D&D General Do you care about lore?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Or can you? What constitutes the core play experience? And for whom? Is it just the mechanics? Or is play experience also bound up with the lore you play with?

If you're playing Dark Sun and I'm playing Eberron, their lore doesn't interact or impact each other. But we are both recognizably playing D&D.

D&D is not the lore.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have said it before, but I'm saying it again: Everyone should download and listen to some episodes of Dimension 20, just so they can see how far D&D can get stretched and still be recognizably D&D.

New York City with a magical otherworld sixth borough? Still D&D.

An idyllic 1950s that never was with magical motorcycle gangs? Still D&D.

Even if you don't agree that's possible -- maybe especially if you don't -- go listen to the podcast (I think it may also be on YouTube) and see. D&D is not a setting. D&D isn't even the standard monsters in the Monster Manual.

There's a value in having a shared experience -- it's great for people to swap stories about Phandalin or the Tomb of Horrors or meeting Meepo in the Sunless Citadel -- but you can strip D&D way down to its chassis and it's still D&D. Think of it like a car: You can enjoy a stock experience where you drive a car just as it was sold by the dealership, or you could go down to the chassis and turn it into a funny car or a hot rod -- but it's still a car, even if it no longer looks like the Honda Civic the dealership sold.

 

[Umbran]

Or can you?

It would seem to me that the empirical evidence of over four decades of how we talk about and approach the game makes the answer to that question a resounding, "Yes!"

If you really want to set up some arbitrary lines in the sand for what is, or is not, D&D, that don't match the behavior of hundreds of thousands of players over multiple generations, you can do that. Have fun.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If you really want to set up some arbitrary lines in the sand for what is, or is not, D&D, that don't match the behavior of hundreds of thousands of players over multiple generations, you can do that. Have fun.

Even Gygax tried that in Dragon editorials. Didn't work then, doesn't work now.

 

[Micah Sweet]

5e has been an intensely nostalgia-driven edition. Over half of the adventures are call backs to classic modules, and even PHBII and MMII type books are titled with the names of famous greyhawk and fr npcs. I mean, they're publishing 3 "classic" campaign settings in the next couple of years. So I don't think it's the case that wotc doesn't care about older players. Maybe they fail in their attempt to be all things to all people.

I would argue that 5e started out intensely nostalgia driven, but shortly after the popularity spiked and they started getting a lot more new fans, and especially in the last year or so as the social climate has changed, more and more the products have been pushing for the new folks instead, and the older generation of fans are being left behind if they don't like the direction they're going. Old IP usage has more to do with brand recognition than anything else.

 

[Umbran]

I mean, they're publishing 3 "classic" campaign settings in the next couple of years. So I don't think it's the case that wotc doesn't care about older players.

I don't think it has much to do with older players. They are simply working with IP they already control - note how they're also doing a lot of work with Magic: the Gathering material. It is probably seen as easier, less resource-intensive, and/or lower risk to work with stuff they already own than to generate wholly new material.

 

[Reynard]

Do you (and Umbran) get to declare that for people? Is that somehow less problematic than considering the lore part of the core play experience?

Wait, are you saying that because I am disagreeing with a sweeping, indefensible statement you are making, I am somehow the one guilty of making a sweeping, indefensible statement?

Huh.

 

[billd91]

It would seem to me that the empirical evidence of over four decades of how we talk about and approach the game makes the answer to that question a resounding, "Yes!"

If you really want to set up some arbitrary lines in the sand for what is, or is not, D&D, that don't match the behavior of hundreds of thousands of players over multiple generations, you can do that. Have fun.

I'm not the one setting up the lines.

 

[billd91]

If you're playing Dark Sun and I'm playing Eberron, their lore doesn't interact or impact each other. But we are both recognizably playing D&D.

D&D is not the lore.

But can you tell anybody who played Dark Sun or Eberron that lore wasn't a core play aspect of the campaigns they were playing? That the lore isn't core to defining why one is Dark Sun and the other Eberron?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But can you tell anybody who played Dark Sun or Eberron that lore wasn't a core play aspect of the campaigns they were playing? That the lore isn't core to defining why one is Dark Sun and the other Eberron?

The lore is in the setting. The lore is not the game. (Well, it shouldn't be. See my earlier gripes about the implicit setting assumptions in the Monster Manual, many of which fly in the face of both Eberron and Dark Sun.)