Manbearcat
Legend
I was thinking about this thread this morning and it got me evaluating my relationship with Dungeons & Dragons vs that of Marvel comics. I was hoping to tease out the nuance of my reasoning regarding the utility and general place of canon in each. A few things came to the fore of my self-evaluation:
1) Marvel comics is fundamentally a work of serial fiction where continuity, granular characterization of (typically) literary archetypes, classical themes, and broad genre tropes are paramount. This mature and evolved canon came first and developed over the course of considerable years. This, essentially, is Marvel comics.
Much, much later roleplaying games emerged. As a consequence of that temporal relationship, in order for Marvel comics games to avoid being dysfunctional, TTRPGs dedicated to emulating this serial fiction must cohere with and adhere to those characterizations, that continuity, and those broad genre tropes. Gameplay should still produces emergent rather than prescribed stories, but a fairly stout undercurrent of canonical constraints on play are to be expected.
2) D&D, while not being the exact inverse of Marvel comics, it is fundamentally very different. It was, of course, inspired by dozens of sources. However, the primordial soup and henceforth course of D&D is not serial fiction and attendant canonical constraint. It is an odd marriage of macro-cultural zeitgeist, isolated micro-zeitgeists, a heaping helping of (varying in functionality and design tightness) mechanical architecture meant to test player skill, DIY spirit (to make up for all the missing or dysfunctional bits!), an eclectic collage of fantasy goo, and a mish-mash of archetypes and legends. As a consequence, you have a signal of a very broad and zoomed out "D&D story" (such as the Moldvay Basic foreword) which remains uncontroversial coinciding with a whole lot of noise. This Erector Set of bubble gum, paper clips, cherry bombs, bottle rockets, and packing peanuts inevitably produced rather extreme genre and play priority drift.
Unsurprisingly, over time, various niches distilled and refined a few distinct play experiences and aesthetic expectations of "what D&D is." Equally unsurprising (because $2 is better than $1), capitalizing on this zeitgeist, various fictions (settings) would emerge/be sponsored (particularly the 2e era) to compete for the attention of the D&D userbase and the hopeful continual sponsorship by TSR/WotC. Given maturation over the course of a decade and change, they would eventually qualify as serial fictions.
So then. My conclusion from all that is simple:
The genesis and evolution of D&D is distinct from that of Marvel comics. Unlike a Marvel TTRPG, it was neither birthed from granular canon nor does it rely on tight adherence to such as a constraint to maintain its genre identity.
Appended autobiographical footnote:
I've run Ravenloft games, FR games, Dark Sun games, a Planescape game, and many, many, many more games with just off-the-cuff made up setting stuff that still bore that uncontroversial beating heart of "the D&D story" at its core. None of them were more or less "D&D-ish" than the others.
1) Marvel comics is fundamentally a work of serial fiction where continuity, granular characterization of (typically) literary archetypes, classical themes, and broad genre tropes are paramount. This mature and evolved canon came first and developed over the course of considerable years. This, essentially, is Marvel comics.
Much, much later roleplaying games emerged. As a consequence of that temporal relationship, in order for Marvel comics games to avoid being dysfunctional, TTRPGs dedicated to emulating this serial fiction must cohere with and adhere to those characterizations, that continuity, and those broad genre tropes. Gameplay should still produces emergent rather than prescribed stories, but a fairly stout undercurrent of canonical constraints on play are to be expected.
2) D&D, while not being the exact inverse of Marvel comics, it is fundamentally very different. It was, of course, inspired by dozens of sources. However, the primordial soup and henceforth course of D&D is not serial fiction and attendant canonical constraint. It is an odd marriage of macro-cultural zeitgeist, isolated micro-zeitgeists, a heaping helping of (varying in functionality and design tightness) mechanical architecture meant to test player skill, DIY spirit (to make up for all the missing or dysfunctional bits!), an eclectic collage of fantasy goo, and a mish-mash of archetypes and legends. As a consequence, you have a signal of a very broad and zoomed out "D&D story" (such as the Moldvay Basic foreword) which remains uncontroversial coinciding with a whole lot of noise. This Erector Set of bubble gum, paper clips, cherry bombs, bottle rockets, and packing peanuts inevitably produced rather extreme genre and play priority drift.
Unsurprisingly, over time, various niches distilled and refined a few distinct play experiences and aesthetic expectations of "what D&D is." Equally unsurprising (because $2 is better than $1), capitalizing on this zeitgeist, various fictions (settings) would emerge/be sponsored (particularly the 2e era) to compete for the attention of the D&D userbase and the hopeful continual sponsorship by TSR/WotC. Given maturation over the course of a decade and change, they would eventually qualify as serial fictions.
So then. My conclusion from all that is simple:
The genesis and evolution of D&D is distinct from that of Marvel comics. Unlike a Marvel TTRPG, it was neither birthed from granular canon nor does it rely on tight adherence to such as a constraint to maintain its genre identity.
Appended autobiographical footnote:
I've run Ravenloft games, FR games, Dark Sun games, a Planescape game, and many, many, many more games with just off-the-cuff made up setting stuff that still bore that uncontroversial beating heart of "the D&D story" at its core. None of them were more or less "D&D-ish" than the others.
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