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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8993267" data-attributes="member: 42582">I regard this as quite a controversial claim to make. By any standard metric of artistry, I think there is more art in (say) what I experience GMing Burning Wheel compared to what I experience GMing White Plume Mountain. I'd make the same assertion about using the Keep on the Borderlands as a setting in Burning Wheel compared to as a setting in AD&D.I'm happy to explain why if you like - at this point I'll just say that the reason for the difference is because of what Burning Wheel makes salient in the play experience, compared to what AD&D does.I think this is perhaps more accurate: D&D as played in the post-DL style is a vehicle for the GM inventing a fiction and then sharing it with their friends.This, on the other hand, I think is less accurate. The point of a system like (say) Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World is not to "find one's voice within the parameters of someone else's design intent". Rather, the system provides an alternative structure for creativity from the one you've identified for D&D: rather than a vehicle for a single designer to share their vision, these RPGs invite multiple participants to execute their visions during the course of play.I think Gygax had quite a clear idea of what D&D was (as conceived of by him and Arneson). It was a type of wargame.Hence he took for granted that many features of wargame resolution would be applied by D&D players - for instance, that they would be familiar with the use of "feet/inches per turn" methods for resolving movement; that they would be comfortable treating terrain-and-architecture marked maps as a "board" on which players make moves and referees resolve them; that dice might be used to resolve "fog of war"-type questions (eg do we notice the somewhat concealed doo-dad in the corner of the room?); that a referee would adjudicate the "hidden gameboard" aspects of this; etc.I think Robin Laws has it right, in his essay "The Literary Edge" which is in the Over the Edge rulebook (p 193 of my 20th anniversary edition):Role-playing game changed forever the first time a player said, "I know it's the best strategy, but my character wouldn't do that." Suddenly an aesthetic concern had been put ahead of a gaming one . . . At that unheralded moment, role-playing stopped being a game at all and began quietly evolving into a narrative art form . . . But who is the "narrator"? Mainstream D&D answers that one way (as per your - Clint_L's - post and my reply above); some other RPGs answer it the same way ( [USER=7027139]@loverdrive[/USER] mentioned V:tM, Shadowrun and maybe others, and there are many many more RPGs that adapt basically the same approach as mainstream D&D); yet other RPGs answer it a different way (eg AW, DW, BW etc).It's fairly clear how the "hidden gameboard" aspect of wargaming D&D has been adapted to the "GM shares their fiction" approach of mainstream contemporary D&D. But what is the role, in mainstream contemporary D&D play, of legacy wargame elements like sword damage dice, spell and bow ranges, areas of effect for fireballs, etc? That's an interesting question. They feed into the wargaming remnant of the combat system. And they provide some colour to feed into the GM's narration. They are not a particularly useful set of tools for players to contribute to the fiction, and I think that's a reason why they're not part of the best "indie" RPG designs. (And there are a couple of currently active thread discussing how to handle them in the context of 4e D&D, which has starkly different combat and non-combat resolution systems.)</blockquote>

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