Kaiyanwang
Adventurer
That's my answer (by way of WizarDru), but I'm not willing to claim it is the universal answer.
I meant that it worked for me

That's my answer (by way of WizarDru), but I'm not willing to claim it is the universal answer.
All of this late discussion of the highways and byways of ancient Italian empires and their relation to our fantasy roleplaying game of choice seem to boil down to me to the one quintessential question: What is the Soul of D&D?
I have my own answer, of course, and it suggests that the Soul of D&D, its very essence, is in what is experienced and achieved. Yet much of the roadway discussion seems to focus more on the externals, the body and clothes, if you will, of the experience. I submit that in the case of our preferred FRPG the Soul exists independent of both body and clothing, and while both body and clothing may inform our interpretation of the Soul, the essence of such can be achieved no matter what form of body or clothing one prefers. There are many games that do not carry the label D&D which I believe can carry its Soul; I also believe that many games played clothed in the sackcloth of D&D do not reflect its Soul.
But that of course, depends on some consensus of definition, so I put to you the question: What is the Soul of D&D?
What is the Soul of D&D?
My off-the-cuff response is that there is no singular "soul". The problems tend to arise when we assume there is one, and we attempt to figure out how to achieve an experience of it. Everyone wants their own way to be right "right way" to reach perfection.
I was re-watching some Babylon 5 last night, the episode was, "Walkabout", in which Dr. Franklin is wandering the station, trying to find himself after realizing he had a drug problem.
During his wanderings, he meets a woman, who repeatedly looks at him through a faceted tumbler. He asks what she's doing, and she says that she has a belief that light passes through the body, and brings with it an image of the soul. And if she holds the glass just right, all the scattered images would align, and she'd see the person's soul, what they really were.
He asks her if she'd ever managed the trick. She admits she had not. All she sees are the various scattered images of the same person, through the facets of the glass.
If we stop assuming that there is one really central experience or soul, then we would stop arguing about which is the right way to reach it, and maybe we could accept that we are all looking for our own thing, and that's okay.
To identify the soul of D&D, we have to be able to distinguish it from the soul of any other RPG, because if we can't, what we're claiming is the soul simply isn't.
For whatever reason, some people seem threatened by the idea of universality