How Do We Get The Genie Back In The Bottle?

I am obsessed with the hobby as it was in the early to mid-80s. It was arguably the high water mark of the hobby, being as it were an extention of the alternative underground, with it's connections to university campuses and model railways, both hotbeds of outcast humanity and radical ideas (Z gauge - who thought that one up?)

Now, we have a hobby which has been dragged by Mammon and a generation who were not even potentially lucky wanks back then, into the light, where the things which made it so appealing are being forgotten and actively ignored, allowing it to become a bit tame.

Look, I and others (if you take the time to speak to us grumbling old bastards, with our grey hair, WRG rules and single colour  D20s and no sharp edges from use (and certainly with no cute little fucking unicorns, ducks or kittens moulded into them - Grow up) lived through those times, which were every bit as frightening as the modern world is, and gaming was somewhere we could essentially slip between the cracks and go unobserved as part of a secretive, supposedly devil worshipping, subculture.

You learned things from talking to people, exploring backstreets, the dark corners of model shops and for some reason philatelic suppliers (Can anyone explain that connection? Rye Stamp & Hobby, Not Just Stamps, Stamp Corner etc) meeting some truly strange individuals. 

I don't just mean a kid in eyeliner and black hair dye (been there, got the hangups and the counselling) or grown men claiming to be unicorns. No, these were  proper old school wierdos, with sandals, pipes and detailed knowledge of Napoleonic underwear, or people who actually understood and played Chivalry & Sorcery.

There was so much to learn, so much to read, and rules systems were generally rich and detailed. There was also a LOT of variety.

These days the rules are simplistic and samey, meaning that you can be playing the same game with different figures, often not even vaguely feeling 'period correct'.

Serious research has largely gone out of the window, and roleplaying games have as many winners as losers playing them.

This is not the natural order of thing, whatsoever.

Look, I am all for a vibrant hobby, but, if you are going to make Gary Gygax a godhead, then you should also learn the history and background of that hobby. You have a duty, sacred or otherwise, to accurately record and pass on the history. Not the history you wish it had, but the grubby, sordid history in grubby, sordid frightening times, which created somewhere for you to live temporarily until nuclear war, terrorism or religious fundamentalists finally got you.

Gaming has always attracted broken people and turned many of them into functioning human beings, because they had to learn to interact with others, and pass that on to an upcoming generation. That is right and proper. Gaming has also been somewhere that chancers and people with dreams have been able to make a living. Now, we have Big Box Companies ploughing these small traders into the earth, never to be seen, as thy hoover up every penny from gullible fools.

This has to stop.

You don't have to buy something out of company loyalty or to fit in with your mates. You really don't.

My own circle of teenage gamers was around 40 across the social and economic scale, at 5 different clubs and as many informal groups. Some of us likes one thing, some of us another. We did not feel an urge to be the same. Hell, we tried NOT to be the same, and from this we developed a rich and varied understanding of the hobby, encouraged by older (and wiser) gamers from the 1st generation, the collective godhead of gaming.  

Even today, those of us still involved, are individuals, and very opinionated individuals at that, and we play games together, laugh together and yes, we are growing old together.  

We remember those early days , and lament how the hobby is truly going down the plughole.

It's time to find the plug