|
|
Post by delta on Sept 12, 2020 13:02:36 GMT -6
Are there any public audio or video recordings of Gygax or Arneson running actual play sessions?
Having thought of this today, I feel like I've had a blind spot to have never wondered about it before. Is it crazy future-shock to even think such a thing should exist?
I searched on YouTube and found a single 37 second video clip, Gygax mostly chatting socially. I'm really looking for something long enough to document the pace of the game in real-time (like on the order of an hour or something would be great).
|
|
|
|
Post by Desparil on Sept 12, 2020 13:18:27 GMT -6
Is there any public video of Gygax or Arneson running actual play sessions? Having thought of this today, I feel like I've had a blind spot to have never wondered about it before. Is it crazy future-shock to even think such a thing should exist? I searched on YouTube and found a single 37 second clip, Gygax mostly chatting socially. I'm really looking for something long enough to document the pace of the game in real-time (like on the order of an hour or something would be great). I mean, they died in 2008 and 2009... I don't know off hand how far in advance of their deaths they stopped attending public events. But let's say somewhere around 2007 or 2008 was the last possible opportunity for someone to take such a video. Very few phones could record video at that point in time, and even if you had one of those phones it was way less of a reflex to be like "I gotta record this!" and whip it out. I'm someone who was attending university at that point in time, and on top of that I was in the engineering program; such a thing was probably so rare as to be unheard of among the (on average) older and less computer-oriented crowd interested in playing or observing games hosted by Gary or Dave. |
|
|
|
Post by Punkrabbitt on Sept 12, 2020 17:22:49 GMT -6
They started D&D before the invention of electricity, so probably no early play videos in any case.
|
|
|
|
Post by delta on Sept 12, 2020 19:12:13 GMT -6
I mean, I personally recorded at least one game session with VHS camcorder circa 1987, so it's not completely beyond the pale that someone would have done that.
What about audio recordings? I almost dimly feel like I've heard of such a thing.
|
|
|
|
Post by Desparil on Sept 12, 2020 21:27:12 GMT -6
Sure, not impossible per se. But I went to a couple of smaller conventions during that time and can't recall anyone, whether attendees or staff, using video equipment to record events. Out of curiosity, I did some Google searching to see if things were any different at the big conventions. I found a few videos of stuff like San Diego Comic-Con from those years, but almost all of them were only a couple minutes long and the only longer ones I could find were official/promotional highlight reels. I found even fewer for Gen Con in particular - which makes sense, since it only had 1/4 the attendees.
Though speaking of tape recorders, it looks like Jolly Blackburn was audio recording his own events as early as 2005, so that's kind of cool!
|
|
|
|
Post by Zenopus on Sept 12, 2020 22:59:34 GMT -6
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2020 15:17:01 GMT -6
Oh, good one. I remember the impromptu DMing from the radio show. That's a great example.
|
|
|
|
Post by asaki on Sept 13, 2020 16:37:32 GMT -6
There's another longer one (not super long), I think it's Frank Mentzer DMing? Yeah, here we go: www.youtube.com/watch?v=APPxO-SJVK8
Oh nice, never saw this one, I'll have to watch it:
There might be more!
There's also probably a video out there of Stefan Pokorny (from Dwarven Forge) running AD&D 1st Edition. I watched him run it at Gary Con this year via Twitch, was really awesome.
|
|
|
|
Post by Starbeard on Sept 14, 2020 10:31:54 GMT -6
Is there any public video of Gygax or Arneson running actual play sessions? Having thought of this today, I feel like I've had a blind spot to have never wondered about it before. Is it crazy future-shock to even think such a thing should exist? I searched on YouTube and found a single 37 second clip, Gygax mostly chatting socially. I'm really looking for something long enough to document the pace of the game in real-time (like on the order of an hour or something would be great). I mean, they died in 2008 and 2009... I don't know off hand how far in advance of their deaths they stopped attending public events. But let's say somewhere around 2007 or 2008 was the last possible opportunity for someone to take such a video. Very few phones could record video at that point in time, and even if you had one of those phones it was way less of a reflex to be like "I gotta record this!" and whip it out. I'm someone who was attending university at that point in time, and on top of that I was in the engineering program; such a thing was probably so rare as to be unheard of among the (on average) older and less computer-oriented crowd interested in playing or observing games hosted by Gary or Dave. I dunno, camcorders and digital cameras were taking video all the time well before 2008. Snapping home video for posterity is a cultural phenomenon that has existed since the 60s among the social classes most associated with gaming. I mean, we have home camera footage of the second ever tournament of the SCA in 1966. I do see your point, though. I think there was a temporary drop off of habitually snapping video in the 2000s, especially among the younger generation who were just becoming adults during the changes in technology. Digital pocket cameras were a lot better at taking and uploading 1000s of photos at a go, so the trend just went with the tech. I started university in 2002, and while I recall taking oodles of video in the 1990s, I think I mostly took pictures and just a few shorter videos in the 2000s (who wants to carry around a digital camcorder when you can get more photos than you'll ever need from a camera that fits in your pocket?). The older generations, who were already used to a life of lugging stuff around (they did invent the bum bag/fanny pack, after all), might not have felt so strongly about those pros and cons. Anyway, so ultimately I don't think it has to do with the wider relevance of taking video. The internet is crawling with game con home videos from the 2000s. It has