What's up with the Zeb Cook hatred?

[northrundicandus]

Mod Hat On.

I don't want to see point-by-point rebuttal pissing matches between two posters. That has derailed the thread previously. Don't go there again.

[TRP]

I remember when I dated in college I had to point this history out to the girls who new I played (assuring them my 1E was normal, no different then playing any other board game).

Axe is a young-un. By the time he was in college the nerd badge was already firmly affixed. When were you in college, Axe? Late '80s? Early '90s?

I don't know who was buying more AD&D books and modules in the late '70s and early '80s, but obviously, by the time the mid'-80s rolled around the older gamers (college-aged and above) began to be left out of the potential consumer pool. Maybe we weren't the *biggest* market, but we couldn't have been an inconsequential market.

My point is, by totally abandoning the more mature players, TSR guaranteed they'd move on to other games or drop RPGs altogether. This started during the Gary era (whether or not he wanted it, he was there for it) and continued onward from there. Yes, you're right, it can't all be laid at the feet of 2e, but on the other hand, it did nothing to even attempt to turn the tide either, and it actually facilitated the marginalization.

It's now a deeply ingrained paradigm that entry level D&D is only for kids. What? Approximately 12 to late teen? If that wasn't true in the '70s and early '80s, then it doesn't have to be true now. Of course, I have no idea how you disestablish such entrenched thinking.

Thank goodness for the OSR, cause better material than what can be expected from Engulf & Devour, Inc may now be had for the foreseeable future.

[JLowder]

Maybe where you were from, but here in Los Angeles in the late 70's/early 80's AD&D was firmly in the realm of 'stoner/musician/artist counter-culture'.

That was part of the audience, but it wasn't the core.

Here's an early 80s ad for D&D. Gives you a clear idea of who the game was aimed at, who the core audience was:
http://trollandflame.blogspot.com/2009/ ... rcial.html

You can cite cool celebs now that play, just as you can cite cool celebs that play Warcraft and other MMOs. That does not make them the core audience.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

[blackprinceofmuncie]

You only need read the first post in the "Zeb Cook is a liar" thread, which contains "I don't like Zeb Cook, I think he's a bad person." There are more examples, but I'm not going to bother trotting them all out.

Just so there is no confusion, saying that someone is a bad person does not violate the rules of posting at this site. Neither does responding to that statement with an opposing point of view. What we're not going to allow is for that kind of thing to turn into an out-and-out fight or for one poster to tell another they're not allowed to state their opinion.

Axe & Jim, as far as the "has Zeb Cook been personally attacked" discussion goes, please just agree to disagree and move on to more fruitful, gaming-related areas of discussion.

Thanks.

[Stormcrow]

You seem to hold a low opinion of 7th graders (and kids in general I suspect). After 7 Harry Potter books being monumental money makers (their author the second wealthiest woman in England after the queen, and in a single decade, millions upon millions of copies sold and read over and over (a rags to riches story) off the back of, for the most part, millions of young kids (mine was in 4th grade when she started reading The Sorcerer's Stone) I think that myth would have gone to the way side.

The reason Harry Potter has been such a sensation is precisely because it got kids to read who otherwise might not. I remember seeing a lot of cartoons depicting parents confused or delighted that their children were reading a book instead of watching TV. Harry Potter is simply the exception that proves the rule.

[JCBoney]

Here's an early 80s ad for D&D. Gives you a clear idea of who the game was aimed at, who the core audience was:
http://trollandflame.blogspot.com/2009/ ... rcial.html

It give you a clear idea of who the Moldvay Basic Set was aimed at.

[AxeMental]

But, the HP phenominia also proves that kids can read if given material worth reading (just as the Hobbit and LOTRs did in the 70s). Perhaps as a society that needs to be our focus (make reading fun). You should see my kids reading list for the past 5 years. You have to capture a kids imagination in a thoughtful way, not stuff down their throat "moral lessons" or bore them to tears. Write and expose books that are superior to television and your going in the right direction.

[Stormcrow]

But it also proves that kids can read if given material worth reading.

Sure they can! But they usually don't.

I've looked at the text of the first Harry Potter book, and found it too simplistic to bother reading. Well of course it is! It was written for a younger audience than me, but it was still wildly popular. And that's just what AD&D 2nd Edition did...

[AxeMental]

There are two sorts of interesting reading being referred to here I think. Complex sentense structure and wide vocabulary (adult writing) Gygax was a master at, and just interesting concepts, relationships etc. that have depth (HP). If you look at OSRIC its written in a way kids can understand but its still adult and intel.

[Chainsaw]

Fuckin' A! Cliff played AD&D too, back when it was cool.

Haha, that's awesome. Once again, I'm forced to think, "Too bad it wasn't Lars who was thrown from the bus."

