So watching Bill Maher. He does a part on bitcoins where Mt. Gox (the largest bitcoin exchange) filed bankruptcy after loosing some $500 million in bitcoins. His big punchline is something like: You don't trust your money with 3 guys in the basement playing D&D.
Mt. Gox is Magic The Gathering Online eXchange. We all know that Magic is tons more profitable than D&D. D&D does not have anything to do with, Magic does.
But D&D still has such strong brand recognition, that whoever wrote the punchline felt the need to shoehorn in D&D instead of Magic.
Pretty nifty in my book.
that's only because those guys remember D&D from their younger days, and by the time Magic came about, they were already grown past their school days. They don't associate Magic with nerds because in their personal experience, nerds played D&D back in the 70s and 80s. Magic wasn't around yet
The game hit full-on 1980s fad levels of popularity, so it's going to be the geeky reference of choice until there's no one left who was around for the 80s and even then it might live on as a general geeky reference well past that.
Quote from: Sacrosanct;733752that's only because those guys remember D&D from their younger days, and by the time Magic came about, they were already grown past their school days. They don't associate Magic with nerds because in their personal experience, nerds played D&D back in the 70s and 80s. Magic wasn't around yet
I had assumed his writers were a revolving stable of cheap 20-somethings. A modicum of googling says that his writers are mostly folks that have been with him for years.
So, yeah, may be more a case of some old farts.
It's often used as a joke on MST3K/Rifftrax as well.
I'm not sure it's a good meme to be associated with, being nerds who live in their parents basements.
I miss the days when they thought we were satan worshippers...
Finally, validation.
Congrats! D&D got associated with the magic beans used by paedophiles, drug dealers and computer extortionists!
Obvious answer: Don't watch Bill Maher.
Quote from: Rincewind1;733762Finally, validation.
Good one!
Quote from: JeremyR;733757It's often used as a joke on MST3K/Rifftrax as well.
I'm not sure it's a good meme to be associated with, being nerds who live in their parents basements.
I miss the days when they thought we were satan worshippers...
I miss the days when everyone thought we were hot womanizing playboy studs.
Wait...aren't we? We're still cool right? right? ...
Cool like the other side of the pillow.
There was a period in the very early 80's when the Moldvay/Cook Basic Set was as mainstream as Monopoly or Clue and could be found anywhere that sold toys, even unlikely places like hardware stores and stationary shops.
Third edition at it's absolute zenith didn't even come close.
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;733944There was a period in the very early 80's when the Moldvay/Cook Basic Set was as mainstream as Monopoly or Clue could be found anywhere that sold toys, even unlikely places like hardware stores and stationary shops.
Third edition at it's absolute zenith didn't even come close.
I bought my copy of Moldvay at a Walgreen's.
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;733944There was a period in the very early 80's when the Moldvay/Cook Basic Set was as mainstream as Monopoly or Clue could be found anywhere that sold toys, even unlikely places like hardware stores and stationary shops.
Third edition at it's absolute zenith didn't even come close.
So ... is it possible that the nerds and neckbeards stereotype is because mainstream folks largely rejected it while nerds and neckbeards embraced it? Hence, not a stereotype, just a reasonable description of participants?
Lord knows the handful of times I have been to a convention or stayed in the FLGS long enough to talk with folks ... they pretty well deserve the stereotype.
Quote from: Old One Eye;733948So ... is it possible that the nerds and neckbeards stereotype is because mainstream folks largely rejected it while nerds and neckbeards embraced it? Hence, not a stereotype, just a reasonable description of participants?
.
The 80's "Satanic Panic" (Which was a real, chilling force in rural Illinois, where I was a teen at the time) took a lot of wind out of D&D's cultural sails, or so it seemed to me at the time.
And, as Jaimie Mal used to rightly point out on Grognardia, every fad passtime (Bridge in the 50's, for example) has only a few hardcores that stay with it as a lifetime hobby. Most people just play and enjoy it for awhile and move on. There were certainly a lot of people I met playing D&D back then who were not the stereotypical basement-dwelling nerd. Acxtually, there are a lot of people I meet through D&D
now who are not the stereotypical basement-dwelling nerd.
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;733952And, as Jaimie Mal used to rightly point out on Grognardia, every fad passtime (Bridge in the 50's, for example) has only a few hardcores that stay with it as a lifetime hobby. Most people just play and enjoy it for awhile and move on.
