Then and now

There seems to be quite a flurry over the recent incarnation of Dungeons and Dragons, complements of the good folks at Wizards of the Coast.  Much of it focused on the look of the new rule books.  My thoughts some other time.  But here's what I notice.  D&D as a non-electronic pastime is having a difficult go of it fitting into the 21st century.  Why not?  Most things that once were considered the tops are struggling now.  It's almost as if culture, art, and entertainment changed overnight all of a sudden, and those looking back are working to figure out how to fit in.  Even books, time honored books, dating to the earliest form of communication, are scarce able to avoid being swallowed up by the post-digital leviathan. 

So why not D&D?  Why wouldn't it struggle? And I thought of some of what we had in the day when the game first came out, versus what youngsters have today and what the game provides.  Of course for many players of the game in its earliest incarnations, the primary source for imagination and escapism was: 

So when a game pops up that looks like this:

It is going to pique the curiosity of at least a few individuals.  As it expands and grows and develops, you have a game that looks like this:

and this:

And when you consider that, until about 1977, the absolute best you could hope for in the top genre movies out there would be akin to this:

that's still pretty impressive.  Even when computer games and video games began to emerge in the 70s and early 80s, D&D - especially as it developed - gave the available technology a run for the money.  Sure Star Wars had come out, and movie special effects were improving.  But you couldn't spend every day going to a movie, even after VCRs became widely available.  So if you wanted to flex those creative muscles, and be inspired by the new technology, you had this:

and this:

While the good folks at TSR (and other publishers) could produce something as awe-inspiring and promising as this:

and even this:

But now, consider a few quick clips from the here and now:

and:

And compared to that, when people think of D&D as a  non-electronic entertainment source, their minds increasingly see this:

See how that works?  In the late 70s and 80s, as I said in my post about the Monster Manual, things simply weren't as widely available, nor anywhere near as sophisticated and technically brilliant, as they are today.  Holding Ravenloft or Dragonlance or even the Players Handbook in your hands gave you an edge on most of what was available to all but a select group of people in the right markets.  Now, it's like churning butter versus buying it by the tub at the local Kroger's.  Or it's like singing around a campfire versus flying in the latest HD 3D quantum space simulator.  Will it continue to survive?  That's hard to say.  But I have a feeling, like so many other pastimes that lasted for ages longer than D&D, all it will be able to do will be survive.