"HF" vs. "S&S" gaming: the underlying reason of conflict and change in D&D

[Obryn]

If you say D&D is a totally unique genre, then back it up.

Well, I think it's more like, "Show me that it isn't."

Off the top of my head, I see the following influences:

* Conan
* Vance
* Tolkien
* Whatshisface with the monks
* Sci-fi with psionics, Barrier Peaks, etc.
* Lovecraft
* Gygaxian weirdness (beholders, mind flayers, drow, brain moles)
* Completely gamist Gygaxian inventions because they'd be fun in dungeons (gelatinous cube, trapper, lurker above, etc.)
* Completely gamist Gygaxian inventions to trick players and challenge their assumptions (rust monsters, gas spores, etc.)
* Weird stuff that's uncategorizable (most of Fiend Folio)

If this doesn't make it a genre all its own, I don't know what does I think the Gygaxian weirdness in particular is what defines the D&D "genre" more than anything else - and those were primarily invented for game-play purposes more than for any ecological reasons. (Although I should note that you can play D&D without playing in the Gygaxian genre - for instance, in Dark Sun.)

And saying that what I say is totally unsupported is very unfair. Because it isn't. A little research about the history of early D&D and EGG support me. Follow the links on my initial post.

He is using that as a retoric weapon.

No, I don't think it's completely unsupported. In fact, I think there is evidence to support what you say, to an extent. On the other hand, there's also counter-evidence you're ignoring. In short, I think you're getting tunnel vision because you're very emotionally invested in this classification.

Like I said before, I don't know that it brings anything to the table that oldschool vs. new-school doesn't.

-O

 

[Zulgyan]

The way elves are presented in D&D is very sword & sorcerish. They are in deep dirty dungeons scavenging gold and wandering around human towns looking for mercenary type jobs. The cast on you a fireball, a tasha's hideous uncontrollable laughter, and they protect themselves with mirror image and a fly spell. They are very different from HF elves.

If you read my post all along this thread, I never say that any edition is pure S&S or pure HF. Some lean more towards one of the genres, but none of them are 100% of them.

I also say in my OP, that 3E tried to get back to it's original S&S roots.

On elves, I would also like to add:

There used to be no need of drows to have an evil elf.

Because they're not elves, they're humans in funny makeup.

I agree, and that makes the game closer to S&S.

 

[Desdichado]

1. AD&D 1E to AD&D 2E--Biggest change was the emphasis on "Story First" and Hickman style campaigns

I'm curious; do you think there was a mechanical aspect to this, or is it just a question of presentation?

Because I wonder how much presentation affects gamers, unless they're new to the game being presented. I don't imagine many gamers who played 1e played 2e significantly differently than they did 1e. Unless they got kinda swept away by one or more of the campaign settings and the ideas it espoused.

2. AD&D 2E to D&D 3E--Biggest changes was the empowerment of players, making character creation and progression the centerpiece of the game, and the attempt via the toolbox approach and the D20/OGL to make D&D a universal system

I'm also curious what you mean by player empowerment. I don't think I disagree with what you're saying, at least with my interpretation of the words, but my interpretation isn't the only one out there, as I've seen on many an OSR screed. I like to think that 3e made character more mechanically interesting, gave a lot of interesting choices to players building their characters, and delegated a fair amount of the busywork of running the game to the players. In that respect, it was empowering. I don't think of it as a zero sum game where empowering players means emasculating DMs or something, though.

No offense intended to women DMs.

 

[Mallus]

They only thing you got to do is get the AD&D DMG and check out the inspirational reading list.

Which includes a lot of different kinds of fantasy literature, including science fiction/science fantasy.

Check out the early Dragon Magazines, what kind of literature is discussed there, and the dozen of EGG articles saying that D&D is NOT TOLKIEN.

Yes, but that hasn't stopped D&D players from using the game to re-create Tolkien since the very beginning. Note EGG's own players nagged him to put more Tolkien bit into his own campaign.

... how he said hundred of times the Tolkien races where there just to make the game sell better.

Which would indicate a demand for Tolkienesque (ie, High Fantasy) elements in D&D, from the very beginning, wouldn't it?

 

[Desdichado]

They only thing you got to do is get the AD&D DMG and check out the inspirational reading list. Check out the early Dragon Magazines, what kind of literature is discussed there, and the dozen of EGG articles saying that D&D is NOT TOLKIEN.