I think so too.
This seems to be case possibly in other niches too, outside of tabletop rpg games.
From that same time period in the 1980's, for example, how many people today are still into hairspray metal bands? :rolleyes:
D&D is actually sort of lucky as far as "Games that were briefly big fads" go. How many people still play pogs?
I've always thought that people in the mainstream media were pretty scared by D&D and every other entertainment that doesn't require passive consumption and pay them to advertise it. They embraced the Satanic panic but later, in the nineties, embraced the idea of attacking it with a whispering campaign (yes that's from the Illuminati card game) and made it a reference that indicated hopeless geekiness.
Not that it's a conspiracy, it's a confluence of vested interests. They don't have to get a committee of wolves together and decide to hunt rabbits.
Sorry, I stopped reading and threw up at "watching Bill Maher."
Quote from: JRR;734069Sorry, I stopped reading and threw up at "watching Bill Maher."
You need to brush your teeth after throwing up. Stomach acid is tough stuff.
Quote from: Old One Eye;733748So watching Bill Maher. He does a part on bitcoins where Mt. Gox (the largest bitcoin exchange) filed bankruptcy after loosing some $500 million in bitcoins. His big punchline is something like: You don't trust your money with 3 guys in the basement playing D&D.
Mt. Gox is Magic The Gathering Online eXchange. We all know that Magic is tons more profitable than D&D. D&D does not have anything to do with, Magic does.
But D&D still has such strong brand recognition, that whoever wrote the punchline felt the need to shoehorn in D&D instead of Magic.
Pretty nifty in my book.
That....actually sounds like some pathetic spin doctoring. Really, "People think that D&D Players suck more than Magic the Gathering Players! Rejoice! We are the butt of more jokes!"
Quote from: jeff37923;734091That....actually sounds like some pathetic spin doctoring. Really, "People think that D&D Players suck more than Magic the Gathering Players! Rejoice! We are the butt of more jokes!"
It certainty does not bother me. Why would it?
Quote from: David Johansen;733961I've always thought that people in the mainstream media were pretty scared by D&D and every other entertainment that doesn't require passive consumption and pay them to advertise it. They embraced the Satanic panic but later, in the nineties, embraced the idea of attacking it with a whispering campaign (yes that's from the Illuminati card game) and made it a reference that indicated hopeless geekiness.
Not that it's a conspiracy, it's a confluence of vested interests. They don't have to get a committee of wolves together and decide to hunt rabbits.
The thing is though in the UK, the Satanic panic was a joke and there was no other whispering campaign and .... its still played by geeks and neckbeards.
so if you remove the cultural bagage that seems to indicate a conspiracy to label the game and you still get the same result, ie played by geeks and neckbeards then ....
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;733944There was a period in the very early 80's when the Moldvay/Cook Basic Set was as mainstream as Monopoly or Clue and could be found anywhere that sold toys, even unlikely places like hardware stores and stationary shops.
Third edition at it's absolute zenith didn't even come close.
I remember when Albertson's (a large grocery chain, mostly gone now) in Florida had a rather nice toy department aisle. I bought some Armored Trooper Dorvack (http://www.1999.co.jp/search_e.asp?Typ1_c=109&scope=1&urikire=0&andor=0&scope2=0&sortID=0&SFlt_f=1&SFilter=Series&ItKey=Dorvack) model kits there, and they also had the Basic and Expert (Moldvay/Cook) sets, although that was the breadth and depth of their RPG materials.
Heh; s'funny...a grocery store whose toy aisle was kitted out like most specialty hobby shops of the day :).
Course the aisle went pretty "meh", then they cut it down by half and it shared space with outdoor/pool toys, then the next time I noticed it was outdoor/pool toys and housewares (toasters, pots and pans, etc.)
But yeah, for one brief period, D&D was available at Albertsons! :)
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;733944There was a period in the very early 80's when the Moldvay/Cook Basic Set was as mainstream as Monopoly or Clue and could be found anywhere that sold toys, even unlikely places like hardware stores and stationary shops.
Third edition at it's absolute zenith didn't even come close.
I don't remember ever seeing the game in those main stream stores back then; I remember always having to go to the hobby shops and Waldenbooks. I'm not saying it didn't happen, I just didn't see it.
