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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5294620" data-attributes="member: 42582">I can see where this is coming from, but I don't fully agree, for two sorts of reasons: the history of the published game, and the history of what people have tried to do with it (as revealed via Dragon magazine before it became a mere house organ, via internet posts, etc).If we look at AD&D 1st ed, we have books like Oriental Adventures which take the focus away from going into holes in the ground and finding treasure on monsters. The rules in that book - the skills, the class features (including rules for XP gain), the event charts in the GM's section, etc - all suggest a game where the players are engaged with a political and social world, and make their fortune in that world, rather than via classic dungeon delving. (I'm speaking here both from theory and from experience - I started GMing an OA game as soon as the book came out, and have never GMed a dungeon-crawl game since then. I was also influenced by what I was reading in Dragon at the time, especially the anti-alignment article in Dragon 101(?) - "For King and Country".)Of course aspects of OA don't make complete sense - eg the XP rules aren't changed radically enough - but 3rd ed OA caught up with this to some extent, for example by suggesting that treasure be given as rewards rather than as loot. And 4e makes this a core possibility, by linking treasure to level and encounter-based parcels rather than to monsters. 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. That sort of play is of course possible in 4e, but the rulebooks support other sorts of play from the ground up.In Dragon from the same (mid-80s) era we also had an article in Dragon 95 by Katharine Kerr adapting the monster XP reward system to give XPs for non-combat encounters.2nd ed AD&D only increased these factors pushing D&D players away from traditional play. To the extent that the XP rules didn't keep up, it's a well-known fact that many GMs just abandoned them, adopting the "level up every few session" approach instead.I agree with this - ie, that D&D doesn't do everything, or even an especially wide subset of everything - but, especially given its history and the range of expectations and possiblities to which this has given rise, I don't think it specifies a genre with any great specificity. 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?Historically, all these things and more have been done with the game. Until players know which one they're meant to be doing, it can be hard to make the game work. Hence (in my view) the benefits of getting everyone on the same page.For the reasons just given, I agree with caveat but think it tends to swallow up the point, especially when the known range of actual D&D play is taken into account.I generally agree with your diagnosis, although as a 4e fan I naturally tend to think that its consideration of the issues has been a bit more thorough (eg treasure parcels, the pretty radical change to alignment as a mechanic).I'm not sure I fully understand your prescription, though, of returning to first principles first. If the suggestion here is "play a game that sets things up the way you want it to", then that's good advice, but for all sorts of reasons - practical and emotional - people tend to stick with D&D even when they might be better off without it.If the suggestion is instead "when playing D&D play it as it was written to be played back in the early 70s" then I'm not sure this will work either. For better or worse, people are trying to do other sorts of stuff with D&D, and I think will continue to do so.As far as genres go, this is too broad to specify much about the actual content of play.The Shaman contrasted his musketeers Flashing Blade game with a potential "Huguenot agonistes" game. Both might fit the description of "PCs are middle class or gentlefolk trying to make their fortunes in early modern France", but as The Shaman rightly pointed out, they'd be pretty different games. By choosing Flashing Blades, the GM and players have already agreed which one they're going to engage in. But by choosing D&D, for most people it is still an open question whether the game will be Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance (= something like LoTR with less history and more gods and magic), Conan, The Dying Earth (= something like Conan with fewer thews and more wit), Lo5R (which the original OA hints at by implication, and which the 3rd ed OA makes an express attempt at) or any of the rest of the games that people try and play with a semi-generic (maybe it would be better to say "would-be generic") fantasy RPG.</blockquote>

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