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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 5641579" data-attributes="member: 17106">Very pertinently, I would say that playing D&D is art, while playing a typical strategy game is not (chess, perhaps, or your miniature wargame of choice). In this case, all action takes place within predefined rules, and there is an explicit nonartistic goal (winning). Conversely, D&D rules are more guidelines than actual rules, allowing for greater creativity, and there is no explicit goal presented within them (leaving you free to decide your own, which may or may not be particularly artistic).Semantically, I would say it's more accurate to describe D&D itself as an artistic medium than generalizing that all D&D is art. After all, it's been said someone can easily write words in a book that aren't art and put paint on a canvas without making art, so someone I think can do something that's described as D&D without creating art (although I would describe that as counterintuitive, similar to making nonartistic markings on canvas). That would not have been as good of a poll question, however.The poll question asks about your game and your goals, which is why it's spread the way it is.That's pretty much one of the main criticisms of art as a profession or an academic pursuit. And yet art is indubitably a cornerstone of human civilization, one of the things that separates humans from nonhuman animals. It's hard to refute that criticism. At some point, you are pretty much in "I know it when I see it" territory, an idea raised elsewhere.</blockquote>

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