Dnd becoming hyper saturated and "lacking identity" alongside the rest o nerd culture

[mephnick]

I'd argue that the satanic panic moral guardians were one of the single best things that happened to D&D as a product.

Absolutely a great example of the Streisand Effect.

[Kyrell1978]

(in the context of the lived experiences of individual D&D players, not so much).

This is a bit of an understatement. I don't know if you were around for it, but it meant immediately being ostracized, sometimes not even by the kids but by their parents. But I live in the middle of the Bible Belt so maybe it wasn't so bad elsewhere.

[Nifft]

Wait wait wait, I missed something from the OP.

If D&D is hyper-saturated, could we just drop a seed crystal in and pull out a whole new game?

(Also: do you think Dwayne Johnson would work?)

[JAL_1138]

I'd argue that the satanic panic moral guardians were one of the single best things that happened to D&D as a product (in the context of the lived experiences of individual D&D players, not so much). The adage "no publicity is bad publicity" exists for a reason, and blowing off authority figures when they're losing their crap over approximately nothing is a long running youth hobby, even if they would have absolutely no interest in what the authority figures are spouting off about otherwise.

This is a bit of an understatement. I don't know if you were around for it, but it meant immediately being ostracized, sometimes not even by the kids but by their parents. But I live in the middle of the Bible Belt so maybe it wasn't so bad elsewhere.

It may have made the lives of players hell (it certainly did in my hometown in rural East MiddleOfNowhere, Appalachia, where it persisted well into the late 90s and early ‘00s when I encountered it, and to some slightly lesser extent is still going on today), but in terms of business, the Satanic Panic certainly seemed to boost interest and thus sales figures—it may be a correlation/causation conflation, but it was in swing when Red Box came out and took off like a rocket.

[Mr Beer]

Ever read those crazy Chick Tracts about D&D? Super annoying that charm spells don't work in real life, though to be fair I skipped worshipping Satan so maybe that's what went wrong.

[Beleriphon]

One thing that always interests me about the "x is too dumbed down!" arguments is that a lot of times, people fail to take into consideration their years and years of built up systems mastery that can help transfer from game to game. You see it in video games, and I'm seeing it in RPGs right now.

I like that, it works in videogames too. There's a certain logic that videogames to follow in their design, no matter what the game actually is. This is driven in part by the fact that the games are meant to be played on a flat screen with a control interface of some kind, to the fact that there's only so much you can do before you make something nobody wants to play because its just too weird.

[Arbane]

Found this in a sig on another forum. It seems relevant.
"I am so weary of male geeks treating geekdom like it's the goddamn Marines. 'I didn't see my friends die face down in the fictional muck of my AD&D campaign so you could just come in here and start liking The Avengers, lady!'" - Hanover Fist

Ever read those crazy Chick Tracts about D&D? Super annoying that charm spells don't work in real life, though to be fair I skipped worshipping Satan so maybe that's what went wrong.

The people who make The Gamers series made a movie out of that one. With permission.

[JAL_1138]

I like that, it works in videogames too. There's a certain logic that videogames to follow in their design, no matter what the game actually is. This is driven in part by the fact that the games are meant to be played on a flat screen with a control interface of some kind, to the fact that there's only so much you can do before you make something nobody wants to play because its just too weird.

PC gamers tend to complain most about games getting “dumbed down,” I think, possibly due in some significant part to multiplatform games needing to be designed to work on consoles with gamepads instead of taking full advantage of KB+M (nevermind that more PC games for primarily-PC genres that had faded in popularity for a while are being made to high standards by midsize and indie devs now than ever), although apparently it’s spread to the Nintendo crowd too.

I find the complaints about 5e being “dumbed down for the casuals and kiddies” to be kinda strange, as someone who started in 2e AD&D (toward the very tail end of it, granted, although I wasn’t a fan of the “Players’ Option” series like Combat & Tactics that came out around then and didn’t use them much) and find it to feel more like a throwback to the D&D I grew up with in spite of the huge difference in mechanics, whereas 3.5 and 4e didn’t feel like the same D&D, and have seen so many other TSR grognards pulled back into the D&D fold after years of grousing about 3e-and-later games.

