Experts on other systems, why aren't they d&d?

[Maggan]

I am not sure if I made much sense there.

Sense or no sense, you summed up my feelings on the matter nicely.

D&D with GURPS rules would be "That edition of D&D that used the GURPS rules". Conversely, Hackmaster is "The Hackmaster edition that was based on AD&D".

To me. I only speak of myself and my view on things.

/M

 

[Rolflyn]

For me, D&D is whatever we play when we get together a group saying we are going to play D&D and no one complains. So 2E, 3E, oD&D, arcana unearthed, pathfinder, etc. are D&D. Everyone in my group would say we are playing D&D when playing those games.

If we were playing Mutants & Masterminds, Runequest, Torg, or Star Wars Saga Edition, no one would call them "D&D" so they aren't.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Most, if not all, of the games you mention started with D&D and made changes. Palladium Fantasy certainly did, it's basically D&D with houserules. RoleMaster started out as supplementary tables for D&D and RuneQuest, not an rpg in its own right.

Nothing in roleplaying was built on its own, everything derives from an earlier work. OD&D comes mostly from Chainmail with hit points and armor class taken by Dave Arneson from a naval combat game (his own I believe).

I think the creators of those systems would disagree strongly with you. Otherwise their works would be considered plagiarism. Whether this is true or not of Palladium, I will assume that the author did not take D&D whole cloth and make enough changes to consider it to be his own work. I consider this system to be inspired by D&D, not built directly from it. Pathfinder is a better example of a system that is using D&D 3E as its base and modifying it into a new version of D&D.

Rolemaster was meant as an addition to other RPGs including D&D. Again, it didn't take D&D and modify it into a new game system. And even though the charts in Arms Law/Claw Law were advertised as convertable to D&D, in practice it was very unwieldy, IME. The charts meshed much better with RuneQuest.

4E is the closest version of D&D to break the rule. But even it emerged from rules worked into the previous edition through the Book of Nine Swords and other material in 3E.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Question Galeros:

(please understand I'm using an extreme example for understanding, not for sarcasm)


If WotC sold D&D to me and I released 5th edition, which was the following:

1. It only has Dragons as pcs or monsters/npcs.

2. Each pc creates a dungeon in which to place its hoard.

3. It is player vs player (with some NPC dragons thrown in to spice things up).

4. It is called Dungeons and Dragons.

5. There is no other game called Dungeons and Dragons (apart from the prior editions)



Would my game be Dungeons and Dragons to you?



Edit: this makes me think of the line: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." but want to change it to "The name of a rose on any other flower would still be a rose." And now I'm not sure if I'm making any sense.

I knew someone was going to do something like this.

I admit, I was not thinking too hard when I posted. I would call that DnD in name only really.

Soooooo, I got nothing.

 

[Scribble]

4E is the closest version of D&D to break the rule. But even it emerged from rules worked into the previous edition through the Book of Nine Swords and other material in 3E.

I don't agree with that statement. I see other areas where the ideas in 4e came from in the previous rules sets. Bo9S was just a way to "test" the new ideas.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I don't agree with that statement. I see other areas where the ideas in 4e came from in the previous rules sets. Bo9S was just a way to "test" the new ideas.

That's why I said "...and other material in 3E." And I was only referring to the stuff that people find truly out-of-whack when they state that 4E doesn't feel like D&D to them. It also has some elements carried forward from the beginnings of D&D.

I believe that 4E has been able to capture some of the intangibles that existed in 1E that made the game more enjoyable for me. Things that 3E had lost. It's hard to quantify them (that's why I use the term "intangibles"), but they are important factors that make me want to play D&D, or more importantly for me, want to DM.

 

[Scribble]

That's why I said "...and other material in 3E." And I was only referring to the stuff that people find truly out-of-whack when they state that 4E doesn't feel like D&D to them. It also has some elements carried forward from the beginnings of D&D.

I believe that 4E has been able to capture some of the intangibles that existed in 1E that made the game more enjoyable for me. Things that 3E had lost. It's hard to quantify them (that's why I use the term "intangibles"), but they are important factors that make me want to play D&D, or more importantly for me, want to DM.

Well, I'm still not so sure I agree... See I still think a lot of that "out of whack" stuff was in D&D already. Bo9S and such seemed to just be a test run for a new way to format it, or use it.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The problem with the car analogy

The problem with the car analogy and identity is that it confuses brand and similarity under one identity while ignoring "brand name as concept"--the way you can "Xerox" something on a non-Xerox copier. (Technically, you can't. But people used to say it, and everyone knew what they meant.)

You want to compare 3E/3.5 to 4E, Pathfinder, and any number of products. You decide that 3E is a Chevy car, 3.5 is a later model of the same car, 4E is a Chevy truck, and Pathfinder is a Toyota car. Which is more like a Chevy car, a Chevy truck or a Toyota car? Well, assuming you picked fairly standard models, and the conversation already assumes a bunch about the exact activities that you are going to be using--you have all but guaranteed that people will say that the Chevy Car is more like the Toyota than the Chevy Truck.

But no reasonable person is going to say that the Toyota car is really a Chevy and the Chevy Truck is not. Partly, because no one cares to try to stake out anything on the identity front in that analogy. And partly because neither Toyota nor Chevy are recent (Xerox-like) terms for "car".

If GM bought out a Toyota plant (ha!) and started producing the same exact cars under the Chevy label, those cars that used to be Toyotas are now Chevys. And that's what people would say about this mysterious model X for awhile: "Oh, that's the Chevy that used to be a Toyota." But note that already, it is a Chevy. Eventually, people would forget, and it would just be another Chevy. The same exact thing would happen if WotC bought Pathfinder: "Oh, that's the game that used to be a D&D clone but is now one of the D&D versions." And eventually, it's just another version of D&D.

The reason for that is the same reason that no one can pin down exactly what D&D is--beyond a "state of mind" and what the producers of games call those games. There is no single "D&D" that everyone can point to (not even OD&D) as the definitive thing.

You can play a D&Dish game with Fantasy Hero. I did it for years, playing in the Forgotten Realms even. But never would any of us have said we were "playing D&D". We were playing Fantasy Hero in a (mostly) D&D-ish manner. When we play 4E, we are playing D&D--in a 4Eish manner. When we play AE, we are playing AE--which is always a bit D&Dish by design. When we play 3E, we are playing D&D--in a 3Eish manner. When we play an AE/3E mixture, we are probably playing D&D in an AE-ish manner, but it could be the other way around.

To say that something is or isn't D&D beyond the scope of brand identity and "state of mind" is to acribe more definition to "D&D" than is possible.

 

[Hereticus]

If D&D was the first and primary fantasy role playing game you played, any FRP you play can be referred to as D&D.

That is if you like the system. If you don't like the system, it's not D&D to you.

D&D is like "scotch tape", or a "xerox" copy machine.

 

[smetzger]

I haven't read the whole thread, here are a couple of older games that are very D&D ish

Gamma World
Boot Hill