"HF" vs. "S&S" gaming: the underlying reason of conflict and change in D&D

[Zulgyan]

D&D fantasy:

Large number of protagonists
Clerics - holy men in plate armor who cast healing spells
Vancian magic
Large zoo dungeons
Tremendous variety of monsters
Tremendous number of magic items
Mixing of numerous other genres and time periods. As Remathilis says, it's a genre where Conan, Turjan, Bilbo, Sir Galahad and Getafix team up to fight Count Dracula, a Norse fire giant and something from an AE Van Vogt story.

IMHO, all this stuff is secondary, accessory, cosmetic. In D&D, stuff from other places gets "adapted" to the D&D world. It does not enter it, unchanged.

For example, the Medusa, a unique mythic ultra powerful monster of ancient Greece, in D&D is just more canon fodder that will be encountered in 2d4 numbers on a swamp. They are degraded (for good gaming) when they enter the D&D world. They are not incorporated AS IS with all their true significance.So the incorporation of stuff into D&D is no AUTOMATIC - it adapts to it's caracteristics.

So D&D is not ALL genres. It takes inspirations from other genres and sources and modifies the stuff to adapt it.

So, to know what a genre is, you don't have to look at this secondary, accessory stuff, you have to look at it's underlying world view, morals, values, high concepts and themes.

3e lost 2e's emphasis on story and setting so the game had, imo, become a lot more S&S, as Zulgyan defines S&S.

Yes. And in the OP I said, that IMO:

3E wants to go back to it's sword & sorcery roots. But the inclusion of some elements brings some confusion. The majority of fans, many without noticing it, want a game about High Fantasy. THIS is the major underlying source of conflict in all edition wars. High Fantasy elements start creeping into the game, either explicitly in the books, or by the generalized idea of how it is supposed to be played.

 

[Doug McCrae]

So, to know what a genre is, you don't have to look at this secondary, accessory stuff, you have to look at it's underlying world view, morals, values, high concepts and themes.

D&D fantasy's world view is that the purpose of life is to kill things and take their stuff. There are no morals. Money, magic items and killing things are of value. It's a deeply primitive genre, which is probably why it's used mostly for games, not novels.

Even in post Gygaxian D&D, which assumes the PCs are of good alignment, these 'good' people kill hordes and hordes of sentient beings and rob them. Ostensibly in a good cause. Post-Gygaxian morality is something of a figleaf.

You're wrong about the importance of trappings, they're an important part of most genres, particularly in the case of D&D fantasy, which is probably most notable for its quite bizarre trappings. Sword & sorcery with no pre-Renaissance combat and no magic isn't sword & sorcery.

By contrast horror and noir are genres that can take place anywhere. They are trapping free, relying on mood and atmosphere.

 

[Mallus]

In Gygaxian D&D, the rules assumed the PCs were amoral looters, hence XP for gold. From Dragonlance onward, the default PCs were good guys. 2nd ed supported this with some rules - no xp for gold and no assassin class.

My impression was that most D&D players wanted to play 'the good guys', who also happened to loot and kill a lot (why hello alignment system!), that the archetypal D&D character was a semi-moral looter, or an amoral looter with an ability to rationalize their deeds at the cosmic level .

Ultimately, D&D PC's are just corpse looters. Even the ones in sweeping, epic high fantasy campaigns full of Manichean struggles where good triumphs over evil. They also do bad thing to live flesh with flaming oil.

In 4e it's harder to die, so the game has become a bit more HF, epic quests are better supported.

Note that being hard to kill is also a characteristic of popular swords and sorcery heroes.

In conclusion, 2e was the high point (or nadir) of HF in D&D.

I ran a sweeping epic using 2e for many years, but it bore little resemblance to Zul's definition. It certainly wasn't Judeo-Christian, it certainly was tough, there was a overarching set of stories, but nothing was plotted out, and I didn't run it because of Dragonlance, I had just gotten sick of the disconnected dungeon-crawls of my youth.

BTW, I think too much gets made of Dragonlance. While it's certainly the D&D version of the Lord of the Rings (for better or worse... wait, make that worse), I see it primarily as a reflection of what a lot of D&D players were already doing; running high fantasy in the D&D idiom.

Dragonlance didn't introduce high fantasy to D&D. Tolkien did.

