Forked Thread: D&D: Generic and Specific Both?

[xechnao]

... things like Accidental Suck, where a character could be totally inappropriate for a game, despite the rules saying they're OK.

I think this is the answer or part of to the question here. D&D can be so modular as what it provides may not fall apart by your modifications. Under some modifications more things may fall apart and this can go to the extreme that everything provided to the DM needs to be modified which means simply that everything has fallen apart at this point.

 

[Remathilis]

My experiences have been that people use D&D like a system.
Which varies a lot from campaign to campaign. Look at all the different play experiences documented on the Story Hour forum.
What about homebrews? They can diverge a lot more from the Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms baseline than a setting like Eberron does.
Because they used it as one.
What if you're playing 1e or 2e? Are you saying they were systems but 3e+ is a game?

Semantics, actually.

D&D was considered a "system" because there was no other name for it prior to 2000. Its ALWAYS been a permeation of the d20 System (mainly because the d20 was used in nearly all major conflict resolution mechanics, barring the occasional 1-X on a d6 or percentile roll) but it was never mechanically divorced from D&D and given its own name by anyone prior to 2000.

We've been playing d20 all along, and just didn't know it!

 

[Remathilis]

i ignore barrier peaks, thought it was some bad joke, or made for that game about little green men from outer space; and never really played in blackmoor...

Barrier Peaks, Temple of the Frog, Blackmoor, etc. There seems to be a lot of spaceships crashing in Greyhawk, no?

All of this is a furphy. D&D is no more defined by six-shooters than it is by lasers. What it IS defined by is the default core implied setting, which has none of this, and is thoroughly pseudo-medieval (or was...not considering 4E here). So I think he's right, and that you're arguably just playing games.

The monk is a core D&Dism and an oriental anachronism amongst the occidental pseudomedieval stuff, though...you have a point there. Arguably it doesn't belong in the core. And monsters don't count in the same way core races and classes do - they lack the screentime to matter.

As I pointed to though, were does it stop?

I played in a Planescape game that never (ok rarely) touched a typical D&D world, but dealt with a group of humanoids (githzerai, tieflings, genasi, bauriars, and a rogue modron, not a single human, elf or hobbit) who primarily fought a Mind Flayer army allied with demonic forces. When we weren't busy stopping Orcus from coming back.

Was that D&D? We still had clerics and thieves and bastard swords and magic missile, but we lacked goblins and dragons and gnomes and dwarves.

What about Midnight? Its as far from the core assumptions of D&D as you can go and still call it medieval fantasy. No clerics (well, PC clerics), magic is dangerous to cast, and good luck finding something like a paladin or bard. Yet it has magic and dragons and elves and dwarves. Is it closer to D&D than my Planescape game above?

See what a slippery slope trying to define what the D&D "game" can be by what is and isn't D&D?

 

[justanobody]

These nutty outlier things are a part of what defines D&D fantasy -- the kitchen-sinkiness of it, the free-for-all nature of it-- and separates it from a hypothetical RPG that's more focused on strict genre-emulation.

This is where your argument and many other people screw up, and probably shouldn't be playing D&D or many other games if they cannot understand that just because some secondary product has some strange crap in it, does not make it a part of the core that does define D&D.

By your logic, since I have played a game that had an adventure based fully around rpae and slavery, then D&D must be a game about rape and slavery since there is a single instance of it in there right?

No. Your are wrong. A VCR is not a toaster, just because you can stick a slice of bread into it.

Learn to use the language properly. When talking about the core, with the exception of 4th edition and its stupidity; you are discounting all things other than the minimal required to play the game.

AD&D that was PHB, MM, DMG; and arguably the MM wasn't really needed.

3rd is similar, and older editions needed only 2 books.

Just because all those settings existed in AD&D does not make that what D&D is, and just because Blackmoor and Greyhawk had a single instance of random crap, does not mean that is what it is.

Your core is the minimum required to play, no matter how WotC wants to brainwash people into thinking with 4th edition.

So please use the language correctly, and not fall prey to marketing scams and advertisement hype in a discussion because you were fooled by them.

So is D&D a game about rape an slavery, just because one adventure exists about it, like you try to define D&D by that one adventure written about aliens; or is D&D what is in the core, and the rest is just added crap like more of the supplemental material?

This is where the whole confusion exists in people trying to claim D&D is some sort of throw everything in including the kitchen sink, because it does allow it, but that isn't D&D.

D&D is what you buy at the store. You won't find your stupid lasers and six-shooters in the starter set, and the core books even tell you an arequebus is extremely rare IF, notice the BIG IF, you want to use them for your time setting, but are NOT standards for use in D&D.

So stop trying to confuse people with your misunderstandings, and other people's bold faced lies.

The adventure I was in about rape and slavery is no more a part of what defines D&D that your outlier things.

Read and learn the core. Just because you can add crap to the core, doesn't mean you should.

D&D was considered a "system" because there was no other name for it prior to 2000.

Yes there was a name for it. GAME.

You want a system try GURPS - Generic Universal RolePlaying System

 

[Mallus]

This is where your argument and many other people screw up, and probably shouldn't be playing D&D or many other games if they cannot understand that just because some secondary product has some strange crap in it, does not make it a part of the core that does define D&D.

