Does D&D fill every niche?

[Desdichado]

I should clarify; I'm talking about d20, not D&D. D&D itself most certainly does not fill every niche, or even come close to it. It's really quite self-referential and is increasingly distanced from the genre that spawned it, IMO.

 

[argo]

I always say that DnD is a sub-genre unto itself. At this point the core rules are full of so many sacred cows, self-refrencing logic loops and so much shared gaming history that it can't avoid morphing anything it touches into DnD.

Not that any of that is a bad thing per se.

I think that DnD does an excellent job of mimicing any sort of whimsical, high-magic high-fantasy action adventure with a fake-midevil facade. I think it also does a prety good job of emulating the sorts of epic-fantasy tales we often get in the fantasy novels.

Now d20 on the other hand is much more versatile. Different genres require different levels of rules tweaking but I think that d20 can do most genres without much difficulty so long as part of the flavor you are going for is "action-adventure". The fruther you get away from action-adventure the harder it is to make d20 sit up and perform. In particular the closer you get to concepts of "simulation" and modeling the "realistic" outcomes in great detail the faster d20 breaks down.

Later.

 

[Stone Angel]

Well I am in agreement with most others here. It does somethings better than it does others. It fills the fantasy Genre quite well and then d20 can usually satisfy the others. You find it hard to replicate a certain feelings and atmosphere that authors create in their fiction. Some movies are also difficult to reproduce. Such as Tolkien, McCaffrey, Lewis and others. But thats ok. D&D isn't The Hobbit. The Matrix, The Highlander, Conan, and others don't exactly translate to D&D as we know it. But thats ok.


The Seraph of Earth and Stone

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

D&D

I agree with the consensus here. D&D is it's own genre. D20 does the D&D genre exceptionally well, and some others pretty well.

But there are some basic ideas built into d20 that are hard to get away from, that make it hard to simulate some genres:

1) play is centered around the idea of a 'party'. Much literature is centered around a single heroic individual and his sidekick

2) characters grow significantly in capability over the life of a story in a d20 campaign.

3) People in d20 tend to be specialists, at least where skills are concerned, since the cost to buy a rank in a skill remains constant, rather than increasing (ranks 1-3 cost the same as 4-6).

I'm sure there is more but that is what I can think of now. 1) and 2) aren't really criticisms, since to me they're a large part of what makes gaming fun.

Ken

 

[reanjr]

Do you feel that D&D d20 fills every niche in a fantasy setting as far as characters/magical abilities go? Do you feel you are able to mimic your favorite characters from movies, books, video games, anime, etc. through class progressions and feats? Is there any role or magical abilities that you feel are not included in D&D due to rule constraints or the simple fact that it just hasn't been created yet. Do you feel the 3rd party companies have 'picked up the slack' and filled in any roles that seem to be missing. Have you implemented any homebrew classes or feats to fill any niches that you feel were left out? Personally I have tried to incorporate homebrew classes pertaining to Final Fantasy that I felt could not be achieved through normal class/feat selection for my campaign. I know this may sound confusing becuase there are several questions, and i may even possibly be restating the same question over and over.

Doesn't even come close.

I'm not too sure how I would make Conan in D&D. Barbarian doesn't really fit. Neither does rogue or fighter...

Lord of the Rings ranger? Kind of, but not really possible.

D&D can not even come close to handling a traditional fantasy level of magic. It also does horribly with non-brute fighters. Nothing to fill the role of Moses type character. I actually can't think of many characters outside of TSR novels that D&D can actually portray. Even a whole bunch of them can't be, especially wizards.

I can't afford a lot of third party stuff, so I don't know if they're picking up the slack or not. In certain areas I know I've seen some ideas that do, but a lot of the archetypes I just spoke about still haven't been covered to my knowledge (Conan has been covered in Conan for instance).

I have created hordes of class variants, a couple classes and prestige classes, loads of feat variants, bunch of feats, and an entirely new system. All to accomodate different types of characters.

 

[Wombat]

D&D does D&D very well.

I think it does a very poor job mapping most standard fantasy and mythological settings, at least for any books and movies created prior to D&D hitting the public consciousness. OTOH, it is a fun game so the "givens" of D&D (classes, magic shops, attrition-based combat, etc.) can be cool to play out.

No, it won't do Tolkein, King Arthur, or Earthsea very well for me, but at least I can have some fun playing around with the Endless Dungeons of D&D.

 

[reanjr]

Can't say they do.

You can't make a good horseman.
You can't make a good commander. (Hint: "Fighting retreat" is not a supernatural ability.)

ooo, those are both really good ones I forgot. I guess I just have resigend myself on those.

 

[MonsterMash]

D&D is its own genre and is perfect for that. D20 games can be used for most genres and settings, but are not perfect for all of them. Sometimes specialised rulesets can be much better, remembering En-Garde, where a characters social standing was of primary importance and combat was rudimentary.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

d20 works well for genres and settings where most characters fall into strong and distinct archetypes. It works less well for cases where this is not the case.

Take Transhuman Space, for example. You might have a party that consists of:

- a 100+ year old multimillionaire,
- a combat bioroid (artificial human),
- an uplifted (sapient) octopus,
- a "ghost" (an "uploaded" human brain that now only exists as a personality simulation),
- and an artificial intelligence with multiple robot bodies.

And all are perfectly viable starting characters. GURPS (the system for which Transhuman Space was written) does all these easily. But d20?

Well, maybe, but not without a lot of work and fudging. And these aren't even the oddest possible character types available in TS - GURPS allows a customization of characters that is as far as I know simply not available with any of the current variants of d20.

In summary, I use d20 (and D&D) when I am okay with the fact that the PCs will have to fit into certain archetypes. And I use GURPS when I am not.

 

[Desdichado]

d20 works well for genres and settings where most characters fall into strong and distinct archetypes. It works less well for cases where this is not the case.

I might have agreed with that... maybe... before d20 Modern or d20 Call of Cthulhu was released. Now we've had games like Mutants & Masterminds and soon Blue Rose that only fail to be d20 by a technicality that literally blow that theory completely out of the water.

d20 is fine for non-archetypical characters. Its as good as any other system, in fact, for that.