Weird open question; there’s been a couple of times in my life when D&D wasn’t cool but other TTRPGs (Twilight 2000, Shadowrun, White Wolf) were the awesome things you wanted to play.
Is that just some biased perception or did everyone else get that?
@Leucrotta I think the things that made D&D "not cool" at that time was a combination of the sentiments that it was a "brand-name" RPG everyone thought about first when thinking RPG's, and certain kinds of people considered especially "uncool" played D&D. You wanted to be that edgy/cool nerd you played something deviant like Shadowrun, Vampire or Werewolf. They didn't require specialty dice, didn't have a mountain of specialist sourcebooks, and seemeded more narrative-friendly.
@Yolfen Thanks! I definitely got the feeling that AD&D was/was regarded as kids table stuff, so I wanted to check if that was a universal thing.
It definitely read to me that Shadowrun and White Wolf had the Dark Future aesthetic we thought was cool (which is weird considering Dark Sun, Ravenloft, some aspects of Planescape) - I definitely think some of it was "AD&D is your first game so you're going to want to progress." Now I wonder if some of it was TSR trying to be family-friendly/humorous.
@Leucrotta That is one of the reasons I enjoyed playing the campaigns for the original Descent: Journeys in the Dark board game. Over time you were adding more and upgraded dice to the roll, so you had a tangible measure of your character progress. You could still roll poorly, but when you rolled well it felt so good. :3
@Leucrotta I dunno that I would've considered AD&D back then as "kid's table" as it still seemed like a very stats and condition-heavy system where you either got THAC0 or you didn't.
@Yolfen You got me thinking about a rules/perception thing with dice though - not type, but number. I think in contrast to AD&D, rolling multiple dice is way more emotionally satisfying - like even if it actually didn't translate to a higher chance of success, it LOOKED more like you could succeed and you had a really physical handle on how badass your character was.