Gaming Generation Gap

[The Ghost]

To me, this has always been the best thing about D&D. It never tried to have a clear "this is the look/feel of D&D." It was Conan mixed with Lord of The Rings, mixed with Star Wars, and Kung Fu, and Ray Harryhausen, and weird 1950s sci-fi and planet of the apes, and mythology, and fairy tales and horror films and books... All of it rolled up into a strange little ball of imagination.

Looking back after twenty-odd years of gaming, I agree.

Thats why it always amuses/bugs me when people say things are core concepts of D&D or that a certain look/feel has no place in D&D. It does. Pretty much anything/everything does.

I don't find it all that annoying that different people found different core ideas within the same set of rules. If you asked me back when I started playing D&D what D&D was I would have told you it is medieval Europe with Arthurian fantasies thrown in. Why? Because that is what I was interested in when I discovered the rules. So I can understand when people see certain elements as being core and others not. There was a time when that is all that I saw as well.

 

[Scribble]

Looking back after twenty-odd years of gaming, I agree.



I don't find it all that annoying that different people found different core ideas within the same set of rules. If you asked me back when I started playing D&D what D&D was I would have told you it is medieval Europe with Arthurian fantasies thrown in. Why? Because that is what I was interested in when I discovered the rules. So I can understand when people see certain elements as being core and others not. There was a time when that is all that I saw as well.

Don't get me wrong, I have no issue with people wanting to focus their own games on one element or another, or want to exclude one element or another.
The very fact that two people can look at the same game and see two completely different ideas is where the game should be.


What bugs me is when people want to say something added to the game, is NOT D&D or something taken from the game makes it not D&D. The idea that D&D should be built to a certain look or feel really, and if it doesn't match that look or feel it shouldn't be in the game. I guess "annoys me" is a bad choice of words? Maybe "makes me sad" is better?

I guess I just like the fact that D&D has always seemed to be more about wild imagination, and less about "focused" imagination, and feel that was always its strong point.

 

[Ariosto]

Considering what I see as a fundamental "re-skinning" ethos in 4E, I'm not sure how much what would amount to "fluff" in modern or futuristic terminology would be in demand.

In the first 4E session I DMed, one of the players played a robot. I'm guessing it was built as a warforged -- but that really does not matter much that I can see.

In that sense, it's a lot like early D&D or T&T. If you imagine your character as a spaceman, an android, or a rabbit-shaped pooka -- then just play him/her/it that way!

There are a lot more rules to manipulate now, but their tenor seems far from one likely to get concerned with distinguishing .38 caliber from 9mm. That sort of thing might go over better in 3E.

Back when D&D was published by a company also publishing different RPGs on different subjects, and variety was largely considered by hobbyists as a spice of the gaming life, it was pretty natural to let (e.g.) Marvel Super Heroes and AD&D each be its own thing.

EPT, MA, and GW all used rules similar to D&D, and Buck Rogers XXVc was rather like an interplanetary 2E AD&D.

Articles in The Dragon mostly took over the role that OD&D supplements had briefly filled in offering all sorts of variants. Supplements came in some quarters (and perhaps increasingly over the course of 2E and 3E) to be seen as adding to "canon", defining the "D&D world" in some authoritative way.

In general, I think the idea of packaging setting and mechanics together has only grown stronger even as "vanilla systems" such as BRP, Hero, and GURPS have carved out their own niche. My guess is that "D&D fantasy" is likely to continue to become more rather than less sharply defined under WotC, whatever elements may be added.

 

[Glyfair]

As an aside, since Vance was discussed quite a bit earlier...

The NYT a few days ago put up a story on Vance, which touches somewhat on why he is "lesser known."

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Currently, D&D is very much locked into a certain mindset of "traditional fantasy". As far as actual WotC books are considered, all D&D campaigns take place in a vaguely European medieval society full of knights, elves, orcs, and wizards. Elements inspired by non-European cultures are less common (in fact, anything more specific than vaguely European is less common), guns don't exist (to an extent that counters the historical presence of gunpowder in the medieval world), and the entire world is governed by generic polytheistic gods and magical planes of existence.

Sticking with official TSR and WotC products:

Nonwestern: Oriental Adventures (1st Edition and 3rd Edition versions), Maztica (2nd Edition), Complete Ninja's Handbook (2nd Edition), Old Empires (2nd Edition), Al Qadim (2nd Edition), Empire of the Petal Throne (OD&D related: Tékumel :: The World of the Petal Throne). There were several Dragon Articles on using India and Africa as campaign settings.

Blackpowder Weapons: 2nd Edition Player's Handbook, Forgotten Realms Campaign setting (both 2nd and 3rd Edition), 3.x Edition DMG, Immortals Storm module (for pre 3e D&D). There are lots of Dragon magazine articles on it.

Modern Weapons and Warfare: The previously mentioned sections in the DMG 1.0 and 3.x. Masque of the Red Death (2nd Edition), Modern d20 (3rd Edition compatiable), Eberron (using D&D with modern sensibilities), and the Dragon module "City Beyond the Gate"

Futuristic Weapons and Warfare: Buck Rogers XXVc (2nd Edition), Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (1st Edition), Gamma World (all but 3rd Edition and the Alternity version were D&D compatible), Alternity (with a little work compatible with 2nd Edition), and Star Wars d20 (and its subsequent editions Revised and Saga)

And that doesn't even begin to include the 3PP such as Deadlands d20 with its Gunslinger character class or Dragonstar.

I could run an entire Final Fantasy Type Campaign with 2nd Edition D&D and 4th Edition Gamma World, though I would probably throw in a bit of Buck Rogers XXVc just because they all used the same basic system. And I could do it even easier with the D&D 3.x and Modern d20 games.

