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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 259165" data-attributes="member: 1106">I don't buy it.  At it's best, D&D carries so much feel and inspiration with it that it effectively carries it's own meta-setting around with it on it's back - those spells, magic items, monsters, class and race archetypes, concepts of dungeon crawling and "adventurers", theive's guilds and planes, the underdark and the alignment system etc. etc.  Some other games do this to an extent, but most of them have only one setting, or weaker archetypes, rules, genre, or less resources (adventures, monsters, pre-made settings etc).Network externality reasoning as the sole reason for it's success aside, the D&D swords-and-sorcery blueprint makes worldbuilding a lot easier whilst retaining archetypes so appealing that generic rulesets find it difficult to compete.  For telling your own story and making your own world, it acts as spakfiller for the gaps which you can't be bothered detailing yourself.  It's neither generic swords 'n' sorcery (too much baggage) nor setting specific (readily transplantable so far as swords & sorcery fantasy gaming goes), making it sort of a hybrid.  I think that this is partially responsible for it's success.D&D is the epitome of a "game with soul" - it may not be a cohesive one, and it borrows from everywhere, but it has a feel all of it's own - one that it stamps into settings that had a life beforehand (such as the Forgotten Realms) and D&D-ises them with beholders and vorpal swords and clerics and spell memorisation like some sort of pulp-swords-and-sorcery-setting Borg.For a game without soul, look to something truly generic like Fudge - D&D is not your huckleberry, it's steeped in soul.  For me, it's a good deal of it's appeal!</blockquote>

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