We did see the 4e ver. Red Box released briefly at Target stores in our area. I thought that was stretching the brand name pretty well and a probable strength of having Hasbro as a parent.
Quote from: MonsterSlayer;734196I don't remember ever seeing the game in those main stream stores back then; I remember always having to go to the hobby shops and Waldenbooks. I'm not saying it didn't happen, I just didn't see it.
We did see the 4e ver. Red Box released briefly at Target stores in our area. I thought that was stretching the brand name pretty well and a probable strength of having Hasbro as a parent.
I remember the boxed sets in toy stores, and bought my AD&D books at Fred Meyers
Quote from: MonsterSlayer;734196I don't remember ever seeing the game in those main stream stores back then; I remember always having to go to the hobby shops and Waldenbooks. I'm not saying it didn't happen, I just didn't see it.
We did see the 4e ver. Red Box released briefly at Target stores in our area. I thought that was stretching the brand name pretty well and a probable strength of having Hasbro as a parent.
I recall thumbing through a MM at Magic Mart as a wee lad long before knowing what it was. Vaguely remember seeing some books at Freds. Couple years later, bought my first dice set at Toys R Us.
I grew up in the 80's with D&D and I remember it being sold in all sorts of stores. Sure, mostly book stores and toy stores but also Woolworths and Bradlees department stores too.
The "satanic panic" didn't affect my neighborhood much. However, my mother heard the word "game" and saw the dice and assumed we were gambling. But then she always thought everyone was trying to steal from her every second of the day.
It took me years but I finally forgave Tom Hanks for "Mazes and Monsters." Heck, he was just a struggling actor in those days.
I bought the "black box" D&D set at Toys 'R Us in 1991. I also bought Top Secret SI about the same time, maybe a year before.
Quote from: ggroy;733955From that same time period in the 1980's, for example, how many people today are still into hairspray metal bands? :rolleyes:
Death to All Butt Metal!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfB7vF7nCdA&feature=kp
for a sec, wondered what "butt metal" was. instead of big hair, big booty? isn't that rap's purview?
Like I said, I miss the glory days of D&D's public image as something edgy, dangerous, and satanic. Its way better than being associated with 40 year old jobless virgins.
Quote from: RPGPundit;735092Like I said, I miss the glory days of D&D's public image as something edgy, dangerous, and satanic. Its way better than being associated with 40 year old jobless virgins.
Ah the myth of the halcyon days that never were :)
I don't think a game founded by whitecollar midwestern wargamers was ever edgy except in the eyes of other whitecollar midwestern wargamers ....
You know what you thought when you say that goth guy in his leather trench coat and kiss makup buying his copy of Vampire in 1992 that was everybody else thought about D&D players in 1978
Quote from: jibbajibba;735119Ah the myth of the halcyon days that never were :)
I'm pretty sure this is how those "edgy" DnD players were envisioned back in '80s:
(http://www.projective.co/wp-content/uploads/revenge-of-the-nerds.jpg)
Quote from: Endless Flight;734203I bought the "black box" D&D set at Toys 'R Us in 1991. I also bought Top Secret SI about the same time, maybe a year before.
I seem to remember reading that that black box set (I think it was a re-editing of Mentzer with levels 1-5 included, right?) was the highest selling D&D game rule set ever. Is that correct?
I always thought that it was odd since I never came across that set, ever. Not in stores at the time, not in hobby shops, and only very rarely even on ebay to this day.
Quote from: Rincewind1;735120I'm pretty sure this is how those "edgy" DnD players were envisioned back in '80s:
(http://www.projective.co/wp-content/uploads/revenge-of-the-nerds.jpg)
It was certainly dying down by '84, but the satanic panic was still going.
I guess it finally reached its peak stupid in '88 when Geraldo had his special.
Quote from: RPGPundit;735092Like I said, I miss the glory days of D&D's public image as something edgy, dangerous, and satanic. Its way better than being associated with 40 year old jobless virgins.
That association exists, but I think the OP has the right of it. If I'm running a Mutants and Masterminds campaign and I need to be out the door at work, I don't say that, I say I have a D&D game I want to get to, because everyone knows what that means. MtG may be a huge moneymaker but I don't feel like it has the same sort of cultural penetration that D&D achieved, at least here in the States.
That satanic scare didn't make D&D seem dangerous and edgy; it was all about adolescent schoolkids being corrupted. D&D was about as 'edgy' as peanut allergies. Peanut allergies suffered by dorky 13-year-olds.
