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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 3867640" data-attributes="member: 2205">Interesting points, RC.  Here's my take:When you say "you are at a disadvantage" in what way do you mean?  Do you mean, "if you're WotC or some other game developer?" or do you mean literally all of us here?I mean, I accept that in general the less widely read you are the more disadvantaged you are, but I'd also propose that being well-read outside the fantasy genre is more likely to provide some significant advantage than being well-read within it.  You can be familiar with some of the basic nuances of fantasy and run a very successful fantasy game based on just that, especially if you're familiar with other influences.  I've had a lot of luck crafting campaigns that feel like paranoid Robert Ludlum thrillers set in a fantasy world, for example.  I've had good luck drawing influence from horror, history, science fiction, or heck, even romance novels on occasion.I don't think the signal to noise ratio is any different than it's ever been.  Looking backwards, we simply have the advantage of having filtered away the noise and are just looking at the signal, giving us an artificially compressed body of 'signal' works, making it seem better than ever.I've read really crappy fantasy for as long as I can remember.  If anything, I think there's more good stuff out there now.  But there's more stuff in general, so it's still an ongoing filtering process.  Agreed on that.Some of it does.  Some of it doesn't.Not that I see the relevence there, though.  Good storytelling tends to be timeless, so it's not wonder that we can spot similarities between works in the past and nowEh.  I guess I can see your point, but I don't agree with it.  Fantasy isn't like language.  Fantasy can be good without any reference to works that have come before it.  You can throw fantasy into any type of story, even one that has no references to the fantasy genre, and get a good story; in fact, probably one that's more interesting than yet another retread of the same ole same ole.  For example, you could throw fantasy elements at a classic British boarding school story, add in some mystery elements and have a run with it.  Might do fairly well.I think that that's true, though, for the sector of the fantasy audience that's extremely conservative in their tastes and don't care to look beyond the rather limited horizons of what they know and already like.  Which I'm trying not to couch in terms that are insulting, because that's perfectly fine; I know what I like too, and I don't spend lots of time looking outside the "tried and true" but on the occasions when I've done so, I've often found that there's stuff out there that I otherwise would never have considered but which is really quite good.In any case, in terms of D&D capturing a "new fantasy" market segment, I think your points are irrelevent.  In terms of retaining the "classic fantasy" market segment, you're probably spot on.  Ideally, WotC needs to straddle the line with material that appeals to both segments simultaneously, of course.  And I firmly believe that that's exactly what they're trying to do.  The whole "WotC is firing the customer" mentality doesn't hold true with what we know so far of 4e, looked at from the bigger picture.  It's certainly changing some of the D&Diana; the specific minutia and esoterica of the past, but I see no evidence that it's abandoning "classic fantasy" as a driving motif.  In fact, with as many changes as seem to depart from it, I see just as many that cleave closer to it (the Realm of Fairy, for example, or an entire race of cursed people in the tieflings, etc.).</blockquote>

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