This one's been coming for a while, folks. I'm pretty sure the same ground has already been tread by many other bloggers, but as both a gamer and someone who's going to be working with kids professionally some day, I just really needed to get this off of my chest. Bear with me.
One of the most common complaints that I've seen throughout the Old School blogging and forums community is about the monolithic 'Kids These Days.' They're too soft to accept that they automatically die if they touch the big demon face. None of them have the attention span to dedicate to 4 hours sitting down at a table without going crazy from digital withdrawal. Video games have spoiled them and now no one can use their imagination to play real games. Tabletop role-playing just isn't bright and shiny enough to drag them out of their technologically induced haze.
I'm sorry, but fuck that.
Back when I was in elementary and middle school, me and my friends were big old nerds. We played Magic, read Tolkien and Expanded Universe Star Wars novels and made our own comics set in both these worlds and our own. And before any of us got our hands on a codified rules system, we were doing our own story telling role-playing games. But we were also on the fringe of our age group. We were a minority of kids interested in fantasy and imaginary play and it stayed that way for a long time.
Right now, the most popular books for kids in America are a series of 7 fantasy novels starring a trio of young wizards fighting against an overwhelming evil while still trying to maintain grades at a magical academy. In the 13 years that the Harry Potter books have been in print, they have sold over 400 million copies, better than every edition of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit published over a combined 70 year period. There are hundreds of fantasy series available for kids and teens at every library and book store across America.
On top of that, kids actually have an existing framework for what role-playing games are, thanks to console and computer RPGs. Even across cultural lines, the Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda are pretty universal. Kids as young as 6 already have an idea of how hit points, initiative and experience work thanks to Pokemon, the most popular portable game ever made. Even the most recent book in the popular children's series about cats beating each other up, Warriors, has a miniature Lone Wolf style 'Adventure Game' written into the back.
So why do people think that Kids These Days aren't primed and ready to enjoy tabletop RPGs? Probably because Kids These Days wouldn't want to play their kind of RPGs.
So let's not dismiss kids off hand because they wouldn't want to inch their way down a dungeon corridor. Role-playing games are really born out of the creative influences of their time and as a result, games made today are more likely to attract kids born today. Instead of bemoaning the fact that their D&D isn't like my D&D, complaining instead of participating, we could be showing kids how cool tabletop role-playing is in a milieu that they're interested in. I can't fathom a middle schooler picking up a Jack Vance or Fritz Lieber paperback today, but if your campaign world was influenced by Avatar: the Last Airbender and One Piece, you'd have a line of kids out the door who are ready for adventure.
Let's cast a wide net, folks.
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
We will never escape it
Yesterday, I met with the mother of one of my potential players for the library Dungeons and Dragons game. She had sent me an email a week or so ago saying that she did not want her son playing in the campaign for somewhat cryptic reasons (having to do with 'leveling up (?)' and 'not their kind of game').
After clarification, she told me that it was for religious reasons. What she and her husband knew of Dungeons and Dragons was that it was a gateway drug into unsavory, non-christian activity and that kids who played couldn't distinguish fantasy and reality. Thus, it was something that she wanted to keep her kids away from.
I can't say that I'm not disappointed. As much as we would hate to admit it, Dungeons and Dragons still carries a stigma among most people that it will never get away from. If anything, the game's disappearance from the public eye has ingrained these assumptions among mainstream America. So far, since I've started asking kids who visit the library if they'd be interested, I've heard about its age, its nerdy nature and now its unchristian associations. In order to break these assumptions, you've just got to be as honest and open as possible. I told the kid's mother that role-playing games have been a really positive, creative influence on my life in the 10 or so years that I've been reading and playing them. I may not agree with her decision, but I respect it and I hope that she'll at least think about it more positively in the future.
In closing, I'd like to post the Dungeons and Dragons controversies page from Wikipedia, which is what I showed my boss after we talked with our concerned mother. We may think of stuff like Dark Dungeons and Mazes and Monsters as ridiculous, but we must always, always remember that for some, this is all that they know about D&D.
It is up to us to challenge that perception.
After clarification, she told me that it was for religious reasons. What she and her husband knew of Dungeons and Dragons was that it was a gateway drug into unsavory, non-christian activity and that kids who played couldn't distinguish fantasy and reality. Thus, it was something that she wanted to keep her kids away from.
I can't say that I'm not disappointed. As much as we would hate to admit it, Dungeons and Dragons still carries a stigma among most people that it will never get away from. If anything, the game's disappearance from the public eye has ingrained these assumptions among mainstream America. So far, since I've started asking kids who visit the library if they'd be interested, I've heard about its age, its nerdy nature and now its unchristian associations. In order to break these assumptions, you've just got to be as honest and open as possible. I told the kid's mother that role-playing games have been a really positive, creative influence on my life in the 10 or so years that I've been reading and playing them. I may not agree with her decision, but I respect it and I hope that she'll at least think about it more positively in the future.
