D&D - historical or fantastic?

[Quasqueton]

How do you prefer your D&D game?

Quasqueton

 

[Kanegrundar]

I voted an 8. It's over the top in many cases, but grounded it reality in others (at least until a spell breaks the laws of physics for a bit).

D&D is for the fantasical, for me. There are other games to play for grim and gritty.

 

[Kvantum]

7 for me. Realism has a place in D&D, but it's way after fantasy, and more importantly, fun. There are better mechanics to run a grim 'n gritty game than d20/3.X D&D.

D&D under hyper-realism? No thanks. Gimme my Warforged Fighter with the adamantine greatsword, or the half-dragon paladin, or the sorcerer slingning fireballs left and right.

 

[Gold Roger]

8-The way it's presented in most current books. The vestige of pseudohistorical medival europe (and these days other continents as well) can be made out as basis of a fantastic adventurer (level 1-10) turn superheroes (level 10-20) game.

It doesn't really make sense, but it's fun, recognizable and can given the necessary amount of inner consistency.

So, I'm in for the fantastic, but I'd miss the vestige of pseudohistorical for it's own worth of usefull and enjoyable clichees

 

[Odhanan]

8/9. I love fantasy, and I like hints of historical behaviors and stuff, but what I want primarily is fantasy. Not pseudo-historical stuff.

I may want to play pseudo-historical game (and I insist on the 'pseudo' vigorously), but that's not what I usually favor.

 

[the Jester]

I voted 7, but only because the implication of your poll is that fantastic is not grim and gritty.

 

[Henry]

I voted 8. I'm all for Eberron's mile-high towers, Faerun's deserts surrounded by icebergs, and Dark Sun's seas made entirely of silt.

 

[Odhanan]

I voted 7, but only because the implication of your poll is that fantastic is not grim and gritty.

Good point. Grim and gritty can be fantasy. They're not opposites, IMO. For instance, A Song of Ice and Fire isn't historical in the slightest, but fantasy manifests itself in a different way than over-the-top, high fantasy with flying carpets and stuff.

 

[lukelightning]

More fantasy than historic. I think a D&D/fantasy world would be incredibly different from the usual "medievalish world + magic and monsters" that we usually think of. The reason is that magic/fantasy elements would have been in that world from day one, and that would have affected the way the world evolved in ways that we can't even imagine.

 

[fusangite]

I picked 7. I would have gone for 8 or 9 but I felt that the term "historical" might partly mean "sociological." What I mean by this is that I do like to make believable societies based on sociological ideas that have come to us, in part, through the study of history. I am not a big fan of hand-waving major sociological incoherence; so, there are certain distributions of power that we know just won't make sense. One of the things that just wouldn't make sense is historical European feudalism -- the D&D universe makes it so easy to collect power without collecting followers or any of the usual ways for upstarts' power to be limited by an establishment. As such, D&D is going to have more social mobility and flexibility than a lot of historical systems; but does caring about such things make me more "historical" and less "fantastic?"