One of the things I've noticed over the decades I've played D&D is that each group has a definite culture and that this culture affects the expectations of the players. I remember in 3.5 when I played in a theater of the mind game for the first time, nobody new about the free 5-foot step and I was really struggling to picture where all the baddies were, how far away they all were, and where my allies were in relation to them. Nobody else seemed to have that problem. In fact, they didn't seem to really care. It was more about describing what your character does rather than trying to position your characters tactically and the DM was very accommodating to whatever anyone wanted to do, regardless of distance, as long as it was cool. Meanwhile, I'm over here with graph paper like, "Okay, so I'm here and the one bad guy is over there. My allies are right here. So I can go... there." 😅

I also noticed when I played in a 2E game for the first time, there was a style to the adventures that felt much more like tomb raiding than anything I had ever played before. The focus was all on what the players could plunder from various crypts and keeps. I've obviously seen that in later editions, but there's a kind of... I don't know... there was a kind of acknowledgment that tomb raiding isn't necessarily good in other games I've played. Like in Eberron, with Morgrave University sending adventurers to plunder the ruins of Xen'drik or in Age of Worms, where the tombs of the Wind Dukes are virtually all plundered and empty. People were doing these things and it left a mark. It didn't seem like that existed in this group and it was interesting to me.

Are there things you've seen in other groups that surprised you. Maybe they were things you wanted to try with your own group or maybe they were things that you definitely didn't agree with. I'd be curious to see what others have experienced.

So, I've mentioned how I have a group of a bit over 30 people, with 6 DMs, previously.

I am the one that taught the majority of them how to play, and the original DM for our group that has grown from the few of us who used to play during lunch in high school or that made up the core group at the public Library.

People have come and gone, and many of them also learned at different times, or in different eras, so I know what you are speaking to here, even if one strips away the greater "moral arc of the universe" aspect (which is why tomb raiding became less a "good thing" and more icky).

D&D has never operated in a vacuum -- like nothing else does -- and so it has changed as the awareness or cultural circumstances have. There were distinct, marked differences between UK D&D and US D&D back in the day -- and then there were distinct differences between B/X players and AD&D players. Sometimes hostile, sometimes snobbish, sometimes just "that's too weird or silly".

The reaction to the Demonic Scare stuff, for example, drained D&D of an entire existing internal history around Demons and Devils. Parts of that are still floating around in the game. The awakening awareness of racism and sexism in the game caused changes that are still being dealt with and often referred to (even here on this forum, though they couch it in other terms).

So yes, there are particulars. My group has some interesting divisions, as well, that are only partially dependent on edition learned. The 3/3.5ers are more about the classes and the class system and generally trend towards a more "we need to have the coolest characters" style, whereas the 1e/2e group is more about "we need to have the coolest toys", and the 4e/5e group is generally more about "how will I lay this character". There is overlap, no doubt -- not denying that. Just, in general, that's how they approach things.

On the DM side, I'm always about the "cool world" thing, lol, while one is more about "Cool villain" and another is about "cool story" as their primary drivers. My strong tendency to be about crunch is countered by three of them who want as little crunch as possible, lol.

And that's another thing: the crunchy types -- almost all of them 1e/2e origin players -- want more stuff because they trigger off a 'what is possible" kind of thinking. The 3/3.4 folks look at it more as "what isn't possible", and are more frequently the rules lawyers; for them, the expectation is that they have what is possible before them and they strive to imagine what they can do with all the cool stuff they have. THe 4/5 players are always about "imma try this" -- they don't care if it is possible or not, they just want to try it out and find out (which I would normally phrase a different way).

From 11/12 to 60, the group of us have an interesting dynamic, and several play in outside games, as well (and so I am proud to note we have a little impact, lol). The above breakdowns are not really based on age, either -- one player who came to the group had only ever played 1e/2e before diving into 5e, and was of an age to the older among us. ad is very much in the 1/2 camp. Another learned to play 3.5 as a kid, and brought in someone who learned to play in 4e.

1e/2e are very much the traditional, old school "dungeon crawls" in the way the games were designed and supported. The whole style of play was very much "here's a dark place filled with monsters and treasure, go get it.".

That changed as the editions did. It helps, perhaps, to realize that Magic: The Gathering started out as a D&D game. Those are the people who bought out TSR. They brought a very different kind of way of seeing things, a different approach to the game, and that was reflected in the 3e and later versions -- a move away from the dungeons and more to thee larger world -- but that was also where a lot of the old Dungeon games had moved, as well, with the wider sense of connected things (helped initially by such stuff as Ravenloft and the GDQ series, Saltmarsh and others that expanded the idea of the game from its tomb raider/indiana jones origins towards a more "heroes of the book" style thing -- and a part of that is the points of reference for folks.

The inspirations -- Old Serials, Vance, Moorcock and the "New Fantasy" of the 64 to 77 era all have a lot to do with how those earliest adventures came up. But those weren't the points of knowledge of the later generations -- they looked to the stuff TSR created (the choose your own adventure) and stuff published under them by external folks (Drizz't), but also the fantasy of the 80's, 90's, and early 2000's -- all of which is very different from those earlier inspirations such as newhon and barsoom and pellucidar.

One thing I see reflected very strongly in the current 5e era (that wasn't as pronounced early in the 5e era) is the influence of Anime and Video Games on the whole game and on play styles. personally I find this fascinating, intriguing, nd a little chucklesome, because those things were themselves influenced by the earlier editions of D&D, shaped and changed by more localized aspects. "isekai" isnt a new thing at all -- going back to the Wood between the Worlds, folks have long found themselves in another world more wondrous than our own.

Some of the earliest video games for computers were based on D&D rules, and many of the basic concepts used in Video games really come directly from D&D and other ttrp games. So it is a full circle on the grander scale, and I enjoy watching it (because it is a reflection of what I do in real life).

So, yes, there are differences, and I see them reflected fairly consistently across other groups and even markedly so here. Is this bad, good, indifferent?

No clue. rude as it sounds, ain't no one paying me to figure that out, and I would rather play. And I do that kind of work for a living, lol.