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Everything old is new again.
The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders.... They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.
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I'm 33, and I'd say rpg's on Nintendo is what got me interestet in rpg's in the first place. So I disagree of course.
Tri, I think that's a quote from Aristotle, correct?
If so, and I think it is, it may well be that the quote doesn't show how old and predictable it is for old people to complain about children, instead it could well show that children misbehaving in such a way actually is a sign of the decline of a civilization. So you could read it either way if you want.
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It's attributed to many different ancient scholars, and there is no solid proof linking it to any of them.
Well, my point stands. Your post appeared to be suggesting that complaining about children's behavior and upbringing is just crotchety old man talk because someone said it 3,000 years ago. My point is that 3,000 years ago, civilizations were failing, and it may well be that a symptom of a declining civilization is disrespectful, entitled and uncivilized youth.
My favorite quotation about the state of civilization is actually from Robert Heinlein who said something along the lines of "You can tell how civilized a culture actually is by checking out their public restrooms."
I feel sorry for today's youth as I notice that Imagination is in a decline as more and more turn to the swift press of a button over the roll of dice. Gone are the days of pretend.
I wish we can get the pen and paper rpgs back in the mainstream. Children are not using their imagination playing console games and MMOs all the time.
I know I may make no since in the above so I will sum up below
Kids lack imagination due to the electronic gaming age.
I fear for the creativity of movies and games in the future as we can already see the movie industry's lack of new material.Lets bring the world back to Pen and Paper table top!
Absolutely on board.
Last game I played in (not dmed), brought dice, pencils, paper to fill out my own character sheets as I wished. I got laughed at by the technologists, who brought all their laptops and dice rollers, phones and what not. Then they proceeded to be distracted by laptops and phones over the weeks.
A shameful display. New is not always better, and mutliple types of entertainment dragged along to a game can really distract.
My point is that 3,000 years ago, civilizations were failing, and it may well be that a symptom of a declining civilization is disrespectful, entitled and uncivilized youth.The point is that the perception is always there, regardless of the reality.
OK, that's fair, but that doesn't change that it could be reality.
True enough. On the other hand, when the wolf attacks it doesn't much help to say "but they were always crying wolf!"
Sometimes there is a wolf.
The Assyrians wouldn't have put up with this, lol.
Drk is right about the hollywood movie industry. It is running out of ideas, trying to sell childhood back to people and sequels again and again.
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I did have a sad moment recently. The game ran but I was missing some players. I tried to explain prior, cmon people, I know you like skyrim, but this game coming up (which I had a lot planned for) will be better than a game of skyrim, and you will be able to do things you can't in skyrim.
It was a dungeon of ghosts, where each had to be laid to rest or defeated to continue. It was rp and checks to pass them. There was gambling of magic items to get past the gambler ghost, physical tests to get past the athlete. Social checks to calm the mourning cannibal, a duel against a dead swordsman ghost with very specific criteria to win, help an old linguist decipher a puzzle he had made, a prostitute ghost and possession etc etc. It was a series of scenes, but some had other things on and some didn't get to play it. Sigh.
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Drk is right about the hollywood movie industry. It is running out of ideas, trying to sell childhood back to people and sequels again and again.
Like they did with John Carpenter's The Thing?
Wow, I didn't know Angels in the Outfield was a remake. The more you know.
Hell, Scarface was a remake. So was Ocean's Eleven, and I for one am glad they did it. Great movie.
The rot has got in deep, not everything is bad, but the industry has real problems and a lack of vision. Sameyness is here.
By Scarface you mean 1983 right?
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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If you feel that the youth need more imagination and that table top RPGs need to come back, then I have a solution.
Find a way to volunteer to introduce Pathfinder to a group of teens.
- Talk to your game store owner about setting up a monthly Beginner Box night.
- Look into starting to mentoring in an after school RPG club.
- If you have teenagers, talk to them about inviting some friend over regularly to play.
- Talk to your local PFS coordinator about how you can help attract more teens.
If you can't do any of those or something similar, buy some Beginner Boxes or books and donate them to a group that can.
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The best way to draw kids into a hobby is to rant angrily about how much kids these days suck and things were so much better back in my day. I can't imagine why my general strategy of waving a cane angrily at any child with a gameboy who passes by hasn't made them realize how much better I am than them and how they should really play my game.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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The Assyrians wouldn't have put up with this, lol.
Drk is right about the hollywood movie industry. It is running out of ideas, trying to sell childhood back to people and sequels again and again.
