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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8782536" data-attributes="member: 7023840">I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I am trying to make sure I get to the salient distinction here- which comes up a lot when people talk about the "brand" of D&D, or how other games are interchangeable.Look, brands are powerful things. There is a reason large companies spend a lot of money differentiating various types of flavored carbonated sugar water. And brand loyalty, especially irrational and tribal brand loyalty? Well, you see that in everything from Red Sox/Yankees to Bama/Auburn to iPhone/Android to BMW/Audi. This isn't about that, however, at all. The refrain of "D&D is popular because the brand is popular," is reassuring because it sounds true, but it is one of those trite truisms that obfuscates more than it reveals. Essentially, people are saying, "D&D is popular because D&D is popular." Great! But ... what does that have to say about anything? What does that have to say about the design of D&D? What does that have to say about what it means to make a popular game? Why it is popular? What makes 5e (for example) so successful? The facile truism avoids any real analysis. You will often see it employed by those who can't understand why (insert their favored RPG) isn't more popular, and D&D is. "Oh, it's because D&D is popular, therefor it's popular, because people be stupid." To use a very old reference ....<img src="https://c.tenor.com/kltH_Vs3rEoAAAAC/dukakis-losing.gif" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 382px" />And that's why I make essays like this. Because understanding why D&D is deigned the way it is ... understanding the decisions that go into it, understanding what makes it popular ... that's interesting! To make a game that appeals to a few people- to make a game that is the bestest and greatest game ever for a small group of people for a short period of time ... that's not easy, but it's not hard either. But once you have to start making compromises to your own vision ... once you realize that this is a game that has to be in a conversation with both the future and the past, a game that has to appeal to both the hardcore crunch and the hardcore lore people, a game that has to be mini-ready AND playable as ToTM, a game that has to have relatively complete rules but also be easily hackable ... that makes for fascinating design!To me, that's the interesting conversation that a lot of people don't want to have. I hear you when you write, And then you have edition wars and D&D players who fight even more than they do about other systems.  Yeah, they do. And it sucks. Because fandom has a toxic side. But that's the whole thing- D&D is the only system that has people arguing about editions, about rules, that has people (like me) posting histories of the use of the scimitar for the druid class; it is a game and an ecosystem. Which is why I keep getting back to the point that it's not just about the system. There are plenty of games out there that provide better and bespoke systems for certain uses, but to concentrate on the rules alone, to ignore the history, the community, the norms, the massive amount of homebrew and 3PP, the lore, the ... the EVERYTHING associated with D&D? When you do that, you miss what D&D is.IMO. And it is my opinion because I've written a fair amount about the topic. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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