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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3027245" data-attributes="member: 2067">That's simply because no popular fantasy setting nowadays uses knights on bicycles.If they encouraged their heroes to storm into battle on raging motorcycles, though, perhaps ones that shot missles....D&D would become more popular. It's a basic marketing premise: you take something good, add something that will sell, and you have something good that will sell. The horse market is not rip-roaring....now the automotive market....if we could get the people who watch American Chopper to play D&D because we involve in-deapth motorcycle design rules, we've got a hit. If they encouraged their wizards to ride around the streets of modern London on bicycles, it would also become more popular. Because what sells to people interested in fantasy nowadays are tales of wizards as a hidden organization RIGHT NOW, not in medieval europe, and if we could get the people who watch Harry Potter to play D&D because we put bicycles in the equipment list, we've got a hit.It doesn't need to abandon the words, it needs to abandon the specific pigeonholes that they have been put into. Arguably, 3e got rid of hobbits as PC races. Now, 3e sells better than any previous edition. You could say, perhaps with some accuracy, that it is because people get to play roguish adventurers instead of Bilbo Baggins. That the fantasy heritage of halflings-as-hobbits is worthless to a successful game, and so the game has only gained by getting rid of it.Barbarians could be raging nordic whatchamajigs or Conan-inspired whatevers, but, hey, the kids love this drug culture, and there is a recent trend toward pop tribalism (lots of piercings and tatoos, these are very popular), and then there's the rap music, so how about we make them body-art loving druggies on the streets of the inner city. Edgy sells.It all depends on what the audience wants. Guns and dragons tend to be seperate (though I bet it would be a great selling supplement!), people like swords and axes, shafts of metal are sexy and they sell, and they lead to interesting combat, which sells even better. But space ships and wizards go together. Dragons and aliens from dimension X blend nicely. Wizards and Psychics can get along just fine. And putting them together is going to sell more than keeping them seperate, because one of D&D's great things is that you can mash up the fantasy you like into one big pot and they all play nice together.The audience definately didn't want Tolkienesque halflnigs, judging by the popularity of the editions (which is the only real measure of what the audience wants that we have). You keep insisting upon a definition of fantasy which includes things that are LIGHTYEARS away from fantasy. Epic poetry is epic poetry. It's not fantasy just because it involved tales of the gods. Now it has inspired modern fantasy, including D&D. And people like it,so it's good to include it in D&D. But it has never been and will never be fantasy itself. The roots of and inspiration for, perhaps. But if you're going to be tight about genre definitions, epic poetry is not fantasy.More to the point, this "appealing to the fundamental aspect of human psyche more directly" is highly dubious. Mystery as a genre appeals to our human desire to figure out puzzles. Horror, to our human desire to feel afraid. Sci-fi, to our human curiosity about our world (and the consequences thereof). If fantasy is connected to wish-fullfillment (which, it must be stated, also sperates it from things like epic poetry), that's no more or less fundamental or direct than any other genre's appeal.Now, if a game based on playing fantasy roles is based on wish-fullfillment (which D&D is, to a fairly large extent), what does it gain from only adhering to a specific and limited subset of people's wish-fullfillment? If people want to be as unbreakable as Naruto, then one of the things that will appeal to them is television sets and ninjas side-by-side, because in their fantasy, such things exist. Vacuum tubes and mystical magic.People do want to be as clever as Bilbo. However, they don't want to be as fat or grumpy or boring. So halflings are lithe and clever and adventurous. And it sells better. By going away from it's roots, it has made it more popular. One would have to think that, given what the majority of the buying demographics want, becoming THEIR vessel for wish-fullfillment (rather than remaining like an artifact from the mid-seventies) would be not only wise, but nessecary. And if their imaginations see rocket ships and spirit shamans side by side, then it is nessecary to place them side by side.</blockquote>

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