 

[Mallus]

Post-Gygaxian morality is something of a figleaf.

Nicely said.

 

[Doug McCrae]

My impression was that most D&D players wanted to play 'the good guys', who also happened to loot and kill a lot (why hello alignment system!), that the archetypal D&D character was a semi-moral looter, or an amoral looter with an ability to rationalize their deeds at the cosmic level .

Ultimately, D&D PC's are just corpse looters. Even the ones in sweeping, epic high fantasy campaigns full of Manichean struggles where good triumphs over evil. They also do bad thing to live flesh with flaming oil.

You're right, things haven't really changed. Old school D&D should be praised for at least being honest about it.

Note that being hard to kill is also a characteristic of popular swords and sorcery heroes.

Yes. I was, for the moment, accepting Zulgyan's (wrong) definition of S&S.

BTW, I think too much gets made of Dragonlance. While it's certainly the D&D version of the Lord of the Rings (for better or worse... wait, make that worse), I see it primarily as a reflection of what a lot of D&D players were already doing; running high fantasy in the D&D idiom.

Dragonlance didn't introduce high fantasy to D&D. Tolkien did.

I agree with this too. I think a lot of people (including Gary to some extent) got bored of the Gygaxian style at various points. The transition in the published materials can be seen throughout the 80s, Dragonlance is just a point on a path, and maybe earlier if you look at GDQ, RuneQuest, Chivalry & Sorcery and Empire of the Petal Throne.

I mean people can't just keep dungeon bashing for 35 years and not get bored, right?

 

[Ariosto]

Nicely said.

Darned right. Ms Pac Man is basically D&D (over-)simplified. It was designed to be a game first and last. Alignment, even in the later forms (with a Good - Evil axis), served primarily as another factor in creating challenge for player skill. There's a pretty natural evolution in the course of play to see more than just the game factors, but putting a lot of emphasis on the inferences can lead to dissatisfaction. One may find that "it would be an excellent game, if not for the dungeons, and the dragons, and ..."

 

[Mallus]

That 2E pounded the square peg of legacy mechanics into the round hole of a new concept of what the game was about was for many (on both sides of the divide in opinion of the new concept) a bit of a problem.

That 'new concept' was formally introduced to the game 5 years prior to the publication of 2e. And I'd argue it was informally introduced by gamers long before that, seeing how influential Tolkien was, even with Gary's own players.

And can a whole system be called legacy mechanics? There really isn't much difference between 2e and 1e.

An "S&S" story can quite properly finish with a protagonist coming to a bad end (not unknown in Dunsany, and common enough in C.A. Smith, I think). Such an incident, though, would be but a chapter in the epic novel form that has come to epitomize HF.

Perhaps the comparison should be between swords and sorcery stories vs. series fiction? Some D&D players want the risk and danger of being the protagonist of a Clark Ashton Smith one-off set in Zothique and others want the relative stability of being Conan (or James Bond, or Kirk)?

 

[Doug McCrae]

Darned right. Ms Pac Man is basically D&D (over-)simplified.

Early videogames, with their frequent protagonist death, would count as S&S by Zulgyan's definition. In fact Ms Pac-Man would be more S&S than Conan, where the protagonist doesn't die.

 

[Mallus]

Ms Pac Man is basically D&D (over-)simplified.

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.

Alignment, even in the later forms (with a Good - Evil axis), served primarily as another factor in creating challenge for player skill.

Absolutely right! Good guys hunt bad guys and bad guys hunt good guys when they get in their way. It's all good, or, rather, it's all (usually?) a series of inherently amoral power fantasies in semi-boardgame form.

One may find that "it would be an excellent game, if not for the dungeons, and the dragons, and ..."

This is why I've all but removed both dungeons and dragons from my D&D campaigns.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Is this a good time to mention that there are variant d20 systems published under the OGL that are specifically devoted to the Swords and Sorcery genre? That these games, which I'm not familiar with even by name though I'm pretty sure they exist, most likely put OD&D/1E to shame when it comes to modeling S&S?

I think the whole OD&D/1E was S&S and 2E/3E/4E was HF idea is a load of crap. I'm not familiar with OGL S&S games, but I'm sure comparing them with OD&D/1E will illuminate how un-S&S OD&D/1E could be.