They actually are not out of ideas. The problem they have is that Hollywood is ran by lawyers and bored millionaires instead of the artists that should be. They want safe ideas that will make them money instead of creative risks that might not bring back the investment. They also have the high cost of making a modern movie going against them. Everyone wants the biggest, flashiest, and coolest special effects. Actors are super expensive these days, so are directors, directors of photography, and the many hundreds of crew that are needed to make the movie. Sets are huge, on location desired, and green screen isn't cheap.
Then we have people that have so much money they force their way into being a producer and do stupid things. But that is a different topic.
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Middle age - that period in life when you stop criticizing the generation that came before you and start criticizing the one that's coming after.
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I feel like I just said this elsewhere (pretty sure I did)...
But tabletop RPGs and video games are about the same age, born in the early-mid 70s.
One of the early video games was called "dnd," made in 1975, which predates me by a mere year. It was of course based on and named after the fledgling tabletop game becoming popular around the same time amongst gamer circles. Which also illustrates that both media have always been interesting to gamers around the same time.
As I get older, I understand wanting to shake your cane and tell the kids to get them and their newfangled trash off their lawn, but when the "newfangled trash" you're objecting to is the same age as your own hobby, I don't really get it.
Now, yeah, video games are more mainstream these days than TTRPGs. That has to do with marketing and accessibility and production costs and all kinds of things. It would be nice if TTRPGs became more mainstream (I'm sure Hasbro would be happier if they were, as it would mean their D&D division would make them more money), sure. But that's all to do with some complex forces that are hard for us to control.
Besides, if TTRPGs were more mainstream, they may lose the very qualities we find attractive in them. After all, as led to above--probably the easiest way for TTRPGs to become mainstream were if Hasbro were to do something with D&D that made them more mainstream. D&D 4e might even be seen as an earlier attempt to do just that. Different opinions differ about 4e's quality, but a lot of folks who do find it off putting find it such precisely because there was a lot of effort to make it more palatable for the masses. Should all TTRPGs take that route?
I might also add that while video games are more mainstream (although video gamers are only slightly less ostracized than table toppers), what's considered a mainstream game are largely shooters and puzzle games. RPGs in the digital world, while increasingly popular in recent years, are still considered to be more "niche." And we're back to...
Not so different after all.
Oh, yes, and I am also someone who can say that were it not for video games, I never would have played TTRPGs. The Gold Box games from the late 80s largely got me interested in D&D.
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Grew up with videogames.
Nearly turned away from tabletop RPGs entirely after horrible early experiences partially because there was a lack of imagination at the table. It was all by-the-number, formulaic, an mostly RP-absent.
Thank goodness tabletop RPG players are just as varied as videogame players! You'd think there was a large amount of crossover going on there...
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Computer games are more popular than tabletop games, and (probably) have been since they were first available.
It's not because kids have no imagination, it's because turning on a computer or console for a quick game is easier than arranging for 4+ friends to come over to your house and take over your parents' living room for hours on end. Playing a computer game is still something people do mainly on their own, in their own time.
Kids still go out and play with their friends, run around pretending to be pirates or what-have-you and they still socialise. when they get a little bit too old to run around pretending to be pirates (sorry LARPers... :p ), they go riding on bikes, skateboarding, have a kickabout on the park [male-centric]. And sure, they might play computer games. Tabletop gaming just isn't on the radar for most people, it never has been.
Bemoaning that kids are playing computer games rather than tabletop games is pining for a reality that has never existed.
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As for creativity now and then...
20th century media alone...
Look for Beatles copycat bands - plenty of them, we don't remember them today, that doesn't mean they didn't exist.
Look for a list of Rock'n'Roll bands, look for sound samples from those of these bands whose names you don't know - they sound familiar? Probably because they more or less plagiarized their more famous predecessors.
80s pop bands - must I really?
The golden days of western movies - yeah, really many original stories there and they all were put to screen at least a dozen times ;-)
Video games - the list of R-type, Mario, Tetris and Galaga clones is endless.
When we look back at entertainment/culture/art of different eras, we tend to think of what prevailed, music, paintings, movies etc - the thing is, they were copied in their time, there were unoriginal, boring and unimaginatve people around then, as there are now.
When I was introduced into RPGs, there were about 20 players around in three schools around my age. The rest had other interests and hobbies. At least where I live, RPGs were never mainstream, Some heard of them and those that were interested looked for them and then for other players - but those already were people looking for some way to express a certain creativity or looking for social gaming.
Throwing an RPG (pen and paper) on a bunch of randomly chosen kiddos just because the like fantasy video games is doomed to fail - but then, throwing an RPG at a bunch of kiddos that liked the Conan movie back then (or a Harryhousen movie) probably didn't result in the instant birth of a new gaming group, either.
