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Post by Admin Pete on May 25, 2016 9:44:23 GMT -5
This thread is also on DF and I thought it was a great question.
For myself:
OD&D - If I discovered this for the first time at my current age of 60 I would jump all over it and wonder why I had not found it sooner.
Holmes & Classic - same answer
1st Ed AD&D - same answer and I would still simplfy it down to essentially OD&D.
2nd Ed AD&D - I would look for an earlier edition
3rd or later - I would be totally turned off and not interested due to the extreme color blind unfriendly presentation of all of these products. There are way to many pages where the text is either difficult or very difficult to read due to the print and the background or essentially invisible text due to the print and the background. If you cannot read something it is hard to generate interest in it.
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Post by hengest on May 25, 2016 11:24:03 GMT -5
Agree on 3rd. I don't think I could ever have gotten into it. When I played it was just using the SRD online and leaving the rest to the DM. If I had had to deal with the books...
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Post by captaincrumbcake on May 25, 2016 11:48:02 GMT -5
All presentations aside, imo, this (below) is what makes a D&D player!
Those that do...will.
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Post by Admin Pete on May 25, 2016 13:17:58 GMT -5
I am not sure how that automatically trumps having a physical disability that prevents me from being able to read a product. If I cannot read something, I should somehow like it anyway, just because I like Howard and ERB? I am a bit confused here.  |
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Post by captaincrumbcake on May 25, 2016 14:38:31 GMT -5
DM Mike from SOD podcast could likely address that better than I; he uses electronics to 'read' texts.
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Post by mormonyoyoman on May 25, 2016 22:33:09 GMT -5
ODnD? Probably.
B/X? Likely, though species as class HAS to go.
ADnD? Probably not, except for comedy.
Other versions? Maybe 5e. 4th edition? There was no 4th edition.
Runequest or TnT? You betchum, Red Ryder.
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Post by captaincrumbcake on May 26, 2016 12:33:26 GMT -5
I agree with your assessment of how badly 3E and beyond materials were marketed (I never liked the presentation, either). There are some that would suggest, the original LBBs were, also, hard to become interested in; not because of presentation per se, but because of the convoluted concepts of the material. Rob or Mike or some origon might be able to shed more light on the matter, but, if I am not mistaken, the idea of marketing Holmes was precisely to generate interest among new gamers/customers, by presenting the material in a simpler, cohesive and easy to understand approach. Or, I could be totally wrong altogether.  |
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Post by Von on Jun 9, 2016 8:01:10 GMT -5
I have difficulty imagining how I could have made it to adulthood without having encountered games and gaming. I SUSPECT I would be deterred by any game (the game as experienced at a given table) which implied that I needed to absorb multiple hundreds of pages of rules in order to enjoy it, and so I would need the right DM to enjoy any edition after OD&D or perhaps Basic. I would probably not have the patience to decipher the OD&D books and manipulate them into a playable game either...
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Post by tetramorph on Jun 9, 2016 9:59:34 GMT -5
Yes, because, in a way, that is really what has happened for me.
I have only come back to this hobby from childhood after many years.
It is pretty fresh and new to me at this time.
For many years I thought that D&D and RPGs were just something I did as a kid and "not my thing" now that I was all grown up.
I was wrong.
Thankfully.
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Post by smubee on Jun 9, 2016 11:07:25 GMT -5
I agree with your assessment of how badly 3E and beyond materials were marketed (I never liked the presentation, either). There are some that would suggest, the original LBBs were, also, hard to become interested in; not because of presentation per se, but because of the convoluted concepts of the material. Rob or Mike or some origon might be able to shed more light on the matter, but, if I am not mistaken, the idea of marketing Holmes was precisely to generate interest among new gamers/customers, by presenting the material in a simpler, cohesive and easy to understand approach. Or, I could be totally wrong altogether. I think that by presentation he means this :  It's incredibly difficult to read, even as a 19 year old. *screenshot from the 3.5 DMG |
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Post by Admin Pete on Jun 9, 2016 11:30:30 GMT -5
I think that by presentation he means this : It's incredibly difficult to read, even as a 19 year old. *screenshot from the 3.5 DMG Exactly - and put that in color with the words blending into the background and it makes it impossible for us color-blind people. |
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Post by captaincrumbcake on Jun 9, 2016 11:52:48 GMT -5
Ahhhh. I never thought of that. Not being color-blind. My 2 brothers-in-law are both color blind and over the years have conveyed to me many of its...ahem...distracting abilities.