In closing, I'd like to post the Dungeons and Dragons controversies page from Wikipedia, which is what I showed my boss after we talked with our concerned mother. We may think of stuff like Dark Dungeons and Mazes and Monsters as ridiculous, but we must always, always remember that for some, this is all that they know about D&D.
It is up to us to challenge that perception.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Because it will probably come up eventually
I'm a really big fan of D&D 4e.
I really like what Mike Mearls et al have done with the game. I like how much easier it is to run than 3rd Edition. I like how tactical and cinematic it feels and the mechanics of powers. I like the integration of Wushu-esque Skills Challenges, even though I had to go to the Internet to find a better interpretation of them. Yet the more I read Old School forums and blogs, the more I experience a certain disdain for 4e; not only a disdain, but an active desire to see it fail, as if by its collapse, people would suddenly come to their senses and realize that the fun they were having is clearly bad and would pick up a copy of OSRIC post haste. I know that the vast majority of Old School folks are honestly just trying to play and promote older games, but shit like James Mishler's utterly insulting Types Of Adventures chart (sadly non-existent now due to destruction of evidence) and the backlash against Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulik playing Swords and Wizardry wrong leaves a sour taste in my mouth and a strong desire to steer myself solely towards the positive side of this scene.
There's a band called Against Me! If you're a punk fan, you've probably heard of them. They played anarchist folk-punk in basements, laundromats and coffee houses for years, releasing their records on small independent labels to pretty universal acclaim. Pretty soon, basement shows couldn't hold the average audience they brought in, and as a result, they signed to Fat Wreck Chords, one of the bigger independent labels in the country. All of a sudden, the same fans who had loved their music were coming to their shows to spit in their faces, slash their tires and pour bleach on their merchandise because God forbid a band adapt and evolve the way that they want.
The most virulent elements of the OSR remind me of all of that bottomless negativity and with us or against us antagonism that I still try to ignore in music scenes across the country. Edition Wars and smug superiority only serve to fracture a hobby that's pretty tiny to begin with, and telling someone that they're not playing real D&D because they use Ascending AC is the worst way to entice people into becoming involved. There are many different ways to play these wonderful old games that many people are rediscovering and that I have discovered for the first time. Just as these games should not be denigrated as 'outdated' or 'nostalgic', their more modern cousins should not be labeled as 'dumbed down' or 'travesties.'
On a completely different note, thanks to A Paladin in Citadel for putting me up on his blogs list and hello to the folks who've just started following Fistful of Coppers! I promise to start talking about Unarmored AC or the Kuo-Tua in the near future. :)
I really like what Mike Mearls et al have done with the game. I like how much easier it is to run than 3rd Edition. I like how tactical and cinematic it feels and the mechanics of powers. I like the integration of Wushu-esque Skills Challenges, even though I had to go to the Internet to find a better interpretation of them. Yet the more I read Old School forums and blogs, the more I experience a certain disdain for 4e; not only a disdain, but an active desire to see it fail, as if by its collapse, people would suddenly come to their senses and realize that the fun they were having is clearly bad and would pick up a copy of OSRIC post haste. I know that the vast majority of Old School folks are honestly just trying to play and promote older games, but shit like James Mishler's utterly insulting Types Of Adventures chart (sadly non-existent now due to destruction of evidence) and the backlash against Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulik playing Swords and Wizardry wrong leaves a sour taste in my mouth and a strong desire to steer myself solely towards the positive side of this scene.
There's a band called Against Me! If you're a punk fan, you've probably heard of them. They played anarchist folk-punk in basements, laundromats and coffee houses for years, releasing their records on small independent labels to pretty universal acclaim. Pretty soon, basement shows couldn't hold the average audience they brought in, and as a result, they signed to Fat Wreck Chords, one of the bigger independent labels in the country. All of a sudden, the same fans who had loved their music were coming to their shows to spit in their faces, slash their tires and pour bleach on their merchandise because God forbid a band adapt and evolve the way that they want.
The most virulent elements of the OSR remind me of all of that bottomless negativity and with us or against us antagonism that I still try to ignore in music scenes across the country. Edition Wars and smug superiority only serve to fracture a hobby that's pretty tiny to begin with, and telling someone that they're not playing real D&D because they use Ascending AC is the worst way to entice people into becoming involved. There are many different ways to play these wonderful old games that many people are rediscovering and that I have discovered for the first time. Just as these games should not be denigrated as 'outdated' or 'nostalgic', their more modern cousins should not be labeled as 'dumbed down' or 'travesties.'
On a completely different note, thanks to A Paladin in Citadel for putting me up on his blogs list and hello to the folks who've just started following Fistful of Coppers! I promise to start talking about Unarmored AC or the Kuo-Tua in the near future. :)
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