Is D&D "about" combat?

[Agamon]

One last thought. I think the problem with these discussions is that people have a really difficult time separating the game from their game. And it makes conversation problematic. I'm not talking about anyone's personal game. The horse racing example above sounds like fun and I would probably do something the same. But, my point is, the game doesn't really answer the question.

Good point. I'm not currently playing D&D, so I have no problem making an objective opinion. I've also been on the side of, "No, D&D isn't just an elaborate minis game" in other threads in the past, there's a lot more to it. So I get what the "not combat" side is saying.

But when it comes right down to it, the covers of the books don't invoke images of negotiation, merchandising, or really much else beyond actual or inferred combat. We're talking about the game, fundamentally, not what can happen in any single given session or campaign.

 

[Jack7]

When you're in a fight the game is about combat. When you're preparing for a fight it's about potential combat.

When you're not in a fight, or not preparing for one, it's about something else.

It seems to me it depends a lot on the world you're operating in and how that works.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Children's vitamins are not about being gummy, or sweet, or fruit-flavored. They're about providing children with nutritional supplements that health care professionals feel are beneficial to growing children. However, before children's vitamins that were gummy, sweet, or fruit-flavored existed, children did not take a daily multivitamin at nearly the rate they do today. They just weren't popular.

Adding a new feature to something to make it more palatable to a larger audience does not suddenly make something not about the thing that it's actually about. Adding the trappings of roleplaying to a fantasy war game that was about combat doesn't necessarily mean it's no longer about combat. It can still be about combat (and, in my opinion and those of many others, undeniably is).

Of all the things that the people who created D&D in the first place set out to do, I bet you that at no point did one of them say, "Man, we should make this game not about combat anymore."

I have to say that I think you are wrong, and you don't even realise how wrong you are. However, you are so clearly steadfast in your grasp of this wrongness that you are unable to contemplate other approaches.

I don't know when you started playing RPGs, but you are far wide of the mark in your analysis. It certainly doesn't sound to me like you were there at the start, because you don't sound like ANYONE that I've ever known who was there at the start. There was a gaping chasm between tabletop wargaming and D&D which is apparently difficult to grasp if you didn't see it happen. That is very different to your assertion.

You are setting up weird straw man arguments and asserting your position but you have no evidence, yours is just one opinion amongst many, and seems less well formed than most. You've got the bit between your teeth, but it isn't an argument you can win I'm afraid.

 

[Mark CMG]

I have to say that I think you are wrong

The core concept of D&D was to allow a player to, essentially, play a unit consisting of a single individual based initially off of the Chainmail system used for combat miniatures wargaming. It developed from there to include some noncombat aspects of play, and aslo play that left the traditional battlefields, but that was its original core. I lived south of Lake Geneva during the time of D&D's early development and subsequent publication, I was a wargamer a couple circles/degrees removed from the authors/originators at the time in the early Seventies, then started playing D&D myself with friends in 1974, and only played D&D with TSR personel at GenCon in those early days, but that was clearly my recollection of how it all began. I don't believe that Dannager's analogy strays far, if at all, from the mark, if I am reading it correctly. He seems to be saying that it began as a wargaming variant and then exploded from there when the additional aspects were added to the game, right?

 

[Dannager]

I have to say that I think you are wrong, and you don't even realise how wrong you are. However, you are so clearly steadfast in your grasp of this wrongness that you are unable to contemplate other approaches.

I don't know when you started playing RPGs, but you are far wide of the mark in your analysis. It certainly doesn't sound to me like you were there at the start, because you don't sound like ANYONE that I've ever known who was there at the start. There was a gaping chasm between tabletop wargaming and D&D which is apparently difficult to grasp if you didn't see it happen. That is very different to your assertion.

You are setting up weird straw man arguments and asserting your position but you have no evidence, yours is just one opinion amongst many, and seems less well formed than most. You've got the bit between your teeth, but it isn't an argument you can win I'm afraid.

