Is D&D "about" combat?

[Hussar]

I think both you and Umbran are applying faulty logic. The amount of time spent in development or the amount of page space in the rules, I think, can be taken to indicate the parts of the game that are the most rules-intensive. Assuming anything beyond that, like what the game is fundamentally about, is overreaching.

If you spend 3/4 of your pagecount devoted to how to kill stuff and what stuff you can kill and the only way to advance in your game is to kill stuff (or at the very least, mostly kill stuff and take its loot) it's not a huge stretch to say that your game is about killing stuff.

Otherwise, you are basically saying that the dev's are completely wasting everyone's time on stuff that is not being used all the time.

There's a reason there's no weather rules in Monopoly for example.

Is D&D about combat? IMO, yup, it is. That's where the classes are designed around, that's how you advance in the game, that's what your character sheet is primarily designed to aid you to do.

Is that all there is? No, of course not. But, I'm thinking that the knee-jerk reaction is more a reaction to the idea that a game that focuses on combat is somehow "inferior" to other games. Never minding the fact that most RPG's do focus on combat.

As far as this goes:

And that's changed. I don't think that we see exhortations in favor of "good role-playing" in rulebooks anymore. And I think that gaming has suffered for it. Certainly, in my locality, it's exceedingly difficult to find any player who would rather play a character than a character-sheet. Can it be that attitudes have changed so much in the span of a mere decade? I hope not.

I'm suspecting a LOT of reader bias here. An even casual perusal of any editions books shows a very strong emphasis on tactical play as well as pages of advice on "good roleplay". It's divided largely in the same ratios in any edition.

 

[Dannager]

I answered No.

I think that when D&D first appeared, it brought two things to a gaming table which had never been there before

1) Roleplaying
2) Adventure

I would say that more than anything else, D&D is "About" roleplaying. It is easy to lose sight of that because it is so embedded in the warp and weft of gaming life, but that is the fundamental thing which made it different.

I then add on to that 'Adventure', which was why the roleplaying was immersive and fun.

This needs to be expanded upon, I think. Just because D&D added new aspects to the experience doesn't necessarily change its focus to something else.

Mass Effect 2 brought new gameplay elements to the console RPG experience - Paragon/Renegade snap decisions that could be made during conversation, for example. That didn't suddenly mean that the focus was suddenly on that new element.

In order to determine the focus of a game, you first have to pick a perspective. I prefer to use the perspective of the game's developers, because this is a perspective that allows us to ignore the individual user's slant on how it should work in favor of a professional (hopefully informed) opinion that actually led to the game's creation.

I think both you and Umbran are applying faulty logic. The amount of time spent in development or the amount of page space in the rules, I think, can be taken to indicate the parts of the game that are the most rules-intensive. Assuming anything beyond that, like what the game is fundamentally about, is overreaching.

This is, frankly, some backwards thinking: you argue that time spent in development signifies nothing beyond which areas of the game are most rules intensive, but fail to acknowledge that the areas of the game which are rules intensive are determined by the person (or people) who also determine(s) time spent in development. The reality is that the game's developers made those areas of the game so rules intensive because that's where they felt the game's "meat" was. They understood that combat is the most consistently exciting part of the tabletop RPG experience, and that it makes up a consistently large chunk of your average D&D game, and that people enjoy having lots of mechanical ways to express their individual characters' participation in combat encounters.

On the other hand, they obviously did not believe stew-cooking to be of critical importance to the tabletop RPG experience, and thus spent a great deal less time implementing rules which might allow one to determine the success of their stewing endeavors.

 

[Dannager]

Pretty much every game has the most robust system in the rules for the thing that the game is actually about. If you don't find that logical, I'm alright with that.

Absolutely. In fact, I would argue that this is a tautology - games are defined by their rules, therefore the focus of a game's rules is the focus of the game itself, regardless of what the individual might bring to the table.

 

[Dannager]

There's an awful lot of combat-related stuff in the game (tables of weapons, books of monsters, gobs of combat spells), but its not a primarily combat game.

Isn't calling something primary a tacit acknowledgement that other things exist which are secondary or tertiary?

Look at the eqiupment lists - what does 1E's chickens that you can buy have to do with combat?

Almost nothing.

Who thinks flumphs were included in the fiend folio solely to combat?

Almost no one.

And I doubt spells like comprehend languages and create water had combat in mind when they were put into game.

Possibly, but probably not.

I'll alway believe that D&D is "more than hack-n-slash".

It is.

