Add on the list, as you like.  Just a few to get us started:

1.  Cool dice!
2.  Getting to talk to GameScience's Lou Zocchi at Gen Con
3.  Worn, dog-eared, marked-up, beloved copies of Rolemaster, the 1st Ed. DMG, RQ, Traveller's LBBs, and other RPGs still in heavy use
4.  Palladium's X-Mas Grab Bags
5.  Designers and publishers willing to go the extra mile to help out gamers--whether they're actively buying product or not.
6.  Risus Fan Sites!
7.  Encounter Critical existing
8.  John H. Kim's page
9.  Erol Otus
10.  Folks willing to publish high-quality RPG resources for no financial gain (and often at a loss) just in hopes folks will enjoy and use them.
11.  Late-night gaming sessions with old friends

Pretty much everything, in the bigger picture, is right in the hobby.

RPGPundit

* Being able to converse online with Gary Gygax. Love or hate him, agree or disagree with him, he certainly is readily available to answer questions, and give insight into the history of the hobby.

* Having so many games to choose from, including multiple versions of various games (such as D&D, in particular)

* The internet - the internet would have been a godsend back when I first started gaming in the late 70s. It allows the exchange of ideas, advice, and material with people across the globe, which can greatly improve one's game.

I think the #1 item on my list is the bang for the buck, the growing potential as well as the lasting effect of the whole roleplaying experience.

If you don't go apeshit into collector mode, you can really have a LOT of fun with a single product. I still run or play using some of the same games I used10, 20 years ago.

What's even more beautiful is how as a hobbyist, you get to add to your hobby. YOUR characters, YOUR adventures, YOUR locales, and so on. I like the fact I was using my creativity at an early age. No matter how awkward it came out, it was a lot of fun and I wasn't even 10 years old!

There's a load of other reasons but this to me beats everything else: It's very DIY and it's very cheap.




A second aspect would be that, IMO, it can appeal to a wide variety of persons of all ages, no matter what they do, where they are or what they like.

It's a lot of fun.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineIt's a lot of fun.

 Well,...YEAH ...  thats a big one. (*grin*)


What is cureently RIGHT with the hobby?
 There are a lot more female gamers getting iino the hobby on their own than there was 15 , 20 years ago.
OR if a boyfriend or husband got them into it - they're staying with gaming even after a break-up.

- E.W.C.

It keeps us off the streets!

thats kinda funny.

 I can see the gangs of gamers threatening to toss twenty sided dice and miniatures at people now. The cries from the public "Won't somebody please start a game or 500 games  and get these people off the streets?"

- E.W.C.

D&D is as cheap as you need it to be.  You can pay just about nothing, and use the SRD pretty  much as-is.  You can pay a little more, and get the PHB.  You can pay a little more, if you're running the game, and get the DMG and/or the MM.  You can pay a _lot_ more, if you like, and get extra player, monster, or DM options to use in your game.  You can play as a party of Giants defending your land against the evil humans with the base books, for cripes sakes.

eBay allows you to play with dang near anything you remember happily from when you were fifteen, and yet your mom threw out/you lost when you moved/you leant to Brad and he never returned it, the bastard.  Or, you can often get for a discount something you were always curious about.  It's the world's largest used gaming store.

The internet lets you find and meet up with hidden gamers in your own town, or nearby, who are interested in what you play and want to get in a game or two.

The Internet makes it easier to learn about and track down some material for older games (eg. 1st Ed + B/X D&D) now than it was when they were first published in the 80s!

Quote from: PseudoephedrineIt's a lot of fun.

Yup.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineIt's a lot of fun.

The most important one!

Gaming in general is pretty darn awesome. This is a golden age.

The last time I recruited players, I got 14 people within a week, and narrowed those down to 6. My Thursday group is on session #46 next week o the campaign, and we're reaching the end of this arc.

Through that group of 6 I've met and gamed with something like 14 other gamers. Many of the guys in my group straddle across other campaigns so we've had a lot of cross fertilization.

Last year 4 of us went to GenCon together and had a great time. Two of us made it to the semifinals of the D&D Open. The rest of our team for the Open that year was a 4-player campaign group from Illinois. We hung out with those guys at Gen Con too, trading phone numbers and maybe plans to be a team again next year, extending our gaming family just a bit more.

Miniatures are cheap and plentiful. And usually already have a paintjob. You can buy them in nearly any major bookstore. Theyre so cheap I often get extra miniatures as gifts that end up in the campaign stockpile. I often give them away to players. "You like that Ranger guy? He's yours. I have like 4 of him."

D&D books are available everywhere. They are better than any previous version of D&D as far as usability, tools, and lots of content go. Also, theyre cheap off of Amazon. I only buy about three books a year, but because they are all for the same game, I have quite a library.

The D&D Minatures game is going strong in a way that Chainmail never did. I can go any Friday night down to the local place and play in the open
weekly tournament as a drop in.

This last year some of us started doing the Living campaigns, which are a lot of fun. We also started playing Xendrik Expeditions, which is very cool.

At DDXP this year, I won a big stack of free stuff.

In general, it's been just great.

The fact that the Internet, POD services like Lulu, and the proise of digital distribution, are essentially bringing gaming back to their DIY roots, back in the days when just about anyone could print up a game on cheap paper and sell it in ziploc baggies at conventions, only much more sophisticated.

I think that's pretty cool, and I hope to take joyous advantage of that.

The potential. The fact that by its very nature the RPG will always be capable of more than what fussbudgets, theorists, and pigeon holers think it should be.