The monsters I mentioned have been in the MM since 1e. That's not a "secondary product", is it? The module w/the spaceship in it is considered to be a classic of the 1e-era. And Blackmoor was the personal campaign of D&D's co-founder.

Would to you like to contradict these facts?

Your are wrong.

Sez you. And badly.

When talking about the core...

... people usually include the Monster Manual.

Just because all those settings existed in AD&D does not make that what D&D is...

They are a part of what D&D is. Which I've said before, BTW.

..and just because Blackmoor and Greyhawk had a single instance of random crap, does not mean that is what it is.

Single?

Your core is the minimum required to play, no matter how WotC wants to brainwash people into thinking with 4th edition.

This has nothing to do with 4e. Or WotC.

So please use the language correctly, and not fall prey to marketing scams and advertisement hype in a discussion because you were fooled by them.

You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?

This is where the whole confusion exists in people trying to claim D&D is some sort of throw everything in including the kitchen sink, because it does allow it, but that isn't D&D.

What's odds is that, even though you concede D&D contains all the things I've been mentioning, you refuse to admit that these things are part of what defines/characterizes D&D. Why is that?

Read and learn the core.

Which small subset of the D&D corpus that you personally approve of would that be?

 

[Mallus]

We've been playing d20 all along, and just didn't know it!

Heh... I do believe you're right!

 

[Remathilis]

SNIP!

Wow. Just wow. (and I don't mean Warcraft).

Yes there was a name for it. GAME.

You want a system try GURPS - Generic Universal RolePlaying System

Monopoly is a game. I cannot use the rules for Monopoly to play Battleship. I certainly cannot use them to play Apples to Apples.

Final Fantasy is a GAME for the Playstation SYSTEM. If I don't have a Playstation, that FF disc is a coaster. By the same token, not all Playstation games play like Final Fantasy. I can play Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, Street Fighter III, or MLB Baseball, all of which are different GAMES using the same SYSTEM.

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?

D&D is entirely unsuited, AS WRITTEN, to handle a variety of systems. You said it yourself, GURPS handles different genre's better. I cannot open my first edition PHB, roll up an elven fighter/wizard and call him a Jedi and go play Star Wars with it. D&D is terrible at emulating anything other than permeations of D&D. Its exactly that reason so many D&D-clones (fantasy d20 RPG systems) sprouted up; good luck trying to run A Game of Thrones using just the 3.5 PHB.

Sure, D&D's beauty is that its easy to mod. But that brings me back to the Final Fantasy/Playstation analogy. You can play a specific Final Fantasy (7), you can play different variants of it (6, 8, 12) or even other CRPGs (Chrono Cross, Dragon Warrior) or something completely different (Tekken) but DON'T tell me that Final Fantasy 12 is the most customizable GAME ever made because it runs on the same SYSTEM as FF10, Kingdom Heats, or Tekken 5.

That's the Playstation's credit. D&D on the whole is relatively inflexible. The d20 System on which its made (and the proto-versions from 1974-1999) are remarkable at their ability to contort to whatever the user wants. It can handle everything from Blackmoor to Dark Sun to Ravenloft to Midnight to d20 Modern to Star Wars to Mutants & Masterminds to Fourth Edition Core.

Try doing that with your Monopoly GAME.

 

[rounser]

Barrier Peaks, Temple of the Frog, Blackmoor, etc. There seems to be a lot of spaceships crashing in Greyhawk, no?

Correct - no. Greyhawk's Blackmoor is not the Blackmoor with the Temple of the Frog and the City of the Gods. That's Arneson's Blackmoor, in a different world.

 

[justanobody]

Wow. Just wow. (and I don't mean Warcraft).

I despise the 4th edition approach to what core is, and any attempt to ret-con it to older editions. Everything is not core, optional material does not define a game or the genre, even if it was an OPTION for the game.

You didn't need a spaceship like a SpellJammer to get between world because the planes existed that would allow travel. Any random option you add does not define the game, just your variant of it. Treating it like your variant is what everyone else does is wrong for discussions.

Like when I say I don't like healing surges and I think they are dumb and don't belong. I don't deny they are part of 4th edition. But that does not make my method of healing within 4th part of 4th edition either. Its just my variant and has little to nothing to do with 4th edition that everyone else plays.

I was just saying D&D is not a system. Maybe the previous response made me not fill in enough, but D&D is a specific game, not intended for everything under the sun to be added to it, just like Monopoly is not meant to play Battleship with....

 

[Betote]

It's not that D&D is generic; it's that it has become generic. D&D was (and is) huge -as well as awesome

So, in the beginning, D&D was a mix-match of very different, very quirky stuff (Vance, Moorcock, Howard, Tolkien, John Wayne, Bruce Lee, Sci-Fi, Hammer horror films...). All these different things (basically, everything that was cool during the 70's) became their own unique setting. With time, and the extraordinary success of D&D, they've become the standard for fantasy games. Let's face it: whenever we open any fantasy rpg book for the first time, and go to the monsters section, we look for the beholder

So, nowadays, D&D is a generic game, because it can be used for almost any instance of generic fantasy. And it's like that because D&D fixed what generic fantasy is.