D&D is its own Genre of Fantasy?

[buzz]

You are stretching the meaning of the word "genre" in multiple directions and I do not believe it serves the purpose well. ... I had a longer response but do not want to keep debating the misuse of a word.

What's a more appropriate term for the source material the RPG tries to emulate, then? If "Fantasy" in "Fantasy Role Playing Game" doesn't refer to genre, what is it referring to?

I guess I don't understand how saying "genre" is a misuse of the term.

 

[Desdichado]

Roleplaying game vs. book or movie is a separate medium. But "D&D fantasy" vs. "standard post-Tolkien rip-off fantasy" isn't really a separate genre because the conventions are pretty much exactly the same. It's only the details of setting that are different.

 

[Mark CMG]

What's a more appropriate term for the source material the RPG tries to emulate, then? If "Fantasy" in "Fantasy Role Playing Game" doesn't refer to genre, what is it referring to?

Is blue automobile a color? The rules used in D&D could be written to try to allow players to emulate a single genre of fiction or any number of genres of fiction and it still wouldn't make D&D a genre unto itself. The use of the word "genre" is simply not accurate or appropriate, whether or not another term applies to what you are trying to get describe. Likely the word "type" or "category" or "kind" are better choices. D&D is a type, category, or kind of RPG.

 

[Victim]

Magic, for me, is the biggest sticking point, not characterization. Magic in novels serves the plot. When you read about someone picking up magic item A, you know that he or she will use it at some point in the future. And, it will be the perfect fit to solve problem X. Sam will use the glowing potion to foil Shelob, the hero will have those flying boots and an invisiblity helm at just the right time, etc.

In RPG's this is almost never true. Magic items and spells are tools for the players, not for the plot. The player chooses to use or not use a given magic item and its efficacy is dictated by the situation, again, not by the plot. Look at any character sheet over about 6th level. I will almost guarantee that there is a potion on there that the character has had for the last four levels and likely will for the next ten.

This is a trope that you never see in novels. The idea that The Hero picks up a Magic Arrow and then never uses it until he dies horribly under the claws of Random Monster Z, is not the stuff of good fiction.

I'd say that the Jhereg books come pretty close though.

 

[Doug McCrae]

It might be better to call D&D a subgenre. It's on the same level as high fantasy, low fantasy, sword & sorcery - a subset of the fantasy genre.

EDIT: It should be stressed that D&D is not high fantasy or sword & sorcery. It's a blend of the two, plus many other elements - Hammer horror vampires and werewolves, Harryhausen walking skeletons, ideas that had no prior analogue in fiction (the plethora of monsters and magic items). This is sufficient to make D&D something new within fantasy, a new subgenre.

 

[buzz]

Likely the word "type" or "category" or "kind" are better choices. D&D is a type, category, or kind of RPG.

Are we maybe talking past each other here, Mark? I'm not saying that the D&D rulebook you're holding in your hand, is a genre, the same way that the physical copy of LOTR sitting on my shelf is not a genre. I'm saying "D&D fantasy" is a genre (or sub-), and that's what D&D (the game) basically emulates as-written.

 

[buzz]

But "D&D fantasy" vs. "standard post-Tolkien rip-off fantasy" isn't really a separate genre because the conventions are pretty much exactly the same. It's only the details of setting that are different.

I'd argue that the two are not quite the same, but are dang close. There's Tolkien rip-offs, and then there's fiction obviously modeled on D&D's basic setup. The latter typically includes aspects of the former, but not always the other way around.

E.g., The Sword of Shannara is probably a good example of the former; it's obviously built on Tolkien's model, but I don't remember it being all that "D&D" (though it's been decades since I read it). Feist's Magician (one of my favorite books as a kid), otoh, is very much built on a lot of D&D assumptions (it began as a published OD&D campaign world after all), which also include many a Tolkien-ism.