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General Tabletop Discussion
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Genres and Campaign Settings, and why D&D is not a Work of Literature
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<blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 8087832" data-attributes="member: 7635"><p>To be honest, I prefer "tropes" to genre.</p><p></p><p>Tropes, (defined as; a storytelling device or convention, a shortcut for describing situations the storyteller can reasonably assume the audience will recognize) are the building block of genre. Certain combinations of tropes form specific genres (for example, dark hallways, thunderstorms, and 'is anybody there?' are all tropes of the suspense genre). But tropes aren't married to one specific genre all the time (dark hallways are common in both murder mysteries and slasher horror) and tropes get added, removed and remixed to make new things all the time.</p><p></p><p>A setting (like a D&D setting) often takes tropes from a few different sources: fantasy (the magical pseudo-medieval setting), the game mechanics (clerics heal, wizards blast, rogues sneak, fighters... Fight) and whatever "genre" of Fantasy it wants to emulate. (High, epic, pulp, dark, etc). Baseline D&D itself is a thick mixture of tropes from different genres (wuxia monks fighting next to pulp barbarians) which further complicates the matter.</p><p></p><p>I think the biggest problem with trying to give a setting a genre is that people attempt to distill the genre for purity. Which leads the the problem mentioned. The designer is tempted to prune everything that isn't a trope of the genre out and only keep the "pure" genre tropes. Which is really the opposite of how a setting should work, it should add the tropes of a genre as appropriate and only prune that which absolutely doesn't not work (that is anethema to the genre). </p><p></p><p>For example, a dark fantasy/ horror setting like Ravenloft or Innistrad should take the traditional D&D tropes and add horror tropes like near constant darkness, isolation, supernatural monsters, curses, hauntings, etc. It's really easy to look at D&D's stew of tropes and say "ya know, holy knights don't fit the horror genre so they should be cut" rather than say "what would horror look like if a holy knight's special gifts don't give him an advantage against the monster of the story?" Curse of Strahd doesn't emulate Dracula perfectly, but its tropes are there for D&D to play with.</p><p></p><p>All this is too say, adding the tropes of a genre isn't the same as emulating the genre. Eberron is D&D with pulp and noir tropes, but doesn't emulate either genre. Ravenloft is D&D with horror tropes. Dark Sun is D&D with apocalyptic and sword and sandals genre tropes. Theros is D&D with greek myth tropes. Etc, etc. They are all still D&D underneath.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Remathilis, post: 8087832, member: 7635"] To be honest, I prefer "tropes" to genre. Tropes, (defined as; a storytelling device or convention, a shortcut for describing situations the storyteller can reasonably assume the audience will recognize) are the building block of genre. Certain combinations of tropes form specific genres (for example, dark hallways, thunderstorms, and 'is anybody there?' are all tropes of the suspense genre). But tropes aren't married to one specific genre all the time (dark hallways are common in both murder mysteries and slasher horror) and tropes get added, removed and remixed to make new things all the time. A setting (like a D&D setting) often takes tropes from a few different sources: fantasy (the magical pseudo-medieval setting), the game mechanics (clerics heal, wizards blast, rogues sneak, fighters... Fight) and whatever "genre" of Fantasy it wants to emulate. (High, epic, pulp, dark, etc). Baseline D&D itself is a thick mixture of tropes from different genres (wuxia monks fighting next to pulp barbarians) which further complicates the matter. I think the biggest problem with trying to give a setting a genre is that people attempt to distill the genre for purity. Which leads the the problem mentioned. The designer is tempted to prune everything that isn't a trope of the genre out and only keep the "pure" genre tropes. Which is really the opposite of how a setting should work, it should add the tropes of a genre as appropriate and only prune that which absolutely doesn't not work (that is anethema to the genre). For example, a dark fantasy/ horror setting like Ravenloft or Innistrad should take the traditional D&D tropes and add horror tropes like near constant darkness, isolation, supernatural monsters, curses, hauntings, etc. It's really easy to look at D&D's stew of tropes and say "ya know, holy knights don't fit the horror genre so they should be cut" rather than say "what would horror look like if a holy knight's special gifts don't give him an advantage against the monster of the story?" Curse of Strahd doesn't emulate Dracula perfectly, but its tropes are there for D&D to play with. All this is too say, adding the tropes of a genre isn't the same as emulating the genre. Eberron is D&D with pulp and noir tropes, but doesn't emulate either genre. Ravenloft is D&D with horror tropes. Dark Sun is D&D with apocalyptic and sword and sandals genre tropes. Theros is D&D with greek myth tropes. Etc, etc. They are all still D&D underneath. [/QUOTE]
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