At least that is what I remember.
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Shortening out the references to electronics:
I feel sorry for today's youth as I notice that Imagination is in a decline ... Gone are the days of pretend ... Kids lack imagination ... I fear for the creativity ... in the future ...
I'm 40+
My grandad said his father was told essentially the same thing by his father.Every generation seems to feel the same way about every following generation. I see no evidence that it is true.
The kinds of things they imagine and how it is applied CHANGES. But i don't see it going away.
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Grew up with videogames.
Nearly turned away from tabletop RPGs entirely after horrible early experiences partially because there was a lack of imagination at the table. It was all by-the-number, formulaic, an mostly RP-absent.
Thank goodness tabletop RPG players are just as varied as videogame players! You'd think there was a large amount of crossover going on there...
The accounting chronicles: the cheese-number adventures really is a sad thing to experience.
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Final Fantasy. My first RPG.
Chrono Trigger here.
I bet you don't even know how to get an NES cart to work. :PFinal Fantasy. My first RPG.Chrono Trigger here.
Lies. CT was my first RPG. Mario 1/Duck Hunt, Mario 3, ExciteBike, Ninja Turtles, and StarTropics were my first games.
Anyway - Same way you get a SNES one to work. Blow out the machine, blow out the cartridge. Lick the slot (or your finger then rub it on the slot, for the hygenically paranoid) if that doesn't do the trick.
Ah, blinking blue-and-pink NES screens when the thing decides it doesn't want to work today. Always used to beg my parents that my designated 30 minutes of "Nintendo Time" not be started until I got the thing working.
Dangit, now I'm all nostalgic.
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Super mario, duck hunt.......okay, done drooling now. Good old pen and paper. Holy crap, actually physically holding a pencil and writing instead of typing. Incredibly simple and almost impossible to stuff up. Now, with the high tech pdas, smartphones...etc. Alot more room for it to go wrong.
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Anyway - Same way you get a SNES one to work. Blow out the machine, blow out the cartridge. Lick the slot (or your finger then rub it on the slot, for the hygenically paranoid) if that doesn't do the trick.Ah, blinking blue-and-pink NES screens when the thing decides it doesn't want to work today. Always used to beg my parents that my designated 30 minutes of "Nintendo Time" not be started until I got the thing working.
Dangit, now I'm all nostalgic.
This thread could use a mature rating :)
-_-
Shortening out the references to electronics:
I feel sorry for today's youth as I notice that Imagination is in a decline ... Gone are the days of pretend ... Kids lack imagination ... I fear for the creativity ... in the future ...I'm 40+
My grandad said his father was told essentially the same thing by his father.Every generation seems to feel the same way about every following generation. I see no evidence that it is true.
The kinds of things they imagine and how it is applied CHANGES. But i don't see it going away.
Why should it matter that it's said in literally every generation regardless of the actual properties of the following generation? This time might be the time it's actually true and therefore we should take it as a serious warning. After all, they said it in Greece shortly before Greece fell (and for centuries before Greece fell but that's not important), so maybe this is a sign that our modern world is on the verge of collapse due to more people playing WoW than DnD.
Also, I hear Greece had blue skies shortly before it fell. I just looked outside and the sky... was blue. Clearly it is a warning we would be ill-advised to ignore.
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Drk is right about the hollywood movie industry. It is running out of ideas, trying to sell childhood back to people and sequels again and again.Like they did with John Carpenter's The Thing?
Wow, I didn't know Angels in the Outfield was a remake. The more you know.
Hell, Scarface was a remake. So was Ocean's Eleven, and I for one am glad they did it. Great movie.
Was it Shakespeare who once said that there are only five stories, everything else is packaging?
Hmm... doesn't sound like Shakespeare, but it's an old concept. From a pure plot analysis perspective there's not a whole lot of difference between LoTR, Harry Potter or Spiderman...
I don't know... I wish I was able to acquire a broader perspective of this sort of thing, but that's the problem with a linear existence. I can certainly understand the OP's point of view, and I'm initially tempted to agree, but I'm sure that my parent's generation said similar things about mine.
After all, long before electronic games were around, television was "destroying the world's youth"... as were radio, cinema, and comic books before that.
I think that electronic gaming has been a double-edged sword. It has been a "gateway drug" to actual RPGs (I really don't like the idea of calling the Final Fantasy-styled games "RPGs", because they aren't) for several decades now, but it does sort of seem to propagate a sense of laziness among some.
