Unpopular opinions go here

[TerraDave]

So wait, if I adapt a game from 5e, can I invent D&D?

Well, if you replace 5e with 3e then you can invent Pathfinder.

 

[CleverNickName]

You don't have to correct someone's grammar or spelling. Honest. You don't even have to mention it.
Unless you're an editor or a teacher, you truly can ignore it.

 

[Emberashh]

Agreed. The recent D&D movie was definitely not inspired by or in any way in the same genre as Tolkien's or Howard's glimpse back into a more ancient world.

There are almost no elements of "swords and sorcery" left in D&D except for the tendency to continue to eschew firearms. But aside from that, there is barely anything in modern D&D older than Dickens, and even that is fading as D&D's default setting moves more and more into the 20th century.

The fundamental problem is I think the inability to imagine anything distant enough into the past, along with the utter collapse of the contemporary readership of the sort of historical fiction source material that inspired all the "swords and sorcery" authors. No one (well almost no one) actually reads Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, Morte D'Arthur, or Doyle's "The White Company" or anything of the sort anymore much less writes fan fiction about it.

I am also raising this comment from the depths to counter with Three Hearts and Three Lions, a book that to this day still screams DND with every page, but was also directly called out by Gygax back in the day in the description for trolls.

Sword and Sorcery is still heavily steeped in in DND, and as has always been the case, the genre of Appendix N, which is what DND is, is primarily SNS. Epic fantasy and Scifi have variously encroached upon and taken greater or lesser prominence over time, but they haven't shunted SNS out entirely.

 

[Celebrim]

I am also raising this comment from the depths to counter with Three Hearts and Three Lions, a book that to this day still screams DND with every page, but was also directly called out by Gygax back in the day in the description for trolls.

Sword and Sorcery is still heavily steeped in in DND, and as has always been the case, the genre of Appendix N, which is what DND is, is primarily SNS. Epic fantasy and Scifi have variously encroached upon and taken greater or lesser prominence over time, but they haven't shunted SNS out entirely.

While I concur that Gygax's game was inspired in many ways by sword and sorcery, the truth is that books like "Three Hearts and Three Lions" are not what young writers and GMs are growing up with these days. The book may have well inspired Gygax, but nearly 50 years later his sources of inspiration are pretty remote to anyone under the age of 50.

 

[Reynard]

While I concur that Gygax's game was inspired in many ways by sword and sorcery, the truth is that books like "Three Hearts and Three Lions" are not what young writers and GMs are growing up with these days. The book may have well inspired Gygax, but nearly 50 years later his sources of inspiration are pretty remote to anyone under the age of 50.

If D&D wants to emulate fantasy that is held dear by GenZ, they have to completely overhaul the game system in order to achieve that. Which is fine as far as I am concerned, but that did not go so well last time and I don't get the impression that WotC is willing to make any big changes.

 

[Emberashh]

While I concur that Gygax's game was inspired in many ways by sword and sorcery, the truth is that books like "Three Hearts and Three Lions" are not what young writers and GMs are growing up with these days. The book may have well inspired Gygax, but nearly 50 years later his sources of inspiration are pretty remote to anyone under the age of 50.

Sure it isnt. THTL even for voracious readers is an obscure book unless you're in the adjacent OSR hobby.

However, what many young writers and GMs are growing up with is DND itself. Thats why when most people who have played DND go on to read THTL, they can pick out the DNDisms pretty readily.

Its sort of a Family Guy thing. You don't need to be steeped in 70s/80s/90s TV lore to find Family Guy's near constant references to them funny.

Likewise, you don't need to read any sword and sorcery novels to end up liking the genre.

If you play and enjoy DND, you almost assuredly enjoy at least some of what sword and sorcery offers, if not all of it.

The real problem with sword and sorcery's overall appeal is actually that its best modern examples are either poor modernizations (ala that Conan movie starring Aquaman), are simply happening in entirely different mediums (aka, DND heritage games), or are just obscure because they, like a lot of literature, are getting hit in the popularity nether region by the great diversity of entertainment we have now.

