Of Roads, and Rome, and the Soul of D&D

[Olgar Shiverstone]

All of this late discussion of the highways and byways of ancient Italian empires and their relation to our fantasy roleplaying game of choice seem to boil down to me to the one quintessential question: What is the Soul of D&D?

I have my own answer, of course, and it suggests that the Soul of D&D, its very essence, is in what is experienced and achieved. Yet much of the roadway discussion seems to focus more on the externals, the body and clothes, if you will, of the experience. I submit that in the case of our preferred FRPG the Soul exists independent of both body and clothing, and while both body and clothing may inform our interpretation of the Soul, the essence of such can be achieved no matter what form of body or clothing one prefers. There are many games that do not carry the label D&D which I believe can carry its Soul; I also believe that many games played clothed in the sackcloth of D&D do not reflect its Soul.

But that of course, depends on some consensus of definition, so I put to you the question: What is the Soul of D&D?

 

[Pour]

I have to agree with you, but that doesn't stop some people's rage, suspicion, fear, jealousy and irrational hatred from boiling over, as if this Soul should only be achieved through their avenue and no other. I think it has to do, strangely, with how much we love something, and how much time and effort we put into it. How could anyone deny how much love and time we put into this? How could anyone make a claim about this Soul without having gone through what we did? Even the wise and thoughtful fall into these ravines, just for how difficult it is to accept for any extended period the idea of Soul achieved in ways mysterious, or even undesirable or inferior, to us. It's exasperated by the fact the conversation never stops, and by extension the arguments.

It's human and it's going on in all spheres of human existence, not just on the RPG messageboards. It's powerfully tempting sometimes. Hell, we all have felt it and surrendered to it before. We've all given into that gnawing aggravation or phantom threat of... what, I'm not exactly sure, but which inspires us to find the faults in other people, the imperfections in what they treasure, to ridicule their own surrender to base accusations, opinionated claims presented as fact, dismissal and indignation. There is a sense of community as we find others doing the same, movements form, barriers are erected, there's a combined sense of justification and self-fulfillment, a sense of right.

Some wallow in this state longer than others, and there is a glowing initial period where we feel we've cracked it, finally, that we've discovered the true path and captured the essence of this Soul forever... but the longer we stay, the worse we feel, and the more those emotions listed above seem a part of our lives (or in this case hobby). It comes to a point people lose their glow, are more confused or frustrated than when they started, and will 'give up', vanish from the boards, change their rule system, even give up gaming entirely. There is a complete self-destruction. Sometimes it is vocalized (usually explosively), cathartic in a way, other times internalized, but it's end result is the same: we depart. We either go with a loss of all beliefs, or clinging to our lingering certainty and negative sense of others, or accepting what we enjoy and what others do too without sense of right or wrong, but in all cases we depart.

With time we rebuild from the state we've achieved. If we lost all belief, we might return to RPGs, or reading or video games, maybe something entirely unrelated with the same fervor. If we brought with us the seeds of self-righteousness then we're doomed to repeat the negative aspects of the above cycle- though the game or the interest might be different, and if we've truly accepted ourselves and others, then we return happier and wiser than before.

Inevitably, we're in the social and emotional cycle wash, and there will be times we fall into these ruts, but there are varying settings. We don't always have to go heavy duty, love and hate, right and wrong, superior and inferior. With acceptance we can settle for a refreshing tumble dry.

(Or maybe I'm full of $#!*)

 

[Haltherrion]

I've given that some thought since I moved to 4E which dispenses with a great deal of previous systems feel (even the bones) yet I still am comfortable calling it D&D and while no other system I've tried comes close (haven't tried pathfinder although I may at some point, sounds interesting).

I guess for me the soul of the game has to do with a system focused on leveling and magic acquisition with a certain weight of rules that provide a rich mix of monsters, spells and items without being too cumbersome or too realistic or silly. Kind of a weak answer but that's a hard one for me.