And even the satanic thing was confined largely to religious regions of the U.S. Everywhere else, disapproval of D&D was more of a 'you kids need to stop playing so much intellivision and go outside to get some fresh air' level of concern.
Quote from: Haffrung;735205That satanic scare didn't make D&D seem dangerous and edgy; it was all about adolescent schoolkids being corrupted. D&D was about as 'edgy' as peanut allergies. Peanut allergies suffered by dorky 13-year-olds.
And even the satanic thing was confined largely to religious regions of the U.S. Everywhere else, disapproval of D&D was more of a 'you kids need to stop playing so much intellivision and go outside to get some fresh air' level of concern.
No kidding. "Edgy" and "Dangerous" were the Bloods, or the Crips, or the Skinheads.
D&D player? Yeah, I don't think society was scared of D&D players lol
Quote from: Sacrosanct;735207No kidding. "Edgy" and "Dangerous" were the Bloods, or the Crips, or the Skinheads.
Or over the last decade or so, "Jihadists".
Quote from: jibbajibba;735119Ah the myth of the halcyon days that never were :)
I don't think a game founded by whitecollar midwestern wargamers was ever edgy except in the eyes of other whitecollar midwestern wargamers ....
You know what you thought when you say that goth guy in his leather trench coat and kiss makup buying his copy of Vampire in 1992 that was everybody else thought about D&D players in 1978
Among gamers it wasn't considered edgy, because we knew it was largely just us nerds and geeks. But here in the states, in the 80s, among non-gamers it had a pretty dark reputation. The reputation never matched the reality, of course. At the time though, i remember hearing how gamers did drugs, worshipped the devil and killed each other in sewers (as if doing one of those things alone wasn't enough).
Quote from: Haffrung;735205And even the satanic thing was confined largely to religious regions of the U.S. Everywhere else, disapproval of D&D was more of a 'you kids need to stop playing so much intellivision and go outside to get some fresh air' level of concern.
But that is a good chunk of the US. My parents were liberals from boston, and even I had my books confiscated and the game forbidden while living in Southern California (which has its deeply religious areas). When my mother told me not to play D&D, ot wasn't because the lack of outside activity, it was because she genuinely thought it was the devil's game. I think outside the US, it may not have been as noticeable. But here the notion that gamers were geeky fantasy nerds, wasn't something i encountered until the 90s.
Quote from: Sacrosanct;735207No kidding. "Edgy" and "Dangerous" were the Bloods, or the Crips, or the Skinheads.
D&D player? Yeah, I don't think society was scared of D&D players lol
Again, it depended on where you lived. I spent five years in southern california where the crips and bloods were an actual concern (to the point that we couldn't where their colors on school grounds and had security guards). But it was also a deeply religious community and i personally heard more about the evils and dangers of D&D from parents than i did about the evils and dangers of gangs. There was a real paranoia in the air back then, in places like this, that seems crazy today but people genuinely believed stuff like Mazes and Monsters was real.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;735219...she genuinely thought it was the devil's game...
Oh crap. You mean it's not?
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;735216Among gamers it wasn't considered edgy, because we knew it was largely just us nerds and geeks. But here in the states, in the 80s, among non-gamers it had a pretty dark reputation. The reputation never matched the reality, of course. At the time though, i remember hearing how gamers did drugs, worshipped the devil and killed each other in sewers (as if doing one of those things alone wasn't enough).
One out of three isn't a bad score :D.
Quote from: Rincewind1;735222One out of three isn't a bad score :D.
I just loved how it couldn't simply be one bad thing, it had to be something that involved murder, demon worship AND drugs. "Hey guys, know what would go great with this cocaine? Satan!"
Quote from: Saplatt;735221Oh crap. You mean it's not?
No, but the disparity between the belief that it was and the reality that it was just a nerdy fantasy game with dice and pencils is why this dead ale wives sketch was so funny when it came out (because it was mocking actual PSA's by the 700 Club): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVsTtSrOMsI
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;735223I just loved how it couldn't simply be one bad thing, it had to be something that involved murder, demon worship AND drugs. "Hey guys, know what would go great with this cocaine? Satan!"
