Happy Presidents Day, good people.
After a decent go of searching the forums, I was unable to find any reference to this:
published by DotDash Meredith Premium Publishing
I'm relatively certain that my search methods need attention, since this publication was released in September of 2024, and there is absolutely NO way that every delver on EN World just happened to miss it. Maybe, to some, it wasn't exactly a priority for discussion, but for this to fly completely under the TTRPG world's radar strikes me as utterly impossible.
In any case, taking into account how passionate the D&D-playing members of EN World are about their core avocation, I chose to simply include a link to this publication as opposed to coming out as a cheerleader for it. As with nearly any third-party opinion regarding a subject I'm passionate about, there are things about the pub that I liked and a few that I thought could have stood improvement or that it was a mistake to leave out. But then again, it's only 96 pages long, which we all know is a woefully inadequate amount of space to touch upon everything that is and has been Dungeons & Dragons.
Overall, I believe the many authors, editors, and other contributors to the work did a super job, assuming of course that the goal was to paint the TTRPG hobby in general in the best light possible. I also believe that there isn't a delver out there who realizes that, despite the fact that the hobby has been around for five decades+, to any person who isn't a fan, the hobby and D&D in particular remain shrouded in a cloud of mystery, head-scratching, and misunderstanding. And that is why I think that this publication's timing could not have been better.
The movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and the series Stranger Things and The Big Bang Theory are among the many warm lights along the journey to this point who made D&D a positive aspect in the lives of their shows' key personalities, the goal of course being to inform their respective audiences that this 'weird' pastime may not be the devil-worshipping ritual that ill-spirited and less responsible parties have painted it to be.
There were two major points in the pub whose inclusion I am especially grateful for. "The Game's Journey" on page 16 begins with an example of the very misrepresentation of the hobby that I touched on in the previous paragraph. For me this is a very personal thing, since I encountered this kind of baffling but militant resistance to a subject that its detractors knew almost nothing about many times in the early to mid-1980's, just when D&D was slowly emerging from its 'For Extreme Nerds Only' shell.
The other point I wanted to highlight about the pub is "Therapy and Play" which begins on page 86. Absolutely spot-on article, especially because it speaks truth to what D&D and its cousins in the TTRPG world actually are and not what their detractors would like the public to believe that they are. How many shy kids and adults, people who seriously thought that they had nothing whatsoever to bring to a table, have D&D and I teamed up for to prove otherwise. Many of them are now (happily) 'Loud-mouthed' DMs and GMs for whom without D&D I probably never could have convinced to take that first step out of the shadow that imprisoned them (at least not then).
In short, I urge any EN World delver to add this publication to their library while the chance is still available. As the above link shows us, you still have the opportunity to get it new for $15. In about a year, would-be scalpers will be attempting to hock the pub on eBay for considerably more, whether they are successful or not.
Do you already have this pub, or have otherwise read its contents? I'd love for you to chime in and tell us your thoughts about it.
Best,
Pat
After a decent go of searching the forums, I was unable to find any reference to this:
published by DotDash Meredith Premium Publishing
I'm relatively certain that my search methods need attention, since this publication was released in September of 2024, and there is absolutely NO way that every delver on EN World just happened to miss it. Maybe, to some, it wasn't exactly a priority for discussion, but for this to fly completely under the TTRPG world's radar strikes me as utterly impossible.
In any case, taking into account how passionate the D&D-playing members of EN World are about their core avocation, I chose to simply include a link to this publication as opposed to coming out as a cheerleader for it. As with nearly any third-party opinion regarding a subject I'm passionate about, there are things about the pub that I liked and a few that I thought could have stood improvement or that it was a mistake to leave out. But then again, it's only 96 pages long, which we all know is a woefully inadequate amount of space to touch upon everything that is and has been Dungeons & Dragons.
Overall, I believe the many authors, editors, and other contributors to the work did a super job, assuming of course that the goal was to paint the TTRPG hobby in general in the best light possible. I also believe that there isn't a delver out there who realizes that, despite the fact that the hobby has been around for five decades+, to any person who isn't a fan, the hobby and D&D in particular remain shrouded in a cloud of mystery, head-scratching, and misunderstanding. And that is why I think that this publication's timing could not have been better.
The movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and the series Stranger Things and The Big Bang Theory are among the many warm lights along the journey to this point who made D&D a positive aspect in the lives of their shows' key personalities, the goal of course being to inform their respective audiences that this 'weird' pastime may not be the devil-worshipping ritual that ill-spirited and less responsible parties have painted it to be.
There were two major points in the pub whose inclusion I am especially grateful for. "The Game's Journey" on page 16 begins with an example of the very misrepresentation of the hobby that I touched on in the previous paragraph. For me this is a very personal thing, since I encountered this kind of baffling but militant resistance to a subject that its detractors knew almost nothing about many times in the early to mid-1980's, just when D&D was slowly emerging from its 'For Extreme Nerds Only' shell.
The other point I wanted to highlight about the pub is "Therapy and Play" which begins on page 86. Absolutely spot-on article, especially because it speaks truth to what D&D and its cousins in the TTRPG world actually are and not what their detractors would like the public to believe that they are. How many shy kids and adults, people who seriously thought that they had nothing whatsoever to bring to a table, have D&D and I teamed up for to prove otherwise. Many of them are now (happily) 'Loud-mouthed' DMs and GMs for whom without D&D I probably never could have convinced to take that first step out of the shadow that imprisoned them (at least not then).
In short, I urge any EN World delver to add this publication to their library while the chance is still available. As the above link shows us, you still have the opportunity to get it new for $15. In about a year, would-be scalpers will be attempting to hock the pub on eBay for considerably more, whether they are successful or not.
Do you already have this pub, or have otherwise read its contents? I'd love for you to chime in and tell us your thoughts about it.
Best,
Pat