to be something else. We're talking about game sessions here: they take a long time, much longer than most economy digital cameras could record in a go. Unless you only wanted a little snippet of video to show you playing with the Great Gygax (which would already be better served by a few photos anyway), then why bother? Also, roleplaying game sessions are by nature private affairs. You're usually either playing at someone's house, or in a room at a convention; the games probably didn't draw a random audience, so who's going to take the random video? Everyone there is busy playing. I'm sure there has been some home video of Gygax and Arneson playing games, it's just that little or none of it is currently accessible. It might not be known for its value (or the taker may not care about its public value enough to convert it and post it to Youtube), or maybe it existed at one time but that hard drive or film reel is now dead and gone or forgotten in a box. |
|
|
|
Post by Desparil on Sept 14, 2020 11:58:01 GMT -6
I mean, they died in 2008 and 2009... I don't know off hand how far in advance of their deaths they stopped attending public events. But let's say somewhere around 2007 or 2008 was the last possible opportunity for someone to take such a video. Very few phones could record video at that point in time, and even if you had one of those phones it was way less of a reflex to be like "I gotta record this!" and whip it out. I'm someone who was attending university at that point in time, and on top of that I was in the engineering program; such a thing was probably so rare as to be unheard of among the (on average) older and less computer-oriented crowd interested in playing or observing games hosted by Gary or Dave. I dunno, camcorders and digital cameras were taking video all the time well before 2008. Snapping home video for posterity is a cultural phenomenon that has existed since the 60s among the social classes most associated with gaming. I mean, we have home camera footage of the second ever tournament of the SCA in 1966. I do see your point, though. I think there was a temporary drop off of habitually snapping video in the 2000s, especially among the younger generation who were just becoming adults during the changes in technology. Digital pocket cameras were a lot better at taking and uploading 1000s of photos at a go, so the trend just went with the tech. I started university in 2002, and while I recall taking oodles of video in the 1990s, I think I mostly took pictures and just a few shorter videos in the 2000s (who wants to carry around a digital camcorder when you can get more photos than you'll ever need from a camera that fits in your pocket?). The older generations, who were already used to a life of lugging stuff around (they did invent the bum bag/fanny pack, after all), might not have felt so strongly about those pros and cons. Anyway, so ultimately I don't think it has to do with the wider relevance of taking video. The internet is crawling with game con home videos from the 2000s. It has to be something else. We're talking about game sessions here: they take a long time, much longer than most economy digital cameras could record in a go. Unless you only wanted a little snippet of video to show you playing with the Great Gygax (which would already be better served by a few photos anyway), then why bother? Also, roleplaying game sessions are by nature private affairs. You're usually either playing at someone's house, or in a room at a convention; the games probably didn't draw a random audience, so who's going to take the random video? Everyone there is busy playing. I'm sure there has been some home video of Gygax and Arneson playing games, it's just that little or none of it is currently accessible. It might not be known for its value (or the taker may not care about its public value enough to convert it and post it to Youtube), or maybe it existed at one time but that hard drive or film reel is now dead and gone or forgotten in a box. Oh, I know all about home video. My dad made tons of them when we were kids. But he never took the camcorder on vacation; we have plenty of pictures from vacations, but no video whatsoever. And like I said, I only went to some smaller cons, but camcorders were big - I'm pretty confident when I say that I never saw any guests carrying them around, only the occasional local news crew getting a story or a staff member recording the big events (cosplay contests, etc.) for the following year's promotional materials. Also, with lots of older home video, there's the issue of it being on VHS, which requires additional equipment to convert into a digital format. So many, many hours of all kinds of recordings will never reach the public eye simply because the owner doesn't have the time, money, or wherewithal to convert the tapes. So yeah, there's certainly a possibility that some recording exists in the abstract sense, but delta was specifically asking about public recordings - i.e., hosted somewhere that we on this forum could watch/listen and discuss them. Which is why I focused on issues of why that in particular is unlikely, corroborating the observed fact that in practice no one here has ever found and posted such recordings. |
|
|
|
Post by Starbeard on Sept 14, 2020 13:35:40 GMT -6
My dad made tons of them when we were kids. But he never took the camcorder on vacation; we have plenty of pictures from vacations, but no video whatsoever. Really? We took ours everywhere. Of course, by the mid-2000s my parents stopped—again, because it was just cumbersome and pointless. If my dad was going to carry around a heavy camera, it would be a nice digital SLR instead a crummy digital camcorder. But I see your point about the conventions, and I think we're saying the same thing. In the kind of settings where their games are likely to have been in the 1990s and 2000s, the chances that they would have been recorded by random foot traffic or fanboy onlookers are low—let alone the culture back then against just filming a table without permission. Maybe a player could have set up a camera mount, but that would have required forethought to bring the gear, and again the weird conversation about asking permission to film everybody and periodically interrupting the game to switch tapes. |
|
