Is there a Generation Gap in D&D?

                        The term generation gap became a buzz word in the 1960s. With the staunch differences between the WWII generation, and the new Baby Boom generation struggling with the social upheaval at the end of that decade and spilling into the next. The generation gap is a difference in outlook on the world due to a difference in age. Can we apply this sociological and psychological phenomenon to the current situation in D&D? There, at times, seems to be large amounts of misunderstanding between the modern 5e D&D surge of fans, and the older fans that tend to lean towards the OSR movement. I think some of the history of the game can explain some of this gap, and I try to explain a more personal side of the history below.
                I am not sure exactly how to tackle this subject, and I feel that I am going to get flack for it no matter what I say. I might as well just jump into then. For some in the D&D community there is a generational war, and I see it waged on a daily basis on most forms of social media. For a lot of the newer players to the game they feel assaulted by older player, or that older players are trying to gatekeep the hobby as a whole. My goal today is to talk about what it was like for me and several others I know personally growing up in an era that D&D was at best consider a hobby for the geeks and nerds (words that have lost a bit of their connotation, often considered a positive these days) and at worst evil and demonic. Some of us that lived through the Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s have war wounds, and sometimes do feel protective of the hobby. This is not an excuse to beat up on new players, or new styles of play, but sometimes moving on is hard.

First D&D...Next Pokemon

Back in the Day

                I cannot completely sum up the entirety of the experiences of ALL gamers in ALL places throughout the earlier days of D&D. What I can do is sum up some of my experiences, and some of the experiences of people that I know. Note that not EVERY player experienced these aspects of the game, but some did.

To get a beginning grasp of what the times were like during the dark days of D&D, you should really see the 60 Minutes piece on D&D, which I will link to below. Many newer players do not realize that there was a nationwide organization, BADD (Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons), which was promoting the idea that a game was inherently evil, and caused people to kill themselves. This does not include all the local news reports that blame D&D for any form of abnormal behavior and of course, there is always Dark Dungeons.

60 Minutes D&D Episode

I vividly remember not being able to take any of my D&D books to school. There was a real threat that the books would be confiscated, even if I was reading them on my own time, and never have them returned. I have a close friend and his family confront him about him playing D&D and made him physically throw his books away in front of them. Though I cannot find direct evidence, I do remember people mentioning book burning of D&D. Whether it actually happened or not, we believed it did. Generally, these are the interactions between adults and kids, but the interactions between kids and other kids could be just as bad.

Headline says it all

Trying to find new members to play with was a challenge for me, and for the first decade of playing the game, I played with the same group from my neighborhood. Bringing up that you played could be a risk; you could labeled a “dork/geek” or a less than kind word for the homosexual community. Geek culture was not what it is today, and that was not a friendly label. It put a target on you for harassment and possibly physical abuse, both of these even more a certainty if you were labeled a homosexual. Honestly, “Thac0” became a code word. We could say it, and it meant nothing to the world outside of D&D. If the person knew it, you could feel safe to discuss the game around them. This is the reason I named the blog “Thac0” because I remember using this ploy up until about a decade ago. We often used a sports stand in to talk about D&D when non-players were around. Example: “Hey, are we playing “basketball” (D&D) tonight? Yes, please don’t forget the ball (dice) and John is team captain (DM).” It sounds like a joke but, this was actually done.

Dark Dungeons is a great game.

I was in my twenties and dating women, I had a career, and had to have a conversation when I “came out” as a gamer. There are certainly women out there that I dated that honestly never knew, I would just say that I was going to my friends to hang out. True story, I was hanging out with my wife before we started dating and 4^th edition had just come out. We were at the mall, in 2009, I am 30 years old. I excuse myself to the bathroom, and secretly go to the bookstore and purchase the Player’s Handbook and secret it away in my pack. The book is 3/4^th into my bag, and who comes walking into the store but my friends and my future wife. First words out of her mouth, “Hey, what’s that?” I froze in fear, because I really liked this girl and I was afraid of a reaction. I try to brush it off with a clever, “Uh, nothing.” She is not buying my clever line and pulls the Player’s Handbook out of my bag. To my surprise and shock, she did not care and just laughter (because she never giggles) that I was so secretive about it. My wife is not a RPG player, but the culture had begun to change. My public expression of D&D changed that day; I have not been one to hide it anymore.

Today’s D&D

                To me, today is the type of D&D world we always wanted, and we would have loved as kids. It is generally accepted by the masses as just a game, and not a tool of the devil. There are so many choices when it comes to the hobby that one cannot consume all the media that exists for it. There are games of every edition, run every day throughout the world. New players are pouring into the game, what more could we have wanted?

Whether you like the edition or not, it has done wonders for the community.

                It is hard for some people to accept that the game has changed though. Many of the newer players to the game do not have an Appendix N background in D&D. Many of the new players have Anime/Comics/Video Game background, and there characters and style of play are suited more towards that angle. Just like we produced characters based on the media we consumed, so do they. The new 5e ruleset are designed to give a set of rules that are more useful for those styles of story, than a tactically planned delve into a dark cavern. There is nothing wrong with either style of play, and both are valid.

                Older players need to remember there is not a conspiracy by “the youth” to ruin “your” game.  D&D is not “your” game, it is “our” game and just because we have played it longer does not mean we have some special claim to it. Younger gamers on the other hand, remember that many of the older players went through some rough years to play this game, and anything that is hard fought for is difficult to see change. Many of us have been doing this awhile and have some great advice, regardless of edition.

They aren't out to get you.

                I am currently prepping to run a 5e campaign on Friday, bringing an older D&D player out of a 20-year retirement. I am also prepping for the next day, Gygax’s birthday, to run a B/X campaign for people at a local hobby shop and many of them never played back in the day. In light of this, I was chatting in a D&D forum earlier today, and a long time player mentioned his son who is eight is attending a D&D camp over summer! How amazing is that? 
                I write this while sitting in my school’s club with 12 young people playing D&D and laughing quite a bit. Overall, this what we all want, right?
               The last thing I would like to see after posting this is an edition war and flames fired by both sides. Let's try to keep it clean.


EDIT: This article proved to be very popular. I went ahead and created a Facebook group for the blog, if you are interested the link is here.