But you're trying to argue that D&D isn't primarily about combat. I don't think that's a defensible position to take. Calling combat primary to D&D acknowledges that things like chicken prices and comprehend languages are part of D&D, but are less significant by comparison.

Is D&D all about combat? No.

Is D&D about combat, in the sense that it is primarily about combat? Almost certainly.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Mike Mearls highlights:
"Setting aside mechanics, I think you can boil D&D down to three basic activities: exploration, roleplay, and combat."

And I think this hits it pretty well. However, I like Gryph's answer of "Adventure" (shared by Plane Sailing) and El Mahdi's "Conflict" as a way of tying Mearl's three activities together.

Well done guys!

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Dannager]

I'm suspecting a LOT of reader bias here. An even casual perusal of any editions books shows a very strong emphasis on tactical play as well as pages of advice on "good roleplay". It's divided largely in the same ratios in any edition.

Yeah. This strikes as more "Ahhh, the good old days, when things were pretty much just as they are now (or worse), but look better in the rear view mirror," than anything else.

EDIT: I also have to wonder if the thought process of those who answered "No" to the poll went something along the lines of "Is D&D about combat? No way! D&D is about a bunch of different things: roleplaying, combat, exploration, flumphs!" and then I wonder how many of those people would answer "Yes" to a poll that asked "Is D&D about roleplaying?"

I'd wager quite a few. The egalitarian face put on in response to being confronted with a reality they dislike would fly out the window once confronted with a reality that they do like.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

It genuinely mystifies me that people will argue so vehemently about the "correct" answer to a question that was specifically fishing for a knee-jerk answer.

Bias? Well no spit, Spurlock! It's a knee-jerk reaction. The "correct" answer is the biased answer.

Re the question, I, being "of the Old Ways", I answered "no".

 

[Dannager]

It genuinely mystifies me that people will argue so vehemently about the "correct" answer to a question that was specifically fishing for a knee-jerk answer.

Bias? Well no spit, Spurlock! It's a knee-jerk reaction. The "correct" answer is the biased answer.

You don't believe that it's potentially illuminating to discuss why people may have the knee-jerk reactions that they do to this question?

Because, I mean, I do. In fact, I think it's downright fascinating.

By the way, the question of reader bias wasn't brought up until Hussar addressed the OP's lengthy discussion on how, in his view, roleplaying standards have declined over the years. We weren't talking about the poll (except in my very tangential edit). We were talking about the OP's very-much-not-knee-jerk-at-all thoughts on roleplaying (and why those thoughts suggest some very strong biases in the OP).

BTW, being "of the Old Ways", I answered "no".

So, hypothetically, what would your knee-jerk reaction be to the question of "Is D&D about roleplaying?"

 

[Hussar]

Dannager - I'm not sure that's fair though. If you asked any roleplayer, "Is D&D about roleplaying", everyone would say yes. After all, it is a roleplaying game.

Of course, since the definition of "roleplaying" is a pretty nebulous concept, the question doesn't have a whole lot of value.

OTOH, if you were to ask if D&D is about tracking niggly details, most people would probably say no, despite the fact that this plays a large part of any D&D experience.

 

[Dannager]

Dannager - I'm not sure that's fair though. If you asked any roleplayer, "Is D&D about roleplaying", everyone would say yes. After all, it is a roleplaying game.

Ah, but there's the rub.

You ask Person A: "Is D&D about combat?"

They respond: "No, D&D isn't about any one thing - it's about combat, roleplaying, exploration, etc."

You ask that same Person A: "Is D&D about roleplaying?"

They respond: "Yes."

This is illustrative. We now know that Person A defends against the claim that D&D is about combat by saying D&D is about lots of things (including roleplaying and combat). But when presented with the question of whether or not it's about roleplaying, suddenly it is about roleplaying, and the other aspects of the game they made a point of including earlier receive no mention.

In other words, when the first question is posed, Person A appears to give primacy to nothing, considering many different aspects of the game to share the spotlight, as it were. When the second question is posed, Person A appears to give primacy to roleplaying. This indicates one of two things: either Person A's opinion on what D&D is about changes based on the question asked (they have no well-formed idea of what D&D is about), or Person A tries to make a "single-minded" position (such as D&D being about combat) look short-sighted while simultaneously adhering to a view that is very similar to the one they criticize (hypocrisy).

In order for Person A to have a consistent position, they would have to respond to both questions with "No," or they would have to respond to the first question with "No, D&D is about roleplaying," and the second question with "Yes."

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that anyone in particular here follows the above pattern. I'm merely wondering at whether or not any of the poll's respondents fit this pattern.