So who still plays this game? When did you start?

[aramis]

Amen to this. I too really miss the days when there was no such thing as "BadWrongFun".

False memory, there.

The Christian far-right, and quite a few parents, bought into a hysteria which labeled all RPGs as evil, and thus, in modern terms, Badwrongfun... And even from 1974, several psychologists and psychiatrists were claiming D&D was causing psychosis.

Modern society no longer considers all rpg play as badwrongfun...

 

[casquilho]

False memory, there.

The Christian far-right, and quite a few parents, bought into a hysteria which labeled all RPGs as evil, and thus, in modern terms, Badwrongfun... And even from 1974, several psychologists and psychiatrists were claiming D&D was causing psychosis.

Modern society no longer considers all rpg play as badwrongfun...

Sorry, not false memory, you and I are talking two very different things. Outside forces have always had issue with what I elected to do with my free time. Not the issue at all. The whole internal, within the gamer community "BadWrongFun" attitude from folks, even some on this forum, came later as people explored ways to game outside the original dynamic. It was later (I noticed it around the early eighties) where internal forces began to try and say what format "real RPG game play" had to be. Topics like miniatures or not, levels of DM/GM control over character creation, power levels of characters, complexity of the rule sets, to name a few began to be more prevalent. Even game publishers got into the act.

I couldn't care less about the outside forces telling me how to have fun. That is always going to be there and has always been there. I was speaking about the game community and what I missed about it. So no, my memory is not false. There was a time when games shifted from "let's just play" to "let's play the way I think you should".

 

[sabredog]

Sorry, not false memory, you and I are talking two very different things. Outside forces have always had issue with what I elected to do with my free time. Not the issue at all. The whole internal, within the gamer community "BadWrongFun" attitude from folks, even some on this forum, came later as people explored ways to game outside the original dynamic. It was later (I noticed it around the early eighties) where internal forces began to try and say what format "real RPG game play" had to be. Topics like miniatures or not, levels of DM/GM control over character creation, power levels of characters, complexity of the rule sets, to name a few began to be more prevalent. Even game publishers got into the act.

I hear you. Rules metastasized as games became more popular, and gaming companies started making rules to fit their house campaigns instead of one made up by the players. It was like you had to buy all the assorted books to play the game at all and canon became everything. Personally, I hate that.

Today, while their seems to be a renaissance of gaming in general the whole "you have to play it our way to be correct" thing is also back with a vengeance. Especially since the whole miniatures-must-be-used thing has expanded. Now it seems far too many companies write rules to fit their minis and it all is ridiculously expensive.

of course, this is also why people are publishing sets of rules that are basic and "white box" in response to this trend - something that didn't happen in the Great RPG Explosion of the late '80's. I think that's a good thing. Games that require me to buy three or four books just to have enough (and possibly not all) rules and information to even start playing the game are definitely not my thing.

That's probably why I never got into MegaTraveller even though I really liked some of where it was going at the time it came out. And then there were the other variants that just piled it on seemingly every year.

I'll just stick with CT: it has everything I'll ever need along with room to make up anything it doesn't have while not tied down to the canon of a playsetting I'll never use.

 

[sabredog]

Traveller nights we'd play from 6 or so to about 10pm, then move from the school building (got kicked out) to one of the guys apartments. Play until 2 or 3am, make a donut run (the nearby bakery started baking at 2am for later, and they opened their back door. Donuts fresh out of the oil - no need to chew as they melted in your mouth. Needless to say between that time of day and the sugar rush, games got...interesting). Cool thing was we swapped refereeing and playing between 2 of us, so there was always a chance to play. And it was a shared universe.

LOL! Oh those were the days! We used to play nearly every Saturday night and if I wasn't running Traveller I was running Call of Cthulhu. We start around 6-7pm and end when we were pretty much just exhausted or enough players were too stoned and/or drunk to continue. Usually around 1-2 in the morning, but there were epic sessions that lasted till the sun started to come up. Usually at some point in the middle we'd have a recess to get pizzas, Whoppers, and snacks at the local 7-11 and pizza place.

We had a running gag from the early days when we were still in High School when I'd run a game of D&D and someone wanting special dispensation in the game, like an emergency saving throw for divine intervention or something, would buy me a Big Gulp for the game - it continued until I moved away and still happens sometimes if I play with any of those guys even now. It led to amusing events, like how my Judges Guild Traveller shield in that awful green (I still have it though it is extremely ratty) has huge spots all over it from a beer spill when one guy was jubilant from a good throw. I have some deckplans that got scorched from a cigarette that was too close. I can't begin to count how many dice walked away from games. And once I picked up what I thought was my icy Big Gulp from the floor next to my chair, took a deep swig, and discovered it was my buddy's chew spit Big Gulp cup instead.