And all this stuff spans from the beginning of D&D to this very day.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Sorry Double Post

As for the D&D to Final Fantasy connection, go watch "Record of Lodoss War".

 

[Orius]

Blackpowder Weapons: 2nd Edition Player's Handbook, Forgotten Realms Campaign setting (both 2nd and 3rd Edition), 3.x Edition DMG, Immortals Storm module (for pre 3e D&D). There are lots of Dragon magazine articles on it.

Don't forget the Player's Option books for 2e. Firearms are there in Combat & Tactics, and I think they're presented in Skills and Powers. High-Level Campaigns makes mentions of firearms as they apply to world with technology and magical level different from the AD&D n orm.

 

[jmucchiello]

You know, jmucchiello, it may not be your intent, but your post comes across quite strongly as a big rant on how lazy younger gamers are (with a very clear implication that my criticisms are simply a result of my own laziness). Which, frankly, is really insulting. I'd appreciate it if you dialed back the implications that I (or other people who are not "old-school") don't have enough imagination or will to create something new and interesting.

Well, I'm not ranting. I'm raving, celebrating. The whole point of D&D is to explore your imagination.

Of course you can always just make things up. But that is not what I have been talking about. When I say that D&D doesn't support certain things, I am not even remotely saying that it is impossible to play a D&D game that involves things like guns or robots. What I am saying is that the game as written doesn't really help you do such things.

And I fundamentally disagree with you. The game as written gives you everything you need to play androids, ninja, pirates and cat-people. Aristo above says he's played in a 4e game with an android. He didn't mention the use of 3rd party material.

Everything in the game is just made up. When your DM says "The king looks troubled as you are summoned before him...." did he read that line from a WotC approved plot? No, he made it up. Unless you only play pre-generated characters in pre-written adventures at some point you must make something up. So why stop with just our good king delivering a plot macguffin and also make up your own rules for androids? What is the difference?

Currently, D&D is very much locked into a certain mindset of "traditional fantasy". As far as actual WotC books are considered, all D&D campaigns take place in a vaguely European medieval society full of knights, elves, orcs, and wizards. Elements inspired by non-European cultures are less common (in fact, anything more specific than vaguely European is less common), guns don't exist (to an extent that counters the historical presence of gunpowder in the medieval world), and the entire world is governed by generic polytheistic gods and magical planes of existence.

D&D really doesn't support Knights very well. Play Harn if you want to see how far D&D's assumptions stray from truly Medieval inspired gaming.

The level of Greek and Western European influence dominates D&D is far more a result of the game being written in ENGLISH than anything else. All the Greek and Norse myths are heavily dominant because the words we speak resonate with those concepts. But I'd guess half the monsters in any MM are made-up and non-European influenced creatures.

 

[Ariosto]

Conflating "support" and "more rules" seems often to be a phase through which gamers go. (It can also be a firm and enduring conviction, of course!)

The "classic" Traveller line in its fullness provided an awful lot of rules -- on some subjects, effectively two or three or more different games! Some systems made for engrossing solitaire games, and might produce materials of great utility in certain contexts (such as a war-game). One might come to find, though, that they really made no significant contribution (even had they required much less effort) to one's role-playing sessions. More precisely, it might depend on circumstances; I am not sympathetic to blanket claims that fewer tools in the toolbox is categorically A Good Thing.

I personally find pleasure in "simulation" in (probably) whatever sense you may interpret the term ... but not necessarily in all forms at once.

A lacuna in RPG rules is rarely a big deal to me, whereas a heap of rules that actively confounds either common sense or speed of play -- or, worst of all, both at once -- can easily lose my interest. (My own mileage on that score may vary depending on personal hierarchies of values or even the moment's mood.)

Not at all intending to paint everyone's experience with the same brush, I will observe that some phenomena seem pretty common.

The RPG field, like the wargame field before it, can -- especially when it is still fairly novel in one's experience -- present an incredibly alluring range of intellectual toys. Yes, this works just fine ... but that is interesting, too! It's a combination of a big buffet for the eating and a big pantry for the cooking.

Another factor, perhaps more associated with youth, is the reassurance one can find in Official Rules®. When I was 11 years old, I knew very little about mortgages, machine-guns or a host of other things about which I now know a little more. Rule-books gave me something on which to lean when my life experience seemed insufficient support.

Certainly not always, but I think rather often, those early enthusiasms run their course and fall away from the fore. One tends to get comfortable with methods that "just work" and fit one like an old pair of bluejeans, and to find it easier to make ad hoc rulings rather than looking up rules.

As well, one's previous explorations of various rules sets have given one a wide variety of models on which to draw. The precise data may escape memory, but the essential concepts are still at hand.

One may find that "game mechanics" have become pretty trivial, not much worth buying more of at all. Calculations for armor value based on slope of glacis? Bah! How does a tank smell when it brews up? Evocative detail! It is not models for which one is in demand, but more prototypes that are interesting to model.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The level of Greek and Western European influence dominates D&D is far more a result of the game being written in ENGLISH than anything else. All the Greek and Norse myths are heavily dominant because the words we speak resonate with those concepts. But I'd guess half the monsters in any MM are made-up and non-European influenced creatures.

Funny thing is, the PC classes have more of a Celtic influence - bards and druids. A lot of the monsters are from Greek myth, and a few - ice/fire giants, drow - are Norse. So D&D is a game of Celtic heroes battling Greek monsters.

You're right that the monsters come from all over. There are a lot more monsters in D&D than there are classes and PC races. They are weirder, more exotic, more varied and have a broader range of influences, including sci-fi (displacer beast), TV shows (roper), comic books (shambling mound) and kids' toys (bulette).