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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3999602" data-attributes="member: 42582">He doesn't list individual arguments. He lists features of D&D gameplay (in all editions that I'm familiar with) that, taken together, locate D&D in a certain genre (and thus render it non-generic, and premise-inspired).I don't understand what you think the fallacy is. Perhaps you could refer me to a standard logic text (I've got Russell, Carnap, Quine, Susan L Stebbing, Copi and Nagel on my shelf ready to hand, and I'm sure the library carries more recent textbooks).But anyway, I'll have another go. Failure to facilitate a certain sort of play does necessitate that the game facilitates only a limited range of sorts of play. If that limit becomes sufficiently narrow, then we can locate the facilitated play within a certain genre, or as inspired by an (implicit) premise. I (and I think Simon also) am asserting that this is true of D&D.Well, not grim & gritty, plus the presence of Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves and Orcs, plus the presence of Arthurian-style knights (Paladins), and Assassins with an Old Man of the Mountain (I've got 1st ed in mind with that one), and Druids with certain well-defined Circles and leadership (I think 2nd ed had that also), plus .... does rule out a whole lot of themes.Then add in reward mechanics which directly facilitate either Conanesque looting or overcoming (primarily combat) challenges (depending on edition) and certain other themes are ruled out (and life also becomes hard for the Paladin - no wonder Dragon had so many Paladin articles and Forum letters, and the web is now full of so many Paladin threads - but the incoherence of some aspects of D&D is really a separate topic).Then add in alignment rules, whose original intended function seems to have been (i) to regulate conflict (be it racial, political, religious) within what are almost guaranteed to be extremely diverse PC parties; and (ii) to motivate those parties to go out and fight things (mostly evil things). With all of this and more, at a certain point the range of viable premises (in the absence of rules changes of one sort or another) becomes fairly narrow. I don't know if you think it's fair to look to modules published by TSR and WoTC as a guide to the premises of the game, but an awful lot of them seem to involve otherwise disparate groups of people coming together in order to kill and loot evil types to stop them stealing/invading/raiding/conquering/otherwise threatening the well-being of the world, but never redistributing the loot to those innocents from whom it was stolen but rather keeping it for the powerup.Is there a word for that genre other than D&D? I don't know, but it's definitely not generic.The major change to the above that 4e seems to be making is first to try and reduce the unexplained disparateness of races and classes (by putting some racial history into the core books, by continuing to broaden the notion of what a paladin is, and so on - this has some similaritiy to what Monte Cook did in Arcana Unearthed) and by using PoL rather than alignment as the motivation for disparate people to come together and adventure (this has some similarity to the first Dragonlance novel).Hence why I think that 4e is not doing something new in setting up a context and premise for play - it's just (IMO) doing it better.I have played RM more than monthly for the past 17 years, so know pretty well what sort of play it does and doesn't support. I know RQ less well, but I still know it.Assuming no rules changes, in both systems the threat of character death is ever-present in combat, when jumping chasms and so on, mostly because of critical success and critical failure/fumble rules. The presence of magic of course makes a huge difference, especially in RM where it can easily be over-the top - I entered this qualification (paranthetically) in my earlier posts.Whether or not they support high heroics depends, I guess, on what you mean by heroics. Neither supports especially well the idea that a fighter might beat a lion or tiger, or even a dragon, in unarmed combat without the aid of magic. For me, this difference from D&D (and all the mechanical elements that bring it about) makes for a radical difference in supported playstyle. Those differences are only reinforced every time I convert a D&D module into RM (which I do frequently).Every edition of D&D with which I'm familar allows a mortal warrior to become sufficiently puissant to defeat lions and tigers in hand-to-hand combat at mid levels, and to do the same to dragons at high levels, without the aid of magic. How is this the RAW supporting grim and gritty play?</blockquote>

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