Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chiaroscuro23" data-source="post: 3443814" data-attributes="member: 15371">Right, so that's the issue exactly: you're using some nonstandard meaning of "D&D Fantasy." The idea that fantasy as a bookstore genre has changed in the wake of D&D is not new. It's been much discussed on internet boards over the years. It's also an idea that I think has a lot of strength to it, though sadly I haven't found much except links to the Forge while tooling around in Google. I'm sure that SFWA or somebody has an interesting essay somewhere online. But my Google-fu is weak.Anyway, I think it's arbitrary and counterproductive to label some of the results of D&D rules taken from story and others contrary to story. Having multiple protagonists from diverse "racial" backgrounds with diverse skill sets who fight evil together while getting constantly stronger is pretty odd, no doubt. And stories with multiple equally important protagonists aren't run-of-the-mill, but a team of specialists working together is normal. And you don't even have to leave the arena of contemporary genre fiction to find exceptions (Song of Ice and Fire involves probably dozens of perspective characters. World War Z is an homage to the oral histories of Studs Terkel.) Can we think of a reason that one consequence of D&D rules, like characters getting stronger with time, is contrary to story while another consequence, like a team of specialists working together to overcome problems, is not? I don't think we can.But all of that is premised on your idea that "D&D Fantasy" is defined by (some of) the game artefacts. Using the more traditional definition, we see stuff like (again, I can only dredge up the Forge, at <a href="http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:m3zEdnT0HTAJ:www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php%3Ft%3D4243+%22D%26D+fantasy%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us" target="_blank">http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:m3zEdnT0HTAJ:www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4243+"D&D+fantasy"&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us</a> )Of course there's a lot of argument, and I can't say I agree with all of this. But it is pretty normal to think of D&D as its own genre, rather than as of a piece with sword & sorcery, high fantasy, and so on. And to think that this genre has infested bookstores for some time in books that do not come from playing the game directly. Normally people only suggest such a division to express their disgust for D&D fantasy. Not me, though. I have nothing against it.FYI, my own shorthand for if a fantasy book is D&D-influenced is if it contains "gold pieces" and the modernist economic construct associated with them.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification