The whimsical element of D&D vs AD&D

[Scott DeWar]

ok, a few comments to make here:

That was from Larry Elmore's comic classic comic Snarfquest. It and Wormy are the two things I remember most fondly from Dragon Magazine.

thank you Jedisoth. Snarf quest! one of my favs too!

For some reason, over the past two years, I've found myself preferring the tone of the older editions (BEMCI - 2nd ed.) to 3.x and beyond. Not sure why. Losing my wife and my father in Nov. '08 and Nov. '09, respectively might have something to do with that.

i am very sorry for you loss. Truly.

and as for dragon magazine, does any one remember the reworked bard, where there was a conversation between two half orc assassins and the dm, where it was better to take on a brigade of Sherman tanks rather then taking on a bard from the book RAW first ed?

DM: hey Guido, where did you learn of Sherman tanks?

I want to apologize for all of the typos in that post. As you can see, they are pretty much corrected.

RPGs as a sociology experiment, postmodern literary statement, or politically correct educational message is Forge or RPG.net chinstroker territory, and I'd fall over myself in my rush to get away from such a game table. I don't think you can get further from D&D humour than that, unless said humour involves taking the piss out of yourself.

and last but not least,

i am seeing a lot of heated responses to this post. lets be careful here and cool down a bit. otherwise the mod squad will be summoned and well, that won't be good at all.

S. DeWar,
drinker of Dewar's Scotch

 

[Hussar]

Rounser - I'm not really seeing what you are seeing to be honest. I think some people are saying no thanks when it comes to the whimsical side of D&D, but, I don't think anyone has actually come forward and said it has no place in the game.

 

[amerigoV]

I have been reading some of the old classic modules - good, fun takes on things in the older works. I am running Expedition to the Ruins of Castle Greyhawk. In homage to modules like Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, I am putting together a special session -- The Grinch who Stole Festivus. The group gets magically transported to a snowy land, must partake in Festivus, and recover the stolen Festivus pole to get back home.

Yes, it will count for XP and loot. And if you do not like it, tough. You go to the top of the list in the Airing of Grievances ("You disappoint me because you have something stuck up your *ss bigger than the Festivus Pole!")

Should be a fun time, I'm thinking.

 

[Scott DeWar]

[aside] Has any one ever looked into the dragons foot games modules? [/aside]

 

[Lanefan]

[aside] Has any one ever looked into the dragons foot games modules? [/aside]

[aside] They did an alternate ending to Q1 that I ran and quite liked. Haven't looked all too closely at many others, though I've been meaning to for ages and still intend to at some point. [/aside]

Lan-"there was nothing whimsical in alt-Q1 - it saw its PC victims and got on with it"-efan

 

[BryonD]

That's fine. The thread is at least partially about "why would you want to ban whimsy, anyway, when it creates a lot of the memories people cherish." I think that when it comes to whimsy in D&D, the accepted wisdom (ban it, purge it, not in my campaign itz iz being teh serious business mang) is wrong.

I think your position that other ways of playing are wrong is wrong.

It is 100% true that silly whimsy things create a "lot of the memories people cherish." But, it is also true that deeply engaging stories create a "lot of the memories people cherish." And, depending on the game in question, whimsy can seriously undermine the value of the serious elements. Sometimes there is a trade-off and you are only counting one side of the ledger.

You can mock serious gaming as "itz iz being teh serious business mang". And others can just as readily mock whimsy as "stupid looney toons children's fare". Both CAN be correct assessments, but the great majority of the time each of these assessments are far from accurate.

Whimsy can be left out and the intentional prohibition of whimsy can improve the game. That doesn't make whimsy bad for D&D, just for certain campaigns.

If whimsy is chocolate chips and my favorite game style is apple pie, there is nothing at all wrong with me wanting to NOT have chocolate chips in my apple pie. The statements you have made seem to presume that I therefore don't like chocolate chips cookies. You would be very very wrong if you think that. You also seem to presume that not wanting chocolate chips in my apple pie means I would never enjoy an apple chocolate chip cake. And again, you would be very wrong.

There are a lot of different campaign styles. You are saying that the universe of possible campaigns is smaller than it is, and further, you are making this universe smaller by condemning my personally preferred region.

 

[rounser]

BryonD, you represent the concensus view that has crept into the game's culture like a thief in the night. The founders of the game knew that D&D is fundamentally something of a lark, and that creativity came hand in hand with in-jokes and random madness "just because". You represent how far we've strayed from the oldschool ideal of a grab bag of fun, and towards codified attempts to create some live-play version of The Great American Fantasy Novel, with all attendant ego and pseudo-realism that entails.

