Players: it's your responsibility to carry a story.

[Ariosto]

re: OD&D being a "tightly-focused game" - I think that's true, but it's more a reflection of the original creators being unable to conceive of how many different purposes the game's eventual audience would put it to.

I think it is not at at all a reflection of an inability I have no reason to suppose and plenty of reasons not to suppose.

I think it is rather a reflection of the same practical practices in design that to this day produce game after game that happens to be about something.

(Taken literally, your claim is no more than that they were in the same position as the one you and I and the designers of Maid are in today -- from which nothing distinguishing them from us can follow. I'm sure I don't know even the number of purposes to which D&D has been turned in the past 40 years. So, I interpret it in a way that theoretically could make sense.)

"Actually, the scope need not be restricted to the medieval; it can stretch from the prehistoric to the imagined future..."

Arneson and Gygax were pioneering a new game form. Their efforts and observations were of similar character to those of the programmers who, some years later, took inspiration from previous D&D-inspired programs to produce the more complex Zork and its virtual Z-machine.

The big difference is that things that still posed technical challenges for computer games -- e.g., wearing things, casting spells, multiple players -- were already implemented in D&D!

The great leap for D&D was the essential concept. Once that creative germ was sown but a little, it sprouted and grew and propagated and mutated on its own. That became, I think, clear enough in the roughly four years of development prior to publication.

 

[S'mon]

I'm not sure that the shift to more Tolkieny style adventures occured in 2e to be honest. Dragonlance is pretty firmly 1e - the modules came out in 84, and the books before that. All of the gaming that the original series was based on is solidly 1e.

Even within 1e, you have a very broad range of themes. And, let's not forget the other side of the street with the Companion rules being released in 84 - with a very strong emphasis on the characters becoming political entities.

I think your timeline ignores a lot of the things that Pemerton is talking about. Yes, if you limit 1e to Greyhawk and Blackmoor, sure, it's a very specific game. But, 1e isn't just that. It's also Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and the Companion through Immortals rules by 1985, several years before 2e came along.

I was only talking about the rulebooks - for 0e, 1e, 2e, 3e and 4e.

 

[Ariosto]

Although some people have criticised the parcel system as MMO loot-dropping, to me it represents the end of "kill things and take their stuff" as core to D&D play.

So far from having ended, it seems only the more pervasive in WotC's scenarios from what I have seen at firsthand and from from what I have read.

Certainly by the time of the first sets boxed and sold in 1974, the text explicitly treated more than the dungeons.

If you're turning up to a D&D game, and find yourself in a tavern, are you meant to look for maps/clues to the nearest dungeon? Listen for rumours of slaves or princesses who need rescuing (as suggested in the notorious editorial heralding 2nd ed)? Look for stray cats who need houses?

We are meant to play. Forget about calling out the instigators: we are the instigators, and you know that it's right!

How the hell do you get into looking for stray cats that need houses? In a magical world full of mystery and peril, wonder and glory, wherein are possible all the adventures of heroic fantasy of which one can dream, you would entertain the merely mundane, the pettily pedestrian, the quondam quotidian?

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Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp and Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers. With this last bit of advice we invite you to read on and enjoy a "world" where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!
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[Hussar]

But, Ariosto, in that quote, and by what you're saying, aren't you essentially saying that D&D is limited to high adventure stories and nothing else?

If I play D&D that doesn't rely on high adventure, is it still D&D? I think it is. Not to my taste honestly, I like high adventure. But, I'm certainly not going to begrudge someone using D&D to play a high rp, court intrigue game. It certainly can be done.

Are there other games that might be more focused on a court intrigue style game? Oh, most certainly. Given the plethora of games out there right now, I'd be pretty sure to be able to find a system for just about anything. But, that doesn't mean that other systems can't be bent towards broader playstyles.

I would think this is one of D&D's strengths. That while it probably works best if you do play the high adventure game, it works well enough for other games as well.

 

[Ariosto]

My own experience, as well as what I see on these boards and what I used to see in Dragon, tells me that signing up for a game of D&D leaves a lot of questions unanswered, which would be answered if I signed up for a game of musketeers.

Those possibilities -- worlds enough, and time -- are supposed to be wide open, to the extent that they remain wide open! It is more the people who want to narrow them who are getting into difficulties.

Other particulars are as adequately laid out in D&D as in most games. It is just that other games are not beset with critics who could argue that The Mountain Witch is too vague, or really about all sorts of "inadequately supported" things.

No, if you really truly want a game that is vague as to what it is about, what you're supposed to do, then you want GURPS.

 

[Ariosto]

But, Ariosto, in that quote, and by what you're saying, aren't you essentially saying that D&D is limited to high adventure stories and nothing else?

No, what is said is that if you don't want a game of high adventure, then you are unlikely to find D&D to your taste. The actual responses of people seem to bear out this prediction!

 

[The Shaman]

The main appeal to running, say, a romantic comedy story in a game like D&D or Shadowrun (I won't argue for Call of Cthulhu) . . .

Aw, c'mon!

. . . is probably one of two things. One, it's just one story among many, and it contrasts and/or complements the other stories going on at the same time.

Contrasting or complementary, yes, but ultimately peripheral, in my experience, at least in the sense that while the focus may be on the complementary activity for a time, the adventurers ultimately focus more of their energy and resources on other activities.

