But what if I LIKE Anime/Video-game tropes in my D&D?

Confession time.

I'm a child of the 90's. I reached my teen years from 1990-2000 (exactly, as it were) and came into D&D in 1992. I vaguely recall the D&D cartoon, didn't read Tolkien or Moorcock till my 20's and my only connection to Howard is the Arnold "Conan" movies. Oh, and I never read Liebir

However, I grew up watching He-Man. I recall fondly hours lost to Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy and its sequels. I recall BEGGING my mom for the "Record of the Lodoss Wars" box set after watching one episode on Cartoon Network (MSRP: $120). My influences in fantasy mostly consisted of Anime, Video-game (mostly JRPGS) and Sci-fi like Star Wars. Its no shock I found and fell in love with D&D, since it promised me the ability to create my OWN fantasies in the same vein as those listed.

However, D&D never emulated my vision of fantasy well. I saw heroic knights performs amazing martial attacks, wizards who flew and faced each other fire, lightning, and summoned beasts. Intricate, detailed stories full of love, betrayal, darkness and redemption. Sure, I played, and loved, D&D. However, D&D was its own brand of fantasy and never emulated the grand heroes, dastardly villains, and epic battles I saw in my view of fantasy.

Third edition moved the paragrim further toward my vision. My core books had heroes that looked cool, not like Ren Fest Actors. My wizards were the sleek, agile sorcerers of Bastard!, not the stogy old Merlins I'd been given. However, the rules didn't catch up completely. My wizards still took naps 1/3 into the dungeon, my fighters still moved 5' at a time. And I still had celebrated lawn ornaments as a PHB race.

Now, 4e is coming and D&D is evolving to fit MY version of fantasy is. Its got demon-people and hellfire. Amoral fey and shadowrealms. It has fighters with awesome maneuvers using fantastical weapons and armor, and mages who sling spells all day (only pausing to refuel there "big spells"). It has nimble rogues dodging and weaving around huge elemental creatures. It feels less like Led Zeppelin and more like DragonForce. Its fast-paced, exciting, and (to beat the word to death) "cool".

In short, its what I've wanted out of D&D for better than a decade.

Anyone else with me? Anyone else excited D&D is finally drawing inspiration from more modern and more worldly forms of fantasy traditions? Anyone else grow up on Final Fantasy and Everquest who is now excited their D&D games can evoke the same feel? Anyone happy that Squaresoft, Tokyo Pop and Blizzard have been added to list of inspirations next to Tolkien, Howard and Moorcock?

In short, anyone HAPPY about the move to add some anime and videogame elements into the old horse that is D&D?

Remathilis said:

Anyone else with me? Anyone else excited D&D is finally drawing inspiration from more modern and more worldly forms of fantasy traditions? Anyone else grow up on Final Fantasy and Everquest who is now excited their D&D games can evoke the same feel? Anyone happy that Squaresoft, Tokyo Pop and Blizzard have been added to list of inspirations next to Tolkien, Howard and Moorcock?

In short, anyone HAPPY about the move to add some anime and videogame elements into the old horse that is D&D?

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Personally? No. Although I'm glad that you're happy. Its clear that WotC is targeting your generation for 4E, and if you are excited about it, then the designers look like they are doing their jobs.

I've always found it easier to add magical elements to an RPG to get the high fantasy I wanted, than it is to subtract. When I wanted to play anime (which I enjoyed doing) I grabbed my Exalted books and had a blast.

Remathilis said:

In short, anyone HAPPY about the move to add some anime and videogame elements into the old horse that is D&D?

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I am, you spoony bard!

I simply hope that 4e has a base-rules that work for most games then branch out with supplemental-setting books. So that way you could get your anime and someone else could get their Merlins and Arthurs, etc.

Also as has been said before, you should also check out Exalted, it is a PnP made by White Wolf and is fashioned to be a Anime-style, fantasy game. They even separate each chapter of their books with a little comic.

It sounds like you and I are very nearly the same age. Yet my feelings about anime are just the opposite of yours.

I had a brief infatuation with all things Japanese--even spending three years learning the language in college and visiting the country, and watching all the anime I could get my hands on--but then I got better. I can't stand those Western kids who reject their own cultural heritage and seem to wish that they were Japanese themselves.

Like you, I played Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, but I imagined those games taking place in very Medieval-looking worlds, especially Dragon Warrior--seriously, how can you play the first Dragon Warrior game, with its King James Bible-style English, and imagine it as anime?

I don't remember when I was introduced to Tolkien and Howard and others, but once I had been, I was hooked. This fantasy felt so much more "real" and "grown up" than the vapid, puerile storylines I saw in anime and JRPGs. I could never go back.

Anime and JRPGs just seem so shallow. Their storylines conform to a handful of predictable plots and universally feature a number of tiresome tropes. I can only watch teenagers toting oversized swords while wearing unrealistic armour save the world so many times before it gets old. I'm done with anime; I grew up.

