AaronOfBarbaria
Adventurer
I can't decide between saying that your comment proves my point, or pointing out that I could have been clearer in stating that I was meaning to compare any particular version of D&D to the other games occupying the FLGS shelves or digital equivalent at the time.Define term "big-name RPG". By many measures, there are only two "big name" games - D&D and Pathfinder (which is really another form of D&D, as far as rules and focus are concerned). And then your statement doesn't mean all that much.
Such as 2nd or 3rd edition and Vampire: the Masquerade, and other similar comparisons.
In what way is that statement not also true of, for example, Shadowrun or Vampire: the Masquerade?In my personal experience, D&D tends to emphasise combat as the ultimate method of conflict resolution, because only combat produces finality of resolution.
Play style and the focus of the game are not quite the same thing.The whole reason there are so many different systems (and more being created everyday) is to cater to different play styles.
There are many different systems because each provides a different flavor for the various pieces of it - the feel to combat resolution could present the "bold heroes and dangerous monsters" feel like D&D tries to, or it could present a "you'd be lucky to survive" feel like Call of Cthulhu aims for, or it could be something else entirely, and the feel of other parts of the game similarly can differ.
That doesn't mean that D&D written in such a way that it can't be used with very little focus on combat, just like it doesn't mean I can't have my Call of Cthulhu campaign be "Resident Evil: 1925"
Yes, what the game rewards XP for does encourage those behaviors. So it's a good thing that there has never been a version of D&D that offered up XP rewards for only combat, nor such disparity between combat and non-combat rewards that a player would be tempted to always choose combat, rather than other more efficient by being less risky methods. Sure, there is an odd-one-out version of D&D (specifically AD&D 2nd edition) that did, for whatever reason, make it so that the official default rule was XP only being gained from defeated monsters - but even that version presented detailed suggestions for what other XP awards a DM could hand out.Getting xp for winning fights also encourages combat.
And really, if we are going to say that what the mechanics of the game give us is what is primarily responsible for coloring how the game is played, can you reconcile this for me: In Vampire: the Masquerade, the shared traits of every vampire character are all combat boosts - you gain a natural weapon, you can buff your physical stats beyond human capability, you are more resistant to damage, and can heal what damage you do sustain at an accelerated rate - and yet people don't commonly say "Masquerade is combat-focused."