[comk59]

I find the complaints about 5e being “dumbed down for the casuals and kiddies” to be kinda strange, as someone who started in 2e AD&D (toward the very tail end of it, granted, although I wasn’t a fan of the “Players’ Option” series like Combat & Tactics that came out around then and didn’t use them much) and find it to feel more like a throwback to the D&D I grew up with in spite of the huge difference in mechanics, whereas 3.5 and 4e didn’t feel like the same D&D, and have seen so many other TSR grognards pulled back into the D&D fold after years of grousing about 3e-and-later games.

It does feel odd that 3.P is considered "baseline D&D" by so many, and that any streamlining is considered dumbing down.

[Darth Ultron]

I don't think D&D can loose it's identity in geek culture: D&D IS geek culture.

Going back to say the 60's, you had the proto-geeks, but they were in tight, closed circles. They each liked one specific thing. And as there was limited communication, it was hard for people to find each other, share ideas and communicate. It happened, but it happened slowly.

The '70's brought in D&D and gathered the geeks. The idea of using imagination to play a game where you can do anything really brought people to the table. Geeks of all types came to play the game, and they had something in common. By the '80s, if you were a geek, you have played D&D. It's nearly a basic requirement.

When you meet a geek, the question is not ''if'' they have played D&D, it is really more ''what" D&D they have played. You'd be hard pressed to find a geek that has not played D&D. This makes D&D really the base of geek culture.

One of the best and greatest things about D&D is it can be customized to whatever a person wants it to be....and this has always been true. ''How" to play the game has been an endless debate from Day One.

[Willie the Duck]

I hope the OP (if this wasn't all a performance piece) has gotten the message--trying to explain that other people have just joined the D&D club because 'now it's cool' is gatekeeping. I.e. declaring others not good enough for your club, which is the same thing the stereotypical 'nerd' has supposedly spent their whole life being subjected to and ought to find repellant. You've got yours, now you want to draw up the drawbridge and make sure no one else can get inside. You were very polite, but the actual message you were conveying was rather toxic.

A few other points I would make on what others have said:

• Yep, there are gamers around who weren't alive when nerdom was genuinely uncool.
• I think most of us lost our credibility at being the 'outcast class' when we started (as a group) getting into high-income careers, summer blockbusters started catering straight to us, and of course when we became old enough to realize becoming an adult was our responsibility.
• OP's definition of nerdery/nerdity ("an individual who presents a great passion towards a subject that is extremely related to logical side, such as mechanics, biology, chemistry, physics, literature, etc.") is rather self-congratulatory, and certainly useless for discussing TT RPGs. We are smart people interested in 'things that matter' (such a literature and science) if we're smart people interested in those things, not because we are nerds.
• The premise that gaming fell from the pinnacle of 3e/PF down to 5e makes sense only if the entirety of one's experience are those two games. No one who has played a non-D&D TTRPG would ever put those two games on opposite ends of any spectrum. There are hundreds of games more rigorous/complex/broken (to mix positive, neutral, and negative terms) than 3e/pf, and hundreds more sublime/straightforward/simple than 5e. They simply aren't polar opposites.

[Koo Rehtorb]

It does feel odd that 3.P is considered "baseline D&D" by so many, and that any streamlining is considered dumbing down.

I think it's just when the biggest group of relatively long time players started playing.

[Mordaedil]

I don't think D&D can loose it's identity in geek culture: D&D IS geek culture.

Going back to say the 60's, you had the proto-geeks, but they were in tight, closed circles. They each liked one specific thing. And as there was limited communication, it was hard for people to find each other, share ideas and communicate. It happened, but it happened slowly.

The '70's brought in D&D and gathered the geeks. The idea of using imagination to play a game where you can do anything really brought people to the table. Geeks of all types came to play the game, and they had something in common. By the '80s, if you were a geek, you have played D&D. It's nearly a basic requirement.

When you meet a geek, the question is not ''if'' they have played D&D, it is really more ''what" D&D they have played. You'd be hard pressed to find a geek that has not played D&D. This makes D&D really the base of geek culture.

One of the best and greatest things about D&D is it can be customized to whatever a person wants it to be....and this has always been true. ''How" to play the game has been an endless debate from Day One.

This is just not true. I have plenty of friends who are absolutely geeks who have never played D&D. Some of them I was able to introduce to D&D. Others just had no interest in it, or gave it a try and had a miserable time.

