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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5470356" data-attributes="member: 59082">Danny, are you asking for clarity because you want to understand what I am saying or because you want to invalidate what I'm saying? I'm honestly not sure.I'll assume the former. What I'm saying is that I can't define it for you. The universal aspect of D&D can only be experienced through the individual and thus is quite personal. My D&D experience is probably quite different from yours, but I also think there is a universal and archetypal underlying "essence" that imbues both of our experiences. In other words, you and I both have personal experiences of a universal "archetype," in a similar sense that you and I both have personal experiences of love, but that love is universal.Let me use the analogy of water. Water can be in different forms: a solid (ice), a liquid (water), a gas (vapor). It can be in the ocean, a sea or lake, a river or stream, a cup, a Nalgene bottle, a toilet bowl. But it is always water. You and I might experience water quite differently; maybe you are a scuba diver and I'm a Himalaya conqueror. Maybe you drowned when you were little and I am an Olympic swimmer. Maybe you hate drinking water and I can't go anywhere without my Sigg bottle of spring water. But it is still water, no matter what form or context it is in.But let me be a bit more specific. What is the D&D experience to me? Well, I'm tired so won't be able to wax as poetically or as clearly as I might be able to in eight hours, but there is a lot I could say about this, but again, remember that whatever I say is my own personal take and may or may not apply to you. The D&D experience is entering into a shared imagination space with others with familiar themes that are uniquely flavored in a certain way, with very distinct fantasy tropes that have become part of the D&D canon: vorpal swords, chromatic dragons, dungeon crawls, magic missiles, fireballs, gold pieces, rods, staves, and wands; drow and githyanki, Orcus and Demogorgon, illithids and aboleths; elvish fighter-mages and dwarvish warrior-priests, etc etc etc.D&D has a unique flavor to it; the experience of it is engaging the canonical tropes in some manner, whether by-the-book versions in a pre-made world or unique variations in a homebrew. It combines familiar and even common fantasy concepts, but in a very specific manner. One could call it "Gygaxian" but it has been developed beyond the Great Founder by countless game designers and dungeon masters and players. I think you could say that D&D is a distinct fantasy world unto itself; all of the different campaign settings are different takes on the archetypal D&D world, of which there is no direct or specific official version - not even Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms; those too are "versions" of the D&D World. So yeah, I would say that when it comes down to it, the D&D Experience is imaginative play in some version of the archetypal D&D World. Earthdawn or Talislanta or Harn are cousin fantasy worlds but they aren't D&D Worlds. The "Talislanta Experience" is different, with its own unique flavor, its many races and exotic locales, from the mysterious Ariane mystics to the gluttonous Quan, from the Zaran wilderness to the hellish Midnight Realm.In some sense the D&D Experience, or the archetypal D&D world, is just as specific. It has just been diversified more, into thousands upon thousands of different variations. In the same sense that the D&D Experience is both personal and universal, the D&D world is both personal--in the form of a specific world--and universal--in the form all possible D&D ideas, tropes, creatures, races, and themes. I'll leave it there for now to see if that helps clarify at all what I mean. If you can tease a definition out of that, I'll be impressed. G'night!</blockquote>

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