JiffyPopTart
Bree-Yark
Aren't there a very high percentage of adventures where the characters are doing their deeds in the name of "saving the town/city/region/world/multiverse"?I find @Mordhau's thesis - that the structure of D&D, the way setting supports adventure, is drawn heavily from the western genre - very plausible. It's not a claim about tropes, which are typically pseudo-mediaeval. It's about story structure.
What is most striking for me is the role of vigilante violence in D&D. D&D characters don't inflict violence in the name of a cause, or based on some claim to authority or justified retribution, but because they can, and they take themselves to be entitled to impose their own values and desires onto the world. To me that is reminiscent of westerns, and also super-hero comics (another quintessentially American genre?). It also resonates strongly, and unsurprisingly, with REH's Conan.
I think that D&D resembles JRRT/LotR in only the most superficial ways. In Tolkien, social status reflects a character's nature, which is often closely connected to their birth/heritage. In Sam's case, him becoming Mayor isn't a sign of his social mobility, but rather his true nature being externalised in his social situation. It compares interestingly to Pippin and Merry's roles as the "nobility" of the The Shire who maintain connections to the monarchies of Rohan and Gondor.
It's possible to have RPGs that will produce fiction that emulates LotR, or Arthurian stories, but they need to depart pretty thoroughly from D&D's structure.
I'd argue the slaughter they do in pursuit of that goal "for a cause".
Not that there aren't a lot of westerns about "save the ranch/farm/town/territory", just saying most adventures aren't set up to be straight murderhobos.