in the back of a station-wagon full of smelly boy scout gear, and with our books and dice out of reach, "playing D&D" in a session where no PCs where involved and the DM simply told us a story about what some NPCs we knew where doing in another part of the campaign, and thoroughly enjoying it.

Nowadays, it seems different. Well, it is different. I play modern D&D because it's different than AD&D, not in spite of it. (Not that I need a game different from AD&D, so much that if I want to play AD&D I'll play... um, Labyrinth Lord, probably... =P ) Characters take a lot longer to "roll up", and with that tends to come a lot more interest and detail in background, etc. right out of the box. Which is good stuff, for sure... But it seems to me that players just don't care anymore about stuff that's happening beyond their character's arms' length.

Too much "play" is happening away from the table. The character-creation minigame (solo) becomes the focus of too much of the players' attention. Too much of their tactical influence on the larger game is tied up there. And too often the character sheet is seen as the limit of a player's choices and their influence on the game. On the DM side, it's harder and harder to actually bring the things that would give the campaign "life" into actual play. And for myself, at least, a certain laziness creeps in. If the players don't care, then why bother? Why not just string together a series of level-appropriate combat challenges and just not worry about why?

I don't know: Is this really an artifact of changing times & changing systems? Or is it a matter of different circumstances, different players, etc.? I feel like if I was seeing the players outside of the 4-6 hours we game each week (and I doubt we'd be in the back of someone's Mom's car, but we could hang out and have a beer or three if we had the time) it might change things. But maybe not - we've got email, and even when we are together outside the game, we always seem to have other things on our minds...

 

[Whisper72]

Well... as to the effect of the editions of D&D themselves, I firmly believe there are simply different playstyles preferred by different people and each edition caters to some types of play better then others (I say better, because I also believe each playstyle CAN be played in each edition, merely that some styles under some editions are more like swimming against the current then with the current).

As to the nostalgia, I also believe that a large part and parcel of nostalgia is the mere fact that 'when we were young' so to speak, everthing was new. And it was new. Entirely new. Nowadays, the whole fantasy genre is much more known / commonplace then it was then. The amount of fantasy writers known to a broad audience was much smaller, and most of the 'blockbuster' series had not yet been written. Also, the idea of roleplaying was much more novel, and there were fewer other references (read: collectible card games and computergames), so the whole concept itself was new.
Couple that to the fact that most of us who began playing in the seventies and eighties when we were in highschool now have busy jobs, often a family. This means the amount of time we have available is less, in quantity obviously, but also in quality. Now, many of us must squeeze in play between stressfull other 'stuff' (jobs, kids) that never quite completely 'leaves your head'.

These things together make it that the experiences the way we had them back then, can never come back, and in fact, even other newcomers to the game, are less likely to experience these same things, simply because we are now in edition X, with a plethora of games to choose from, loads of informationa available etc. The whole 'newness' of the game, even the entire genre, is simply no more...

Just my personal thoughts on the matter...

 

[jmucchiello]

The only thing I miss from "the olden days" is copious amounts of time. Nothing compares to having daily 5+ hours gaming sessions.

 

[Erekose]

I find it difficult to differentiate the whole composite of being young, the whole series of "firsts" and well . . . the novelty of playing a RPG (although D&D was the first RPG I encountered) over 20 years ago.

I guess I'd still think of myself as having an "old school" style of play but it wouldn't surprise me if many of us harken back to when we first started as some of the "best" times we've played.

 

[Whisper72]

Well... a large part of real world nostalgia is simply the human mind / psyche at work... we have a natural tendency to forget a lot of the bad and remember mostly the good...

So looking backwards in time, trying to remember how things were, includes a natural tendency towards those rosy glasses...

 

[LostSoul]

I don't know: Is this really an artifact of changing times & changing systems?

Yes. The "build" is not based on play.

(For the most part - if you know the game is going to feature a specific location and specific types of encounters you'll build towards that. "What's a good Rogue build for The Red Hand of Doom?")

If each feat/power/skill required in-game justification to acquire, then you'd see less "building" and more character changes based on what happens in-game.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well... as to the effect of the editions of D&D themselves, I firmly believe there are simply different playstyles preferred by different people and each edition caters to some types of play better then others (I say better, because I also believe each playstyle CAN be played in each edition, merely that some styles under some editions are more like swimming against the current then with the current).

I agree. I have modern 3E/C&C players who are fully invested in the world.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Like others above me, I also miss the playtime I had as a kid and young adult. By the time I get that back, I may be half-blind, toothless and on a fixed income.

But I always enjoyed the PC design process...it's only my focus that has changed. Early on, I was all about making power-killers of some kind. Now, I try to optimize the character as a personality; make design choices as if that person were making them. I can and do still make optimized killer PCs, but its rare.

 

[Umbran]

I don't know: Is this really an artifact of changing times & changing systems? Or is it a matter of different circumstances, different players, etc.?

Yes, it is a matter of all of these things.

To be sure, the earliest editions of D&D didn't allow for much "building" at all. But the base of such has been in D&D since 2e came out with "kits", so it isn't what I'd call new to the game at this point.

And I think the choice to build based on expectations (say, you're doing a specific AP), or to a specific optimization, or in reaction to what's gone on in the game is not a matter of rules, but of the individual players.

Some folks will say that the rules lead folks to build in advance, but I think that's a weak argument. It depends somehow on the speaker to be different, that most gamers are sheep and do what the rules tell them, but we (somehow, magically, I suppose) know better. I think gamers in general are free-willed folks, and choose what they do, rather than just accept the rules as handed to them without question. If they build beforehand, that's because the want to do so, they like that form of play.

I don't recall ever playing a game in which the actions of the NPCs were in and of themselves really of interest to the players, except insofar as they impacted the PCs. So, that interest seems to me to have been peculiar to your players, not to what game they were playing.

 

[The Shaman]

The "build" is not based on play. . . . If each feat/power/skill required in-game justification to acquire, then you'd see less "building" and more character changes based on what happens in-game.

This has long been one of my most serious reservations about d20 games.

When prestige classes were introduced, the initial idea was that these could be uses as tools for the referee to use in world-building, but in my experience soon they became just another set of stats for the players to eye when considering what their characters would be in five, ten, or twenty levels.

Now contrast that with my "Gimli of Arabia" dwarf fighter - this kind of experience is, hands down, one of my absolute favorite features of roleplaying games, the synergy which arises from character and setting and events of the game.

As far as "nostalgia" goes, I play games which provide the experience I want and I don't play games which don't, so what some might call "nostalgic" I call "last night's game." If the latest-and-greatest doesn't get me where I want to go, then there's no reason for me to play it.