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<blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 3290584" data-attributes="member: 2205">I guess I was the minority he describes.&nbsp; Finding that disparity between D&amp;D and Tolkien--or fantasy that I read in general of any author--was a bit of a shock to me, and turned me off from D&amp;D for a long time.&nbsp; I still played it from time to time, but not much, back in the old days.I disagree.&nbsp; It only works well at that from the extent that you can at least see vague nods in the direction of each of those influences, but emulating any of them?&nbsp; Not in my book.&nbsp;&nbsp; As long as your vaguely Dracula, Blob, Cthulhu and King Kong like antagonists sit in rooms of a strangely complex underground cavern complex surrounded by a bizarre assortment of traps that are clearly meant more to challenge the players more than the characters and feels very gamish, then your vaguely Conan, Merlin, Frodo, John Carter and Gray Mouser characters can go through a very slow and tedious resource management and &quot;clever trap avoidance&quot; game that is nothing like any of those influences, to eventually confront their antagonists on a square grid and do a number of mechanical wargames like manuevres against them that none of the characters in question would do.The only thing D&amp;D has ever been excellent at emulating is itself.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Desdichado, post: 3290584, member: 2205"] I guess I was the minority he describes. Finding that disparity between D&D and Tolkien--or fantasy that I read in general of any author--was a bit of a shock to me, and turned me off from D&D for a long time. I still played it from time to time, but not much, back in the old days. I disagree. It only works well at that from the extent that you can at least see vague nods in the direction of each of those influences, but emulating any of them? Not in my book. As long as your vaguely Dracula, Blob, Cthulhu and King Kong like antagonists sit in rooms of a strangely complex underground cavern complex surrounded by a bizarre assortment of traps that are clearly meant more to challenge the players more than the characters and feels very gamish, then your vaguely Conan, Merlin, Frodo, John Carter and Gray Mouser characters can go through a very slow and tedious resource management and "clever trap avoidance" game that is nothing like any of those influences, to eventually confront their antagonists on a square grid and do a number of mechanical wargames like manuevres against them that none of the characters in question would do. The only thing D&D has ever been excellent at emulating is itself. [/QUOTE]

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