RPGaDay2018, Day 10 – How Has Gaming Changed You?

Today’s question is: How has gaming changed you?

Oof. How hasn’t it?

I’m 49 years old. I started gaming 38 years ago, when I received a copy of TOP SECRET for my 11th birthday. Six months later, for Christmas, I received the Moldvay Basic D&D set… and from there, I was off to the races.

I gamed through high school, into college, and into my adult life. Gaming has changed me, in as much as nearly every friend I’ve made in the past 38 years has been through gaming… gaming became my career, as I began publish my own designs and do freelance work for other publishers, and that work led to other writing jobs, in comics, fiction, etc. I even met my wife via the Kansas University Gamers And Roleplayers club (KUGAR).

So yeah, you could say that gaming has changed me. It’s literally influenced every part of my life, from relationships to work, and I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without it.

 
 

RPGaDay2018, Day 9: How Has A Game Surprised You?

Today’s question: How has a game surprised you?

I’ll admit to having been completely surprised by how much I really dig D&D 5th Edition. After 14 years of immersion (as a player, a DM and a designer & publisher) in the crunchy complexity of 3rd Edition (and it’s d20 derivatives, like Pathfinder), and after finding the dramatic redesign of 4th Edition completely not to my liking, I had pretty much no interest in 5th Edition.

Then I looked at the “Basic” PDFs that Wizards of the Coast made available, and immediately went out and bought the three core books. I was amazed at how streamlined it was, and how many influences it bore from more modern, narrative games, yet still managed to be Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a cliché, but it truly felt like a distillation of everything I loved from 2nd and 3rd editions, and awakened a nostalgic love that went back to my Basic/Expert set days. (And that might be the most surprising thing of all.)

My only regret is that I haven’t had the time (or the playing group) to actually run a game yet.

 

RPGaDay2018, Day 8 – How Can We Get More People Playing?

Well, it only took 8 days for us to reach a disappointing question. That’s pretty good. (And, looking ahead, I see that this is pretty much the worst of the lot, so that’s a pretty admirable achievement, overall.)

I will posit that, given that Dungeons and Dragons had it’s best sales year in the game’s 45-year history in 2017, topping even the popularity heyday of the early 80s; that more than 7500 unique broadcasters are streaming games over the internet to an estimated audience of over 9 million people, introducing more and more people every month;, that the game has featured as plot elements in mainstream entertainment ranging from STRANGER THINGS to COMMUNITY; and just last night, Joe Manganiello appeared on a popular late-night talk show to discuss D&D with the host, Steven Colbert — that the question is more than a bit ridiculous.

People are playing — in bigger numbers than ever before.

If anything, what we “need” to do is to show people that there’s more out there than D&D — and, frankly, that’s already starting to happen as well, with a number of very popular streams devoted to non-D&D RPGs.

So… keep up the good work, folks? We’re doing just fine.