…a phrase that makes my blood freeze every time.
Ah, the good old days. Back in the 90s when STARFLEET was really big and there were two STAR TREK shows on the air and the internet wasn’t really around just yet in a meaningful way. What usually follows is a description of the good old days, and while it’s nostalgic and fun, it’s important to put that into historical context. Since it’s hard to do so regarding STARFLEET (mainly because a lot of people don’t remember the walking nightmare that STARFLEET had become in the late 90s), I’ll approach it from another angle.
But for right now, think about a Star Trek fan in 1993. Think about what they need, what they want to talk about and how they’re likely to express it when it comes to their fandom. Keep thinking about that fan while I take you to an entirely different realm. A realm of heroism and wizardry, of fantasy and magic.
That’s right, another geek-friendly property that involves a bunch of friends getting together and having a good time. As it was and ever shall be. Or was. And is.
Welcome to 1993! I’m in an abandoned classroom in Solebury, PA. My friends are there — Stephen Francesconi (who got me into STARFLEET in the first place), Colin Brown and Brian Schaeffer. We stayed after school because Stephen mentioned that he wanted to run a D&D campaign. I’d never played before, but it certainly sounded like my kind of thing.
We played Dungeons and Dragons, but that’s actually not really fair to say. We were playing what was called Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 2nd Edition. The Player’s Handbook looked like this.
We were all in the same room, sitting in chairs. We had pushed a couple of desks together to create a play-surface, and we used the copy machine at the library to make character sheets.
It wasn’t the only thing we used the copier for, either. I was an incredibly poor kid. There’s no way I would have been able to afford a Dungeons and Dragons book. I copied what I could out of books that belonged to my friends. They also had a surplus of dice, and let me use them. Whew! If it weren’t for the charity of my friends, I really wouldn’t have been able to learn to play D&D. I remain very grateful.
I understand the desire to remember way-back-when, too. Life was easier, I didn’t have bills to pay and I still had great knees. But most importantly, I miss Brian Shaeffer. He was one of the nicest people I’ve ever known. He passed away in 2010 after a long fight with cancer.
Let’s fast-forward about 24 years, to a couple of weeks ago.
It’s Wednesday night, and I’m playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends. Neysha is in Louisiana. Mike is in Missouri. Dagny is in Los Angeles. Our Dungeon Master John is in New York. There’s still a character sheet on the table, but it’s a file open on my iPad. While there are still a tremendous number of dice at my place, there are none on my desk. We just roll dice using an application called Roll20. We can hear each other, we can see each other. It’s pretty great.
What the hell happened? You’re doing the same thing, and it’s the same thing, but it’s very different now.
That’s true. Even the game is different, technically. It’s the 5th Edition, but everyone just calls it ‘Dungeons and Dragons.’ Obviously, technology has changed a lot. But it’s not enough to say that, because that isn’t the whole story.
Maybe it’s because I was dirt-poor, but it’s important to mention this. Dungeons and Dragons is effectively free. You can buy the books if you want, but you don’t have to. The Basic Rules are available for everyone — players and potential Dungeon Masters alike — absolutely free of charge 24 hours a day.
There are two important pieces here.
First, technology has made a tremendous difference in the way the game is played. That is to be expected.
The other part is this — The people that make Dungeons and Dragons have taken a look at how people play their game, and how it compares to how it used to be. They’ve been pro-active and responsive. They made a lot of very public and terrible mistakes along the way. Anyone in the hobby will be happy to tell you all about that. But they’re trying, and they’ve been incredibly successful.
I’m still thinking about that fan from 1993.
Good! Me, too. You’ve been thinking about how they do things and how they think about things. Obviously, there are a lot of awesome things going on for that fan in 1993. Things are awesome. But if you were to take a fan of the same age from 2017 and put them in the same place how would it look to them?
Very, very strange.
It would probably look like a freakin’ cult.
They would probably run far, far away.
A lot of people that were playing Dungeons and Dragons are still playing. Likewise, a lot of Star Trek fans are still Star Trek fans. But does STARFLEET meet the needs of modern Star Trek fans? Technology makes a difference, but D&D changed to meet the needs of modern D&D fans. Can STARFLEET do the same?