Belorin
Explorer
I think I get it, back when I first started playing you had very little in the way of intellectual entertainment. Books, games (board, war, strategy and puzzles), movies and TV.
Books were pretty much a solitary thing, you could read a book at the same time as your friends and discuss them after, but while reading it was you and your imagination.
Games were Monopoly, Risk or some variant or wargaming, but to me wargamers always seemed too detail oriented.
Movies and TV were enjoyable, but movies olny lasted a couple of hours, and TV... well it's alot better in some ways now, however there was more diversity in the shows you watched because there were only so many on.
For group activities it was pretty much sports, movies, games or hanging out.
Enter D&D.
An activity that used your imagination like a book you played with your friends like a game and flowed like a movie.
You learned things in those games, about yourself, your friends and the world. In those days you played your character like yourself. There was little powergaming, min-maxing or things like that in those first RPG's at first, you took alot of what you learned back into real life.
One of the best things about the game was it wasn't competitive, you worked with the party to make it to the end of the adventure, everyone helped.
Somewhere along the line it started to become about your character instead of the party.
How could you get more treasure, magic items, stuff. This worked it's way into how you built your character, somehow it got competitive. Who could kill the most orcs or find the most treasure. But in the end, the DM took all the orcs and the treasure and divided it up mostly equally among the party. This brought on a desire to play something different in some players, be it alternate classes or new races and it was fine for awhile. But very little about how the game was played changed, new editions simply tacked on new revisions. (kind of like the Constitution, it's been amended into immobility)
4E looked at all this and said time for a change stripped off all the old coats of paint, varnish and decals and looked at the original. Then started to build a new one using new technology, it will do the same thing as the old one, but faster, quieter and with less maintenance.
The game is about the party again, more stuff to do for all involved and less competition between players. You can walk away from a game with a feeling of accomplishment no matter what you play. And that is useful in real life because these days you so rarely get that feeling on a regular basis.
Wow, I really rambled didn't I?
But I think that's kind of what Jack7 was trying to say and if not well them I'm saying it!
Bel
Books were pretty much a solitary thing, you could read a book at the same time as your friends and discuss them after, but while reading it was you and your imagination.
Games were Monopoly, Risk or some variant or wargaming, but to me wargamers always seemed too detail oriented.
Movies and TV were enjoyable, but movies olny lasted a couple of hours, and TV... well it's alot better in some ways now, however there was more diversity in the shows you watched because there were only so many on.
For group activities it was pretty much sports, movies, games or hanging out.
Enter D&D.
An activity that used your imagination like a book you played with your friends like a game and flowed like a movie.
You learned things in those games, about yourself, your friends and the world. In those days you played your character like yourself. There was little powergaming, min-maxing or things like that in those first RPG's at first, you took alot of what you learned back into real life.
One of the best things about the game was it wasn't competitive, you worked with the party to make it to the end of the adventure, everyone helped.
Somewhere along the line it started to become about your character instead of the party.
How could you get more treasure, magic items, stuff. This worked it's way into how you built your character, somehow it got competitive. Who could kill the most orcs or find the most treasure. But in the end, the DM took all the orcs and the treasure and divided it up mostly equally among the party. This brought on a desire to play something different in some players, be it alternate classes or new races and it was fine for awhile. But very little about how the game was played changed, new editions simply tacked on new revisions. (kind of like the Constitution, it's been amended into immobility)
4E looked at all this and said time for a change stripped off all the old coats of paint, varnish and decals and looked at the original. Then started to build a new one using new technology, it will do the same thing as the old one, but faster, quieter and with less maintenance.
The game is about the party again, more stuff to do for all involved and less competition between players. You can walk away from a game with a feeling of accomplishment no matter what you play. And that is useful in real life because these days you so rarely get that feeling on a regular basis.
Wow, I really rambled didn't I?
But I think that's kind of what Jack7 was trying to say and if not well them I'm saying it!
Bel
