Slashdot Mirror
30 Years of D&D Extravaganza
Klytus writes "GamingReport.com is reporting on the events Wizards of the Coast has planned for this summer's 30th Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. Amongst the events is a 'World D&D Game Day.' There are also plans for a large coffee table book on the 30 years of D&D."
D&D is finally main stream. After 30 years Dungeons & Dragons is no longer the butt of jokes about "probing dungeons" and questions like "Why do dragons horde gold?" And I'm glad to see that the misconception that only pasty white kids who recoil at sunlight play D&D...
...thist just means they're now pasty white out of work dot-commers who play D&D...
Wait...
"Life's funny sometimes." "And sometimes it isn't." --Cat's Cradle
As a long time D&D player and enthusiast of all things fantasy, I think it's fantastic what Wizards of the Coast has done for the game. The care and attention to detail they have put into the new rulebooks could only come from true enthusiasts.
Of course, buying 3.5 so soon after forking over the cash for 3 was kinda, well, annoying. What can you do? The D&D property has seen much worse at the head of its ownership. Here's to another 30 years of gaming that doesn't require electricity. Seeing as how peak oil is on its way, I predict a surge in D&D populartiy. Just kidding. About the energy crisis.
Are there really? In "Understanding Comics" we're told taht the total readship of comic books in North America, as of press time, was about 500,000 "active" readers.
It would be very strange if more people actively play D&D than actively read comics... Though, obviously, the world-wide conversion is very different. Other countries read more comics per capita than the U.S., and I know nothing about the popularity of D&D vs. other things in foreign lands.
Still... it seems reasonable to assume that D&D is the province of the wealthy, being so expensive, and that the U.S. is the largest chunk of it... Even if there were 1 million players in the U.S., would the rest of the world have enough to match that for 2 million? Is two million a reasonable number for "millions," which is technically valid?
Just wondering.
In my opinion D&D shows its age. RPGs have developed quite a lot in the last 30 years, and accumulating XPs / micromanagement is not as essential a part of modern-day RPGs. In a way the XP hunt (as the parent post writes) resembles the scores from computer games and MMORPGs take over.
It's become more and more difficult to get young people (early teenagers) into playing the usual face-to-face RPG in the last 10 years. As far as I can see it there are two reasons: computer games and card trading games. Most of the find it more fun to play computer games than traditional RPGs, and while it at first looked as if Magic and other card games might spur the interest of face-to-face RPGs it turned out that many of the card players kept playing cards and never got into RPGs.
Part of the fun from conversational or traditional RPG is that you are playing with people who've had some experience in life (and have thought a bit about what governs peoples actions). And there are differences in experiences, and it can be very difficult for a 15 year old player to roleplay an adult romance, to react to the emotions a parent might feel at the risk of losing a child etc. These things come with age and there is really nothing we can do about it - besides keep introducing RPG to older teenagers.
Currently the best thing for traditional round-the-table RPS (in my opinion) is the popularity of live-action RPG. Except maybe for plastic-sword-fighting scenarios the LRPGs are hugely popular and often have a 50:50 male female ratio (which - I'm certain - makes the games even more popular). While some of the LRPG players would never dream of playing table RPGs, we managed to get relatively many new players by pushing the ordinary games to LRPG players.
Just my $0.02
If I'm not mistaken, TSR was practically bankrupt at the time of the acquisition by Wizards of the Coast.
Part of the reason was, ironically enough, that TSR had lost a lot of money in a failed attempt to get into the card-trading business. At the same time, Wizards of the Coast had pulled out of RPG-products just a short time earlier. Go figure...
some interesting tidbits in this Gygax Interview
Meet the new sig, same as the old sig
I started playing D&D games, many years ago, and started off with the first edition in the boxed set. Since then I have seen major revisions, changes, arguments and even fights over rules. The game has changed, but many of the player have not! I actually recently quit gaming, because even with the new rules, the death of THAC0 and the advent of mainstream MMPORPGs, I just keep on running into the same types of games. I tried some of the inde games, and found much humor and quite a bit of innovation, but I kept running into the same types of players and charaters. I am looking forward to where the game and the culture are going to go over the next couple of years due to the established feeling that a 30 year anniversery gives. I know a bunch of teenagers who are very interested in gaming, reading and fantasy, and all of them identify themselves as being on the "fringe". Now that D&D has grown up, I wonder if there is going to be a shift towards frat boys and yuppies getting into the game?
