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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 5761428" data-attributes="member: 1106">This strikes me as the kind of self-important pretentious goal that an arts faculty might ascribe to certain literature as a way of throwing the human condition into sharp relief.  I don't think that I know anyone who goes to the D&D game table with this as their idea of a good primary objective.  Incidental pathos of this sort can add depth, sure, but it strikes me as being like having a romantic relationship for the main objective of throwing the ills of the human condition (and possible solutions) into relief.  In other words, it strikes me as auxiliary and incidental to goings-on - great if it occurs, but the focus should be elsewhere.I also suggest that the "arts faculty pretensions of finding a cure for the human condition through chinstroking literature" is not the sum of a narrative.  Maybe I'm missing the point, but D&D is far better at narratives of the Conan variety, where the ripping adventure yarn delivers no information about solving societal ills save for what can be done with a bold and violent mind and a quick blade.In other words, just as the gamist perfection of pseudo-RPGs grown from D&D such as M:tG, Talisman and Heroquest (the Milton Bradley/Games Workshop one) have been attained and are known quantities as a gamist point of arrival for D&D (and therefore not a desirable destination for D&D itself, as these games are all limited in terms of their ability to map to RPG territory), so too the goals of literary style pretension are probably an undesirable primary objective for D&D.D&D's metagame of worldbuilding cannot be dismissed.  Without sufficient simulation of generic fantasy tropes, D&D becomes a poor platform for cliched fantasy worldbuilding and adventure, which is arguably one of the main draws - maybe even the main point - of the game in the first place.</blockquote>

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