Sanglorian
Adventurer
As soon as the 'magic guy' casts spells in a particular way, he/she ceases to be generic! Vancian, ritual, spontaneous, at-will casting, whatever, they're all non-generic and say a lot about the implied sub-genre of fantasy.
D&D Has Never Been Suitable for Generic Fantasy
As soon as the 'magic guy' casts spells in a particular way, he/she ceases to be generic! Vancian, ritual, spontaneous, at-will casting, whatever, they're all non-generic and say a lot about the implied sub-genre of fantasy.
Walking Dad
First Post
My book trader's calogue has his fictional books in its "High Fantasy" part. This is one of five categories for fantasy in it.
At this point you can also full "generic" without "fantasy".
Kinak
First Post
I don't disagree. D&D does D&D fantasy, a distinct subgenre.
I think you're missing a broader point, though. There isn't really a generic fantasy once you start talking about magical systems. You can have the generic fantasy fighter, thief, and maybe even ranger. There isn't a generic fantasy magic system.
But I think D&D can serve two masters. It's not even particularly hard in this case:
1) Present the classic D&D races and classes in the core books. You can use these to play Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or your homebrew that's in the same D&D fantasy subgenre.
2) Build up a toolkit of races and classes that can be filtered down into a variety of fantasy settings.
For (2) we've all seen the no-elves or no-halflings or only-humans campaigns. But with enough classes supporting enough variety of systems, you can choose the most appropriate for your world rather than recreating the base setting.
WotC's going to release more races and classes regardless. But as long as they bring along their own subsystems (spontaneous casting, binding, name magic, nine swords wuxia, whatever), they'll be creating a toolkit for worldbuilders.
Cheers!
Kinak
I think you're missing a broader point, though. There isn't really a generic fantasy once you start talking about magical systems. You can have the generic fantasy fighter, thief, and maybe even ranger. There isn't a generic fantasy magic system.
But I think D&D can serve two masters. It's not even particularly hard in this case:
1) Present the classic D&D races and classes in the core books. You can use these to play Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or your homebrew that's in the same D&D fantasy subgenre.
2) Build up a toolkit of races and classes that can be filtered down into a variety of fantasy settings.
For (2) we've all seen the no-elves or no-halflings or only-humans campaigns. But with enough classes supporting enough variety of systems, you can choose the most appropriate for your world rather than recreating the base setting.
WotC's going to release more races and classes regardless. But as long as they bring along their own subsystems (spontaneous casting, binding, name magic, nine swords wuxia, whatever), they'll be creating a toolkit for worldbuilders.
Cheers!
Kinak
KidSnide
Adventurer
I strongly disagree.
Past editions of D&D (to varying degrees) have been far more flexible than the OP suggests. Published rules have included non-standard D&D genres like Masque of the Red Death, Birthright, Ravenloft and Dark Sun, and plenty of folks have home settings like the Martial-only Tolkein 4e mentioned above, a mythical roman setting, or a Steampunk setting.
The flexibility of D&D is one of its strengths and many of us want to use it as a toolbox to create the type of campaign we envision. 4e focused on a particular style of game (tactical dungeon exploration) and -- despite adding several new forms of flexibility -- suffered greatly due to its narrow focus. D&DN is being billed as a more flexible game. Naturally, there are many players who want to see the flexibility to create their particularly fantasy sub-genre of choice. Obviously, not every whack-ball request should be incorporated into D&DN, but there is a lot of value to listening to these requests in aggregate.
-KS
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Neonchameleon
Legend
Alternatively one could use the team based nature and extract meta-classes like 'disruptive ability guy', 'healer', 'skill guy', 'defender of friends', 'killer', 'face'. You then make sure that all your classes fit these meta-classes, so although the Hacker and the Psychic are both 'disruptive ability guy' and can fit the same role in a team they do so in distinctly different ways. The classes remain with Hacker and Psychic being different classes.
Just to complete the illustration, 4e uses meta-classes roles strongly based on the classes in Supplement 1: Greyhawk, and the meta-classes in the 2e PHB. But it has sufficient classes in each meta-class that when you want a setting without a class you can casually discard that without breaking the game. So druids and fireballs are both easily discardable without having to discard the role within the team played by druids or people who sling fireballs. As for halberds, I don't know how well 4e would work outside a fantasy setting; if you don't have melee monsters the defender role doesn't work.
Come to think of it if you want a cinematic game with high melee and some ranged support you could do worse than a Jedi with the farmboy theme (Defender), a Scoundrel with the smuggler theme (Striker - Han Shot First!), a Diplomat with the princess theme (Leader), a Wookee Brawler with the engineer theme (Defender again I think), and an Astromech Droid (Controller) and his familiar who is fluent in six billion forms of communication.
Edit: and previous editions of D&D have, to me, had to force themselves into settings that aren't D&D rather than flowed there. Compare how much work 2e Dark Sun is compared with 4e Dark Sun despite Dark Sun having been written for 2e.
Pickles JG
First Post
He is not saying that there is generic fantasy but that the D&D rules are not generic & so do not adapt well to more specific fantasy settings. The only one they are well adapted to is D&D.
KidSnides examples are of settings that are adapted to D&D rather than the other way around.
n00bdragon
First Post
What the OP says is true, but don't let that lead you to believe that D&D needs to become a parody of itself. Whatever D&D is is what D&D is. Saying "this is not D&D" is like saying that New Coke is not Coke. It's not old Coke, sure, but it's still Coke (and you drink that up anyway, all they did was change the name back).