Five ounces of cocaine, , ten thousand dollars in gold, D20s, six condoms, two condoms ribbed (for her pleasure), Judas Priest Mixtape, 12 bottles of Jack Daniels, D&D handbooks, two dry - cleaned suits, brass athame, six pairs of nylon stockings, a bound virgin victim...looks like we're set for a weekend in Vegas.
Quote from: Rincewind1;735226Five ounces of cocaine, , ten thousand dollars in gold, D20s, six condoms, two condoms ribbed (for her pleasure), Judas Priest Mixtape, 12 bottles of Jack Daniels, D&D handbooks, two dry - cleaned suits, brass athame, six pairs of nylon stockings, a bound virgin victim...looks like we're set for a weekend in Vegas.
the trouble is the D&D player is the bound virgin :)
Quote from: jibbajibba;735376the trouble is the D&D player is the bound virgin :)
If there ever was a need for an emoticon blowing coffee over a keyboard, it is now.
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;735382If there ever was a need for an emoticon blowing coffee over a keyboard, it is now.
I thought that was pretty funny too. Luckily for the D&D player, that's the easiest of the bunch to get ahold of.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;735219But that is a good chunk of the US. My parents were liberals from boston, and even I had my books confiscated and the game forbidden while living in Southern California (which has its deeply religious areas). When my mother told me not to play D&D, ot wasn't because the lack of outside activity, it was because she genuinely thought it was the devil's game. I think outside the US, it may not have been as noticeable. But here the notion that gamers were geeky fantasy nerds, wasn't something i encountered until the 90s.
My parents, for whatever reason, despite being conservative republicans, never batted an eye at dnd. I had no clue for years that some people identified dnd with witchcraft, or whatever.
Quote from: Bill;735629My parents, for whatever reason, despite being conservative republicans, never batted an eye at dnd. I had no clue for years that some people identified dnd with witchcraft, or whatever.
Same here. I grew up in a very conservative rural Roman Catholic household. And my mom bought my D&D stuff for us for Christmas and birthdays.
Quote from: Sacrosanct;735650Same here. I grew up in a very conservative rural Roman Catholic household. And my mom bought my D&D stuff for us for Christmas and birthdays.
Bet you never realized Satan is going to show up and collect your soul!
I mean...if Satan existed....and cared about dnd.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;735219But that is a good chunk of the US. My parents were liberals from boston, and even I had my books confiscated and the game forbidden while living in Southern California (which has its deeply religious areas). When my mother told me not to play D&D, ot wasn't because the lack of outside activity, it was because she genuinely thought it was the devil's game. I think outside the US, it may not have been as noticeable. But here the notion that gamers were geeky fantasy nerds, wasn't something i encountered until the 90s.
Brendan, if your parents really thought it was the devil's game, they may have been more religious than you let on. I guess it might be all relative, but a belief that Satan exists as an active entity that spawns crap to screw humanity, for many, falls into the "very religious" camp.
The appearance of that horrible Tom Hank's movie of Mazes & Monsters and "BADD", which were both bubbling up in 1982, was really when it started to acquire a bad public association. Also note that's the year that ET came out and depicted Fake D&D momentarily on the big screen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH7pABfm1HQ), too.
I think before that, it was still under the radar and misunderstood by most people, like geocaching.
Quote from: Lynn;735665Brendan, if your parents really thought it was the devil's game, they may have been more religious than you let on. I guess it might be all relative, but a belief that Satan exists as an active entity that spawns crap to screw humanity, for many, falls into the "very religious" camp.
I can attest to my parents (at least, my mother - my father may have just gone along with it to shut her up) buying into the hype as well, while not being particularly religious (we said grace occasionally, but didn't go to church much more than once every couple of years). One doesn't have to believe in Satan to believe in Satan-worshippers, and the Satanic-panic wasn't constrained to D&D back then.
Satan-worship was a ratings-getting topic, be it for talk shows, TV drama series or whatever movie-of-the-week dreck was doing a mashup of Satan-worship, pedos and human sacrifice.
All of this certainly had mom convinced that evil baby-eating Satan-worshippers were lurking around every corner, and that was enough to make her pick up the pitchfork and torch whenever commanded to by daytime television hosts.
A few years later, after the sheep stopped bleating, she barely raised an eyebrow when I purchased the black box and Rules Cyclopedia...
