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It's a big continuum. Everyone who has a self-image, is a social chameleon to the least extent, tells stories or accounts or uses irony or funny voices -- i.e. everyone -- roleplays.

A lot of the fiction D&D is based on was written before the current distinction of fantasy, science fiction, horror. Heroic fantasy-like planetary romance, superscience in quasi-medieval worlds (e.g. in dying-earth settings), gate travel between 'fantasy' and 'modern' settings, and so on are...

I mean the usually acknowledged ones, like Masks of Nyarlathotep, The Enemy Within, the Pendragon campaign, the Gygax modules... I can just about imagine how a scenario could be great and setting-neutral at the same time, but I can't think of any examples.

All the great RPG scenarios are set in particular worlds. I'd feel shortchanged if an adventure didn't tell me about the places where it's set, I can't see how you'd achieve depth without that detail, and I'd rather have the choice to change it than be obliged to make it up. Red Hand of Doom was...

If you put the fragmentary information together -- their write-ups, character names, World of Greyhawk references, and their appearances in Gary's novels, you can see that the main source for Gygaxian elves is definitely European folklore as filtered by Shakespeare and Spenser. In other words...

But the majority (I think) with no clear idea one way or the other would have something accurate to discover or be referred to if they became interested. Yet people listen to audiobooks and radio plays. Combine that with the heat of improvisation, and the novelty of the form, and there's no...

This accusing Gary of disingenuity is extremely distasteful. In civilized discussion you don't call people liars without proof.

Huh? I know perfectly well what a trope is.

Same in the Realms.

To keep making money, you need to either sell a lot of stuff to a few people or less stuff to lots of people. Since Wizards hasn't had the guts to try mass-marketing D&D outside the existing ghetto of 'gamers', it's forced to the former course like TSR was. Yes, all trade books are underpriced...

I'm afraid putting together the bits of the two systems that you like (no objective point of view is available to pick the unambiguous strengths) sounds like a fantasy heartbreaker.

I don't think it's entirely marketing. Gary was also saying that gods are an integral part of D&D -- rather than clerics worshipping nothing in particular -- and are to be dealt with a particular way, which the first chapter of Deities & Demigods describes pretty well. Gary had heard lots of...

It's a medium, and it encompasses a range of artistic styles, just as Western animation does. Very true. Both the popular perception of anime in the West and its anime subculture are far skewed from anime in Japan. C'mon, calling out stances is a hallowed trope of Chinese culture.

I use it when I run AD&D -- well, big bits of it, but the same is true of the three original books.

Along the same lines, I think a bigger factor than difference between GMs and players is that between 'gamers' and others. The current players and DMs of RPGs, and even more the minority who buy products, like heavier rules on average than average people. This is a feedback loop or at least a...

Archetypes are how people think. You might as well ask if realist fiction -- which is normal fiction with a realist surface -- will replace myth. As for D&D classes, I somewhat agree with Storm Raven but I find that in practice they're more effectively archetypal than you'd theoretically think...

That's how I see it. An evil protagonist is structurally nonsense. I also agree that the practical problem is that this player is refusing to cooperate with the DM and other players as people, and until he does you shouldn't waste your time trying to work around his problems. The PCs in the...

I'd put the mindset difference in terms of using the rules to play in a particular idea of sword-and-sorcery fantasy fiction, rather than to simulate a realistic secondary world. It doesn't break the fourth wall any more than non-realistic (including almost all pre-20th-century) theatre does. I...

Why not use an ice cube and play in subzero temperatures?

No one suggested they were.