[BreaktheStatue]

I don't think D&D can loose it's identity in geek culture: D&D IS geek culture.

Going back to say the 60's, you had the proto-geeks, but they were in tight, closed circles. They each liked one specific thing. And as there was limited communication, it was hard for people to find each other, share ideas and communicate. It happened, but it happened slowly.

The '70's brought in D&D and gathered the geeks. The idea of using imagination to play a game where you can do anything really brought people to the table. Geeks of all types came to play the game, and they had something in common. By the '80s, if you were a geek, you have played D&D. It's nearly a basic requirement.

When you meet a geek, the question is not ''if'' they have played D&D, it is really more ''what" D&D they have played. You'd be hard pressed to find a geek that has not played D&D. This makes D&D really the base of geek culture.

One of the best and greatest things about D&D is it can be customized to whatever a person wants it to be....and this has always been true. ''How" to play the game has been an endless debate from Day One.

If you think about it, an "Alpha Geek" would probably lack the social skills to participate in something even as stereotypically geeky as old school DnD, so it's kind of weird that that's the litmus test.

For example, I knew cryptographers that were geeky enough to make Gary Gygax look like Tom Cruise, but they'd never be vocal enough to play the game.

[BeerMug Paladin]

My inner baseline of gatekeeping vis-à-vis geekiness is an interest/love of mathematics. If you don't find such topics enthralling, you're not in my clubhouse!

Back in the day, plenty of people I gamed with found THAC0 confusing enough that they needed to rely on me to perform the calculation required. So clearly, D&D playing is not a sufficient condition for entry.

Seriously, though there is no actual central 'geek' culture, as far as I'm concerned. Most of the 'accepted geek culture' stuff I have been exposed to I find tedious and overrated. No, I will not name those things in this thread. That's a quick route to a derail.

Although I suppose I could always be 'not really a geek'. There's that.

[Anonymouswizard]

To all those worried about the jocks stealing their D&D I've got an elegant solution.

Who wants to start a GiantITP rugby team?

[Willie the Duck]

Although I suppose I could always be 'not really a geek'. There's that.

Are you also not a true Scotsman?

[Kyrell1978]

I think it's just when the biggest group of relatively long time players started playing.

I'd say that's a pretty fair statement. When 3e came out there was definitely some grumbling by the second ed guys, but no where near as much as the switch between 3e to 4e. So (at least anecdotally) it seemed like 3e got a larger portion of the old players and brought in a bunch of new players for a couple of different reasons.

To all those worried about the jocks stealing their D&D I've got an elegant solution.

Who wants to start a GiantITP rugby team?

I would love to play rugby, you're going to have to teach me the rules though because rugby isn't super popular in the midwest United States.

The people who make The Gamers series made a movie out of that one. With permission.

I always thought that was a spoof of the old Mazes and Monsters movie that had Tom Hanks in it.

[comk59]

I always thought that was a spoof of the old Mazes and Monsters movie that had Tom Hanks in it.

Oh, there's elements of that, but Dark Dungeons has shots, names, and lines directly taken from the Chick Tract.

[Kyrell1978]

Oh, there's elements of that, but Dark Dungeons has shots, names, and lines directly taken from the Chick Tract.

That's cool, I just didn't know. I ran into a lot of those Chick Tracts when I was a Corrections Officer. Did you know there was a Chick Tract against Star Wars also? They used the whole Force thing as people practicing witchcraft and whatnot. It was ridiculous.

[Tanarii]

How much you wanna bet that the o.g. Geneva players made exactly this complaint in 1977-78?, when the hobbie was growing.

In fact ... didn't Gygax write more than one rant directed at how West Coast (ie Cal Tech) players were doing things?

This is a fairly typical reaction of everyone, every-when, to the passage of time and changes.

We can still go back and look at complaints in the original newspapers & broadsheets & pamplets about how things have changed, and (commonly) the "youth of today". IIRC there are even documented instances of this from ancient (roman and/or greek) times.

[The Jack]

I'm going to exaggerate my own viewpoint for emphasis/ because it's fun to be an ass.

Nerd culture is bull****, and I'll hold resentment for anyone who self identifies as a 'Gamer'. Games are a diverse medium, you might as well tell me that you can read. You're a sucker if you think diving headlong into 'nerd' culture and using the label to define you is a good idea.

