For me they’re aspirational. I haven’t played a pen and paper RPG in over 20 years, but like to imagine I’ll find the time. With a baby on the way, in about 8 to 12 years I’ll have a captive audience to play with, between her and my wife.
It’s the same with our giant shelf of board games that are better with 3 players. We’re playing the long game here.
You can start when they’re as little as 4 and have decent results. I started with mine when they were 5 and 3 with Hero Kids and by the time they hit 6 and 8, they’d graduated to Pathfinder 2 (edit: albeit with a great deal of help/handholding)
10/10, would indoctrinate children with gateway drugs games again
That’s awesome to know. I suppose they’re really just a game of “let’s pretend” but with a bit of structure.
Exactly. I think we actually “started” just by giving them coloring pages of cartoony fantasy creatures and characters and then making up stories about goblins and dragons on our morning walks, which in turn got them excited about their characters and miniatures and rolling dice
I have the D&D 3.5 core rulebooks on my shelf in the nerd nook. I know that I’m never going to play 3.5 again, but it’s the system I first got into the hobby with. It would feel wrong to get rid of my personal history of nerdship.
@Bougie_Birdie Can confirm this instinct of yours - I got into the game in the 2e AD&D days, and I have spent good money reacquiring things, because I missed them and needed them on my gaming shelf, knowing full well I’ll never use them in play again.
Even if I don’t directly use each book, I might find ideas and inspiration in them that I can bring back to the games I do run. This has happened plenty of times. Besides, they can be fun to read. This goes for old books too. Numerous times I’ve adapted old material for new games.
My husband’s computer recently died and he was very scared about the possibility of losing 40 plus gigs of digital RPG rule books. I did manage to save the drive so all was good.
A good DM knows the rules for the system he is running, a great DM steals from every RPG in arms reach.
There are so many advances in game systems since the Palladium system I use, so I have stolen shamelessly to make combat last less than 1 game session rather than the two or three under standard rules
The universe is good, the rules are ancient
I do have a shelf of books though for Rifts, TMNT, after the bomb
