D&D General Disentangling D&D from D&D Fantasy

[mamba]

What I wonder is: is it possible to disentangle D&D Fantasy from the game of D&D, to do D&D in a different or new flavor of fantasy?

at what point is the flavor removed far enough, would Dark Sun have qualified as non-D&D fantasy if it hadn’t been published under the D&D logo by TSR? Would Ravenloft have? Would Spelljammer or Planescape?

I don’t think GH, FR or DL would ever not sit at the center of D&D, they are too similar for that. SJ and PS probably are more extensions of it than a break from it. Dark Sun on the other hand might qualify as a break / different fantasy.

Maybe space fantasy would, I do not see much D&D in Star Wars…

 

[Laurefindel]

Right. Could D&D be D&D if it adhered to, say, 12th century French Arthurian Romance Fantasy?

Good question. One (or both) would have to bend the definition of what they are, I think, but if this is ‘allowed’ in this exercise, I think I would be possible.

But mostly, I think that D&D fantasy is now broad enough to include a branch that resembles romantic fantasy (romantic in an Arthurian sense, obviously)

 

[SableWyvern]

What are some good examples of this?

D&D settings with non-D&D rulesets:

I have personally done pretty comprehensive conversions for Al Qadim and Dark Sun for Mythras. I'm also aware of a Dragonlance Mythras conversion, and I have done a small amount of work on a Planescape conversion I plan to get back to.

My conversions focus on the setting and have little regard for converting pure mechanical D&Disms, but Mythras Classic Fantasy is an official product (you can check out the free version, Classic Fantasy Imperative) specifically designed to emulate D&D.

GURPS Dungeonfantasy is another official product looking to emulate one form of traditional D&D play in it's own way.

I am currently running 1e-era Forgotten Realms using Rolemaster, and I'm not close to the first person to have done so.

Pretty much every 2-e era setting seems to have a Savage World conversion. 2e-setting communities are full of people doing and offering conversions to their preferred settings.

D&D Rules for non-standard settings/styles
Godbound is a prime example of a commercial game close enough to D&D that you can pick up and use old D&D modules with basically no conversion, but it's focusing on demigod PCs and has as much in common with Exalted as D&D.

The d20 era was full of games with D&D mechanics but different settings. Lone Wolf and Conan by Mongoose were using 80% - 90% or more of the same core mechanics as D&D, with a few tweaks, to run very different games. Even Traveller got a d20 version, and it's getting a 5e D&D version as we speak.

Conan also had an official 1e or 2e version.

And then you had 2e settings like Dark Sun and Birthright really trying to push the envelope on what D&D can be.

Apart from commercially released options, surely it's not in dispute that people have used D&D to run anything and everything they possibly can over the past 50 years?

 

[Ezequielramone]

I think you will have to define when you are not more playing d&d and when you have the d20 system. IMHO a way to think about it is that d20 system is the game, d&d is the macrosetting, the setting you play (like forgotten realms, eberron, your own) is the microsetting (?). In the past, as the first one replaying said, there were many new "macrosettings", like d20 modern, big eyes small mouths, true 20, etc. On the other hand I think you can do different stuffs with D&D. I need to note here that nothing is super categorical. Back in the day BECMI proposed a different way to play d&d, it was d&d but very different from today (you get armies, become inmortal, etc). Some supplements gave you ideas or rules for playing a different type of game like Power of Faerum, Heroes of Battle or Heroes of horror. Close to our times the MCDM's books Strongholds & Followers and Kingdoms & Warfare. I also remember "E6" rules to keep the game in the "heroic fantasy" field. Edit: some OSR games have a different approach to the game that what we see in d&d today. I'm not an expert but I liked a lot "Low Fantasy Game" (I think they are in a second edition called Tales of Argosa) which was new d&d mixed with some old d&d rules and philosophies with some changes becoming something really different. I think the point is where you set the line

 

[SableWyvern]

If D&D must remain intact in crunch and fluff (to a core minimum), I think D&D is indissociable from the fantasy genre it engendered (even though D&D fantasy itself is pretty broad and branching out to many subgenres of their own)

Well, if D&D can only be exactly what it is in every respect and nothing can be changed, it's tautological that it can't be anything other than what it is.

 

[Desdichado]

What I wonder is: is it possible to disentangle D&D Fantasy from the game of D&D, to do D&D in a different or new flavor of fantasy?

Dark Sun suggests that that answer is yes. And they weren't even necessarily trying.

Are there very D&D adjacent (OSR, OGL) games that manage it while still "being" D&D?

Urban Arcana for d20 Modern.

 

[Reynard]

Urban Arcana for d20 Modern.

Urban arcana explicitly added D&D Fantasy to the modern world.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I'd say it's possible to do fiction that's "D&D fantasy" while being disconnected from "D&D the game." The setting would have a bunch of identifiable D&D elements but with the mechanics (and the magic system in particular) being different.

I would say that I've actually done this, except - it was one of my evil clones who wrote those stories, not me! Yes, that's the ticket! Although you might say that the setting is merely "D&D inspired" rather than being an actual D&D fantasy setting.

 

[el-remmen]

Yes, it is possible and it seems like a silly question given the over-abundance of testimony of people who claim to do exactly that in their home games, even if we didn't have examples (like Dark Sun and Masque of the Red Death - heck, Ravenloft in general!) of published material that also moves in that direction along a spectrum from "vanilla D&D" to WTF. I have no reason not to believe the folks who play that way.

 

[Reynard]

Yes, it is possible and it seems like a silly question given the over-abundance of testimony of people who claim to do exactly that in their home games, even if we didn't have examples (like Dark Sun and Masque of the Red Death - heck, Ravenloft in general!) of published material that also moves in that direction along a spectrum from "vanilla D&D" to WTF. I have no reason not to believe the folks who play that way.

Those people might change the skins on monsters and focus on different things, but they rarely, IME, write the D&D fantasy out of the classes and spells.