A lot of kids and adults played D & D without the input of magazines, or newsletters.  The game was what they held in their hands when they got home from the store, and if the rules were difficult to understand; many people just made something up that made sense to them, and played on.

Quote from: Razor 007;1101279A lot of kids and adults played D & D without the input of magazines, or newsletters.  The game was what they held in their hands when they got home from the store, and if the rules were difficult to understand; many people just made something up that made sense to them, and played on.

Granted my first RPG wasn't D&D, but yeah, this was exactly my experience growing up with RPGs.

And even in 2019, I have never compared what is printed in my books, with current online errata.  They should get it right before they send it to the printer, in a rush to market.  I paid for a good book, not a bunch of mistakes.

Quote from: Razor 007;1101291And even in 2019, I have never compared what is printed in my books, with current online errata.  They should get it right before they send it to the printer, in a rush to market.  I paid for a good book, not a bunch of mistakes.

Me either. If I somehow acquired errata'd/updated versions of any of the print books or PDFs I have, then it's entirely incidental.

Quote from: Razor 007;1101291And even in 2019, I have never compared what is printed in my books, with current online errata.  They should get it right before they send it to the printer, in a rush to market.  I paid for a good book, not a bunch of mistakes.

You paid for a good book, not a perfect book.

Quote from: Bren;1100821I have dice that are older than you.

I love throwing that at younger people. "I have pencils in my junk drawer older than you." It tends to remind them about the scope of time and how much bigger things can be than their latest zealotry.

Unfortunately you can also throw that back at me, too. Which I think is a hoot! I somehow need to incorporate this into a Vampire game... "I have clothes that are older than your country. :cool:"

Quote from: jhkim;1101271It depends what you're trying to do. I think as far as defining a generation of gamers, which was the topic from the OP, it should be defined by how the game was actually played by most of those players - not by the rules as written.

So, for example, if gamers often made their own rulings that contradicted the rules as written, that's a feature of that generation of gamer. I don't think the generation should be defined as only the gamers who followed the rules as written if that isn't what most of them did.

I'm fine to also talk about the rules as written, but that's different than what the generation of gamers is like.

OK jhkim, which was the generation of gamers that matches the early description.  Are you saying there was never one that did?  It was just like you played it, all the way back, by most people?

Quote from: EOTB;1101524OK jhkim, which was the generation of gamers that matches the early description.  Are you saying there was never one that did?  It was just like you played it, all the way back, by most people?

I don't think that the differences in groups of players are adequately described by calling them different generations, because they're overlapping in time. Also, if we break up generation by just a few years difference, then there would be over a dozen generations rather than a handful.

Once D&D went mass market, there were tens of thousands of people who bought and played it who had no connection to the Gary Gygax's personal games, and only had the rulebooks to go by. D&D was a runaway mass market hit from around 1977 to 1980 particularly, verging on mainstream. Both my sisters played it in high school around that time, who would never consider an RPG later in life. These mass market players vastly outnumbered those in Gygax's circles.

I was introduced to D&D in 1975, which is close to the start of its mass market penetration. I doubt that I'm typical of people introduced in that time - but I also don't think that a direct friend of Gygax is necessarily typical of the mass-market period either.

The 1e AD&D game described in early, pre-1980 copies of White Dwarf was definitely very different from the game I started playing ca 1984-85. I think a lot of this was due to the 1e AD&D DMG's complete failure to explain the megadungeon (OD&D 'Underworld') concept as the central pillar of play, so in the early '80s it seemed everyone went over to a Mentzer style approach of wilderness + small dungeons, very often published module dungeons like Keep on the Borderlands and Castle Amber.