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

[Willie the Duck]

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....

Agreed Arbane. Jack, I don't know what version of WoD you played, but the original version was positively brimming with 90s college-educated, upper-middle-class liberalism (with, as mentioned, touches of clueless attempts at multiculturalism). Werewolves were eco-terrorists. Mages was an anti-corporate 'screw the man' (hey fellow old folks: remember when in politics the man, the media, and the deep state all referred to conservatives?) rage against the machine. Changeling was Woodstock 25th anniversary hippy-revival writ large. Vampire, as the brand leader, got turned into anything the fandom wanted it to be, so it is hard to pin down. I don't know if using political allegory in a game is all that productive. I don't know if products that don't really have to pick a side in the modern culture war really ought to or not. However, I will give WoD credit for having picked a side from the beginning and been consistent about it.

[Nifft]

It's like American Football except not turn based.

American Football is a game of inches.

Rugby is a game of centimeters.

[Morty]

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.

By "a few times", do you mean... exactly once? In passing? This looks like a pretty unprompted rant against the idea of diversity.

And as usual, when people say "World of Darkness", they mean "the old World of Darkness as it existed in the 90s", never mind that it's had several new iterations since then.

[Doug Lampert]

It's like American Football except not turn based.

And with lots less armor. Hence the old saying, "Give blood, play rugby."

[Anonymouswizard]

And with lots less armor. Hence the old saying, "Give blood, play rugby."

To be fair, while we mock American Football players for wearing armour, it does tend towards injuries that make it a lot more necessary. I believe it's due to the tackles, in AF it's a case of slamming into each other while in Rugby you pull them to the ground (there is a slam, but it's a lot less violent and is the only way to get the grip).

I don't believe it happens in professional rugby, but I've seen rugby players literally dragging their tacklers after them because they failed to get a good enough grip (although a that point you should be just passing).


The other great saying is 'football* is a gentleman's sport play by hooligans, rugby is a hooligan's sport played by gentlemen'.

* Association Football.

[Willie the Duck]

To be fair, while we mock American Football players for wearing armour, it does tend towards injuries that make it a lot more necessary. I believe it's due to the tackles, in AF it's a case of slamming into each other while in Rugby you pull them to the ground (there is a slam, but it's a lot less violent and is the only way to get the grip).

Saying one is more mock-worthy than the other is like comparing fencing and jousting and pretending the jousters are wussy in some way for wearing armor or the fencers more wussy for facing less impactful weapons. They are different types of sport, with different associated injuries (rugby football does lead to more 'bloody' scrape-ups, gridiron football leads to more TBIs and joint injuries).

EDIT: Okay, now how did we end up on this tangent?

[Nifft]

Saying one is more mock-worthy than the other is like comparing fencing and jousting and pretending the jousters are wussy in some way for wearing armor or the fencers more wussy for facing less impactful weapons. They are different types of sport, with different associated injuries (rugby football does lead to more 'bloody' scrape-ups, gridiron football leads to more TBIs and joint injuries).

EDIT: Okay, now how did we end up on this tangent?

"Jousters should just get off their high horse."

... and Gatekeepers should do likewise.

I've parried us back on topic!

[Darth Ultron]

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.

You did just prove my point though: your geek friends have played D&D. Though, too guess it depends what you will say a ''geek" is, too...

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.

D&D is infamous for being full of ''poor social skills alpha geeks''. It's just about the ''default gamer". Though granted like half the human race has ''poor social skills", so it's not like geeks somehow stand out.

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.)

Well, a lot of the more modern changes have dumbed down D&D, and even more so made it a Nice Safe Place sort of game. Though, this is not unique to the game and has been a whole shift in society. 0E, 1E and 2E all cover the same basic hard fun game with lots of thing like death, loss and unfairness. By 2000, everyone wanted all the kidz to be safe and happy and protected and sheltered from the real world. And you can see the huge effect that had on 3E. Just about everything that might make a kidz sad was removed from 3E or watered down to just about nothing.

And 3E just went overboard with the mushy stuff like ''oh, summoned creatures are happy copies of the real creature made by magic from free trade, free range, non-conflict planes that sort of non-exist for a couple minutes to help your spellcaster in a fight, happy hugs and rainbows!"

[Anonymouswizard]

Saying one is more mock-worthy than the other is like comparing fencing and jousting and pretending the jousters are wussy in some way for wearing armor or the fencers more wussy for facing less impactful weapons. They are different types of sport, with different associated injuries (rugby football does lead to more 'bloody' scrape-ups, gridiron football leads to more TBIs and joint injuries).

