[swillden]

I think D&D gets the hack'n'slash reputation mostly because people start playing it when they're too young to really understand role playing.

I play with my wife and kids, and I'd really like to push more roleplaying because that would allow my wife to enjoy the game a lot more (she really only plays because the kids like it), but the kids (ages 7, 11, 13, 15) just don't get it. They get bored with any sort of play that isn't heavy on combat -- a couple of days ago we played through a section of an ancient wizard's keep that was loaded with traps, tricks and puzzles and all but one of them got really bored, though my wife thought it was somewhat interesting.

[davi]

I'm kind of curious/concerned about the future of role-playing -- will it get picked up by kids today? What's your perspective on this a as a father of today's children? Seems like the 15-year-old at least could get into the role-playing aspect.

That said I have buddies in their 30's who still love the hack-n-slash aspect, the superhero, rolling dice, throwing fireballs fun of it all, and who kind of get bored & check out when role-playing comes to the fore of a gaming session. So it could just be a component of the gamer's personality.

Related quote from Dave Arneson:

"Pegasus: What other changes have you seen in gamers, rather than in gaming itself? How are we different?

"Dave: Well, it seems like they're a lot older. Used to all be young – high school kids, college kids – you don't see that too much any more. I don't know if that's because they're off playing video games or card games, or they're just not interested. I think some of it's the video games because you get much more of an instant feedback response from a video game than you do from a roleplaying game. Again, is that good or bad? I think that's bad, because I think they ultimately have a lot more fun playing roleplaying games than shooting up spaceships and aliens."

(http://www.judgesguild.net/guildhall/pegasus/pegasus_14/inte...)