D&Disms Outside D&D

[Reynard]

With D&D being the first modern RPG, it has outsize cultural influence on the hobby, the industry, and adjacent media. I am curious what sorts of D&D-isms you see in other, non-D&D TTRPGs and related media (like CRPGs and card/board games). Along with the question: do you like seeing these things, or are pervasive D&Disms a bad thing to you?

For example, the notion of "classes" extends broadly beyond D&D. They are usually categorized into something like Warrior, Rogue and Wizard (with some fuzziness in the lines and the possible inclusion of a Priest category). Even some "point buy" or "skill based" TTRPGs embrace the categories and archetypes if not the classes.

Of course many TTRPGs use D&D races (usually with one or two stand out exceptions like faeries or lizard people). The Tolkien+ list is a pretty pervasive part of the landscape in modern fantasy gaming beyond D&D.

I will note that a lot of this is a reinforcing cycle: D&D inspires other games including CRPGS, and these things inspire D&D in return, and on and on. There's a lot of World of Warcraft DNA in modern D&D for example.

Anyway, how do you feel about D&Disms outside actual D&D, primarily in other fantasy TTRPGs?

 

[The Shadow]

One D&Dism that's always bemused me is that Minecraft has undead harmed by healing potions and healed by harming ones. It's so counterintuitive in the absence of "positive and negative energy" that I can only assume that it was taken as given.

 

[Dioltach]

I was amused to realise the other day that all kinds of companies are calling their reward points "XP" nowadays.

 

[aco175]

I see more video game-isms than just D&D. Some might be handed down from D&D with it being the original and such. We played D&D with the scouts a few weeks ago and instead of searching the room or dead monsters, the kids kept saying that the 'loot' them. Another was that needed a healing "pot".

I did see in a written apology a couple weeks ago from a billion dollar company saying that they 'rolled a 1' in the rollout of something or another.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Along with the question: do you like seeing these things, or are pervasive D&Disms a bad thing to you?

I'm pretty bored with D&Disms, myself. I'd definitely say anything that's not an RPG or directly RPG-derived but is filled with D&Disms is less interesting for it.

That might not have been true a decade or two ago, but it most assuredly is now.

In other RPGs, it depends entirely on what the goal is - if it's to produce a sort of alternative but D&D-like game, then, cool, fine, meets the goal. If, however, you're trying to create an RPG that's not like D&D, but have accidentally/subconsciously used a ton of "D&Disms", yeah I'm going to be kind of annoyed by that. I don't see race/class as D&D-ism, but stuff like, all dungeons being full of traps for no apparent reason, money always being gold pieces, Barbarian being a class, Bards being silly singing-dudes and so on, those are D&Disms (and indeed 3Eisms are the dominant form of D&Dism to this day).

What I find much worse than D&Disms though are WoWisms. There's a considerable crossover, but there's a ton of fantasy videogames (including indie ones) and even now some board games and the like which are so heavily influenced by WoW in both terms of aesthetic presentation and conceptualization of abilities, spells, and the like, that it's kind of sickening, in a very bad way.

Bear in mind I am a sensitive little flower re: brands/branding/tropes/cliches - In William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, about someone who is basically allergic to brands, I completely felt it - and yeah, Tommy Hilfiger is the worst - his stuff has always given me a visceral negative reaction because of how branded it is. And there are elements of D&Disms/WoWisms that are so repetitive they're like that kind of branding.

I'm actually beginning to tire of the "jokey bunch of sarcastic twerps" model of an adventuring party, which honestly has been increasingly popularized for decades, and whilst it's accurate, it's kind of tiring to see it repeated in media so much.

 

[JAMUMU]

Apropos of nothing, I've always thought there was some mileage in a game-setting-type-thing where D&D characters got dropped into a deep, immersive, realistic fantasy world and used their D&Disms to absolutely break reality. Like, all the NPCs were playing Rolemaster, but the PCs were using 5e rules.

 

[Reynard]

Apropos of nothing, I've always thought there was some mileage in a game-setting-type-thing where D&D characters got dropped into a deep, immersive, realistic fantasy world and used their D&Disms to absolutely break reality. Like, all the NPCs were playing Rolemaster, but the PCs were using 5e rules.

One of my bucket list campaigns is a completely meta game where monsters are literally made of XP,levels are a real world phenomenon and the PCs know that the game rules are the physics AND that there is a DM in the sky out to get them.

 

[The Shadow]

One of my bucket list campaigns is a completely meta game where monsters are literally made of XP,levels are a real world phenomenon and the PCs know that the game rules are the physics AND that there is a DM in the sky out to get them.

Except for the DM, that's basically what Order of the Stick is.

 

[DMZ2112]

I am pretty immune to D&Disms at this point, maybe because I play too many RPG video games. I am always tickled when I encounter one out in the world, though, especially if it seems like the user is unaware.

I will say that when Call of Duty got XP, my eyebrows rose a bit, and when Madden got XP, I may have had to restrain them from leaping off my face.

I'm actually beginning to tire of the "jokey bunch of sarcastic twerps" model of an adventuring party, which honestly has been increasingly popularized for decades, and whilst it's accurate, it's kind of tiring to see it repeated in media so much.

I agree, but I feel like this might be something we can more effectively lay at the feet of Joss Whedon than D&D. Dude has a lot to answer for, and a lot to answer for... and a lot to answer for.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I agree, but I feel like this might be something we can more effectively lay at the feet of Joss Whedon than D&D. Dude has a lot to answer for, and a lot to answer for... and a lot to answer for.

Hard disagree.

Whedon, despite being a man of many sins, is merely a whipping boy for the sins of others here. He didn't start the fire, it was always burning - and you can see that all the way back to the 30s (perhaps even the 1600s - the Rude Mechanicals etc. - but I think that's stretching it) in various forms. He just was particularly influential briefly in the '90s, but the reason he was influential was that we were already talking like that - as is easily seen by looking at game-related comic-strips from the era.

Whedon also had relatively good judgement about it - when to use it, when not to, and so on, and that cannot be said for the majority of his imitators.