D&D vs D20

[Rasyr]

Since a comment made shortly after the Ennies, I have been thinking about something and I figured that I would throw it out here and get a few comments and see what folks think about it.

After the Ennies, one of the judges (IIRC, it was Teflon Billy, but I could be wrong and it might have been somebody else) made a comment to the effect that HARP does D&D better than d20 did.

This got me to thinking that maybe D&D wasn't actually a specific game anymore, that perhaps it was more along the lines of its own genre, or sub-genre of a fantasy game. That it encompassed a style of play rather than the actual rules that are used to play game.

D20 is the default rule-set used by this style/sub-genre, and thanks to the OGL one of the most over-developed systems out there. It has even far surpassed Rolemaster 2nd Edition, which had a reputation for having rules for almost everything. D20 not only has rules for everything, but often has several variations of each rule, which in turn makes it much much more complex than Rolemaster ever was, but then again, this is just my personal opinion.

So, I guess what I am asking is, does anybody else feel that perhaps D&D is no longer just a set of rules for a game, but actually a style of play or perhaps a sub-genre of fantasy games that could possibly be played with different set of rules?

 

[Christopher Lambert]

I haven't read his comment, so this is uninformed. I think they mean a type of setting (eg really high magic). I don't think I've seen a non-D20 game system try to replicate DnD, but I'm only familiar with a few of these.

 

[Turanil]

This got me to thinking that maybe D&D wasn't actually a specific game anymore, that perhaps it was more along the lines of its own genre, or sub-genre of a fantasy game. That it encompassed a style of play rather than the actual rules that are used to play the game.

So, does anybody else feel that perhaps D&D is no longer just a set of rules for a game, but actually a style of play or perhaps a sub-genre of fantasy games that could possibly be played with different set of rules?

Yes, I think that D&D has become its own genre. That is: Tolkien races + gnomes, working as druids, monks, paladins, druids, and wizards, in a mish-mash world having everything and its brother together, including the worst such as Mimics, Irthak : ) and what not.

Someone has proposed me an Eberron game. I would be glad to play it, but if at all possible more d20 and less D&D, in that it could get rid of dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings, and only keep the new races created for that setting.

About HARP better than d20 for playing D&D? Well, I should first get a look at that game...

 

[threshel]

I dunno. D&D is a co-operative fantasy adventure game. D&D isn't the only one, but a lot of people think it is due to it's prominence. Maybe it's a "Kleenex v. facial tissue" thing. Everyone has their own ideas of what the game should entail, and if HARP, or GURPS, or Palladium, or Fantasy HERO, or D&D work for them - great. I think that groups play their own style, and sometimes a ruleset comes along that really fits that style, and presto! "This does D&D better than D&D!"
It all comes down to what you think D&D is. I do believe that the game has incredible variety, so that's sometimes hard to define. I have played in enough different groups to know that just saying "We play D&D" isn't enough to jump right in with a new group, even with the d20 reference. In that sense, you may be right. There's just so many ways to play.


J

 

[Henry]

...This got me to thinking that maybe D&D wasn't actually a specific game anymore, that perhaps it was more along the lines of its own genre, or sub-genre of a fantasy game. That it encompassed a style of play rather than the actual rules that are used to play game.

This has been the contention of many gamers over the past 20 years, and the reason why such a gap existed between "real roleplayers" and "those who played D&D" for most of the 1990's. D&D's play involved originally story plus survivalistic elements that made it grittier. In examples from people like Gygax and Arneson, you mostly didn't play Arthur and Lancelot; you played Conan and Fafhrd and the Mouser - a more "mercenary" style that took advantage of every dirty trick and cunning ploy that you could come up with. You didn't just slay the dragon and open the treasure vault (though many did play that way) - you had to check coins for numismatic value, you tore apart table for hidden compartments, you summoned monsters not for combat value, but to drop on someone's head.

D20 is the default rule-set used by this style/sub-genre, and thanks to the OGL one of the most over-developed systems out there. It has even far surpassed Rolemaster 2nd Edition, which had a reputation for having rules for almost everything. D20 not only has rules for everything, but often has several variations of each rule, which in turn makes it much much more complex than Rolemaster ever was, but then again, this is just my personal opinion.

The problem is that many folks take the whole body of work, both 3rd party and official, when looking at D&D, and assuming it's "the whole thing." the reason D&D/d20 has surpassed rolemaster in pages of rules is because TWENTY times more companies are producing material legally. Before, house rules circulated by fans and on message boards; now, anyone with an idea and some willpower can produce their own legal D&D compatible product. The truth is that D&D officially still has room to grow; the number of topics 3rd parties have covered dwarf those WotC has; the same thing would happen to other games, HARP, Rolemaster, Storyteller, etc. if it were more popular and people were allowed to produce OGL material for it, because for every one who has a good system, there's a small flood of tinkers out there who can "do it better."

So, I guess what I am asking is, does anybody else feel that perhaps D&D is no longer just a set of rules for a game, but actually a style of play or perhaps a sub-genre of fantasy games that could possibly be played with different set of rules?

It stopped being this somewhere between 1974 and 1980, IMO. I've seen people claim they play Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms with White Wolf's Storyteller system, and who play D&D with Exalted, etc. As early as the 1970's, Gygax was having to fight for D&D's uniqueness among imitators who came up with rules to play the exact same way they played under D&D - it's just that they liked their rulesset better than what TSR came up with.

 

[Aaron2]

So, I guess what I am asking is, does anybody else feel that perhaps D&D is no longer just a set of rules for a game, but actually a style of play or perhaps a sub-genre of fantasy games that could possibly be played with different set of rules?

D&D has always been its own sub-genre and many games have tried to emulate it. Heck, Rolemaster was once an add-on to D&D. The need for player cooperation and character advancement pretty much assures that any RPG based on a genre will be fundamentally different from the genre its trying to emulate (unless the game is exclusively for one-shots).

I can't see how any game can "out D&D" D&D. However, I do feel that 3e captures the "feel" of D&D better than any previous version.


Aaron

 

[Psion]

Hmmm. This may seem like a left field answer, but D&D isn't a rules set. It's what we do on Friday night.

But more helpfully, when I put up a post inviting people to play D&D without further amplification, most readers will have a pretty good suspicion which books to bring.

 

[Thanee]

D&D is the game, d20 is just a spin-off.

I do not consider d20 as a generic system, really. The basic d20 is D&D.

It's certainly possible to write a generic d20 rulebook with what is available (remove all stuff D&D from D&D, which would be like 50+% of the whole), but noone has done this up to date AFAIK.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

D&D has always been an enormous, insanely complicated and self-contradictory constellation of house rules, variants, and individual approaches to the thing that we do on Friday nights. (Actually, it's Saturday for me, Psion!)

The only difference now is that, with the Internet and the OGL, people can share and publish all the rules they've been developing all along.

 

[Desdichado]

I can certainly understand what he meant by that, but I think you're taking it a bit too literally. I mean, you could also make the claim that Hackmaster is more D&D than the d20 version of D&D; after all, it essentially is the earlier ruleset with a lot of tongue in cheek comments thrown in for fun.

I also think that you'll find that individual perceptions of what D&D are vary considerably. For me, it's the presence of certain conventions. Certainly another ruleset could do D&D just as well or better than the current one; after all, the d20 version of the rules was a considerable change from 2e, and AD&D was a considerable change from the Rules Cyclopedia, or OD&D.