Quote from: Lynn;735665Brendan, if your parents really thought it was the devil's game, they may have been more religious than you let on. I guess it might be all relative, but a belief that Satan exists as an active entity that spawns crap to screw humanity, for many, falls into the "very religious" camp.
.
I never intended to suggest they weren't religious (my mother was extremely religious and my father was too in his own way----but this intensified while living in a highly religious and conservative community). I said they were liberals from Boston and we were living in a very conservative part of California at the time. That doesn't preclude being religious. My point was that lots of areas of the country are religious like this (including sections of Southern California). I mentioned their being from Boston because they were generally immune to many of these concerns, except in the case of D&D where they bought into the rumors. There was a perfect storm of hype at the time, and heavy metal was swept up in this as well.
A lot of secular non-conservative or not-terribly-conservative people were Anti-D&D during the Eighties panic. They tended to be the type who believed anything they saw on TV. "Liberal" windbag and general douche Phil Donahue ran a particularly nasty Anti-D&D episode of his afternoon talk show that bashed the hobby on the joyless and dubious grounds "That there's something funny about grown adults playing a game". This "Defender of the working class" brought on some guy who apparently was a semi-famous East Coast DM to defend the game... then mostly attacked the guy for being a handyman and house-painter. How dare the unwashed proles waste time with a game when Donahue Manor's pool needs cleaned! The nerve!
Joyce Brothers, the celebrity psychiatrist, was to her eternal credit the one public figure of the time who stood up for role-playing a defended it as a positive hobby that taught problem-solving skills.
I really wish there was someplace online that had collected/digitized all of those episodes from back in the day.
Today's entertainment value would be fantastic.
You think you guys had issues my mum started running her own campaigns.
Coming back from uni to find 8 or 9 geeks in the dining room making a pig's ear of trying to start a small scale war in a provincial capital was painful :D
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;735701I never intended to suggest they weren't religious (my mother was extremely religious and my father was too in his own way----but this intensified while living in a highly religious and conservative community). I said they were liberals from Boston...
That's what I thought the mismatch was.
Fortunately, my parents thought the greatest evil was communism, so Papa Gygax was below their radar.
Quote from: Rincewind1;735226Five ounces of cocaine, , ten thousand dollars in gold, D20s, six condoms, two condoms ribbed (for her pleasure), Judas Priest Mixtape, 12 bottles of Jack Daniels, D&D handbooks, two dry - cleaned suits, brass athame, six pairs of nylon stockings, a bound virgin victim...looks like we're set for a weekend in Vegas.
"We can't stop here; this is Stirge Country!"
The D&D brand is, unusually these days, not tied to a particular game world.
You can have GURPS Traveller, because the Galaxy of the Third Imperium is Traveller to so many people. You can have GURPS Bunnies & Burrows, GURPS Vampire the Masquerade, GURPS In Nomine.
GURPS D&D? The closest you can get is GURPS Dungeon Fantasy.
Many 4E fans get irate when people say something like "it's not D&D to me anymore." Wizards must recognize that getting irate with people is not a winning strategy for convincing them to choose your product. Since tons of other fantasy games have similar character types, monsters and magic, there's nothing left to make a product peculiarly D&D except game system.
That 4E changed the system too much is reflected in sales that have left Paizo very happy and Wizards disappointed.
In the past, many RPG publishers did good enough for themselves by selling different games for different settings. That seems to be increasingly a thing of the past, and is probably not good enough for Wizards in any case.
What makes the "core" books a cash cow is that you sell a lot of copies of the same product. Selling supplements specific to Forgotten Realms and whatnot is icing on the cake (and may contribute to more profitable sales of fiction lines).
I think this presents a tricky problem for the Dungeons & Dragons brand. Maybe it will end up being meet to tie it more to a particular game world; then perhaps it will be more feasible to make radical changes to the system. But trying to do that in the reverse order looks like a recipe for disappointment.
Quote from: Phillip;736814I think this presents a tricky problem for the Dungeons & Dragons brand. Maybe it will end up being meet to tie it more to a particular game world; then perhaps it will be more feasible to make radical changes to the system.
That is profoundly unlikely to happen. At this point, that ship has sailed; and thank goodness. D&D is a wide tent, it encompasses a huge variety of potential settings (fantasy, and even things straining the definition of fantasy into other genres).
I would argue that if you made any version of D&D that only worked with one setting, or even one genre/theme, you'll fail to make it seem like D&D. That was a huge part of the problem with 4e, in fact.
