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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7371552" data-attributes="member: 996">That sounds like a game-designer, too - just one more of the storytelling school.&nbsp;That's not the D&amp;D experience, though.&nbsp; Back in the day, you mapped the dungeon, evaded or ambushed monsters, worried constantly about traps, possibly betrayed your buddies, and made away with treasure.&nbsp; Your character didn't amalgamate the best of human traits, you were lucky if you had one or two good stats, and probably had one horrible one, at least.&nbsp; You had a specialty that you could do that was niche-protected so others couldn't.&nbsp; Now, yes, that can, like Star Wars, map pretty easily to the Hero's Journey.&nbsp; Heck, a trip to the store can map to the Hero's Journey.&nbsp; So, yeah, you could run a compelling Hero's Journey kind of story in any version of D&amp;D, or any other system, for that matter.&nbsp; But it won't be the experience Mearls describes.&nbsp; It might be a great - or a better - experience, but it'll be a different one.Also, the experience can't be uncoupled from the person experiencing it.&nbsp; Mike's comments resonated with me, because, I'm guessing, we shared comparable experiences with that edition of the game, back at the height of the fad years.&nbsp; Maybe we have some other things in common, too, that shade that experience, the memory of it and the quality of the <s>nostalgia</s>emotions that revisiting it evokes?So is it /more/ than the system?&nbsp; Sure.&nbsp; But it's not /not/ the system.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7371552, member: 996"] That sounds like a game-designer, too - just one more of the storytelling school. That's not the D&D experience, though. Back in the day, you mapped the dungeon, evaded or ambushed monsters, worried constantly about traps, possibly betrayed your buddies, and made away with treasure. Your character didn't amalgamate the best of human traits, you were lucky if you had one or two good stats, and probably had one horrible one, at least. You had a specialty that you could do that was niche-protected so others couldn't. Now, yes, that can, like Star Wars, map pretty easily to the Hero's Journey. Heck, a trip to the store can map to the Hero's Journey. So, yeah, you could run a compelling Hero's Journey kind of story in any version of D&D, or any other system, for that matter. But it won't be the experience Mearls describes. It might be a great - or a better - experience, but it'll be a different one. Also, the experience can't be uncoupled from the person experiencing it. Mike's comments resonated with me, because, I'm guessing, we shared comparable experiences with that edition of the game, back at the height of the fad years. Maybe we have some other things in common, too, that shade that experience, the memory of it and the quality of the [s]nostalgia[/s]emotions that revisiting it evokes? So is it /more/ than the system? Sure. But it's not /not/ the system. [/QUOTE]

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