If I could get a firm grip on reality, I'd choke it...
completely agreed. My own campaign met every two weeks for a couple of years. After two years of playing, the characters did have a lot of power and magical items, but they were level 12-14, just starting to break into the realm of the "big boys" by comissioning keeps and attracting their followers, starting to become real power players in the world they lived in. They would lose items often from theft or heavy combat usage, so while they had a good stock, they couldn't treat everything like a permanent addition to their character sheet. It was a useful tool they had for as long as they could hold on to it, and they had to take steps to protect it if they wanted to keep whatever it was around. Even magic items can break, get dropped into holes, lifted by theives, extorted, or otherwise removed from play.
and of course, as they broke into the realm of lordship, armies, keeps and such, they picked up commesurately more powerful enemies as well who coveted their holdings. Never give them a blank check without a balance.
I believed strongly in rewarding my players, but they had to work for it. If they did, it would pay off and they'd end up with some primo stuff that they found or could afford to comission to have made (and they'd have to wait for it, usually many months or even years.. that was neat watching them tick off the weeks until they could go pick up their new suit of dragonskin armour, and how excited they'd get when it was ready!). Levelling was infrequent, so it was a big deal when it happened, but progress was constant and noticeable. We had session with no combat at all (but RP XP awards) and sessions where the entire day was one mass battle, and eveything in between.
Eight years later those players still ask when I'm going to start another game or maybe even resume that one. I'm not the best DM around but it goes to show that decent DM'ing makes a difference. Ultimate, the DM is the storyteller, and the game system is just the tool he or she uses to create their game, not WoTC's or TSR's or SJ's or anyone elses; it's theirs, completely, through and through.
Considering that the majority of the entire tabletop RPG community consists of D&D players, your statement is idiotic. It's like saying only 75% of all people consider America to be a superpower.
D20 (the system on which D&D is based) has a market share that completely dwarfs all other competitors (and always has) and it is getting bigger all the time. Why is that? Because the game is simple enough to be welcoming to newbies and provides enough flexibility to keep experienced people coming back. Most other games get their players from the pool of D&D players - they are bad at drawing in newbies. That's why D&D is the leader and the others will always be distant followers.
Does that mean that D&D is better? No. With a few exceptions, the quality of a system is completely relevant to what you are looking for in a game. (EG I want to play a game about Vampires - is D&D or vampire going to be better?) Also, the assessment of a system's quality is completely dependant on the quality of the individual game the assessor is playing. (EG I am not having any fun in the game i'm playing. This system sucks!)
In my experience, the people who feel the need to bash D&D are people who want to feel cooler about the game that they play - they're trying to establish some sort of geek cred. In the end, the quality of a game is most determined by the quality of the GM and players.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
1) D&D is bigger because D&D was first. It has 10 years lead time on other modern gaming systems.
1) D&D was bigger because it was first. It's bigger now because it has kept evolving while maintaining its core aesthetic. It tries to appeal to a bigger audience. It has seen some of its greatest growth in the past few years because of this. Most other modern games have specialised themselves out of the wider audience or they are not newbie friendly.
2) any gaming system can be acceptable with a good gm, but if you have constantly use modified rules and change the objectives the problem is the system.
2) This criticism appplies equally to every game on the market. If there was a game out there whose system was better at this, it would be more popular. Every game fails equally at this because the individual assessment of which rules need changing varies from player to player.
3) I was not expressing an opinion on D20, ONLY on D&D itself
3) D&D is D20! Reading the D20 SRD is like reading a text-only version of the D&D core books! There are other D20 variants, but the vast majority of D20 stuff is D&D stuff.
4) While I agree that many games do get their players from D&D games...you can also say many people have been turned off from roleplaying entirely by D&D.
4) Or you could avoid making lopsided generalizations and say that many people have been turned off from roleplyaing by bad games, bad players, and bad gms - those are the things that ultimately make or break the experience.
I played D&D for several years, the system ITSELF encourages bad roleplaying(munchkins), depicts genocide of "evil" races as a good thing(see that lovely alignment system)and generally promotes a rigid view of roleplaying.
Does GURPS encourage munchkinism because its point-buy system can be min-maxed? Does 7th Sea encourage genocide because it sets up national and cultural stereotypes and conflicts? Does Vampire encourage rigidity because there is so much Canon material out there for it?
Bad players will always play stereotypes, no matter what the options available to them. Bad GMs will always resort to the plot of least thought because that's what is easiest to run regardless of the system.
Play whatever game you prefer, but accept that every game has its limitations. The fact that one system's limits work better for you doesn't make the game itself better.
(To address your address to the moderators: You made broad, unsupported generalizations that were contrary to the prevailing opinion. That's practically the definition of flamebait. I don't know that it was outrageous enough to be a troll, but hey - moderation is subjective and ultimately meaningless, so shrug it off.)
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.