I just stumbled accross Trollsmyth’s old Whither D&D post (April 2008) and the discussion he had with “Wart”. Interesting points made:
1. “If new players aren’t being invited to join in the fun, that’s bad for the hobby as a whole.”
2. “The hobby is still heavily, predominantly male, in spite of the fact that women seem to buy and read more escapist fantasy than men do.”
3. “What’s more disturbing is the apparent abandonment of the traditional golden years of D&D play: ten to fifteen-year-olds.”
4. “Was any generation better primed to love D&D than the one that grew up reading Harry Potter, made Eragon and The Golden Compass best sellers, and who packed the movie theaters to watch Jackson’s LotR flicks? If that’s true, then what happened to them?”
5. “I hesitate to call these things [fanfic freeform roleplaying] ’games’, because there doesn’t seem to be much of a ’game’ element - it’s all about the characterisation and storytelling. Hence why I think the people interested in it probably wouldn’t be much interested in traditional RPGs - they get what they want out of their medium, and adding dice rolls and a structured ruled system would just hamper their creativity, from their POV.”
Gold! Also note his current follow-up article Where the Kids Are.
I wondered, for a while: What’s going to introduce kids to roleplaying? Will it be Faery’s Tale Deluxe? Or does it need the weight of D&D but stripped down – maybe Legends & Labyrinths? Or a return to old games and retro clones such as Labyrinth Lord? Or just super microlite M20?
Then I realized: It’s still going to be the kids’ *friends and relatives*.
I really should ask my best friend whether he’d like to try us teaching his kids how to play M20. M20 Hard Core, actually.
#RPG #thoughts