The other reason seems like it would be accepting the sensibility that a romantic comedy could happen in, say, Greyhawk, and deciding to explore what that would be like. Embracing the tropes of the game world or the game system as part of the humor. Sort of like playing the other people in the world who aren't going into dungeons for a change of pace.

Ever since my earlier post, I have been thinking about a Chill one-shot in the style of Shaun of the Dead.

I agree it's a little odd to run something like a romantic comedy in D&D if you're not using anything else from D&D and there are other games available to you. I kind of suspect, though, that it's not really the case. The melodramatic Austen-inspired romantic subplot I run with my wife in a fantasy Champions game is just one of the things that character's involved with; all the rest are pretty Champions-empowered. But the character would have that kind of subplot by dint of her personality, and mechanics don't enter into it.

One of the strengths of roleplaying games is that a game can be about whatever the players and referee want it to be in any given moment. One could run a romantic-comedy situation with D&D Charisma modifiers and reaction checks if the need arises, and the amount of information which can be extrapolated from a character's class and secondary skill (1e AD&D-stylie) is formidable.

That said, extrapolating from character information to fill in gaps also indicates you're working along the margins of what the game is designed to do.

 

[Hussar]

No, what is said is that if you don't want a game of high adventure, then you are unlikely to find D&D to your taste. The actual responses of people seem to bear out this prediction!

I fail to see the distinction.

As far as the quote goes, it does seem that it isn't born out by observation. I mean, Dragonlance, Immortals rules, Ravenloft, Birthright - are all attempts to adapt D&D to a mold that is pretty far removed from those particular examples of Conan or John Carter.

I totally agree that the base for D&D is high adventure. But, I do think the tree has grown rather broadly over the years to the point where you can use the D&D mechanics to do a lot more than just high adventure.

 

[Barastrondo]

Aw, c'mon!

Well, it could be done, but I daresay that either Call of Cthulhu or the "romantic comedy" aspect would come in sufficient conflict that one of them would have to win.

That said, I would run a not-nearly-serious-enough-to-be-canon game of Call of Cthulhu based on the Drones Club in an instant.

Contrasting or complementary, yes, but ultimately peripheral, in my experience, at least in the sense that while the focus may be on the complementary activity for a time, the adventurers ultimately focus more of their energy and resources on other activities.

This is true, but — somewhat to my interested surprise — the peripheral activities can make an impression on the player's perception of their character's growth quite out of proportion of the amount of energy and resources the party invests.

Long-winded example time! One party of adventurers had sailed across the sea to visit an Arabian fantasy region, in pursuit of a hated foe. When one PC was told by a prudish hotel-keeper that said hostess would not permit men and women to share the same rooms ("I am not running a house of assignation!"), the party invested no energy or resources into the problem. It affected the actual hunt for their enemy, and the dealings with a new local ally, not at all. But it put the PC in a terrible mood, distanced her slightly from her NPC lover, made her think the worst of another female NPC who wound up striking a friendly conversation with him, and finally — when he fell in heroic combat with said foe — the fact that she'd been spending the last week or so in sulky, resentful distance from him made her loss hurt all the more keenly.

It being a D&D game, of course, they had the opportunity to resurrect him — it took fighting off valkyries in Limbo and pulling a heist in the City of Brass for components, because I'm of the "just because you can doesn't mean it should be easy or, god forbid, boring" school — but just that little bit of invested attention made for a damned impressive twist to the story.

(And fear not, no rails were roaded in the course of this story. Said NPC's death was entirely dice-related, right down to the natural 1 on the Heal check a PC made to save him at the last possible minute.)

Ever since my earlier post, I have been thinking about a Chill one-shot in the style of Shaun of the Dead.

DO EEEEET.

One of the strengths of roleplaying games is that a game can be about whatever the players and referee want it to be in any given moment. One could run a romantic-comedy situation with D&D Charisma modifiers and reaction checks if the need arises, and the amount of information which can be extrapolated from a character's class and secondary skill (1e AD&D-stylie) is formidable.

That said, extrapolating from character information to fill in gaps also indicates you're working along the margins of what the game is designed to do.

Granted, but I consider that a strength of the game — and of roleplaying in general — that it's not only possible, but not really contradicted. WotC ran an April Fool's joke recently that talked about how "You might want to wear a funny hat. But there's never been rules before for that before now. Because you've never needed them." And I confess, it's true. I believe many of us have been wearing funny hats without rule support for quite some time.

(Except the hat of stupidity. That had rules. And was a mean, mean trick to play on a poor vain tiefling.)

 

[Ariosto]

Old D&D is not about "running a story" of any sort. Events occur, and afterwards we may tell of them in the form of a romantic comedy, or a cautionary parable, or whatever form of narration we may choose.

What is actually going on, though, is a game. Basketball is clear enough, I think, for all that a game might in the event feature the Harlem Globetrotters, and a cheerleader's wardrobe malfunction, and a brawl among fans.

Ditto D&D, and I would say that my current group might even spend about half of "game night" socializing in ways only tangentially related to the game.

There are plays that are actually directed toward scoring points, but they are far from the only actions possible! We can also play together in the less formally structured sense, just exploring things we happen to find fun.