Growing the hobby, and finishing a thought.

A very strange, and somewhat heated discussion last night lead me to write this.  The discussion started off innocently enough, a GM/Author was talking about the difference him and his players found between playing 2nd edition DnD and Pathfinder.

The discussion then got slightly de railed into a conversation about how people should only be playing NEW games, only new games.  That we should all throw our old games aside, and not teach them to people and just play new games. Basically we should be obligated to do so.  Specifically fifth edition.  (I didn't get a chance to point out that lotfp has been crazy popular kicking ass at awards show the last few years, and that the OSR in general has been kicking ass and taking names for awhile already.... but I digress).   

I'm not quoting anyone in this blog other than my own comments.  Long story short, my opinion is that, it really doesn't matter what game you play, it's a really good thing to introduce new people to the hobby.  End of story.

Here's my story of how I introduced people to the hobby.

A few years back my wife wanted to play out of the blue. Since I hadn't played in years, I was excited. I grabbed the only dnd I had. Second edition. Later I introduced her cousin to dnd, around the same time I discovered the osr and fell in love with blueholme. I realized quickly that this was basically the game I had been playing all along. Basically second edition with some rules filtered out or ignored.

The cousin went on to play in campaigns in osr, fifth and 3.5. He has since introduced and re introduced 3 people to RPGs.

I introduced all his friends (cousin) to basic fantasy, and then mutant future. After the first one shot game, they all showed up with their own dice. They have even played without me! Out of the eight people in that group three have DM'd there own games. I taught another guy how to play fifth, who wound up running a campaign for a pile of us (and still does). He's went on to teach some people.

All this because I played a game of second edition five years ago when my wife wanted to kill a few kobolds. All this is the small rock in the pond.

And if it hadn't been for that moment, I would never have gone down the worm hole of finding gplus and the OSR, and I would never have written a damn thing that got published, It would have been sitting in a notebook somewhere.

I should also note and this is totally off topic, but If I hadn't found the OSR, my dnd would still be 2nd edition (because I'm a cheap bastard and those are the books I have).

In the grand scheme of things, it does not matter one iota what rpg game you teach someone. If you are getting more people into the hobby that's a wonderful thing. If you are perfectly happy to play your game with a group of friends, that's also wonderful. Really it is whatever works for you. But if someone tells you that you are doing it wrong, you can tell that person to go suck on a lemon.