The difference I see is that electronic gaming is continuing to advance and improve and an astounding pace, while pen and paper RPGs really haven't fundamentally changed all that much since their conception. Sure, the rules are different (often being more accessible and involving less complex mathematics, these days) and the errata keeps piling up, but I feel that far less difference exists between Chainmail and Pathfinder than lies between Adventure and Skyrim. Could just be my perspective, though.
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I like how the new proof that the youth is corrupt and worthless is that they aren't playing D&D enough. Quite an amusing reversal, and not one I expected to see with such a total absence of self-awareness.
I eagerly await the date when the crotchety old men decry the modern youth's inferior mathematical ability, as evidenced by their spending time on the holodeck instead of DPS-optimizing in WoW 7.5.
It would be more correct to say that the decline in video games runs parallel to the decline in gamesters.
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I can't find the link for it, but a while ago a tablet was unearthed in the Middle East, dating from Babylonian times. It described a father's woe at his children and others of the new generation being so useless that he feared civilisation itself would end.
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I can't find the link for it, but a while ago a tablet was unearthed in the Middle East, dating from Babylonian times. It described a father's woe at his children and others of the new generation being so useless that he feared civilisation itself would end.
...which actually happened because ancient Babylon didn't last forever! Which proves that this is a serious issue that should be handled with the utmost care and not casually dismissed as just another old fogie waving his cane at you-kids-these-days.
I can't find the link for it, but a while ago a tablet was unearthed in the Middle East, dating from Babylonian times. It described a father's woe at his children and others of the new generation being so useless that he feared civilisation itself would end.
Yep, Babylon did end. lol.
Good old mesopotamia. Crazy region.
Huh. That looks similar to the thing I was looking for.
I'm 33, and I'd say rpg's on Nintendo is what got me interestet in rpg's in the first place. So I disagree of course.
Exactly the same case here (except I turn 33 this week). Video Game RPG's are what led me to table-top RPG's in the first place.
Final Fantasy. My first RPG.
Wait, does Adventure count?
Almost the same here... I rented Ultima Exodus the week before I played Final Fantasy the first time. Ditto on Adventure on Atari. Does Zelda count?
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Sure there are some good RPGs out there, but what gets the kids away from the controller and puts the dice in their hands. In my community there isn't much resources for table top gaming.
I m just saying without the push children will continue to sit in front of a screen or monitor and mash buttons not even using their imagination. I love table top rpg cause the vast choices you can make that can impact your character and the world they are in. Everything in console and MMOs seem like your on a track and always end up at the same point.
Take End game world of warcraft everyone specs for max dps armor and weapons all look the same as people chose the same items that the other person trying to max out dps and armor is chosing.
The isn't a real role play element to MMOs just repetitive actions.
Perhaps I will start a thread on ideas to help boost a communities Tabletop rpg presence.
It'd be nice if people realized that enjoying table-top RPG's and video game RPG's doesn't have to be a mutually exclusive thing.
In the 80's, I was well aware that D&D existed, but as an elementary school kid with very little money, there was no way for me to get any of the books except by way of Christmas/birthday presents. Even then, the books were really intimidating for someone my age who had no one else to help teach me the game. I always wanted to get into it back then, but had no "in."
On the other hand, my whole family was into video games(my mom still plays Ms. Pac-Man to this day) and I got my fantasy fix on games like the Legend of Zelda, eventually full-blown RPG's like Ultima Exodus, Final Fantasy, etc. After finishing those games, I was completely hooked on the idea of creating characters, storyline, adventuring, and by then I was old enough to get a D&D beginner board game to start to learn the ropes of table-top gaming, and it's been amazing ever since.
Video game and table-top go hand-in-hand in my experience. As for the rest of your "kids these days" rant, that's just what they're into.
My oldest daughter is starting to take an interest in gaming; she's a little intimidated by D&D/PF, but she's taken a liking to Magic; The Gathering, so I'm helping her learn that and see where it goes.
I think that electronic gaming has been a double-edged sword. It has been a "gateway drug" to actual RPGs (I really don't like the idea of calling the Final Fantasy-styled games "RPGs", because they aren't) for several decades now, but it does sort of seem to propagate a sense of laziness among some.
How do you figure? In the original Final Fantasy, you rolled up all the characters in your party; chose classes, named them, etc. You had 6 initial classes to pick from, you looted dungeons, acquired gear, fought dragons and saved the world. All in turn-based combat(not real-time hack and slash).
How do you figure that isn't an RPG?
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I'm pretty sure Final Fantasy was based on D&D. There are even illithids and beholders in there.