30 Years Of Dungeons And Dragons 264
vasqzr writes "CNN has a story about Dungeons and Dragons celebrating its 30th birthday. 'An estimated 25,000 fans in 1,200 stores celebrated the anniversary Saturday, said Charles Ryan, brand manager for role-playing games at Wizards of the Coast, a Renton, Washington, company that owns Dungeons & Dragons.'"
Nice, Sort Of (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sorry but TSR jumped the shark with Ravenloft, not to mention Spell Jamming.
Re:Nice, Sort Of (Score:4, Interesting)
Either way, down one for Ed Greenwood (and pray his books come out in paperback faster!)
Re:Nice, Sort Of (Score:5, Interesting)
But 3rd edition was a great revision. The core rules are wonderfully streamlined, yet complex. The system has its flaws and faults still, but melee in 3e was the most managable system of any edition since Basic D&D.
D&D always runs into a problem where in order to keep selling books they have to publish more and more titles, and after a while the well runs dry and they just don't playtest or quality control like they should. But if you stick to the core books and your own house rules, it's a great game.
Changing Demographics? (Score:5, Interesting)
D&D has left the basement rec room geek nirvana of the early '80s and gone elsewhere, as the article (barely) alluded to.
Old or young? (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the Middle Ages (the 1980s) I had a group of about ten people, male and female playing regularly. We played one dungeon for about four months and it was then that I started allowing everyone to keep their characters and started reading history in order to accomodate their increasing character strengths and abilities.
We were also playing games on Apple ][ computers...
Sadly, I moved out of the area we were playing in to accept a job where I have now lived for 20 years. Last I heard the group still met, though once monthly. One of the girls in our group married one of the boys (they were well-suited for each other even though I always thought their characters took out their relationship frustrations on each other) and they now have two children.
"So, Daddy, how did you meet mommy?"
"Actually, she cast a spell that felled an orc that was just about to kill me."
Another one of the girls married, then divorced one of the boys -- then married another boy from the group. They have no children, which is probably a good thing if my memory about their temperment serves me
"So how did you two meet, anyway?"
"I was married to one knight when he came in and swept me off my feet and onto his white charger, while fighting off an underworld demon. I cast a spell of enchantment on him and the rest is history."
Funny thing is, I'm still unmarried.
"Sincere, erudite dungeonmaster seeks....
New round, roll for initiative! (Score:5, Interesting)
D&D really was one of those rare cases of something "new". Before the net was popular, it was a great tool for social networking for geeks. Every tech job I've ever had came not from my experience or my education, but from contacts made over the years around gaming tables.
Alas, it's a also a good example of how success is measured differently between sellers and consumers. D&D never really went into decline around here, but once you own the main rule books and some dice, you don't _need_ anything else and so game stores moved more heavily into card games where the profits were.
The d20 licensing scheme is very, very cool, although I have to admit that I still don't quite trust TSR/Wizards/Hasbro (their first reaction to the net was similar to the RIAA but then after an initial fan-relations-disaster they changed their tune and actually made an effort to reach out to the fans and address legitimate need to be able to share).
It's interesting watching a second generation of gamers start to grow up (and yes, there is a large and healthy population of them). They don't have to be saddled with as much of the "it's evil!" baggage (it's still out there, but weakened as the geek have inherited the earth)
Re:Nice, Sort Of (Score:5, Interesting)
I can understand (and agree with) this argument if all one does is use the pre-prepared campaigns and adventures put out by WotC. But if you're designing your own campaign, I don't see how this need be true. I can't tell you you're wrong, since I haven't run a game or played under D&D3 rules (since I'm not playing or running games at all these days). But you don't have to use the campaigns that WotC puts out.
Put another way, what is it about D&D3 (as opposed to AD&D2 or AD&D1 or original D&D -- don't know much about D&D2 myself) that prevents a creative referee from desigining an interesting campaign, containing involving stories, and presenting them in an engaging fashion?
Re:New round, roll for initiative! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Changing Demographics? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Old Tricks (Score:3, Interesting)
Anything placed in a bag of holding effectively weighs nothing. Zero newtons weight, zero kilograms inertial mass. So.
Take two bags of holding, two cannonballs, two buckets, two pulleys and a length of rope. Now, put the cannonballs in the buckets, and fasten the mouths of the bags over the rims of the buckets. Fasten the buckets to the rope, and run the rope over the two pulleys with one pulley above the other. Make sure that on the left hand side the bag is above the bucket, and on the right hand side the bag is below the bucket so that the cannonball drops out of the bucket and into the bag.
Now, let go of the rope. The weight of the cannonball in the left bucket pulls down on that side, and the cannonball on the right weighs nothing because it's in a BoH. So, the left side moves down, the right side up, and the pulleys turn.