You can read the Q&A threads of EGG here at ENWorld, when he speaks about the main inspirations for the game, how it was much more rooted in S&S rather than HF, how he called Tolkien's masterpiece "The Bore of the Rings", how he said hundred of times the Tolkien races where there just to make the game sell better.

I thought this was much more common knowledge that what I supposed.

That is common knowledge. However, what the game says it's doing (in one, confined, narrow place) and what it's actually doing are not necessarily the same thing. Saying that D&D is S&S because look at Appendix N; it's full of S&S influences is, at best, a very circular argument, proving nothing.

At best. And for a "best" scenario, that's obviously not very good.

 

[Zulgyan]

Well, I think it's more like, "Show me that it isn't."

Off the top of my head, I see the following influences:

* Conan
* Vance
* Tolkien
* Whatshisface with the monks
* Sci-fi with psionics, Barrier Peaks, etc.
* Lovecraft
* Gygaxian weirdness (beholders, mind flayers, drow, brain moles)
* Completely gamist Gygaxian inventions because they'd be fun in dungeons (gelatinous cube, trapper, lurker above, etc.)
* Completely gamist Gygaxian inventions to trick players and challenge their assumptions (rust monsters, gas spores, etc.)
* Weird stuff that's uncategorizable (most of Fiend Folio)

I can agree with this list, and that the whole beautiful mess makes D&D unique.

But so Hyboria is unique.

And Newton is unique.

But they all have some deep similarities in their higher concepts, worldviews, etc. that you can group them all under a man-made label called S&S, that has quite an important consensus on how it is supposed to be.

 

[Remathilis]

Look again at the countless "fantasy heart-breakers" produced with an obviously D&D-derived mix of fantasy elements as the default. One after another has featured the quasi-Tolkien races, similar character types (often down to sharing the class names and essentially duplicating most of their abilities and limitations), the same takes on monsters (rather than going back to the sources), sometimes even spells and magic items derived from D&D prototypes.

Why mess with success?

Somehow, D&D's unique brand of tropes (fighter, thief, healer & mage, elves & dwarves, orcs & goblins, color-coded elemental dragons, XP, HP, and GP) seemed not only to satisfy the necessary tropes of a fantasy game, they came to define its own brand of fantasy (which helped spawn things like Record of the Lodoss Wars, Final Fantasy, Eragon, and Warcraft, proving things go full circle).

My personal theory is D&D didn't start out a S&S-based game and then magically switch gears to HF circa 1985, but elements of both genre's existed from inception, and the balance shifted over time to favor one over the other as a response to the type of fantasy players like and want modeled. Perhaps one day, it will shift back. I don't see a problem with the shift, I LIKED the shift to a more narrative, character-based game from the "give me 3d6, lets see how long THIS lemming lasts" game of yore. That's a personal preference, and its one I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with me on.

 

[rogueattorney]

I'm curious; do you think there was a mechanical aspect to this, or is it just a question of presentation?

Because I wonder how much presentation affects gamers, unless they're new to the game being presented. I don't imagine many gamers who played 1e played 2e significantly differently than they did 1e. Unless they got kinda swept away by one or more of the campaign settings and the ideas it espoused.

It's already been mentioned in this thread by me and others...
1. Xp for gp was done away with in 2e. Where in older versions of D&D grabbing cash was supposed to account for 70-80% of your xp awards, in 2e it became 0%. That right there promotes a fairly different play style.

2. Training rules that took pcs out of action for weeks at a time were done away with in 2e. In episodic S&S styled adventures, it doesn't particularly matter if the pcs go out of action for a month or two between adventures. In epic quest style adventures, it can be very hard for the campaign to fit around the pcs taking a few months off when the Evil Overlord and his Apocolyptic Artifact of Doom are on the march.

 

[rogueattorney]

My personal theory is D&D didn't start out a S&S-based game and then magically switch gears to HF circa 1985, but elements of both genre's existed from inception, and the balance shifted over time to favor one over the other as a response to the type of fantasy players like and want modeled.

So in what way are you disagreeing with the OP? Because this is exactly what he's saying.

 

[Krensky]

I agree, and that makes the game closer to S&S.

It makes it closer to Star Trek.

I'm not even sure elves or fae are appropriate for S&S in the first place. Other types of low fantasy, sure, but they don't really seem to fit in S&S.

That said, a S&S elf would be uncanny, alien, and amoral (at least from the human perspective). Honest in a purely literal sense, indifferent to man or his affairs beyond sources of entertainment and servants. Mercurial, Machiavellian, and altogether not human. And bored. Utterly bored.

D&D elves have never been this. They have always been humans in funny makeup with cool powers.