EDIT: Okay, now how did we end up on this tangent?

It's not that we don't mock rugby, is just that the armour is an easy target for mocking. I'm English, we mock everything. I pointed out that yes, there is a general understanding that the sports are different, although I significantly prefer the less turn based more scrapes and bruises game of rugby as a personal preference.

Plus, you know, a scrum is both enjoyable and looks highly suspect.

[Arbane]

And no, White Wolf wasn't a satire. They actually wrote all that stuff about PERSONAL GOTHIC-PUNK HORROR seriously.

And as usual, when people say "World of Darkness", they mean "the old World of Darkness as it existed in the 90s", never mind that it's had several new iterations since then.

The new one's being called 'Chronicles of Darkness' now, for some copyright reason.

Well, a lot of the more modern changes have dumbed down D&D, and even more so made it a Nice Safe Place sort of game. Though, this is not unique to the game and has been a whole shift in society. 0E, 1E and 2E all cover the same basic hard fun game with lots of thing like death, loss and unfairness. By 2000, everyone wanted all the kidz to be safe and happy and protected and sheltered from the real world. And you can see the huge effect that had on 3E. Just about everything that might make a kidz sad was removed from 3E or watered down to just about nothing.

"Life sucks, so should games!" 9_9

Let me guess, instant save-or-dies built character, and you walked six miles uphill to the dungeon through the snow every day?

Insta-death is only character-building if said characters can be rolled up in 16 minutes or less.

[Morty]

The new one's being called 'Chronicles of Darkness' now, for some copyright reason.

But it was the new World of Darkness for years, and when it became Chronicles of Darkness it wasn't for copyright reasons. It was a decision of the new owners of the property to distance it from the classic WoD. I know, since I'm one of those silly hipsters who actually play and enjoy it.

Mind you, the new World of Darkness wasn't developed by White Wolf, but by Onyx Path, but who cares, I guess.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Insta-death is only character-building if said characters can be rolled up in 16 minutes or less.

I'd put the threshold much lower than 16 minutes, personally. Like ~ 2-3 minutes from idea to functional (if not totally filled out) character. Tops.

[Max_Killjoy]

And no, White Wolf wasn't a satire. They actually wrote all that stuff about PERSONAL GOTHIC-PUNK HORROR seriously.

And as a player you'd better be at least as serious about your PERSONAL GOTHIC-PUNK HORROR, or you were having badwrongfun, and they'd make sure you knew that, too.

[Koo Rehtorb]

White Wolf's greatest sin is that the game lies to you. It tells you that it's about personal horror, and then it gives you rules for playing Blade, badly.

[Willie the Duck]

And as usual, when people say "World of Darkness", they mean "the old World of Darkness as it existed in the 90s", never mind that it's had several new iterations since then.

But it was the new World of Darkness for years, and when it became Chronicles of Darkness it wasn't for copyright reasons. It was a decision of the new owners of the property to distance it from the classic WoD. I know, since I'm one of those silly hipsters who actually play and enjoy it.
Mind you, the new World of Darkness wasn't developed by White Wolf, but by Onyx Path, but who cares, I guess.

Who cares about what, exactly? It's really not clear what point you are trying to make. The rest of us definitely went back to the original, since our point was that WoD had always been leftist (hard to argue that it had always been something if you don't go back to the first instance). It's not 100% clear that The Jack was referring to 90's WoD (since he seems to have played a version no one else recognizes). Regardless, if you prefer CoD (are CoD players hipsters? News to me.), and he is ragging on 90's WoD, isn't that better for you?

"Life sucks, so should games!" 9_9

Let me guess, instant save-or-dies built character, and you walked six miles uphill to the dungeon through the snow every day?

Insta-death is only character-building if said characters can be rolled up in 16 minutes or less.

To be fair, it was almost slightly brave to, right after 2 1/2 pages of everyone pounding down someone for self-congratulatory nerd elitism, go right back to the well and do a primo SNL Weekend Update's 'Drunk Uncle' impression.

[Darth Ultron]

"Life sucks, so should games!" 9_9

Let me guess, instant save-or-dies built character, and you walked six miles uphill to the dungeon through the snow every day?

Insta-death is only character-building if said characters can be rolled up in 16 minutes or less.

More like ''life is hard, and so should be the game", and not a Safe Place.

D&D really swung to ''cartoon combat where the characters just get little boo boos and never die".

[Mordaedil]

You did just prove my point though: your geek friends have played D&D. Though, too guess it depends what you will say a ''geek" is, too...

