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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5294773" data-attributes="member: 42582">S'mon, thanks for a series of very thoughtful replies!I see your point, but still want to hold out a little bit longer - I have some lingering intuition that I can't quite let go of!I agree that by mainstream literary/theatric/cinematic standards D&D has a clear genre focus, and while can pehaps do The Maltese Falcon clearly can't do Love Actually (for all sorts of reasons, including the centrality to D&D of party play).But compared to The Shaman's musketeers game, I still think it's pretty broad. Musketeers specifies a whole range of tropes, and sets a whole lot of expectations. Whereas D&D, without further specification, leaves open such questions as (i) the significance of court intrigue, (ii) whether cardinals are allies or enemies (in Conan normally the latter, but in Forgotten Realms or published Greyhawk often the former), (iii) whether action is mostly urban, mostly wilderness or mostly underground, (iv) whether fame is desirable or not for PCs (ie will it bring them social power and rewards, or just attract pickpockets?), etc.The range in literary terms is slight. The range in player expectations about the game is, in my view, still fairly broad. 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.Agreed. But have a look at Dragon and see what people were actually doing with the game. For whatever reason, D&D has been played in a variety of ways that extends well beyond what was written. Even the increasing medievalism in AD&D can be seen as an attempt to retain players who might otherwise drift to C&S.Agreed. The lack of fit between those rules and the apparently intended game (at least as bad as 1st ed OA, maybe worse)  is one reason why 2nd ed AD&D is one of my least favourite RPGs of all time.At least in my own experience, I can know what I'm getting into if I sign up for a 2nd ed game - namely, a game in which the GM tries to railroad me into and through a story, participation in which via my PC is barely supported by the rules (whether character build, action resolution, or reward).I've got no doubt that some people had better experiences than me in 2nd ed games. But I think it might be the zenith (or nadir) of "playing D&D" giving me no handle, as a player, on how to get into the game until the GM starts railroading me along.I don't have much 3E experience. I agree about the XP system. At least in the core books, treasure gained also seems to be pretty tightly linked to looting monsters and NPCs.On the other hand, the character build rules have Professions, Performance etc. Which (unless I'm a performing Bard) don't have much link to killing things and looting them. Therefore suggesting (i) that exactly what the game is about can't be inferred just from the reward system, and (ii) that until my GM tells me how my Professional Performer is going to earn XP (and I imagine a lot of 3E play carried on various informal XP systems from 2nd ed days rather than using those in the books) I don't really know what the game is about.My personal impression of 3E is that the character build rules want to be Rolemaster, but the reward system and the action resolution system (or at least its spells and hit point components) want to be 1st ed AD&D. An unstable combination, in my view.I agree that the modules seem to be disappointing (judging from what I've heard about them - I've only bought one, plus looked at the early Dungeon adventures and the encounters in the various worldbooks).At a minimum, the game seems to allow both questy play and traditional D&D play (I run a questy-type game, but a lot of posters on these boards seem to run it in a more dungeon-bashing way, and the modules seemed designed to support the latter). But books like The Plane Above and Demonomicon, at least in part, support Glorantha-style HeroQuesting and similar play. And the potential for this is build into the game from the start (via Epic Destinies). Not to mention the flexibility in rewards created by quest XP, skill challenge XP and treasure parcels divorced from defeating monsters. At least in my view, merely knowing I was playing in a 4e game wouldn't necessarily answer all the questions that are answred when I sign up for a musketeers game.Anyway, I'm not sure how persuasive all the above is . . . but I think I believe it!</blockquote>

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