All that said, I don't really see much overt anime influence in 4th Edition D&D so far. I've read the Races & Classes preview. Nothing in there really makes me think "anime" more than it makes me think "classic medievalesque fantasy." I am deeply excited about 4th edition, and am eager to see what they do with fighters and armour in particular.

Remathilis said:

In short, anyone HAPPY about the move to add some anime and videogame elements into the old horse that is D&D?

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Not I. As fortune would have it, I don't see anime when I look at the 4E art or anything else that's been revealed. Since you do, we may both end up happy, and I hope we do.

I have always seen D&D as a tool for creating a fantasy campaign of various genres (not all at once, but a broad selection). I dislike the 3E (and prior) moves toward "D&D emulates D&D" because it restricts the tool and narrows the focus.

If 4E is capable of handling the anime flavor you like without removing the pseudo-Medieval European, swords and sorcery, and pulpish flavor I like, then I would welcome it.

If the result would involve having a lot of manga/anime art, over-the-top "martial" abilities, etc. so prominent that I wasn't able to read the rulebooks without feeling like the flavor was being pushed at me or that I was trying to fit my square peg in an anime-shaped hole, then I'm afraid I have to say, "tough." D&D has been strongly in "my" genre for 30 years.

I play D&D because I like the feel it has evoked since I was nine (probably around the time you were born). I can't imagine picking up Exalted or L5R and demanding that those systems did a good job of emulating the feel of King Arthur, Tolkien, or Conan. Any Exalted players would be rightfully aggravated if the flavor shifted so far that way that they weren't able to use the system for the flavor that originally brought them to the game.

I don't hold any malice against anyone who wants to play an anime-themed game. What you do it your living room doesn't impact me in mine. I think it's fair, though, for me for me to be a bit protective of the flavor of D&D.

If D&D turns into a strongly anime-flavored game, you may have one more game to play, but I have one less.

But, as I said, if 4E can handle your needs without losing the ability to handle mine, I'm genuinely happy.

ArmoredSaint said:

I can't stand those Western kids who reject their own cultural heritage and seem to wish that they were Japanese themselves.

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So, you don't like people that have had a lifetime of Western media shoved down their throats, and opt to like something different?

This fantasy felt so much more "real" and "grown up" than the vapid, puerile storylines I saw in anime and JRPGs.

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One might say that Howard's emphasis on killing, drinking, and ing is pretty puerile, since teenage boys love media that involves those things.

Anime and JRPGs just seem so shallow. Their storylines conform to a handful of predictable plots and universally feature a number of tiresome tropes. I can only watch teenagers toting oversized swords while wearing unrealistic armour save the world so many times before it gets old.

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Despite your claim of "three years of Japan-o-philia," it sounds like you know very little about the diversity and range of anime and manga.

Mourn said:

So, you don't like people that have had a lifetime of Western media shoved down their throats, and opt to like something different?

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In many cases, I don't think these kids (and it is almost without exception, kids) have really been exposed to Western Fantasy. At most, they've seen the Lord of the Rings movies. I encounter few of them who've read the original works of Howard and others. Far from having Western Fantasy "shoved down their throats," today's children's programming force-feeds viewers a steady diet of Japanese and Japanese-influenced cartoons. If anything, anime/manga influence is so ubiquitous and pervasive nowadays that ignoring anime and sticking to classic fantasy represents "trying something different."

Mourn said:

Despite your claim of "three years of Japan-o-philia," it sounds like you know dick about the diversity and range of anime and manga.

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I admit that my period of otakudom ended most of a decade ago, and I've been out of the loop ever since. I still treasure my Record of Lodoss War tapes, and even watch them now and then, but I've always felt that that one stood out from the big, steaming pile of shows/games like Bastard!, Slayers, Final Fantasy VII, Breath of Fire, Naruto, Berserk, and worse.

But what if I LIKE Anime/Video-game tropes in my D&D?

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Then you're Badwrongfun and you should just wait until the Anime/Videogame Book of d20 comes out.

In short, anyone HAPPY about the move to add some anime and videogame elements into the old horse that is D&D?

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I am. We're roughly in the same boat, except that I didn't really get into straight-up fantasy until 1998, my freshman year of HS. And my introduction was RA Salvatore.

I don't mind anime. I'd love it if D&D was easier to incorporate Shintoist spirits like in Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Berzerk made me appreciate the Greatsword (Which, before then, I though it was a bit silly). If NPCs could have unique powers, unrelated to classes or PrCs, like in Ninja Scroll, that'd be wicked.

But I hold more to Samurai Jack than I do to Trigun or Kenchin.

Video games are another story. If fighters were more like Kratos, I'd start drooling. Scaling monsters like Shadow of the Colossus? Yessir! Absorbing the power of my enemies to create special effects, like Megaman? Oh hell yes. The one video game I wish D&D was more like would be Castlevania, where a dude with a whip isn't doing d3 points of subdual damage that doesn't do jack to undead.

But then, I didn't start playing D&D until 2001-2 or so. So I'm less married to the system than anything.

I am looking forward to 4e, however I am one of those folks that just doesn't see any comparison to video games and anime with what we have heard about 4e.