D&D General D&D as an lore fan vs a tools fan

[Morrus]

The Secrets of Waterdeep fan experience made me think. I personally have no interest in going to see it, and I wondered why. I would go and see a LotR or Star Trek immersive experience, but--despite it being one of my primary interests/hobbies--I wouldn't go to a D&D one. The recent D&D movie was fun, but it could have been any fantasy world; the easter eggs and setting weren't why I enjoyed it. I think I figured it out.

For me personally, my fanship of D&D is not as an IP but as a tool. I've never really been into the campaign worlds (though I loved the Dragonlance novels as a kid). I've never bought a Forgotten Realms or Dark Sun boxed set or hardcover. I did buy a 2E Ravenloft boxed set, and I did buy the Dragonlance Adventures hardcover for 1E.

But for me, D&D is a rules system. The lore, the IP, the worlds, are not really what I use D&D for. I make my own worlds, or sometimes replicate non-D&D worlds I am a fan of, but D&D lore? It's not my bag. Never has been.

Maybe it's just me. But I thought I'd put it out there--does anybody else interact with D&D in the way that I do?

(I made a poll, but I suspect most people will choose 'both').

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

This is, I feel, a downstream effect of TSR's choices in the late 80s of splitting D&D into a bunch of sub-brands.

I have met multiple self-proclaimed Dragonlance fans who had no idea those books were D&D tie ins, and to a lesser extent, I've met people who said the same thing about the Drizzt books. And even those who like the Drizzt books, may have been a fan of just those books, or just the Forgotten Realms, without necessarily playing the game.


If I were to say "I'm playing D&D" or "I'm a D&D fan" I would refer solely to the rules and the game itself, in part because homebrew campaign settings are so common and do seem to be the default. A "D&D Fan" and a "Forgotten Realms Fan" are not necessarily the same thing; the issue is how do you sell something other than a ruleset to someone whose only emotional attachment is to the ruleset and not characters or stories?

 

[Stormonu]

I definitely have interest in the lore of various campaign worlds, but I don't get too deep - but I can easily tell you the differences in tone between the likes of Greyhawk, FR and Dragonlance, their history and a bit about the prominent NPCs (and their escapades) of each. But I'm an oddball, I spend my spare time writing (literal) dozens of campaign worlds and fleshing them out.

My love of D&D transcends the rules - I can use any ol' rule system - there's dozen of them, many that do better than the WotC version. Wrapping those rules into a coherent world is far more interesting to me.

PS: I was miffed that Eberron was the one WotC major campaign world that didn't get a boxed set back when it was originally released, so I picked up the Beedle's version just to have a boxed set. I've got every WotC campaign world and many, many beyond it and keep collecting more - latest was Crooked Moon.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I avoided running games as a Dungeonmaster in the 1980s and 1990s because I was not familiar with Dungeons and Dragons lore. I was afraid players were going to debate with me over the attitudes of elves in relation to dwarves for instance.

Instead, I created my own world where I made the lore. In the early 2000s we played for five years in that world and had a blast.

I don't really enjoy Dungeons and Dragons lore.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I think an aspect might be: the things that make for an engaging fictional setting are often in conflict with the things that make an engaging gaming setting.

For games, I want freedom: few defined characters, no defined map - suggestions and prompts are welcome, but I don't want anything spelled out for me.

For stories, you need named characters in named places with specified relationships and minimal gaps.

Basically, a flexible game product doesn't come with the main characters - and a story without the main characters isn't very coherent.

 

[BruceWright]

Lol, I would go to almost any interactive immersive experience just for the experience... (And some of that probably stems from the same reasons I like D&D and RPGs). Even for things I'm not into at all, I like the immersive experience.

Like Meow Wolf. What's going on? What is this strange dimension I'm in? Bad word if I know!!! Don't care, I'm all in!


Yeah, I like the world of Forgotten Realms. I like the trademark monsters like the Beholder and the Mimic. I like knowing what a tiefling is, and knowing what a Bag of Holding is. But I more like the IDEA of a big setting that's a friendly enough world to set my adventures in.

The thrill my players got last year when they travelled up the Sword Coast amd visited Baldur's Gate for one session... they got SO excited. They had drinks and interrogated some shifty sailors at the Blushing Mermaid. That's a unique experience, I think, being able in the game to visit things they knew --and loved-- from other media.

 

[SothFan]

The Secrets of Waterdeep fan experience made me think. I personally have no interest in going to see it, and I wondered why. I would go and see a LotR or Star Trek immersive experience, but--despite being one of my primary interests/hobbies--I wouldn't go to a D&D one. The recent D&D movie was fun, but it could have been any fantasy world; the easter eggs and setting weren't why I enjoyed it. I think I figured it out

This might be a cause for what I was reading about for the other discussion. People seem to be more interested in self involvement than watching others "play".

What if this existed before all the videos of games by others, would you have been more intetested then?

 

[500 Toads]

At this point? Setting, actually. D&D 5E mechanically is a pretty fleshed-out system, and most of my issues with it relate not to a lack of rules coverage but instead what the rules are; balancing issues, for instance.

For a historical setting I can draw upon a lot of real-world historical sources to flesh out details; history texts, newspapers, catalogs, what-not. If I want to run a Call of Cthulhu campaign in 1920s New England, I can check such details such as how buildings were heated (natural gas versus coal, etc), the availability of telephones, the legal status of sidearms and long guns and dynamite, what sorts of crime syndicates might be in play, the status of public transportation, prevailing attitudes towards the supernatural, what might be on the mind of citizens regarding major issues of the day, what-not. Hewing towards these helps keep things internally consistent, and the ability to introduce actual materials like the front page of a contemporary newspaper can be good for setting the mood.

If I want to run a D&D campaign somewhere in Kara-Tur, well, I don't have historical sources because it's a fictional, proprietary setting. Neither I nor my players will have deep knowledge of it how it's "supposed" to be from academic studies, news media, family anecdotes, or the like. Things like the availability of magical services and goods; the legality of being openly armed in urban environments (or of spellcasting, for that matter); the various concerns of the citizenry; the relations between various sovereigns, non-heir ambitious noble-born children, guilds, criminal syndicates and what-not... perhaps I'm odd, but I would appreciate more details regarding lore and societal institutions, rather than another couple of of dozen subclasses.

If I want to run RuneQuest, there's a lot of Glorantha material regarding history, customs, religion, technological development, climate, what-not; and it's continuing to get fleshed out, with more details on particular regions as well as on particular cults. RuneQuest expects that its player characters will be full participants in a society with actual non-adventuring roles, rather than full-time wandering murderhobos, after all. There's the two-volume Guide to Glorantha, there's the Glorantha Sourcebook, there's a series of Cults of RuneQuest books, the Lands of RuneQuest series has started, etc. There's a lot of material there that's already been pretty carefully thought out in terms of actually making sense as a setting, and informing how NPCs in the setting would be likely to act in various situations, and so forth.

 

[aco175]

I made the hard choice instead of choosing both and picked lore. I can make stuff and research things that are cool to place in locations, but I cannot think of all the cool things that others think of. Other peoples ideas are better than mine some of the time and I can steal some of theirs to add to mine.

I like the rules and can play with them but making spells, gods, and cities can be lifted a lot by the professional companies. This does not have to be Wizards.

 

[Basic Expert]

Tools, definitely.

The best thing about D&D and other TTRPGs is the ability to create your own content for it. Why use someone else's stale leftovers when you can create some hot, fresh, flavorful dishes for your group?

Use lore for inspiration or a jumping off point? Sure! Cherry-pick to your heart's content. Slavishly follow it as gospel? Never!