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Did I discover the Left Wing and Right Wing of D&D gaming styles?
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<blockquote data-quote="D+1" data-source="post: 1989397" data-attributes="member: 13654"><p>Never even looked at, much less run any of those, but...Don't know anything at all about Black Company, but I know a few things about the others. Nyambe may be an "historically accurate" setting but IIRC it mixes a lot of time/space so that African cultures from different periods of history and which never had meaningful contact with each other IRL are thrown together. Conan, as has been mentioned, freely mixes VERY diverse cultures that are, historically speaking, unmixable. Dragonlance is no different. Few fantasy settings ARE any different because they generally are FANTASY.</p><p>Well it should be reiterated that the two camps are NOT as polarized as you say. It's my experience that people who DO run a "traditionalist" campaign, as you call it, very often participate in one or more additional campaigns that are not "traditionalist". My guess would be that this is because D&D always has unthinkingly promoted your so-called "World Cuisine" style and the much more rigid "traditionalist" game is a fun, though uncommon game, and people still want an outlet to be in a more "anything goes" type of setting.</p><p></p><p>In America the more appropriate descriptive term would be "kitchen sink", as in: "These type of settings often include everything but the kitchen sink." Naturally, this is just the kind of campaign that I tend to run (and participate in since the highly inaptly-named "traditionalist" game is FAR from the traditional, or typical campaign.) It can get too junky though. In previous games I've actually TRIED to include everything under the sun and it never gets used in the game making most of it a waste of time TRYING to ensure that it's there. What I do always try to make room for are traditional European mounted knights; crypto-Oriental monasterial fighting monks; appearance of anachronistic technology, artifacts and relics; and a little gunpowder. Cultures tend to be a mix of Norse, Medieval Europe, Middle East, ancient greco-roman, and lesser amounts of Polynesian and Oriental (no African, South American, or SE Asian).</p><p></p><p>Is the kitchen sink style the good one? Well, it's not a matter of it being good/bad or being inherently superior to the other style. The two, as I said, are not arch-rival "styles" of gaming. They are not the left wing/right wing of gaming. That designation would FAR more appropriately go to "role vs. roll". For <em>general purposes</em> the kitchen sink style is obviously more adaptable to desires and requirements of DM and players. But more and more options is not always the most desireable setting. Sometimes just having a tight, efficient, limited set of options - the sort of thing most often seen in this so-called "traditional" game - is what you want and need. But playing such a game doesn't mean that you don't like and won't play a "kitchen sink" game as well.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="D+1, post: 1989397, member: 13654"] Never even looked at, much less run any of those, but...Don't know anything at all about Black Company, but I know a few things about the others. Nyambe may be an "historically accurate" setting but IIRC it mixes a lot of time/space so that African cultures from different periods of history and which never had meaningful contact with each other IRL are thrown together. Conan, as has been mentioned, freely mixes VERY diverse cultures that are, historically speaking, unmixable. Dragonlance is no different. Few fantasy settings ARE any different because they generally are FANTASY. Well it should be reiterated that the two camps are NOT as polarized as you say. It's my experience that people who DO run a "traditionalist" campaign, as you call it, very often participate in one or more additional campaigns that are not "traditionalist". My guess would be that this is because D&D always has unthinkingly promoted your so-called "World Cuisine" style and the much more rigid "traditionalist" game is a fun, though uncommon game, and people still want an outlet to be in a more "anything goes" type of setting. In America the more appropriate descriptive term would be "kitchen sink", as in: "These type of settings often include everything but the kitchen sink." Naturally, this is just the kind of campaign that I tend to run (and participate in since the highly inaptly-named "traditionalist" game is FAR from the traditional, or typical campaign.) It can get too junky though. In previous games I've actually TRIED to include everything under the sun and it never gets used in the game making most of it a waste of time TRYING to ensure that it's there. What I do always try to make room for are traditional European mounted knights; crypto-Oriental monasterial fighting monks; appearance of anachronistic technology, artifacts and relics; and a little gunpowder. Cultures tend to be a mix of Norse, Medieval Europe, Middle East, ancient greco-roman, and lesser amounts of Polynesian and Oriental (no African, South American, or SE Asian). Is the kitchen sink style the good one? Well, it's not a matter of it being good/bad or being inherently superior to the other style. The two, as I said, are not arch-rival "styles" of gaming. They are not the left wing/right wing of gaming. That designation would FAR more appropriately go to "role vs. roll". For [I]general purposes[/I] the kitchen sink style is obviously more adaptable to desires and requirements of DM and players. But more and more options is not always the most desireable setting. Sometimes just having a tight, efficient, limited set of options - the sort of thing most often seen in this so-called "traditional" game - is what you want and need. But playing such a game doesn't mean that you don't like and won't play a "kitchen sink" game as well. [/QUOTE]
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