Now for DnD; I just want to play with good players and GMs. IE I don't want to play with bad players and GMs. I've played with so many people with issues that you can get sick of them. With one poor guy, we played WoD games as if it were his therapy; Oh he was a sympathetic guy, but he'd constantly fall for the same traps across different characters, and I still don't know if it's a point of pride or shame that I had him bawling his eyes out on occasion... But you can just get some really **** people playing these games... and as a person living in a small town with little choice in who to play with, it's tiresome to play with so many pariahs.

Now, granted, new players and "casuals" tend to be bad. It's a problem when they're not invested enough, but I think everyone makes bad first characters; I recall wanting to murder a 'pacifist' character in the party, but I'd take a regular jackoff who'll change over some ****bag with the incurable inability to make rollplay or make good characters.

Also, 5th edition is just better than older editions (except I dislike how skills are handled)
By being simple, it does many things a lot better. The grueling detail people put into bull**** tropes (IE special rules for japanese weapons) should just die.

/Edgelord.

I do know a lot of good people that I just don't think I want to play with.

Since world of darkness has been mentioned a few times, I want to point out how much I hate how 'progressive' the series has become. It's a satire, and while the series has always been a transgressor, the world as a whole was never meant to be progressive.
Vampires are divorced from gender politics, werewolves are angry cultists, mages are big headed ideologues, people are awful. It's everything in our world but exaggerated to be worse... it's weird that they're making it more progressive and ostensibly socially liberal. I mean is does an increased acceptance and championing of LGBTQ peoples in a world where everything is Worse sound like a good idea? I'm not sure if it's the freelancers or a cynical corporate move. It's lost identity.

[mephnick]

I like that, it works in videogames too.

It's the Dark Souls effect. Every time a Souls game comes out players complain that they're making the games too easy or predictable and it isn't as hard as the other games.

No, you've just played 5 Souls games now and are tuned into the play style and tactics that help you win. Demons' Souls seemed hard as **** because that kind of game didn't exist before. Dark Souls was the introduction to most people who missed Demons' Souls. That's why everyone thinks those games are the hardest. It's the same as RPGs. D&D 5e is still bloated as hell compared to most RPGs. It isn't "dumbed down" at all.

[Willie the Duck]

How much you wanna bet that the o.g. Geneva players made exactly this complaint in 1977-78?, when the hobbie was growing.

77-78 might have been a turning point. Up until then, it was still the underdog game that the wargamers rolled their eyes at when the D&D-ers came into the store --and before that, Chainmail was the namby-pamby 'fantasy' wargame that good true, real nerds (historical wargamers) scoffed at. 77-78 It was clear that this was becoming a real thing, and most players hadn't learned the game from someone else who had learned from Gary/Dave/etc. themselves.

In fact ... didn't Gygax write more than one rant directed at how West Coast (ie Cal Tech) players were doing things?

Oh for sure (well, him and his group), and those Arduin fans, 'Mnaty-Haul-ers,' and people who used Gods, Demi-Gods an Heroes as a second Monster Manual instead of a measuring stick to show what power-level you shouldn't have reached by now.

Of course, the game as a whole caught on with a different audience than he expected (college kids, and then high schoolers, much more than just wargamers). People liked power levels he didn't want to fully develop (level 8 was supposed to be 'superhero-level'). People focused on things he didn't consider as important (everyone wanted to fight a lot more than manage scarce resources, not too many people wanted to play warlord/noble/landowner come name level). And so on and so forth. So in a huge number of ways, the game that took off wasn't the game he had envisioned, even if the ruleset was the same.

We can still go back and look at complaints in the original newspapers & broadsheets & pamplets about how things have changed, and (commonly) the "youth of today". IIRC there are even documented instances of this from ancient (roman and/or greek) times.

And apparently someone who started gaming with D&D 3rd edition (roughly the ~ seventh of nine iterations of D&D as a whole, depending on how you chop it up) in 2014 is bemoaning how things were better in the good ol' days. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[JAL_1138]

How much you wanna bet that the o.g. Geneva players made exactly this complaint in 1977-78?, when the hobbie was growing.

In fact ... didn't Gygax write more than one rant directed at how West Coast (ie Cal Tech) players were doing things?