Again, not all of my geek friends have. Some of them only play computer games and thinks D&D sounds boring.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Warhammer, Magic, and D&D are the holy trinity of nerdom in my opinion.

[Mordaedil]

Admittedly, all of them do play one of those three. Or have at least in the past.

[Anonymouswizard]

Mind you, the new World of Darkness wasn't developed by White Wolf, but by Onyx Path, but who cares, I guess.

Not quite true. 1e was mostly a White Wolf affair, I think Onyx Path came in sheet WW was bought by CCP and licenced it. 2e was developed entirely by Oynx Path, and is much better because it makes sure to forge it's own identity (including Requiem shaking off the least Masquerade influences, although I'm not super pleased about how Forsaken 2e became even more focused on the hunt). I have to admit that nWoD has the better system as well, varying target numbers should not be a thing.

Although I have too admit that I do like some oWoD enough to be willing to homebrew it to a more nWoD style ruleset.

[GloatingSwine]

To be fair, while we mock American Football players for wearing armour, it does tend towards injuries that make it a lot more necessary. I believe it's due to the tackles, in AF it's a case of slamming into each other while in Rugby you pull them to the ground (there is a slam, but it's a lot less violent and is the only way to get the grip).

On the other hand, the main reason American Football tackles go in as hard as they do is because they're wearing armour.

Same reason boxers hit as hard as they do, because they have big padded gloves that mean they don't break their hands.

Without the armour you'd see a lot more rugby style tackling because anyone who tried to go in like they do now would have a dislocated shoulder, broken collarbone, or both by the end of the first quarter.

[The Jack]

I got into it with 20th and mostly read revised. "satire" doesn't mean it's a parody, it means certain things are held up and looked at more closely to point out things wrong with it. Plus it's good fun to think the streetlamps stay broken to provide a better hunting ground for vampires, that schools are underfunded because evil...
Core rulebooks are often more tame than the supplements. Or maybe, being someone late to the party, I just find myself shifting through my own "best of" edition.

Now, whilst the books have always been left wing (as any longstanding satiric piece that attacks the shortcomings of society will be) they've usually been show-not tell. The first two editions of vampire said "morality is chosen, not ordained'
whilst the last edition gives us (paraphrased) "If you consider yourself X you should go home and rethink your life", explicitly trying to limit your audience that way so that you can comfortable preach to your choir... It's an incredible hack thing to do. Whatever happened to "show, don't tell"?

There's something so fascinating about exploring ideas that aren't your own in a roll-playing environment; What are you going to explore in a safe space?

[Frozen_Feet]

Meh. Since when has there been a "nerd culture" and since when has it been a positive label?

It just sounds to me like a vaguely insulting catch-all category for those hobbies that are too intellectually demanding, too boring or too niche to appeal to the mainstream. Meaning it contains a whole lot of people and hobbies that have nothing in common besides being unpopular.

In that respect, D&D becoming "saturated" and ceasing to be a "nerd" thing would actually be a good thing... but if that's what got your knickers in a twist, I'm sorry to say you're both barking up the wrong tree and something like two decades late.

Why? Well here's the thing: D&D is already in everything, has been since the start of the videogame industry. D&D got its first chance in popularity at the same time and place where videogame design was taking its baby steps. As a result, D&D was among the first complex computerized games and it is singlehandedly responsible for several entire genres of videogames. There's a direct line from D&D to Rogue to Diablo, as well as from D&D to Wizardry to Final Fantasy, and from D&D to Ultima to World of Warcraft. Just to name a few obvious examples.

In addition, D&D tropes have spun off from gaming to various tangential media, from literature, to animation, to comic books etc.

The joke? Go look the amount of people who, say, play World of Warcraft. Now compare it to the amount of people who play 5th edition D&D. Now add people who play Final Fantasy, or Persona, or any other popular CRPG to WoW's tally.

It should become glaringly apparent that the other media that spun off from D&D have become vastly more accessible, popular and lucrative. Tabletop RPGs have remained a niche hobby, and I'm pretty sure they will remain so. Why? Because playing games like these on the tabletop is increasingly obsolete. Advancements in information technology benefit those other media more, than they benefit tabletop games. Pretty much any statement in the form "you can do X in tabletop RPGs but not in videogames" that held true in the 70s, 80s or early 90s can and will be challenged by modern game design and technology.

[Tanarii]

It should become glaringly apparent that the other media that spun off from D&D have become vastly more accessible, popular and lucrative. Tabletop RPGs have remained a niche hobby, and I'm pretty sure they will remain so. Why?