 

[Mercurius]

Olgar, I think that's a good way of putting it - the question about the "Soul of D&D", which is similar to what I was talking about in terms of the "D&D Experience," D&D as an archetype, or what Mike Mearls spoke of as the "core essence" of D&D.

Pour, it is rare that people get that vindictive about the issue or express the view that "Soul should only be achieved through their avenue and no other."

Rather, I think a lot of the debate comes when people feel that someone else is telling them which avenues are valid, or whether or not their experience fits into this or that category. In other words, a lot of the strife comes not from people being offensive, but from people being defensive and assuming that others are attacking them or trying to "fence them in."

People don't like to be fenced in, for someone else to characterize or categorize them. The problem, though, is that this often prevents discussion beyond a certain point. It is like there's this wall that these sorts of opinionated conversations reach, a place where they invariably die through some variation of "Different strokes" or "Let's agree to disagree" or "That's just your opinion, while I have mine."

We could call this place the Cul-De-Sac of Universal Subjectivity. It has saved us from the Highway of Onetruewayism, but we tend to get stuck there because "all views are equal" and there are no higher, deeper truths possible in this sort of world except for, of course, the higher, deeper truths that I am in the know of and thus am not open to being wrong, or expanding or evolving my viewpoint, especially in relation to you.

So we're left butting heads, our opinions impenetrable and unchanging. It is very rare, in my observation, for someone to actually change their viewpoint in the course of one of these sorts of debates. If anything people tend to just get more entrenched. Strangely enough, it is also usually the case that even in that entrenchment their view remains valid.

Or, as I think Niels Bohr said, the opposite of a profound truth may very well be another profound truth. Sometimes the disagreement is just in the understanding, which is stalled by one or both parties trying to convince the other that their "profound truth" is lesser or wrong.

 

[avin]

I don't know what is D&D's soul, but its heart is a D20.

 

[Raven Crowking]

This is the first step toward discovering whether or not there is a "universal" soul or essence of D&D. I'll have to give it some thought before I chime in with something worth reading.

RC

 

[Mort]

This is an excellent question and worthy of a well thought out answer. At this point, all I can say is my current group has moved through 3.0 to 3.5 and now on to 4e and all of us still feel like we are playing D&D and that the essence (soul) of the game has truly continued to permiate the play exprience.

Though I will say this - my 3.0-3.5 1st-epic campaign was set in Greyhawk and my current (4e) campaign is set in Eberron. I believe that 4e really does justice to Eberron on many levels and thus the play experience is not only perservered but in many way better than 3.5 Eberron seemed. I'm not so sure that I could convey the soul/essence of Greyhawk with 4e in the same way as it may be so tied to prior edditions and the sytem associated with them (maybe I'll run a mini-campaign to find out, something to ask my players anyway).

 

[Kaiyanwang]

What is the Soul of D&D?

Didn't your signature already answered to the question?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Didn't your signature already answered to the question?

That's my answer (by way of WizarDru), but I'm not willing to claim it is the universal answer.

 

[Umbran]

My off-the-cuff response is that there is no singular "soul". The problems tend to arise when we assume there is one, and we attempt to figure out how to achieve an experience of it. Everyone wants their own way to be right "right way" to reach perfection.

I was re-watching some Babylon 5 last night, the episode was, "Walkabout", in which Dr. Franklin is wandering the station, trying to find himself after realizing he had a drug problem.

During his wanderings, he meets a woman, who repeatedly looks at him through a faceted tumbler. He asks what she's doing, and she says that she has a belief that light passes through the body, and brings with it an image of the soul. And if she holds the glass just right, all the scattered images would align, and she'd see the person's soul, what they really were.

He asks her if she'd ever managed the trick. She admits she had not. All she sees are the various scattered images of the same person, through the facets of the glass.

If we stop assuming that there is one really central experience or soul, then we would stop arguing about which is the right way to reach it, and maybe we could accept that we are all looking for our own thing, and that's okay.