But, as I've already stated, I don't particularly like the 3.0 and beyond presentations, either. And I got 20/20 color vision! (just a jest, no malice intended.)
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Post by The Semi-Retired Gamer on Jun 19, 2016 19:47:57 GMT -5
I'm sure I would have because I was hooked on those game books such as Zork, Endless Quest, Sorcery, etc. that I discovered at a book fair in school.
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Post by Crimhthan The Great on Aug 3, 2016 11:19:31 GMT -5
In my case I was 37 years young in 1974, so yes I did play D&D when I discovered it as an adult!  |
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Post by smubee on Aug 19, 2016 13:57:47 GMT -5
In my case I was 37 years young in 1974, so yes I did play D&D when I discovered it as an adult! Just out of curiosity, not knowing anything about you.. Did you get a lot of flack from people? Was it perceived as a "nerd" thing, or was it interesting back in 1974? Obviously it's wavered between being something that intelligent people do, to something that geeks do, to something that satanists do, to something that geeks do again. But I'm curious what it was like, especially being an adult back in the day. |
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Post by Crimhthan The Great on Aug 23, 2016 10:57:59 GMT -5
In my case I was 37 years young in 1974, so yes I did play D&D when I discovered it as an adult! Just out of curiosity, not knowing anything about you.. Did you get a lot of flack from people? Was it perceived as a "nerd" thing, or was it interesting back in 1974? Obviously it's wavered between being something that intelligent people do, to something that geeks do, to something that satanists do, to something that geeks do again. But I'm curious what it was like, especially being an adult back in the day. For me and my group, we were all in our mid to late 30's and we had been playing games together all our lives and this was just one more. We did not talk about it much with anyone else, but we did not talk about monopoly, risk, poker or anything else much outside the group either. As for our spouses - they were fine as long as we did not neglect the honeydolist and our kids got involved to greater and lesser degrees. So we never got any flack from anyone about it and for us it would not have mattered if we did. We as a group were and are pretty resistant to any kind of social pressure, unlike earlier generations where social pressure was extremely strong. We were the first generation to have that (public opinion) loosen its grip on society. Quite frankly had anyone accused me or my pals of being satanists they would have likely had missing teeth, black eyes and broken noses. We were not shy nor retiring, and we grew up rough. None of us have ever self-identified as anything other than thinking working men, we are most decidedly not nerds or geeks, just people smart enough to play a wide variety of games and smart enough to play OD&D. The only real barrier to playing D&D is being intelligent enough to do so (and still possessing imagination i.e. surviving public school). As far as we are concerned OD&D players consist only of intelligent people, calling OD&D players a geek or a nerd is just slander by people too stupid to play. Being intelligent does not make you a geek or nerd. Of course for my generation a "geek" was a carnival freak that was exhibited so people could feel good about themselves by comparison (very cruel practice). |
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Post by thorswulf on Aug 27, 2016 23:02:49 GMT -5
I started out with Holmes, and if I encountered it as an adult that box cover would still pull me in!
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Post by scottanderson on Aug 28, 2016 10:44:13 GMT -5
You know, here's another thing. As I age, my brain gets less elastic. I have more trouble doing imagination things. It hasn't stopped me from enjoying the hobby, but it's harder work than it used to be to do it.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2016 11:43:37 GMT -5
I came to D&D as an adult. That's really only a half-truth.
I was weaned on Infocom text adventures, fantasy and sci-fi board games and pretend-you're-something-else computer games from early in childhood, and I picked up roleplaying games in force at around 10-12, with Star Wars and MeRP. D&D itself, however, didn't come around for me until I was in my 20s and read through the 1e and OD&D books out of historical interest. By then I had already built up a pretty solid set of assumptions about how to play an RPG, and had zero practical interest in playing D&D.
I'd say it took about 8 days for me to spin around from being utterly dismissive about D&D to having it become my single favourite game of all time, hands down.
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