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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8081051" data-attributes="member: 18">I mean, you've read D&D, so yeah, you definitely have. The question isn't have you read something influenced by them, as much as have you read something that has that S&S vibe? It's possible to extract elements of Moorcock and Howard without really getting the vibe at all. I'm sure you've seen this before a lot of times in a lot of media - where certain elements are lifted from a thing but then put with a completely different aesthetic. Buffy is a good example.You've listed some of the stuff you're reading and interested by, and mentioned authors you like. I'm sure that list isn't even 1% of what you have read/watched, of course, but it did seem somewhat coherent, in terms of suggesting certain interests and a certain focus on recent works. For example, watching a lot of anime and reading a lot of Brandon Sanderson tends to go hand-in-hand in my experience. S&S is largely dead in modern fantasy, interestingly, because epics have come to really dominate the genre. Virtually all major authors working in the fantasy space do trilogies or series of lengthy books, often with ensemble casts, and with heavy world-building.Now you might say "Well if no-one is doing S&S stuff, does it make sense for a TT RPG?" and that's a reasonable question. However, I don't think what D&D does is much like what's going on in the fantasy space at the moment, for better or worse, either, so maybe it's not a major issue. In my experience, many, perhaps most, D&D groups tend towards a style of play that's much more Lankhmar than it is Game of Thrones or Name of the Wind or First Law or Stormlight Archive (indeed the Stormlight Archive as done by D&D players would be hysterical).EDIT - Helldritch points out the Witcher, and whilst I'd argue it's a related genre, rather than straight S&S, that actually is a modern example of something that does have a pretty strong S&S vibe. Have you read, played or watched Witcher stuff? It's certainly in the Venn diagram of Sanderson, Butcher and anime.There are a lot of stories that do that, it's true. Anime has it all the time - the trouble is the anime approach to that is frequently so tonally and conceptually at odds with, say, the Buffy approach (despite superficial similarities) that it might actually make it harder to understand.I've seen this a few times. They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but I think what's more dangerous is a perceived similarity that masks significant differences, particularly as it can lead to people stubbornly insisting that they do understand a thing when they clearly don't. I'm not saying you're doing this, but it's a pattern I've seen on the internet quite a few times. Hell, I've even seen it from professional critics - the classic is the "This game sucks because I believe it is genre X but it is not like other games in genre X!", which has been used to dump on games from Bushido Blade to Diablo 2 to Demon's Souls.Anyway, this all comes down to one fundamental thing - the idea that some opinions are better informed and more valuable to discussion than others. I hold that that is the case. I'm unclear if you disagree.</blockquote>

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