Most of the good SNS beyond DND and a few scattershot examples are also all ancient and come with the problems of being ancient; accessibility is hard, not just in finding the books but reading them. Not all of them were as timeless as LOTR and can get away with being written like that.

 

[Velderan]

Some people really want to remove the referee from D&D and it shows.

Some people really want to remove the D&D from D&D. I read some of the things people post about D&D and what would make it better for them, while thinking "there's another game that does that" which you could have right now instead of demanding WotC change a game a lot of people like the way it is into something else.

I guess that brings me to another unpopular opinion apparently; there's a game out there you'd like more than what you're playing.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I guess that brings me to another unpopular opinion apparently; there's a game out there you'd like more than what you're playing.

I suspect part of the problem is, that for whatever reason, its even harder to find someone running--or people willing to play--that other game these days than it was 40 years ago. My speculation would be that the network effect of D&D has set in much more heavily than it was in the 70's or even the 80's.

There was a fair bit of this back at the very beginning; since D&D was, for the first couple years, really the only game in town, there were a fair number of people trying to bash it into something more to suit them, even in sometimes (for the time) pretty radical ways. By the 80's a lot of them had either given up or moved onto the plethora of other games available at that time.

 

[overgeeked]

Some people really want to remove the D&D from D&D. I read some of the things people post about D&D and what would make it better for them, while thinking "there's another game that does that" which you could have right now instead of demanding WotC change a game a lot of people like the way it is into something else.

I guess that brings me to another unpopular opinion apparently; there's a game out there you'd like more than what you're playing.

I guess that all depends on how you define D&D and what makes it D&D for you. I've played from '84 until now. B/X, AD&D, 4E, and 5E. They're all D&D to me. They express the ideas differently, have different mechanics, have different worlds and lore, on and on and on. But they're all still D&D. It's more than just the logo or the branding. They're all variations on a theme. I think WotC (or whoever owns D&D in future) can take the game to a lot of far off places (even ones that some of us old timers would find utterly objectionable) and it would still be D&D.

 

[Velderan]

I suspect part of the problem is, that for whatever reason, its even harder to find someone running--or people willing to play--that other game these days than it was 40 years ago. My speculation would be that the network effect of D&D has set in much more heavily than it was in the 70's or even the 80's.

There was a fair bit of this back at the very beginning; since D&D was, for the first couple years, really the only game in town, there were a fair number of people trying to bash it into something more to suit them, even in sometimes (for the time) pretty radical ways. By the 80's a lot of them had either given up or moved onto the plethora of other games available at that time.

Sadly, you're probably pretty much correct for a lot of people. In the last few years, I've played TTRPGs with 2 tables. One table (my weekly PF2e table) is generally open to playing whatever nonsense someone wants to take the time to prepare a game for. The other group? "I just want to play D&D" without ever having tried another game to see if D&D even does what you like best. You know it does what you like, but never considering something else might just do what you like better? I hate using food analogies, but as much as I love pizza I'd get pretty tired of it if I had the same pizza every week.

So if you're the only person interested in trying a different game in a group like that, either you play D&D or you look for a new group that very well might not exist. At least with VTTs making online play an option, people have an easier way to find like-minded players today than they did in the 80s.

I guess that all depends on how you define D&D and what makes it D&D for you. I've played from '84 until now. B/X, AD&D, 4E, and 5E. They're all D&D to me. They express the ideas differently, have different mechanics, have different worlds and lore, on and on and on. But they're all still D&D. It's more than just the logo or the branding. They're all variations on a theme. I think WotC (or whoever owns D&D in future) can take the game to a lot of far off places (even ones that some of us old timers would find utterly objectionable) and it would still be D&D.

This gets into the "how much can you change something before it stops being that thing anymore". Would it still be D&D if you removed classes? Levels? Vancian magic? These are all things I've seen people say the game would be better if they didn't exist. Heck for some people, removing alignment starts to make it something they don't recognize anymore. I imagine if I look through the forum, I'd find a post somewhere that digs into "what makes it D&D for you" and there would be a lot of different ideas. It probably ended up closed by a mod. lol