But what if I LIKE Anime/Video-game tropes in my D&D?

[Exen Trik]

I'd love to play a game with videogame and anime tropes, but I'm not seeing them in 4e like others seem too. I see a more interesting, cinematic and perhaps even over the top play style, but nothing really derived anime or games. As long as the rules allow for such things to fit in the game, but doesn't mandate them it should be fine.

I do think though, that the more "grim and gritty" styles won't be as well represented, without some heavy retooling. But I think that's more a cause of not intending to be "heroic" play.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

I am the chimera.

I like the art of the 70s like that of Boris Vallejo, painted with a high degree exaggerated realism, but I also like fantasy anime (only the good ones). I like traditional d&d becuse of playing hero quest as a kid. I watched the hobbit in the 3rd grade and read the book soon after. record of lodoss war and ghost in the shell was my gateway into anime. I dove deep into anime and i have emerged with a healthy respect for both the old and the new. of both the east and the west.

I think 3.5 does a bad job of mixing mixing the older and newer generations of fantasy, It dilutes itself rather then takes the strengths of the two. i would have done it differently. Lets hope 4e does it differently too.

 

[Rechan]

There's a big difference between what FFVII tries to be, and what it delivers. Whatever ham-fisted philosophy there might be underlying it is completely lost in a story that's disjointed and populated with stilted characters that act childish and speak in nothing but cliches.

Knowing when to leave well enough alone is a skill most JRPG designers would really benefit from, but instead, they seem to think games in which you spend most of your time killing cactus people, angels in bondage, cyborgs on rollerskates and jack-in-the-boxes are the perfect stage to try to make a statement about some of the greatest questions facing humanity.

I noticed you didn't answer his question as to the significant depth in REH's stories.

 

[Rechan]

My biggest problem is a concern that the older visions of D&D are being completely being killed off in favor of the new. Being a child of Dragon magazine, reading editorials by Gary Gygax, actually getting to game at a table with him, to talk to people like Roger Moore and Dave Arneson and Rob Kuntz about their game experiences, my visions were solidly shaped by the very first generation of RPG gamers. To lose this style of play completely to just older editions of the game is kind of saddening to me, in a way. Then again, I can't get Pink Floyd and Guns n' Roses back in the top 40 charts again, either.

Sadly, I don't think that today's generation could get that. Not to knock the 4e designers any, but I don't think that a fresh D&D gamer would be as impacted by sitting down at Mearl's table and talking to Wyatt as you were sitting at Gygax and talking to Kuntz.

 

[Dragonblade]

Anyone else with me? Anyone else excited D&D is finally drawing inspiration from more modern and more worldly forms of fantasy traditions? Anyone else grow up on Final Fantasy and Everquest who is now excited their D&D games can evoke the same feel? Anyone happy that Squaresoft, Tokyo Pop and Blizzard have been added to list of inspirations next to Tolkien, Howard and Moorcock?

In short, anyone HAPPY about the move to add some anime and videogame elements into the old horse that is D&D?

I'm more a child of the 80's, and I have played D&D since it was AD&D 1st edition, but that said, I'm with you!

 

[Remathilis]

If I read your first post properly, Remathilis, I've been playing D&D as long as you've been alive. It's a mind-blowing thought for me. I'm glad if D&D can capture the imaginations of a generation that isn't my own, to tell stories outside of an Online RPG, to foster getting together at the table to laugh and make friends instead of only as raid and guild groups. The part of that table top experience, of face to face playing with one another, THAT's the part I want to see survive for all future gamers, because it's the more important part of it.

I tell this story now and again.

Its 1992-1993 and I'm knee deep in Final Fantasy mania. FF II had me at hello. (Later properly named IV). It was an epic story that (despite having some rather terrible Engrish) featured love, redemption, betrayal, life and death, and ultimately was my "Tolkien" moment.

My friend had just gotten a bunch of old BECMI and 1e books from his uncle, and he went and bought the Rules Cyclopedia. He got together some other friends and invited me to play.

Me: What is this Dungeons & Dragons?
Friend: Its like Final Fantasy, except you get to make up the plot and characters.
Me: Cool. Can I be a dark knight?
Friend: No, but you can be dwarf.
Me: eh. Whatever, I'm in.

That was really all it took to sell me: the ability to create my own "final fantasys" lead me to play, and later DM.

Second Confession: I can't stand MMO's. Not for the rules, not for the video-game aspect, but I hate the Out of Character element of it. If I'm playing a WoW or FF XI character, I want to role-play him, not name him HaXXor and talk about drops, guilds, and raids.

 

[Dragonblade]

I simply hope that 4e has a base-rules that work for most games then branch out with supplemental-setting books. So that way you could get your anime and someone else could get their Merlins and Arthurs, etc.

Also as has been said before, you should also check out Exalted, it is a PnP made by White Wolf and is fashioned to be a Anime-style, fantasy game. They even separate each chapter of their books with a little comic.

Exalted is cool, but it has too much storyteller baggage. I'd rather play an Exalted style game using D&D rules. Thankfully 4e looks like it will make that happen.

 

[The Little Raven]

I tell this story now and again.

My story is similar, except I had been playing D&D before I played Final Fantasy... but Final Fantasy IV is what inspired me to start doing world-building. I can point at FF4 as the catalyst for me becoming a DM.

 

[Remathilis]

I don't think anything in 4e is directly influenced by anime or manga. A handful of elements we've seen are directly influenced by videogames.

Mostly what people mean by anime or videogamey is non-naturalistic, more OTT. 4e will be that, judging by the art and the more gamist mechanics, though, paradoxically it will also be truer to its literary source material in some ways.

Movies, fantasy art, comic books, heck the whole of western pop culture, has been moving in that direction since Star Wars was a mega-hit.

And that, to my taste, is a good thing.

Funny you mention Star Wars. If I can ever get a combat to be as dynamic as a lightsaber duel (with movement, dodges, feints, leaps, etc) I'll be in Heaven Mt. Celestia. Too much of D&D combat involves standing in one place and wolf-packing a foe till dead. It seems again 4e is pushing for a more cinematic and dynamic element I've wanted for years...

 

[mmu1]

I could say the same for Tolkein. He tries to give us an epic, but gets bogged down all the time in minutiae. Most people I know can't read Lord of the Rings because of huge breaks in the plot for him to explain something that, in the end, has no real effect on the story he's trying to tell (other than window dressing). Or how about spending tons of time trying to play up how horrible corrupting and tempting the Ring is, then bring in characters that completely invalidate all that build-up by rejecting it without even the hint of temptation. Or the fact that most of his characters are simply caricatures.

Where did all this straw come from?

Seriously, dude, what the hell does Tolkien have to do with me saying FF VII sucks? Since when does saying I don't like Anime and JRPGs imply that I have to like Tolkien, or that if I did, I'd hold it up as a model for fantasy fiction of all kinds?