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Message: <blockquote data-quote="slobster" data-source="post: 5926724" data-attributes="member: 6693711">One thing I'd like to mention is that, for me, the setting of a game and it's tone and feel (I'll use the term "genre" for that, even though it doesn't quite fit; maybe someone else has a better term) are distinct things.Toril (Forgotten Realms) is a setting. The Star Wars universe and Hogwarts are settings, too. With some houseruling and new classes, D&D is perfectly good at running adventures in any of them. Most systems can withstand that sort of hacking, though I think d20 (getting edition specific here, but that's a function of personal familiarity) is particularly robust in that way.Genre is a whole different ballgame. D&D excels at heroic fantasy. The rules presume that you will spend a fair amount of your time toe-to-toe with some big baddies in physical (or magical) combat. Your character is going to have aspects of a pulp action star or a superhero straight out the gate, including being able to shake off wounds that would be deadly to an average person (a function of using hp instead of wounds) and greater than normal stamina and power.So D&D can run heroic fantasy in Toril, Star Wars, or at Hogwarts. But if, instead of heroic fantasy, you want to run a lighthearted coming-of-age story with mystery elements and more personal than violent conflict, D&D begins to perform poorly. The mechanics can technically cope with that shift in tone, but it's going to be a strain. Players will look over their sheets and wonder why they are wasting time sneaking around the Slytherin common room when they can come out wands blazing. Roleplaying in the style the genre expects isn't reinforced by the rules, increasing the cognitive load on players and the GM.So while I think D&D is great at running heroic fantasy in pretty much any world you can imagine (I don't know if that qualifies it as being "generic"), I find it less satisfying at running a survival horror game. Or a detective mystery plot. Or sweeping romance, political intrigue, or gritty war tragedy. Any of these can be done, with differing amounts of houseruling necessary, but D&D's chassis isn't designed for them and it could be a bumpy ride.TL;DR - I think D&D is great for just about any high action fantasy game you could want to run. I think it is less optimal than other available systems for games with a wildly divergent tone and feel, like Game of Thrones style political intrigue or My Little Pony: the RPG.</blockquote>

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