Because getting 3-5 friends together around a table for 3-4 hours is an incredibly hard thing to accomplish. It's even harder to do it on an on-going basis instead of on-shots. Even in high school and college, when its most likely, it still takes a fairly dedicated group.

I can throw together a board game weekend 1/2 day from any number of friends, associates and vaguely known contacts on fairly short notice. Heck, as little as 1-2 weeks heads up even with all post-college age personal friends. Getting an on-going regular group for TRPGs that doesn't flake out after 4-5 sessions has always required that I either join official play, or run an open table game myself out of game shops. And I have a large roster or contacts for them.

Ongoing continuous TRPG games require a different level of dedication on a whole group level, in your local area.

[Darth Ultron]

It should become glaringly apparent that the other media that spun off from D&D have become vastly more accessible, popular and lucrative. Tabletop RPGs have remained a niche hobby, and I'm pretty sure they will remain so. Why? Because playing games like these on the tabletop is increasingly obsolete. Advancements in information technology benefit those other media more, than they benefit tabletop games. Pretty much any statement in the form "you can do X in tabletop RPGs but not in videogames" that held true in the 70s, 80s or early 90s can and will be challenged by modern game design and technology.

The silly ''pew pew" video games will never replace a real in person live RPG. It's like saying people will only listen to silly digital ''beep beep" recorded music and never go to live concerts.

Ongoing continuous TRPG games require a different level of dedication on a whole group level, in your local area.

It is really not that hard for everyone. If a person wants to do something, amazingly they can make the time to do it.

[Tanarii]

It is really not that hard for everyone. If a person wants to do something, amazingly they can make the time to do it.

Exacly. TRPGs require making time, and doing it as a coordinated group.

There are, of course, some video game players in some video games that do exactly that. But it's not a requirement for entry into the genre in the first place. You can be a video gamer without any such thing.

I make no judgement on anything here. I'm just saying the bar to enter into TRPGs is higher. Just as the bar for being a reader used to be lower than that of a video gamer, because of relative costs.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Not that I really want the topic to drift this way, but I feel the need to point out the trivial case that games (like any artwork, really) can be construed to promote ideas or agendas. The ones that do so without being nakedly obvious about their influences are a lot more insidious than ones which do so in a clumsy, or obvious manner. Because they can get their audience to change their thinking without their audience being aware their thinking is being influenced.

That said, I like how in D&D-old-farts-edition, collecting wealth made you literally more powerful. But that came at the cost of living in ridiculous-deathtrap-universe. Then a latter edition happened. Stressing the former part while eliminating or severely curtailing the latter part. Those make a pretty fundamentally different relationship for the player to the game world.

Of course, I'm not really an art critic, so I never wrote (and never intend to write) an essay on this topic. I also think they just tried to build a toolset for a fun game system (with the ability for modular expansions, of course) and just wound up there as a result of their design decisions. It's just an amusing thought I had at the time.

[Tanarii]

That said, I like how in D&D-old-farts-edition, collecting wealth made you literally more powerful. But that came at the cost of living in ridiculous-deathtrap-universe.

Yeah, I liked the answer to "Who are the most powerful people in the world?" being: Those who braved the biggest dangers in the smartest way, extracting the maximum wealth while not dying. Adventurers indeed.

That said, there are plenty of cases where it breaks down. For example, any time you try to craft a fantasized historical campaign that focuses on things like Bronze Age heroics or chivalry or bushido or muskateering. Things other than the real world historical goals of getting rich and powerful.

[Frozen_Feet]

Because getting 3-5 friends together around a table for 3-4 hours is an incredibly hard thing to accomplish.

A technological problem with a technological solution, which used to be shared by multiplayer videogames. If you don't associate the problem with videogames, that's a testament to how much better videogames have gotten at using technology to solve the problem, as compared to RPGs.

---

The silly ''pew pew" video games will never replace a real in person live RPG. It's like saying people will only listen to silly digital ''beep beep" recorded music and never go to live concerts.

You've demonstrated elsewhere that you don't know a thing about videogames, now you demonstrate you don' t know a thing about contemporary recording technology and digital music.

[Tanarii]

A technological problem with a technological solution, which used to be shared by multiplayer videogames. If you don't associate the problem with videogames, that's a testament to how much better videogames have gotten at using technology to solve the problem, as compared to RPGs.

That's my point. There is no technological solution to it for TRPGs. If you're not sitting at the same table, you've removed the core aspect that makes it a TRPG. That's what makes it harder.

Edit: you're right about multiplayer games having the problem at one time though. I remember playing hot-seat Alpha Centauri and having LAN parties for Diablo.