[JLowder]

So you agree with me then, that challanging and interesting books should be presented to kids at a younger age so that this interest can continue on into adulthood.

All kids should read every day, as should all adults. It's a great idea.

But that wasn't your point. Your point was about D&D being potentially mass market. It's not, because neither kids nor adults read regularly, and even those who do may not be capable of, or interested in, wading through hundreds of pages to play a game. The edition doesn't matter here. The game is not accessible, because of the number and complexity of the rules and the amount of reading required, to most kids or adults.

Beyond that, I never said that the early core was only established gamers. The core of early D&D players was made up of young nerds and crossover established gamers. The sticking point, looking at the various responses, is "nerds." Let's try this instead: outsiders. Could be nerds, could be artists, could be anti-authoritarians. But the vast core of people playing the game were not mainstream. And mainstream culture very quickly rejected the game. You can see that in the very public rejection of D&D by religious and civic groups in the late 1970s and early 1980s. By the mid-1980s, the game was poisoned in the mainstream culture, so much so that you have Gary on 60 Minutes defending it and people thinking Mazes and Monsters was the typical D&D experience.

It wasn't 2E that stopped D&D from being mainstream. (In fact, 2E and later editions have been tailored to be much more mainstream, and d20 was supposed to be the unified system you were saying D&D always should have been.) But D&D was doomed as mainstream culture long before 2E. The nature of D&D itself and the very vocal rejection of 1E by a big segment of the population are the prime culprits there. Did the more artsy outsiders leave the game? Sure. they got jobs and had less time. They saw Tom Hanks stumbling around in a cleric's robe on TV and got tired of telling people "no, that's not really D&D." They saw that the game was no longer a hot new thing and moved on to the next outsider fad.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

[Zotster]

But I'm not sure any of the employees that worked there, short of the stake-owning executives, could have really made that happen.

Because of the personal hard feelings between Lorraine and Gary, and the continuing legal problems between Gary and TSR, no one below Lorraine herself was going to be able to bring Gary back into the fold.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

As a little sidenote here, once FrankM was out of TSR and I took over the GenCon auction (starting in 1988, IIRC), I was told by Lorraine herself that Frank was not welcome at the auction. He would appear once every year and some PAW (the student organization that helped man the auction) person would invite him onstage as a guest auctioneer. I'd let him do it as long as he wanted but then told the PAW people to please not invite him up again. I had nothing against Frank, but it was essentially my job on the line if Lorraine got wind of it.

Mike

[Zotster]

You seem to hold a low opinion of 7th graders (and kids in general I suspect). After 7 Harry Potter books being monumental money makers (their author the second wealthiest woman in England after the queen, and in a single decade, millions upon millions of copies sold and read over and over (a rags to riches story) off the back of, for the most part, millions of young kids (mine was in 4th grade when she started reading The Sorcerer's Stone) I think that myth would have gone to the way side. Its not kids that are lacking, its adults who fail to believe in their potential (and adults who fail to see the potential in other adults). Kids and adults alike crave intellectualism.

Dude, sorry but the Harry Potter books are dumbed down. They are very, very easy reads for anyone over the age of about 8. They are very appealing for their simplistic language and themes. They surely resonate with kids of MS age, but their popularity is based on being incredibly easy to read.

I like the HP books and I've read them all. My wife teaches MS English and has seen kids who never read devour those books. And that's a wonderful thing (though she notes that those kids don't often become general readers, they just slip back to non-readers aside from the HP books). The HP books, IMO, are not something anyone should be pointing to as an example of intellectualism among MS students. Just the opposite, in fact.

[OtspIII]

A lot of people in this thread are citing metalheads and stoners as evidence that D&D had the potential for more mainstream appeal. I can't speak for previous decades, so correct me if things have drastically changed, but these days metalheads are seen almost more as a sub-division of 'nerd' than anything else; the Ranger to the nerd Fighter.

Back in the glory days, was D&D genuinely somewhat mainstream, or just mainstream with outsiders?

[TRP]

A lot of people in this thread are citing metalheads and stoners as evidence that D&D had the potential for more mainstream appeal. I can't speak for previous decades, so correct me if things have drastically changed, but these days metalheads are seen almost more as a sub-division of 'nerd' than anything else; the Ranger to the nerd Fighter.

Back in the glory days, was D&D genuinely somewhat mainstream, or just mainstream with outsiders?

Metal today is not what hard rock and metal were back in the '70s and around '80, and it was a different culture. Metal wasn't so stylized and in-bred that the average joe couldn't relate to it anymore. Bands like Led Zeppelin had wider appeal than metal bands of today.

So yeah, the hard rock scene was probably more eclectic bitd. Now, everyone in so many genres are so pigeon-holed, that it seems crossover music is as rare unicorns.