Eventually the bucket on the right goes up and over the top and the cannonball drops out of the BoH and into the bucket. The reverse happens on the botton: the other ball drops out of the bucket and into the BoH. Result: the left hand side is still heavier than the right, and the pulleys turn.
The pulleys turn faster and faster, with no end in sight. Feel free to attach the mechanism of your choice to this limitless power source.
"newbie" player compared to some of you... (Score:3, Interesting)
Anywho, I work at a bookstore, and we'v been getting materials for giveaways and displays from WotC for a while now, and in our fantasy section (which is my domain) there's a small display with forgotten realms novels and some D&D stickers and whatnot (sadly, we don't stock the game materials for two reasons: owners afraid to attract ultraconservative attention and they just wouldnt sell well)
And by the way...if you think vi vs. emacs is a religious war, try 2ed vs. 3ed...guy I knew totally violently slammed 3 for being "simple" and overpowered and whatnot...too bad he didn't have half his facts straight
Re:For those that didn't already know (Score:2, Interesting)
GreyHawk (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't understand why WotC doesn't invite him back. They don't even let Richard Garfield develop on MTG anymore. Why do corporations feel the need to divorce creators from their projects?
Waitaminnit! (Score:3, Interesting)
How truly bizarre.
In all seriousness, D&D deserves kudos for being the icebreaker that allowed fantasy to break into the mainstream of American culture. I vividly remember my first exposure to the game, way back in 1980. I was in Junior High School, and I encountered this odd group of kids talking about whether Asmodeus could defeat Orcus.
A few days later I found myself rolling up my first fighter (yeah, my imagination needed a kick-start) and going on my first dungeon crawl. Through D&D (and a host of other games, many of which I prefered to D&D for game mechanics) I met some of my best friends, and found an "in crowd" of my own. Of course nobody else thought of us as the "in crowd" but that didn't matter. We had a lot of fun and exercised our imaginations.
As others have stated, the specifics of Basic vs. Advanced, 2nd Edition vs. 3rd Edition, etc. don't really matter. What matters is that D&D opened the door for everything from Aftermath! [pamedia.com] to Call of Cthulhu [callofcthulhu.com] to Neverwinter Nights [bioware.com] and the DragonLance [dl3e.com] world.
My cap is off to Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax for getting the ball rolling, and for the countless game designers, module builders, DMs, and players who have brought fantasy to life for so many people over these 30 years.
Re:Although correlation != causation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Changing Demographics? (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't start planning for D&D's 35th birthday (Score:4, Interesting)
First, some history.
TSR originally published D&D. In the early to mid 90's TSR was publishing a lot of support material (modules, sourcebooks, settings) to keep sales up. As time went on, the quality and sales of this material went way down. TSR eventually owed $30 million to various debtors, primarily their printers. In 1997, WOTC bought TSR with the profits from Magic: The Gathering. Then Pokemon happened. In 1999, a struggling Hasbro bought WOTC to get the Pokemon cash cow. D&D Third Edition was released in 2000, after a year delay, under the d20 license. In 2003, D&D 3.5 was released.
WOTC had an understanding of RPGs, because the founders actually played them. Hasbro, on the other hand, seems to only understand board games for kids. Pokemon dried up, and they paniced. this is the big reason for 3.5, not "fixing things".
Not long after 3.5 came out, rumors began circulating that work had already begun on 4th Edition, and that it would not inherit the d20 license. If true, this would cripple all the companies that take advantage of the d20 license. The d20 license, by the way, is not granted in perpetuity, and can be altered at will according to the licensor's whim (look up the Book of Erotic Fantasy for proof).
Obviously, what Hasbro doesn't get is that RPG core books have a quite lengthy product cycle, but their scramble for income forces them to ignore it.
When I asked the general manager of my local game store what he though of the 4th edition rumors, the first thing he said was "I'm not going to buy it." (He was already annoyed at the existence of 3.5). Of course, he'd put it on his store shelves, he just won't personally own it.
A friend of mine, who still plays M:TG, has a conspiracy theory based on Hasbro realizing their mistake in buying WOTC and making the best of it. He believes Hasbro is quietly moving all of their debt into WOTC, and eventually plan to spin it off into its own entity or try to sell it. Good for Hasbro, but would be the end of D&D. I don't completely buy it, but the way big business is run nowadays, it wouldn't surprise me.
Re:Yeah - definately ! (Score:3, Interesting)
Having played and DMed D&D for many years, I thought I had seen the worst of powergaming.....boy was I wrong......The fact that many of the rules are fairly vague makes it even worse