[Forked Thread: How Important is Magic..?] 5 things you need to know

[Hussar]

/snip
...And besides that, what the hell is so horrifying about anime anyways? Why does everyone immidiately think of the worst anime they can think of when they make the comparisons. I'd bet there are people who got into D&D because of it. Hell, if someone told me the next edition of D&D was anime-esque, and then compared it to Bastard, I'd line up days in advance to buy it. Record of Lodoss War was awesome to the max. I've explained SR4 wireless Matrix by comparing it to Dennou Coil. I get that the guy wearing the Naruto headband that constantly whines about katanas needing to be better is annoying, but they're no more irritating then the drizzt clone or the munchkin - and those are phenomenon you can't blame on anyone else.

What you have to realize ProfC is that "anime" is just short hand for "some sort of genre that I don't like" and has nothing actually to do with the thing itself. Anime is shorthand for "amateurish, poorly drawn, poorly characterized, immature fiction" in the hands of far too many. I know, it bugs the crap out of me too, and I don't even particularly LIKE anime.

On the recognition factor.

Compare introducing a new player to a wizard in pre-4e and in 4e.

In 3e and earlier, your wizard can cast one (maybe two) spells per day, has a choice of about 5 spells (sometimes not even having a choice of what those spells were) and cast his spells by chucking random bits of trash at his enemy. Unless one were versed in Vance, none of this would remotely resemble any fictional wizard that I can think of.

In 4e, your wizard gets four or five spells that he can cast as often as he wants, plus a handful of other, more powerful spells, that are more limited, and he uses a wand (Hello Mr. Potter) or a staff (well here's our standard wizard archetype) or an orb (now this one I'm at a loss on - Pokemon maybe? ).

Which character is going to be more instantly recognizable to a younger player?

As far as races go, we've still got our standard Tolkien races (more or less) minus the hobbits. Yup, we've got more races as well, but, something like a tiefling is going to be pretty recognizable to any current fantasy reader. Hellboy is pretty popular for one. About the only race that straight up isn't recognizable would be Dragonborn.

Even the Lovecraft element is borrowing on current trends. Look at movies like, again, Hellboy - big tentacled monsters from the beyond are pretty popular. Pratchett also uses a Far Realms in a lot of his books, particularly any of the Rincewind ones. So, while it is definitely old school to pull up Lovecraft, it's not without precedence.

 

[Hussar]

I agree -- but that is not the premise of this thread, is it?

It's not? Really?

The premise of the thread was to identify a number of authors that we could point to as examples of the kind of thing that 4e D&D is "all about". Just as I could point someone to Conan or LotR and say, "That's what D&D is all about" twenty or thirty years ago.

Or have I lost the point? Wouldn't be the first time.

 

[Ariosto]

In the decades of my involvement, in the circles in which I have played, D&D has not been "all about" ANY tiny subset of a ghettoized media fandom. I think the nature of that experience has partly but significantly to do with the limited overlap of its extent with the history of the World Wide Web.

In the 1980s, there was annually in the little city I called home a "science fiction convention" that pretty much took over a "resort hotel" that no longer stands. It was an extremely eclectic convocation, bringing together people whose spectrum of vocations and avocations had in common the one characteristic of engaging the imagination.

Role-play gamers were well represented -- but not as an isolated clique; not even as a monolithic one, much less as devout members of the Sect of the True Faith of Recension IV of the Gospel of the Rules of W (Reformed).

The OP contrasted on one hand the blithe, indiscriminate accessibility of the original D&D concept with the prospect of one that "allows those who use and know modern media to have an easier time of picking it up" than those lacking the prerequisite. Of what the instigator thinks that entry barrier ought to be built has since been made more clear, along with a vehement opposition to the view that such a fannish erection is not called for in the first place.