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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 7733227" data-attributes="member: 5142">My gut-reaction feeling to this article is "yes". Yes, I know that you can play many sessions of D&D without combat and that mileage will vary at the table. It is incredibly table dependent. But this fact almost seems like a trite truism rather than strong counter-evidence to the claim in question. Because the system mechanics of a game undeniably affect trends in how that game is played. The game mechanics incentivizes and reinforces certain player (and GM) behaviors in relation to the game as played.  D&D is undeniably associated with a certain degree of hack 'n' slash play. when you ask people what's the goal of D&D, you'll likely get an answer akin to "kill the dragon and/or steal its golden hoard." As one of the links in the article notes, the primary mechanical benefits of leveling up in D&D is being better at combat regardless of whether you used combat to achieve that experience. (Which is also true for a number of other class-based systems.) Consider also, for example, the sort of characters that you can create in D&D and the sorts that you can't. You can't make a traveling merchant who has no proficiency in armor or weapons, but, rather, puts all their character creation points in social/exploration skills. It's a class-based game that assumes competency in combat. Your character will be proficient with a range of weapons, armor, spells, etc. and your class will give you particular combat-specific benefits. Sure, you can choose not to fight or take less combat-oriented options/stats, but that's about like choosing to be a pacifist in a Mortal Kombat brawler. Not saying its impossible or hasn't been done, but, rather, the overall mechanics establish a heavily-mechanized combat-oriented tone for the system. Yes, but I would argue that this rarely plays out this way in D&D at most tables, and I also don't think that the article is claiming that these two are exclusive, but, rather, that the combat pillar has been de-emphasized in a lot of narrativist play, as it tends to redistribute more focus on the other game pillars. And again a big part of that, as you allude, has to do with the associated system mechanics.</blockquote>

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