It's fun to recount those stories and more whenever I get together with some of those guys even today. Ah, the days of glory.

 

[sabredog]

False memory, there.

The Christian far-right, and quite a few parents, bought into a hysteria which labeled all RPGs as evil, and thus, in modern terms, Badwrongfun... And even from 1974, several psychologists and psychiatrists were claiming D&D was causing psychosis.

Modern society no longer considers all rpg play as badwrongfun...

You know, even recently I've run into people who can't or won't play because of that nuttiness. My youngest daughter started playing D&D for the first time with some friends when she was in HS and a few friends of the group had parents who objected that D&D was "evil". They couldn't exactly say why - they would just say (the parents) that it "felt wrong".

I should count myself lucky I was never burned as a witch or kidnapped into some deprogramming hell in a bleak motel somewhere to cure me of all that D&D magic.

 

[aramis]

You know, even recently I've run into people who can't or won't play because of that nuttiness. My youngest daughter started playing D&D for the first time with some friends when she was in HS and a few friends of the group had parents who objected that D&D was "evil". They couldn't exactly say why - they would just say (the parents) that it "felt wrong".

I should count myself lucky I was never burned as a witch or kidnapped into some deprogramming hell in a bleak motel somewhere to cure me of all that D&D magic.

I know that, as recently as 2012, there was a firebrand far right preacher holding a book burning of RPG books. When said preacher did one in 2002 over D&D 3.5's Book of Vile Darkness, Bosco's Comics owner John Weddleton said, "I'm all for it. The ones burned have been paid for. Let them burn; the kids will likely buy new copies."

Said preacher now tries to keep it out of the news... I'm told that he's not at all happy to see store owners endorsing his book burning by noting that it will result in more sales of the hated books...

 

[sabredog]

I know that, as recently as 2012, there was a firebrand far right preacher holding a book burning of RPG books. When said preacher did one in 2002 over D&D 3.5's Book of Vile Darkness, Bosco's Comics owner John Weddleton said, "I'm all for it. The ones burned have been paid for. Let them burn; the kids will likely buy new copies."

Said preacher now tries to keep it out of the news... I'm told that he's not at all happy to see store owners endorsing his book burning by noting that it will result in more sales of the hated books...

When I bought a copy of Eldritch Wizardry and lent it to a buddy, the same one who was one of the first in our group to play D&D with me, he gave it back the next day much saddened. His mom saw it and went "Full Carrie's Mom" over it (the cover was bad enough, but the demon lists were just too much) and he couldn't play D&D anymore. She took all his dice, books, and miniatures and burned them out in the BBQ. I swear, that was a dark time.

Oh hey, remember that goof who caused a national sensation in the tunnels under a university? It inspired that book...Mazes And Monsters? And that terrible movie based on it with Tom Hanks in it? Good times to lines those dark clouds of berserk parents.

 

[aramis]

When I bought a copy of Eldritch Wizardry and lent it to a buddy, the same one who was one of the first in our group to play D&D with me, he gave it back the next day much saddened. His mom saw it and went "Full Carrie's Mom" over it (the cover was bad enough, but the demon lists were just too much) and he couldn't play D&D anymore. She took all his dice, books, and miniatures and burned them out in the BBQ. I swear, that was a dark time.

Oh hey, remember that goof who caused a national sensation in the tunnels under a university? It inspired that book...Mazes And Monsters? And that terrible movie based on it with Tom Hanks in it? Good times to lines those dark clouds of berserk parents.

The Tunnel Incident... James Dallas Egbert III. yeah. Most important was that he did that without a game. Yes, his group had mapped out the steam tunnels. But, no, they weren't LARPing. Moreover, he'd gone there to commit suicide, and failed, then went into hiding. He managed to off himself a year later, with no further involvement with D&D.

And then, Patricia "Pat" Pulling's son committed suicide. She blamed D&D. The D&D group he'd played with had tried to get him to go to therapy, and when he wouldn't kicked him out. She formed BADD, which lied its way to international status... and she tried to get a federal ban on RPGs. She (quite obviously) failed, but not before poisoning millions against D&D & other RPGs.