I understand that you disagree with the way that I see things (which is fine), but I have to wonder at whether the response above is appropriate. I don't see much in there other than "You're so unbelievably wrong you don't even know," even though there have been a number of people in this very thread who have agreed with me. To boot, I've made every effort to support my statements with logical examples (as in the post you responded to, which was merely to point out that adding something to something that exists doesn't necessarily change the fundamental thing it was originally about).

I guess what it boils down to is that I can't see you letting anyone (myself included) get away with the sort of tone you exhibit in the above post because it's little more than an attempt to shut someone else's argument down without really doing anything to refute it, and that is generally always harmful to discussion. Is this the sort of direction you want to steer the thread in? I'd wager not.

 

[Dannager]

The core concept of D&D was to allow a player to, essentially, play a unit consisting of a single individual based initially off of the Chainmail system used for combat miniatures wargaming. It developed from there to include some noncombat aspects of play, and aslo play that left the traditional battlefields, but that was its original core. I lived south of Lake Geneva during the time of D&D's early development and subsequent publication, I was a wargamer a couple circles/degrees removed from the authors/originators at the time in the early Seventies, then started playing D&D myself with friends in 1974, and only played D&D with TSR personel at GenCon in those early days, but that was clearly my recollection of how it all began. I don't believe that Dannager's analogy strays far, if at all, from the mark, if I am reading it correctly. He seems to be saying that it began as a wargaming variant and then exploded from there when the additional aspects were added to the game, right?

Precisely.

 

[MoxieFu]

I have to say that I think you are wrong, and you don't even realise how wrong you are. However, you are so clearly steadfast in your grasp of this wrongness that you are unable to contemplate other approaches.

Thank you PS.

 

[Dannager]

Thank you PS.

Out of curiosity, did you read what Mark CMG had to say?

 

[havard]

The core concept of D&D was to allow a player to, essentially, play a unit consisting of a single individual based initially off of the Chainmail system used for combat miniatures wargaming. It developed from there to include some noncombat aspects of play, and aslo play that left the traditional battlefields, but that was its original core. I lived south of Lake Geneva during the time of D&D's early development and subsequent publication, I was a wargamer a couple circles/degrees removed from the authors/originators at the time in the early Seventies, then started playing D&D myself with friends in 1974, and only played D&D with TSR personel at GenCon in those early days, but that was clearly my recollection of how it all began.

While I agree with this description, I think it is equally fair to say that this game only became D&D when the "other" element was added. It would be hard to convince anyone that combat has nothing to do with D&D, but I think the noncombat aspect is at least equally if not more important, regardless of the games' rules.

While you can still do anything in 4E, I think that the shift that edition made back towards a more combat oriented game was a mistake, as it is in the "other" aspect that our hobby really outshines any competitor.*


*Video Games, Boardgames, card games etc

-Havard

 

[Dannager]

While I agree with this description, I think it is equally fair to say that this game only became D&D when the "other" element was added.

And I agree with this (and I'm guessing Mark CMG does, too). But the fact that it became D&D when these "other" elements were added doesn't necessarily make those elements more important (or even equally important) to what D&D is about than the foundation that it was built upon. As I explained earlier, they weren't Flintstones Children's Vitamins until they were fruit-flavored, but that doesn't mean that Flintstones Children's Vitamins aren't fundamentally about nutrition. There is a higher bar of reason that needs to be established in order to show that.

Now, without a doubt, you are absolutely correct that these "other" aspects of the game are what separates tabletop RPGs from other sorts of games. You can simulate miniatures combat in any number of ways, including in video game form. You can't simulate the DM (adequately) or his custom-tailored story, or the participation of your friends and their characters, each of whom is hand-crafted in the vision of the player behind it. Clearly, these things are vital to determining what makes tabletop RPGs different from other forms of entertainment, but that's not the same as determining what D&D is about.