As requested, a thread on my notion that fewer gamers are readers these days.

While it's purely anecdotal I don't meet many younger gamers who've read Tolkien, let alone Lieber, Howard, or Moorcock.  They have often read Harry Potter or even Narnia or had them read to them by a parent or a teacher.  I suspect, in part, these things are simply out of date by the standards of modern libraries and school teachers.  However, I find most of them have played Morrowind, Elder Scrolls, World of Warcraft and so forth.  So, it seems to me that between the competition from movies and video games and the accessibility of the internet, not as many of the kids have to turn to the classics for their fantasy fix.  They also seem to be less interested in reading for pleasure.

To be honest, I suspect the massive page counts of modern fantasy books are off-putting.  If they got into some Howard, Moorcock, or Lieber the thinner, lower priced book with the cool Frazzetta cover might cure them.  But in anycase, movies and video games seem to build quite different expectations than books.  Minecraft is an odd thing because most kids have a pretty good idea of what is in bronze or gunpowder these days, even when they don't realize that's really what's involved.

I wonder how many listen to these in audio format? For example, Tales of Weird on YouTube has audio versions of many of these which are quite good. If they dislike reading listening is always an option.

After doing some casual investigation into the figures on how much children are or are not reading... it seems the drop has been about 10-20% compared to ten years ago, depending on who you ask.

While kids are reading less, it's not so much less that it's a gigantic number.

I think it's far more likely the reason kids aren't reading things like Tolkein, and Morcock, and Howard... is because they have more relevant modern sources that fit their interest. Harry Potter was brought up, but you also have things like The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, and a whole slew of Young Adult novels that have exploded on the scene in the last ten years.

I think it's more likely, kids are spoiled for choice when it comes to reading, and when making a decision between something that was written back in the early 20th century versus something that was written in the last 15 years, kids are more likely to go with the modern example than the classic.

The first book I ever decided to read on my own, w/o someone making me, was essentially the hobbit, though it was a paperback copy from school library and was titled "overhill & underhill" or "there and back again" I think, and I did so because I had just started playing D&D (red box, basic set lvls 1-3) and this book mentioned dragons and wizards on the back cover. After that, I read stuff about the occult, witch burnings, and encylopedia stuff for weapons and armor. I did this to better understand things from the game, to get a clearer picture of what splint mail was or what elves were historically supposed to be. (that gulf between tolkien and historical aelfs that steal babies and turn them into goblins is still jarring to me).

If kids today follow the same pattern for the same reasons, they have the internet to simply grab a quick answer to their questions, and they may be steered toward reading things with blue hair half demon dragon kin and looking for encyclopedia entries that explain the concept of good, evil, or religion. The game itself has changed and that alone may steer them toward reading things wholly unrelated to the themes that were more dominant up until late 3e/early 4e. Last Airbender as a formative experience begets a different expectation than GI Joe as a formative experience I think.

You're just getting old. Younger people still read, they just read different stuff.

No reason why  Lieber, Howard, or Moorcock should be essential reading just because they were popular in 1976. I'd guess even by the late 80s most D&D players weren't reading those guys, and were instead being influenced by Eddings, Brooks, and Jordan. Today, younger tabletop fantasy gamers are big on Brandon Sanderson (8+ million books sold), Patrick Rothfuss (10 million), Joe Abercrombie (6 million), and Steven Erikson (3 million). And that's not even mentioning GRR Martin (90 million). And given the length of these works, big books don't seem be any deterrent at all to fantasy readers today.

My teenage daughter asked me to DM for a group of her friends, so I recently started running an AD&D/1e game with 11 high-school aged players (we've had five sessions, so far). All but my daughter were new to D&D. I'll have to ask them what kind of stuff they've read/watched/etc. that reminds them of D&D. I'll post their feedback.

Just from things they've mentioned, I know that various anime will probably be one. Also, they've used terms (and tactics) I recognize from computer games like DOTA2 or League of Legends (tanks/carries/support, "kiting", et cetera). A few LotR quotes have been thrown about (probably from the movies, more so than the book).

All four of my own children play RPGs, sometimes. My oldest son runs games of his own, as well. Their D&D-ish background includes movies (e.g., LotR, Clash of the Titans, Krull, Sinbad movies, Jason and the Argonauts, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Big Trouble in Little China), various anime (I couldn't tell you what, though). They all read, some more than others, but what they read varies. My sons have both read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. My eldest has also read Dune. My daughters read a lot, but I wouldn't say it's D&D-ish stuff (it's mostly young adult fiction aimed at girls). Oh, they've all read and/or seen the Harry Potter material, too. AFAIK, none of them have watched or read any of the GRR Martin stuff, and no Moorcock, Leiber, Howard, Burroughs, Eddings, Brooks, Cook, etc. Come to think of it, I should encourage the boys to read some of that. I think they might like the Black Company books, and possibly Moorcock or Leiber, too. Might be a harder sell for my girls, though, since those books are pretty far removed from what they typically choose to read.

It probably doesn't help that many of the books in Appendix N - wouldn't BE TOUCHED today by the big publishing Houses - except maybe Baen.

People realize Howard's Conan stories were published 85 years ago, and Leiber's and Moorcock's most famous works 50 years ago, right? That's for fucking ever ago in pop culture terms.

