4 ms·

Yep, playing D&D was not something to admit to in a general audience. to this day I have difficulty talking about D&D with people in public.

Jtsummers 6y ago
WoW and D&D 4e pretty much changed public perception, at least for people under a certain age (now 40ish), with regard to RPGs in general. That was when the frat guys at universities started playing D&D. That would be the equivalent of the high school jocks slinging dice between drills. Paired with the explosion in tabletop board gaming in the US (thanks Settlers of Catan) that's happened this century, it's become cool/normal to be into these kinds of things.
- sillyquiet 6y ago
  It think the shift into acceptance of D&D is part of a general mainstreaming of geek stuff (the so-called geek wave) rather than just tabletop games and the like. Other 'geek' interests fell into the same category - Star Trek, etc. Those also have reached 'ok, I can talk about it in wider social circles without getting squinted at or handed a copy of The Watchtower' levels in the new millennium where they were not previously. This is definitely a better state of affairs and it really really please me to see new audiences play D&D or discover TNG, but sadly, as such (again, maybe just my nostalgic bias) such things have been so marketable-sized by the corps taking advantage of the geek wave as to be bland and soulless.
  - ketzo 6y ago
    I guess it's just the natural course for anything popular and marketable, really -- although thankfully, Wizards of the Coast has continued to publish some really excellent (at least in my opinion) D&D content. Plus, if you're willing to sift through a lot of so-so stuff, there's a lot of really great free or low-cost amateur homebrew stuff out there. That kind of thing is definitely a result D&D's popularity explosion.
FeloniousHam 6y ago
The game which dare not speak its name.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  Jumanji?
spullara 6y ago
I played a lot of D&D when I was a teenager but it pales in comparison to the amount my teenage daughter plays today. Discord has made it so easy for her to get a group going that she has 3 different groups each week. However, they are much less about min/maxing as they are about the drama and story.
- bregma 6y ago
  I think minmaxers were always just a specialized subgenre of fantasy gamers. The core to role playing games is playing a role -- the strict definition of drama and story. There was always a schism between those who saw the rules as an enabling technology to explore alternative takes on the human condition, and those who saw story and character as a matrix onto which the rules could be projected. Same as pretty much everything else, I'll wager.
dccoolgai 6y ago
I was on the football team and I loved D&D. We had a really small group of kids we played with and lived in constant fear of being "outed".
hesdeadjim 6y ago
If you need any indication how times have changed, my buddy teaches high school and runs a D&D club whose members aren't remotely socially stigmatized for it. I graduated in '99, and even just 20 years ago it's not something I would have brought up at school.

Jtsummers 6y ago

WoW and D&D 4e pretty much changed public perception, at least for people under a certain age (now 40ish), with regard to RPGs in general. That was when the frat guys at universities started playing D&D. That would be the equivalent of the high school jocks slinging dice between drills. Paired with the explosion in tabletop board gaming in the US (thanks Settlers of Catan) that's happened this century, it's become cool/normal to be into these kinds of things.

sillyquiet 6y ago
It think the shift into acceptance of D&D is part of a general mainstreaming of geek stuff (the so-called geek wave) rather than just tabletop games and the like. Other 'geek' interests fell into the same category - Star Trek, etc. Those also have reached 'ok, I can talk about it in wider social circles without getting squinted at or handed a copy of The Watchtower' levels in the new millennium where they were not previously. This is definitely a better state of affairs and it really really please me to see new audiences play D&D or discover TNG, but sadly, as such (again, maybe just my nostalgic bias) such things have been so marketable-sized by the corps taking advantage of the geek wave as to be bland and soulless.
- ketzo 6y ago
  I guess it's just the natural course for anything popular and marketable, really -- although thankfully, Wizards of the Coast has continued to publish some really excellent (at least in my opinion) D&D content. Plus, if you're willing to sift through a lot of so-so stuff, there's a lot of really great free or low-cost amateur homebrew stuff out there. That kind of thing is definitely a result D&D's popularity explosion.

FeloniousHam 6y ago

The game which dare not speak its name.

zentiggr 6y ago
Jumanji?

spullara 6y ago

I played a lot of D&D when I was a teenager but it pales in comparison to the amount my teenage daughter plays today. Discord has made it so easy for her to get a group going that she has 3 different groups each week. However, they are much less about min/maxing as they are about the drama and story.

bregma 6y ago
I think minmaxers were always just a specialized subgenre of fantasy gamers. The core to role playing games is playing a role -- the strict definition of drama and story. There was always a schism between those who saw the rules as an enabling technology to explore alternative takes on the human condition, and those who saw story and character as a matrix onto which the rules could be projected. Same as pretty much everything else, I'll wager.

dccoolgai 6y ago

I was on the football team and I loved D&D. We had a really small group of kids we played with and lived in constant fear of being "outed".

hesdeadjim 6y ago

If you need any indication how times have changed, my buddy teaches high school and runs a D&D club whose members aren't remotely socially stigmatized for it. I graduated in '99, and even just 20 years ago it's not something I would have brought up at school.