My first exposure to the RPG experience was in the mid to late 80s when some friends got together played the Robotech RPG. After having so much fun there, we jumped into DnD. So many fun times...makes me wish to find a group a play again.
I've been a big fan of the show for a while now. Before listening to this, I knew basically nothing about D&D. Since listening, I've become obsessed with the game and have even gotten a few of my friends interested enough to sit down for a few sessions. I'm preparing for my first session as a DM this Friday. Basically, thanks so much for hosting this episode. By all means, host even more D&D themed episodes in the future! I would love to possibly hear a review of Fifth Edition in comparison to previous editions (given that 5e is all I'm familiar with). Anyway, thank you again!!!!
check out dndbeyond.com This is Wizards website for D&D. But having played 3 other editions I can say 3.5 was the best of the previous editions. 5th Ed is a lot more fun and flows better than the older editions. Glad you are playing and getting others involved.
I'm a student at Texas State and I found your podcast through the recommendation of your partner. Loved this video for a paper I'm writing and will definitely listen to more!
This was really long, but I think that it is definitely worth it. Both of these guys have well informed and entertaining views. The history of the game is hard to get to the bottom of as there are so many opinions about what happened, and the people who experienced them can only tell you their side of the story. Fascinating listening, and you did ask a lot of the same questions that I had, thank you!
In 1982 and 83 D&D was so popular I could buy modules and Dragon Dice at my local grocery store ( Meijer) . And incredibly we bought lead figure sets at Toys R Us!
When I was a kid, I had a friend who owned many of the D&D Gazeteers; I remember a harrowing and hilarious adventure in Thyatis (we were divided in two groups - one had many prosperous adventures, while the group I was a part of was enslaved and forced into the arenas. The other group jokingly referred to the adventure as Dungeons e Dinheiro - admittedly those words only have meaning in Portuguese, but it means Dungeons and Money, the cheeky bastards). I never knew I was playing the Mystara campaign until it was no longer being played. What a damned shame; those Gazeteers had good covers. With women's bosoms!
It amazes me how much things have changed since D&D's heyday. What started as a game made "exclusively" for nerds and "presented a gateway to the occult" by some members of society has quickly been embraced by all kinds of social circles. Now, even jocks and the most "popular" gals in schools are playing it. What truly amazes me are the amount of well-known celebrities that play it, from the late and great Robin Williams to George R.R. Martin himself. Next thing I know, former presidents like Clinton or Obama might be dungeon dwellers
From 30:12 to 39:11, I never thought they were never going to get to the topic of James Dallas Egbert the 3rd until 43:46 . And even then the info about what actually was wrong with James in the first place. So, I'm going to break down the details, get to the Nitty-gritty about Why James wanted to kill himself. I had to dig into alot of different sources to find this information, but I eventually pieced together JDE the 3rd story. He was a 16 year old student who excelled very early in his education and managed to get into Michigan State University! He was a kid. He was growing up and dealing with conflicting Hormones, had closet homo-sexual feelings, pressured by his family to continue focusing on his studies, was also bullied for being intelligent, and eventually got into drugs! All of these things became too much for Dallas to take, and he didn't want to deal with both having to continue studying for classes he was failing in due to his personal issues, nor did he want to return home to a demanding mother while he was addicted to drugs. So he decided to try and take his own life, only for his first attempt to fail and he ended up running away, deciding to find comfort or some space away from his problems by living in the home of one of his friends (or Sexual Admirer). It was around that point after a couple of months had passed that his family hired the Private investigator William Deer to seek out Dallas. He found his D&D books first in his dorm and the Map to the Steam Tunnels that he had made and used for his first suicide attempt before eventually finding Dallas, Who really did not want to go back home and asked for the Deer to not tell anyone where he was. William Deer followed through on this and left Dallas alone for now, but his actions would spur Dallas to leave and to Commit to two more attempts, his second time failing...only for his third and last attempt to succeed. All the While William Deer made up the story to the press that Dallas killed himself because of D&D in order to protect the shameful truth that James Dallas Egbert the 3rd was failing his University courses and could live with being who he was. Even though Dallas death spurred the negative attacks on TSR and spread the rumors that D&D killed Dallas, D&D financial success was the book burnings that Christians willingly participated in as Stores that sold D&D would not allow for these people to take them off the shelves freely! Its Ironic really. And the fact that Majority of people who continue to assume that this and other products of entertainment as evil, have still not learned ways to spot and address social problems within our Society and help those people that are in need. Whether mental or physical! I cannot stress enough how important this is...and yet even now we still face these issues.
In the British Isles the 'satanic panic' or the Egbert disappearance were given short shrift or just ignored entirely by the media who regarded the sort of people who openly worried about devil worship as not being completely 100% mentally. At most it got mild 'look at this strange new American game for geeks and the socially inept' type coverage. What really did take off in the British Isles was the Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks which achieved truly massive sales in 1983 and 1984. Literally everyone was playing them. There was a British rpg called Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay which was gritty, sardonic, and a tad cliquey and up itself too. Generally, D&D was looked down on, seen as clichéd, unrealistic, ripping off Tolkien, or to flog puerile books for semi-literate yanks like DragonLance. The Dragon Warriors RPG had an author's section lambasting merry elves, grumpy dwarves etc and praising Lankhmar and Tekumel instead. Just different tastes, not better just different. Call of Cthulhu, on the other hand, and to a lesser degree Runequest and King Arthur Pendragon were widely admired in the British gaming world for their erudition and intellectuality.
Pete Jeffris my mom was worried that I was putting my soul at risk with D&D. The Satanic Panic behavior of the Christians showed me that they are no better than the SJW's and Muslims they rail against.
Funny thing is in Sweden D&D never really hit much, somehow a swedish basic role playing based rpg Dragons and Demons if i translate it so they used D&D as a name to sell even if no roles was alike, no levelsystem. Etc. They put the first 2 boxes out here translated, nobody wanted them, i alway wondered if they instead would have brought out AD&D first, if it would have changed something. The makers Target Games was the biggest into early 90s when rpg died, but its not even dead today really, and D&D never got a chance. Thats quite uncommon in Europe, but sweden has been good in writing our own rpg games. Some was translated to english, KULT is a well known one getting your parets crazy thinking you really was devilwirshippers. Not like nobody played English rpgs, i did, i got alot of D&D stuff in tve 90s worth nothing, i bought and sit on it. Still nice pictures in them, and 15 years later i sold it all. But as it is Sweden did not have D&D as the basic rpg, but a game more related to Runequest really, but just the basics the rest was all local. Its not like this un the countries around us at all, D&D did succed there.
Um actually, those books from the '80s are still 1st edition of the game, even if the books themselves were reprints. We didn't get 2nd edition D&D until 1989.
ha. I made characters and read the books but I think my friends and I were just a little too dumb and unambitious to put a proper game together. Glad we weren't the only ones.
Headrock wait wait wait... you havent played d&d... but you have the rulebooks? DUDE GO TO ADVENTURER’S LEAGUE! (Its pretty much where people teach you the rules, play through a session with you, and it’s free. Bam.)
Surprised that there was no mention of Paizo & Pathfinder. For me that is the best version of D&D and it was entirely due to Wizards of the Coast cancelling Paizo's rights to publish Dragon magazine and going badly wrong with 4th edition, stubbornly refusing to admit their error, which allowed Paizo to hoover up all of the players who loved 3.5 edition and felt abandoned in favour of trying to get MMO players to play 4th edition.