I would much rather see D&D continue to innovate and be it's non-generic self in new and exciting ways than watch the bloated fat man attempt to do a backflip into Gygax's boots.
The thing that has always set D&D apart from other fantasy is that it plays with the tropes but is never beholden to them.
I would much rather see D&D continue to innovate and be it's non-generic self in new and exciting ways than watch the bloated fat man attempt to do a backflip into Gygax's boots.
The thing that has always set D&D apart from other fantasy is that it plays with the tropes but is never beholden to them.
Man in the Funny Hat
Hero
Generic Fantasy is 1st Edition D&D Appendix N. Or at least it can be said to begin there because that was what Gygax cited as influential fiction upon what he presented as D&D. That was a WIDE range of sources. He wasn't trying to build a game that could parrot them all - he was building a game whose final form was affected by them all. Sometimes the affectation is small and barely visible at all. Other times the effect is obvious and a direct imitation of something in that list of books.
In short, when we say D&D is Generic Fantasy we don't mean that it is supposed to be able to directly mimic many different approaches to fantasy which we see in written fiction and movies, although we have often desired for that to be the case and often pursue formal and informal projects that seek to bend D&D to just such a task. What we mean is that the end product of D&D is an AMALGAMATION of many elements from many different sources of fantasy. The result becomes an implied setting that is not specific to any given one of these but generic to many of them.
And Tolkien is really not a good example to present alone. I would suggest Howard first (Conan), and THEN you still have to add generous helpings of Tolkien (elves and orcs), Vance (magic system), Lieber (yada yada), with Anderson and Moorcock (alignment and etc.). And then you STILL need to keep adding other fantasy in order to fill in the gaps.
Now add 30+ years of manipulation and reformulation by people who came AFTER Gygax adding some of their own new sources of fantasy as well as the fictional worlds that D&D ITSELF did indeed spawn. Bizzarre but still a mix of influences. "Generic" is used as the opposite of "Specific" when referring to D&D as Generic Fantasy.
Blue Thunder
First Post
*D&D started as a pure emulation of Arthurian Chivalric myths. It is evident in the art and text of the ODD. There are Galahad-like knights and there are Merlin-like old wizards.
*With the success of the books, the need to expand was born. Thus came the Barbarian, the Ranger and even the Monk (because kung-fu was popular in the 70s)
*So to this Arthurian, Chivalric Romance Euro-influence, they started to add American Pulp Sword and Sorcery tradition...
*...and of course the inevitable Tolkien influence was too great to ignore. So, elves+dwarves+halflings were in the blend all along.
*As decades passed, the roots all these diverse influences were forgotten, and they amalgamated into what we call generic fantasy.
*But, the trouble with generic fantasy is that it is a dead horse in terms of originality. How many more Elven archers are we going to see? Or Dwarves with axes, who like ale?
These are all Tolkien's stereotypes...and how sad that the genre couldn't even move a single step in the direction of originality.
*Solution? In my opinion there is only one way to breathe life into the stale fantasy genre...and it is reviving the roots.
e.g. Discard the "assumed generic world"
Forget Greyhawk or Blackmoor and set your campaign in a historically loose Europe...with uncanny dwarves under northern Germanic mountains;
with beautiful faerie folk in deepest parts of France's magical Broceliande forest. And there are of course little people living under hills in rural England and Ireland...
Paladins? French Knights
Barbarians? Vikings, Mongols, Picts
Fighters? Saxon warriors...
Rangers? They live in Sherwood forest...
etc.
*In short, my proposal is to discard the American influences and decades of in-breeding fiction debris and return to the European, Arthurian, Chivalric Legends influences. Let's return to a legendary medieval Europe and call the Mongols as Mongols, instead of "Tuigan" or any made-up name...
Enough with the analogies.
Thanks for listening.
*With the success of the books, the need to expand was born. Thus came the Barbarian, the Ranger and even the Monk (because kung-fu was popular in the 70s)
*So to this Arthurian, Chivalric Romance Euro-influence, they started to add American Pulp Sword and Sorcery tradition...
*...and of course the inevitable Tolkien influence was too great to ignore. So, elves+dwarves+halflings were in the blend all along.
*As decades passed, the roots all these diverse influences were forgotten, and they amalgamated into what we call generic fantasy.
*But, the trouble with generic fantasy is that it is a dead horse in terms of originality. How many more Elven archers are we going to see? Or Dwarves with axes, who like ale?
These are all Tolkien's stereotypes...and how sad that the genre couldn't even move a single step in the direction of originality.
*Solution? In my opinion there is only one way to breathe life into the stale fantasy genre...and it is reviving the roots.
e.g. Discard the "assumed generic world"
Forget Greyhawk or Blackmoor and set your campaign in a historically loose Europe...with uncanny dwarves under northern Germanic mountains;
with beautiful faerie folk in deepest parts of France's magical Broceliande forest. And there are of course little people living under hills in rural England and Ireland...
Paladins? French Knights
Barbarians? Vikings, Mongols, Picts
Fighters? Saxon warriors...
Rangers? They live in Sherwood forest...
etc.
*In short, my proposal is to discard the American influences and decades of in-breeding fiction debris and return to the European, Arthurian, Chivalric Legends influences. Let's return to a legendary medieval Europe and call the Mongols as Mongols, instead of "Tuigan" or any made-up name...
Enough with the analogies.
Thanks for listening.