This is a fairly typical reaction of everyone, every-when, to the passage of time and changes.

We can still go back and look at complaints in the original newspapers & broadsheets & pamplets about how things have changed, and (commonly) the "youth of today". IIRC there are even documented instances of this from ancient (roman and/or greek) times.

“Dagnabbed whippersnappers! Back in my day...” —Some grumpy old coot, ca. pretty much every era of recorded human history (paraphrased)

Plenty of instances from historical sources at this link: https://historyhustle.com/2500-years...er-generation/

[Tanarii]

And apparently someone who started gaming with D&D 3rd edition (roughly the ~ seventh of nine iterations of D&D as a whole, depending on how you chop it up) in 2014 is bemoaning how things were better in the good ol' days. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Which is absolutely hilarious to me, since I started at ten with a amalgam of BECMI and AD&D, played 2e extensively in college, and wholeheartedly embraced 3e on release, because of the way it simplified & unified the game.

Or, as some people put it at the time, TETSNBN "dumbed down" the game, appealing to newcomers and ruining the One True Way of the hobby. Even as it was expanding and growing the hobby in leaps and bounds.

(I'm sure 2e got the same reaction, but I didn't have regular internet access back then.)

[Willie the Duck]

(I'm sure 2e got the same reaction, but I didn't have regular internet access back then.)

If I recall correctly, Usenet was split on whether it was a good idea, but the overall vitriol/gatekeeping/acting like you and your own part of the nerd tribe has been betrayed somehow attitude was much more muted. Of course, it was still TSR putting it out (the distinction between E. Gary Gygax-TSR and Lorraine Williams-TSR was something that a lot of people only really realized after the fact). So there wasn't this whole "this new MTG-fed company has taken your beloved thing and is going to do who-knows-what with it- angle that 3e had.

[Arbane]

IIRC, the Usenet whiners complained that 3rd Edition D&D was "Just like Diablo".

Since world of darkness has been mentioned a few times, I want to point out how much I hate how 'progressive' the series has become. It's a satire, and while the series has always been a transgressor, the world as a whole was never meant to be progressive.
Vampires are divorced from gender politics, werewolves are angry cultists, mages are big headed ideologues, people are awful. It's everything in our world but exaggerated to be worse... it's weird that they're making it more progressive and ostensibly socially liberal. I mean is does an increased acceptance and championing of LGBTQ peoples in a world where everything is Worse sound like a good idea? I'm not sure if it's the freelancers or a cynical corporate move. It's lost identity.

I don't know how old you are, but I'm pretty sure that WoD games always TRIED (in a 'clueless white-guy college grad' way) to be liberal, aside from their consistent fear of science and mathematics. Vampire power-structures are high-school politics with a body count, Mages are fighting The Man, Werewolves are up against NC-17-rated Captain Planet villains, Changelings shrivel up and die in the presence of accountants....

[Max_Killjoy]

Since world of darkness has been mentioned a few times, I want to point out how much I hate how 'progressive' the series has become. It's a satire, and while the series has always been a transgressor, the world as a whole was never meant to be progressive.

Vampires are divorced from gender politics, werewolves are angry cultists, mages are big headed ideologues, people are awful. It's everything in our world but exaggerated to be worse... it's weird that they're making it more progressive and ostensibly socially liberal. I mean is does an increased acceptance and championing of LGBTQ peoples in a world where everything is Worse sound like a good idea? I'm not sure if it's the freelancers or a cynical corporate move. It's lost identity.

I don't know how old you are, but I'm pretty sure that WoD games always TRIED (in a 'clueless white-guy college grad' way) to be liberal, aside from their consistent fear of science and mathematics. Vampire power-structures are high-school politics with a body count, Mages are fighting The Man, Werewolves are up against NC-17-rated Captain Planet villains, Changelings shrivel up and die in the presence of accountants....

Indeed, White Wolf and their games-as-published have always been neck-deep in a sort of snobby, smug, angry college student faux "liberalism" (American usage) and postmodernist deconstructionism where everything you "know" is supposedly a lie your culture's controlling powers told you, and the real world is a dogpile of ugly "truths".

[GloatingSwine]

I would love to play rugby, you're going to have to teach me the rules though because rugby isn't super popular in the midwest United States.

It's like American Football except not turn based.