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Sep 20, 2012 -- 6:40PM, Doomjester wrote:

A lot of the forum posts here reference gaming experience as a way of establishing cred (e.g. I've been gaming for 20 years and I started with AD&D), but I'm wondering how many teens or early twentysomethings are out there browsing these boards.  These are the players who are going to either take this hobby into the future or see it consigned to the "model train ghetto".

So, do you fit that demographic?

If so, what edition did you start with and what do you think of the current playtest?
 

I'm 24, I guess that's early 20-something. I started with 2e way back when I was 10 (my dad was a longtime D&D player and decided to get me into it.), so I dunno. I've been playing for over a decade, but I'm definitely not up there with the guys who are 50-60 years old and have been playing since red box. I'm also the youngest player in my current group by 2-3 years. I know I'm considered young among some of the longtimers, but to me it seems disappointing that it's so hard to get other people closer to my age or younger into the game. 

[Edit:  Re: Your actual question, right now I'm pretty disappointed in the playtest. I think that having a unique resource for every class is unsustainable and will end up with way too much rules bloat. 4e having everyone on the same system was bad, but this is the exact opposite extreme, a happy medium needs to be found. I'm also not really liking what we're seeing in terms of options available for Mundanes vs Magic, the options available to the mundane classes just feel much more limited in both scope and number, and every indication is that will get worse with higher levels being released. Also not a big fan of how gear is being handled, but gear in general is a personal interest of mine (I have extensive homebrew regarding gear and fighting styles for 3.5) and I'm not likely to be satisfied with a system simple enough to make it into core. I also think the concept of bounded accuracy is flawed and counter to every edition of D&D I've ever played, and the skill system is extremely boring, failing to provide any meaningful non-combat mechanics for anyone without spells.

I mean there are bits and pieces I like. The core mechanic of CS is decent, and advantage/disadvantage dice. But there are huge chunks of the game right now that run completely counter to what I want, and almost every article seems to be pushing itself further in that direction.]


As an aside, people who try to establish credibility with how long they've been playing are generally just wasting their own time in doing so. You can have someone who's been playing RPGs for 6 months who tried to inhale everything out there at once and has played a dozen different systems and knows the ins and outs of how the various games work and design in general.  On the other hand you can have the guy who's been playing for 40 years with the same group doing the same things, still using the same system. Out of these two fictional people, I'd be more interested in hearing the perspective of the new guy.

I am a member of the started in 1e or so group, but my 14yr old son he wanted to give mocking names to the 5e characters we were making, I think the first was called bob1. He started between editions with free form play... and moved on to 4e. He only comes here rarely. I think this is a model train yard.

HEY, BOB!  (I take no one here is familiar with a Ren. Faire specialty, "Ded Bob")  21, near 22, and I started with 2nd Edition (specifically Planescape, Ravenloft, and Forgotten Realms).  Besides a few things here and there, nothing has really wowed me in the current playtest.  I felt like I've already seen it.  That's not a bad thing, but there's no surprise there.  I'm waiting for something new to shock and intrigue me.  I mean, I'll probably still buy 5E (So far, I like what I see), but I'd like it if something really caught me off guard and excited me to check out a little more.  Anyone know what I mean?  Also, I enjoy model trains quite a bit, thank you very much   As for the hobby as a whole?  My FLGS is confident with the progression of D&D.  Tons of people have been introduced to it within the county alone.  Some have stuck with it, some have left.  So, if that's some indication that the next generation of younger adult gamers are interested in D&D.