I should clarify: by "quit" I mean stopped buying/disconnected from all "new" product. Our group played in isolation until late 1989.
And yes, I am owning to a certain degree of gate-keeping mentality/bias...something that goes far beyond just D&D subculture. I do not mind new folks discovering something I love---and getting excited about it...that's wonderful---but I admit when that adoption comes with "baggage" (in the form of the need to change it) then I get a bit disquieted. Sure "things evolve", but that doesn't always mean what others like is what you will like. If you've already rejected mainstream culture and attached yourself to a niche sub-culture---then implicitly there is something about mainstream tastes that doesn't suit you.
I think I was only about 11 years old when---after seeing what happened to the obscure Byrne/Claremont X-men comic book explode in popularity---that I started telling my friends that the worst thing that can happen to something is for it to become
popular. Seriously. 11.
I always THOUGHT it was the greed of the "Sociopaths" (as labeled in the article) that were to blame---prostituting every New Thing to extract more money/social-status from the MOPs. They immediately reach for common tropes that are proven mainstream sellers (e.g. Sex, Rock 'n Roll, More Sugar, etc) and shovel that into everything. Pretty soon the beautiful thing that was so fresh, dynamic, different and yet pure---starts to look exactly like everything else on TV.
I hate seeing that. Maybe that's why I get nervous as soon as the MOPs arrive. I sense the impending "death" or perversion.
But now I'm not so sure that greed is the whole story.
I am realizing my love is for OD&D/AD&D is
as a complete package, and while I don't deny that What-Was-Done-To-It did indeed stoke the fires of it's popularity---and that many Geeks who arrived later have their own beloved memory of What-D&D-Is---to me it's just not the thing
I loved. If the term D&D-lite offends, then think D&D-different. And what it changed into (e.g. Hickman-style, plus all the subsequent styles) is just not something I enjoy.
How do you explain to someone,
"I see that you like that---but it clashes..."? You can't put the same ingredients into every dish and have it retain it's unique flavor. How do you explain that to a hundred people? A thousand? Gygax lost that battle. Apparently all subcultures eventually lose.
All the stuff I rail against ("candy-classes" etc.) are symptomatic of the changes the hobby saw, that (to me) robbed it of it's core-appeal. Whether or not it later developed some "new essence" (e.g. DL/R story-games, post-trad, video-game combat, etc)---I don't know, I jumped off of that crazy train when I saw it was leaving the countryside I called home.
I thought the OSR was about the road back...if that's true, I'm all for it---if not, then it's just another flavor of "D&D-lite" to me, and not what I'm personally looking for---i.e. Gygax's Lightning in a Bottle. Sometimes I think it might be because he and I are a couple of boring mid-westerners with similar sensibilities and that's why the OD&D/AD&D Kool-Aid satisfies. Dunno.
There no accounting for taste, right?