For players, I think that the memories that stick are rarely those of the DM or game designer, who want to have others admire their creation. Even mostly serious campaigns can afford to occasionally break the fourth wall or throw in a sly pop culture reference, and the result be depth and richness, not childishness. I think your dismissal of whimsy as being childish represents perhaps that you don't understand what D&D gameplay organically tends towards without egos getting in the way, the original settings and the nature of the creativity behind what we tale for granted today, and in general seem to have confused running a game with writing a novel (a very common mistake).

That you choose not to tap such a rich vein of fun is typical; you are the rule, not the exception, and the game's culture has lost so very much as a result. Some things are a lot more fun in play than in theory or as static words on a page, like 4e's combat rules play better than they read (although they'd have to, given how dry a read they are, and perhaps desperately in need of some high gygaxian whimsical genius to liven them up).

 

[Hussar]

Wow. Just wow. O.O

That was.... wow... words fail.

Impressive nonetheless. I think I've never seen a more eloquent rant on badwrongfun. Well done you sir.

 

[BryonD]

BryonD, you represent the concensus view that has crept into the game's culture like a thief in the night. The founders of the game knew that D&D is fundamentally something of a lark, and that creativity came hand in hand with in-jokes and random madness "just because". You represent how far we've strayed from the oldschool ideal of a grab bag of fun, and towards codified attempts to create some live-play version of The Great American Fantasy Novel, with all attendant ego and pseudo-realism that entails.

You say "strayed", I say evolved.

That you choose not to tap such a rich vein of fun is typical;

BZZZZZZ! Sorry, thanks for playing

Big error there. I tap into that vein quite frequently. I specifically stated as much.

However, I know from experience that the vein you reference is rich, but other's are both rich and higher in quality, so I tap into those more frequently.

That you felt a need to misrepresent my play style and presume that I miss out on your personal mode of preference is telling. And, frankly, if you admit that I do completely understand and enjoy the style you prefer, your attempt to mischaracterize my preference collapses. You are trapped by the logical disconnect within your position.

 

[rounser]

Impressive nonetheless. I think I've never seen a more eloquent rant on badwrongfun. Well done you sir.

You can play that card if you like, but it's just identifying how the culture of the game has changed, and how much has been lost. The badwrongfun according to the majority is the whimsy, not the mainstream "my campaign is serious" crowd.

As far as BadWrongFun goes, WOTC has written essays on the topic of "Why We're Not Funny", so you've been conditioned to consider the very thing I'm suggesting as misrepresented and misunderstood as BadWrongFun by the current makers of the game. That's a movement for badwrongfun.

You guys represent the mainstream, concensus view. Trying to claim victim status is a bit weak, I'm just saying that somewhere, someone might have made a mistake and got the ban on whimsy terribly wrong.

That you felt a need to misrepresent my play style and presume that I miss out on your personal mode of preference is telling. And, frankly, if you admit that I do completely understand and enjoy the style you prefer, your attempt to mischaracterize my preference collapses. You are trapped by the logical disconnect within your position.

I don't "prefer" whimsy, I just flag it as having been removed from the palette by people such as yourself - and in the past, myself. Often thoughtlessly, because your perspective is the dominant one, and most people don't seem to pay more than a moment's thought beyond "my campaign is serious, this is not, ditch it". It's an uphill battle because it's not intuitive - it's only with experience that you recognise that by doing this you ditch some of the most precious gems of the D&D experience.

I'll reclarify BryonD - I don't care what you do, I'm just making a point that there are many like you, including myself, and perhaps we've been a bit hasty and shallow in our dismissal of whimsy. Perhaps we're even (shudder) wrong in de-emphasising it so pointedly as incompatible with, say, grimdark (as discussed earlier in the thread).

Anyway, hope I've got a few people reconsidering, because although you guys want to claim persecution status for your styles of gaming, whimsy is the thing that has really been persecuted and removed from the game here. There's plenty of aspiring-to-be epic, dramatic, heroic po-faced stuff in the current D&D culture, so to make the claim of badwrongfun about that is highly ironic. I'm just suggesting that some further turf for whimsy should perhaps be reclaimed, though of course not at your table.

You say "strayed", I say evolved.

I suggest your Baloon of Serious Business potentially needs deflating a bit. IMO, art just seems to go through cycles of pretentiousness and self-importance, and backlashes against the same, as I suggested earlier in the thread. Hackmaster and the OSR could be considered the D&D side backlash, arguably. And so it goes.