To put it another way, Moorcock and Leiber are as distant in our past as E.R. Eddison was from when D&D was published, and Howard is as distant from us as H. Rider Haggard was. Fretting over modern gamers neglecting Howard, Moorcock, and Leiber is like a D&D hobbyist in 1978 fretting that nobody reads Eddison's Worm Ourobouros or Haggard's People of the Mist anymore.

Few people ever read fiction written 30 or 40 years before they were born, unless it's for school.

My wife is the same age as I am (she's actually only 3 days older than me) and she plays RPG's. She reads a lot and she's also very into comics (DC specifically). However I don't believe she's read any of the fantasy classics mentioned in the OP. She was big into Harry Potter and LotR (both the books and the films), American Gods, Outlander, various other series as well as some Niven and Harry Harrison (I love Bill the Galactic Hero but apparently she hasn't read it yet), the Ender's Game series (one of her favorites, I only ever read the first one) and other sci-fi stuff thanks to her father's influence I believe as he is a big reader. Come to think of it I still need to read the Robot City books he's lent me.

Some of my earlier entries into fantasy were with Conan, the Sword of Truth series, and LotR/Hobbit. Along the way there were some very RPG-specific reads, such as some of the WoD and D&D titles out there.

Most of my other players don't read at all unless you count textbooks. All of them play videogames.

In any case, I would agree with earlier posters in that I believe mostly the "current" literature is just different and there is more available access to a wide variety of titles. I never would have read Leviathan if ebooks didn't exist, and I can't say I would have felt pressured to read any of the classics my mother owned had I had effortless access to an endless variety of novels at my fingertips. I do think people are being influenced quite a bit more by videogames these days, but I can't claim that for instance Zelda didn't influence me at all back in "the day." Hell, it even inspired me to write my first (and only) RPG to play with my brother. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I do think it builds very different expectations for fantasy roleplaying from literary influence. Reading so much in my youth is something I'd never trade away, and I know I wouldn't see or play RPG's the same way if I hadn't spent so many years shut in my room with my mother's book collection.

Quote from: tenbones;1120405It probably doesn't help that many of the books in Appendix N - wouldn't BE TOUCHED today by the big publishing Houses - except maybe Baen.

And Appendix N is a subset of the full corpus of fiction from that era - all of which has been discredited and memory holed to varying degrees.

Quote from: Haffrung;1120384You're just getting old. Younger people still read, they just read different stuff.

No reason why  Lieber, Howard, or Moorcock should be essential reading just because they were popular in 1976. I'd guess even by the late 80s most D&D players weren't reading those guys, and were instead being influenced by Eddings, Brooks, and Jordan.

Me and my buddies at high school 1988-91 were definitely into Leiber Howard Moorcock, not sub-Tolkien stuff.

Quote from: S'mon;1120423Me and my buddies at high school 1988-91 were definitely into Leiber Howard Moorcock, not sub-Tolkien stuff.

Sure, and so was I. But I guarantee book stores in 1990 weren't selling more copies of Swords Against Deviltry and the Chronicles of Corum than they were of the Wishsong of Shannara and Eye of the World. The great majority of people, now and then, read books published in the last 10 years. I don't understand why we would expect D&D players to be any different when it comes to pop culture.

Well it the Witcher TV show is any example - the video game gave Andrzej Sapkowski a big reader-bump in sales in 2015 - like 400% which has been maintained over 300% of year-on-year totals since before the Witcher III game dropped. So I can only imagine the TV show really boosted it.

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The real interesting test will be to see if Elric of Melnibone' when it drops (assuming they even *try* to be faithful to the book) will reignite the young'uns to pick up Moorcock.

I'd add the Dune movie as well.

Quote from: Haffrung;1120408Fretting over modern gamers neglecting Howard, Moorcock, and Leiber is like a D&D hobbyist in 1978 fretting that nobody reads Eddison's Worm Ourobouros or Haggard's People of the Mist anymore.

FWIW, I didn't take this thread as anyone fretting over it. Seemed more like an observation than a worry. And I think your take on the "why" angle sounds correct. The stuff that's listed in Appendix N is just old (and often hard to find), so it's not shocking that younger readers aren't choosing those books.

Yeah, I concur that it's mostly that kids are reading different stuff these days. My son reads enormous amounts - and he read Tolkien, but he never got into Howard or Lieber. When younger, he tended to read modern YA fiction. Now he's getting a literature minor in college, so he tends to read older stuff, but still not much from Appendix N.

Quote from: Orphan81;1120373After doing some casual investigation into the figures on how much children are or are not reading... it seems the drop has been about 10-20% compared to ten years ago, depending on who you ask.

While kids are reading less, it's not so much less that it's a gigantic number.

Agreed. From what I've read, it seems like there has been a steady decline in reading since the 1950s, which can mostly be attributed to television -- even in recent decades. (Television watching has continued to rise, if one includes streaming services.)

QuoteIt's tempting to blame the decline on the recent proliferation of computers, cellphones, video games and the like. But the data don't really bear that out. For one, the NEA data show that reading has been on the wane since at least the 1980s, well before the advent of Facebook and Fortnite.

A long-term study of reading trends in the Netherlands points to a different culprit: television. From 1955 to 1995, TV time exploded while weekly reading time declined. "Competition from television turned out to be the most evident cause of the decline in reading," the authors of that study concluded.

In the United States, the American Time Use Survey shows that while the average reading time fell between 2004 and 2017, the average amount of time watching TV rose.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/29/leisure-reading-in-the-u-s-is-at-an-all-time-low/