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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3999387" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't accept that you can do anything you want with D&D (be it Basic/Expert, BECMI, 1st ed, 2nd ed or 3rd ed - I'll pass on OD&D which I don't know very well).Every rules system has made it possible for a mid-to-high level fighter to beat a lion or tiger in hand-to-hand combat. As this is a virtually superhuman feat, it follows that every edition of D&D mentioned above has made it impossible to use the rules to play a realism-based, grim-and-gritty game. Contrast this with RQ, or RM, which (in their skill and combat systems, if not their magic systems) virtually enforce such a playstyle.Furthermore, every rules system has had very well-defined character improvement rules. In earlier editions it was primarily gold, with monsters adding a little extra XP. This meant the game strongly supported Conan-esque looting style play, but not (for example) LOTR-type questing. There was an interesting article in Dragon (around number 90-100) that tried to turn the monster XP rules into a more generic challenge-reward system, but even with such a rules change there was no overcoming the necessity of gold to earn all those thousands of XPs required.3E, on the other hand, with its challenge-rating XP system, makes it clear that the premise of play is the overcoming of challenges by the PCs (primarily through combat, given that the only other sort of challenges with any rules support are hazards and traps, and they are handled pretty cursorily). As in T&T, money now becomes a reward that lets PCs acquire the gear they need to beat challenges, rather than a source of improvement (ie XP) in itself.Even if we ignored all the other problems one would have using 3E for LOTR-type questing play, you would also have to tweak the reward/improvement system to support such a game - perhaps by ditching XP and level gain, letting PCs start at a (varied) range of levels, giving the lower level ones a starting pool of fate points to compensate for their weaker stats, and using fate points rather than XPs as the reward currency for achieving thematically appropriate goals.In short: D&D is no more generic as a fantasy RPG engine than is RQ, RM, Pendragon, T&T or TRoS. Which is to say, not that generic at all.There is no real reason to think this is true. If a large number of users want a certain sort of play, then what will be most useful to them is a game that supports that play style. An RPG which aims at the (in my view, unattainable) goal of utter genericness is likely to be sufficiently incoherent that many people will not find it fun to play at all. There is some evidence, at least, that AD&D 2nd ed suffered from this problem.For the reasons Skeptic has given above, I think that the increasing recognition by the 3E and 4e designers of the reality of D&D - that its rules primarily support and are primarily used for gamist play - has been a good thing, not a bad one. I would think it can only strengthen the appeal of the game by making it easier to play and get fun from playing.</blockquote>

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