Quote from: RPGPundit;737242I would argue that if you made any version of D&D that only worked with one setting, or even one genre/theme, you'll fail to make it seem like D&D. That was a huge part of the problem with 4e, in fact.
It's not necessarily a matter of working
only with one setting.
The World of Greyhawk is an example of something that fits like a glove the old editions that also spawned quite a variety of other official worlds. Likewise, Traveller and RuneQuest officially support much more than
only the OTU and Glorantha.
It seems, though, that gamers increasingly expect and desire a package of rules and setting. The tricky problem I alluded to is finding the best course among options for pleasing existing fans' expectations of the D&D brand, or the wider market's expectations of brands generally.
Quote from: RPGPundit;737242That is profoundly unlikely to happen. At this point, that ship has sailed; and thank goodness. D&D is a wide tent, it encompasses a huge variety of potential settings (fantasy, and even things straining the definition of fantasy into other genres).
I would argue that if you made any version of D&D that only worked with one setting, or even one genre/theme, you'll fail to make it seem like D&D. That was a huge part of the problem with 4e, in fact.
Absolutely. Maybe its because i cut my teeth during the setting sprawl of the 90s but I want to be able to use the core D&D to fit my setting.
Quote from: JeremyR;733757It's often used as a joke on MST3K/Rifftrax as well.
I'm not sure it's a good meme to be associated with, being nerds who live in their parents basements.
I miss the days when they thought we were satan worshippers...
Considering a lot of college graduates are living in their parents' basements these days, it doesn't have quite the sting that it used to.
As for the Satanic Panic, it was very much a thing back in the 80s in conservative SW Ohio. Brendan's experience was very much like mine in that my parents bought into the Satanic nature of D&D and threw out all of my stuff. Hell, my mom buys into the "Harry Potter is Satanic" and "Rick Riordan's Demigod books are Satanic" crap, and she was VERY concerned that some of the books my kids are reading are very close to D&D-esque.
My kids have learned to not even bother trying to argue with my mom about SF&F, RPGs, and other games. She's not going to change, so save your breath and ignore what she says.
Quote from: flyerfan1991;737267Considering a lot of college graduates are living in their parents' basements these days, it doesn't have quite the sting that it used to.
As for the Satanic Panic, it was very much a thing back in the 80s in conservative SW Ohio. Brendan's experience was very much like mine in that my parents bought into the Satanic nature of D&D and threw out all of my stuff. Hell, my mom buys into the "Harry Potter is Satanic" and "Rick Riordan's Demigod books are Satanic" crap, and she was VERY concerned that some of the books my kids are reading are very close to D&D-esque.
My kids have learned to not even bother trying to argue with my mom about SF&F, RPGs, and other games. She's not going to change, so save your breath and ignore what she says.
I should probably add that my mom is a incredible and a lovely person, no complaints as a son. I dont want to give the wrong impression here. She just happened to buy into some scary things people told her about D&D and heavy metal.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;737269I should probably add that my mom is a incredible and a lovely person, no complaints as a son. I dont want to give the wrong impression here. She just happened to buy into some scary things people told her about D&D and heavy metal.
Oh, my mom is the same, but she has a pretty simplistic viewpoint on religion and religious people in authority (read: absolute trust).
It was a thing is rural Northern New York as well, and WalkerP a long ago banned poster, lived in Ontario and had clippings of satanic panic letter exchange in his local paper. He may have posted some of that here at one time or another. So it was not just the states or even the more religious regions.
However, we played with a preacher's son on a regular basis. His mom went through the ADnD books and marked over all the nipples. Moms as a rule seem to have really dirty minds. My wife has similar control issues, but I push back when she gets weird.
It seems to me that people of the boomer generations were as a rule more religious than their offspring- even if they didn't go to church, they at least felt bad about it. It kind of goes with their generational love/hate for authority, imo. As a rule though, the satanic panic was a white trash (my people) thing in my area.
Heh, not gaming related, but do you guys remember when living together with your SO while unmarried was called 'living in sin' or how unmarried pregnancy was seen as the absolute worst fucking thing that could ever happen to anyone ever? They were crazy times. I was shocked when I relocated to Tx in 1990 and they were waaay more laid back about both than "liberal" NY.
DnD was never edgy where I lived; EVER. If you played, you hid it or got ostracized.