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Heteroglossia and D&D: Why D&D Speaks in a Multiplicity of Playing Styles
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<blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 8786846" data-attributes="member: 7026617"><p>I don't know that I'd say all of them do. But I think I'd claim most (depending on what "most" means--there are an enormous number of virtually unknown boutique games that if you start counting literally all of them the argument would look funny) are, and virtually all trad games are. </p><p></p><p>In fact I'd claim that a large number contain <em>more</em> (there are a fair number of things baked into D&D's structure that make it actively fight against some styles--for the most blatant example, consider that even as RPGs go, D&D has an enormous amount of its structure wrapped up in combat: even non-martial classes are full of class features and related things that are, in the end, about fighting support. This doesn't mean other games don't lean into that fairly commonly too, but I can think of several general purpose games where its entirely possible to generate a character who is absolutely not about combat in any meaningful way. I'm not saying this is a super-common desire in a hobby that's all about adventure fiction, but its a telling example that D&D has made decisions virtually from day one that narrow its scope intrinsically. And I'm not just talking about the genre things here. I know there's a lot of "but we don't want icky mechanics in our social interactions" in the trad hobby, and particularly in big parts of D&D fandom, but if you're going to run a game that's very heavily based around social manuevering, just what does D&D actually do for you?)</p><p></p><p>That's the thing about claims that D&D is especially well suited to a variety of styles: compared to what? At the very least it always seems like people really cherry-pick the counter-examples to claim it at best, and at worst want to make claims about the narrowness of a number of other games that is not clear to be true.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Thomas Shey, post: 8786846, member: 7026617"] I don't know that I'd say all of them do. But I think I'd claim most (depending on what "most" means--there are an enormous number of virtually unknown boutique games that if you start counting literally all of them the argument would look funny) are, and virtually all trad games are. In fact I'd claim that a large number contain [I]more[/I] (there are a fair number of things baked into D&D's structure that make it actively fight against some styles--for the most blatant example, consider that even as RPGs go, D&D has an enormous amount of its structure wrapped up in combat: even non-martial classes are full of class features and related things that are, in the end, about fighting support. This doesn't mean other games don't lean into that fairly commonly too, but I can think of several general purpose games where its entirely possible to generate a character who is absolutely not about combat in any meaningful way. I'm not saying this is a super-common desire in a hobby that's all about adventure fiction, but its a telling example that D&D has made decisions virtually from day one that narrow its scope intrinsically. And I'm not just talking about the genre things here. I know there's a lot of "but we don't want icky mechanics in our social interactions" in the trad hobby, and particularly in big parts of D&D fandom, but if you're going to run a game that's very heavily based around social manuevering, just what does D&D actually do for you?) That's the thing about claims that D&D is especially well suited to a variety of styles: compared to what? At the very least it always seems like people really cherry-pick the counter-examples to claim it at best, and at worst want to make claims about the narrowness of a number of other games that is not clear to be true. [/QUOTE]
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