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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9197983" data-attributes="member: 42582">You're not being accurate. You're being historically inaccurate. The original D&amp;D books are an attempt to write down the game that Arneson was actually playing. I think it's widely agreed that, as rulebooks, they are incomplete. So are the AD&amp;D rulebooks - Holmes and Moldvay are the first complete versions of D&amp;D rules.But the incompleteness of the rulebooks doesn't change the nature of what Arneson, Gygax and others were actually doing, of the game they actually invented. It is a game in which the players play characters in imagined situations and the scope of player moves is limited only by what everyone agrees to imagine those players' characters doing in those situations. Which is, as I've said, the core of RPGing, and what distinguishes a RPG from a boardgame.Gygax and Arneson's game supports only a rather narrow range of imagined situations - a certain sort of &quot;dungeon crawling&quot;, and (perhaps) some wilderness exploration. This is quite different from the fact that, within those situations, the only limit on player moves is what everyone agrees to imagine those players' characters doing.I can't comment on Skyrim's XP economy, but in D&amp;D XP are earned by succeeding at certain declared actions.It is possible, and indeed quite common, to play D&amp;D without tracking XP. It is not possible to play D&amp;D without player declaring actions for their PCs. When those actions are declared, how are they resolved? Here I think is where we will see that Skyrim and D&amp;D are not all that alike.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9197983, member: 42582"] You're not being accurate. You're being historically inaccurate. The original D&D books are an attempt to write down the game that Arneson was actually playing. I think it's widely agreed that, as rulebooks, they are incomplete. So are the AD&D rulebooks - Holmes and Moldvay are the first complete versions of D&D rules. But the incompleteness of the rulebooks doesn't change the nature of what Arneson, Gygax and others were actually doing, of the game they actually invented. It is a game in which [I]the players play characters in imagined situations[/I] and [I]the scope of player moves is limited only by what everyone agrees to imagine those players' characters doing in those situations[/I]. Which is, as I've said, the core of RPGing, and what distinguishes a RPG from a boardgame. Gygax and Arneson's game supports only a rather narrow range of imagined situations - a certain sort of "dungeon crawling", and (perhaps) some wilderness exploration. This is quite different from the fact that, within those situations, the only limit on player moves is what everyone agrees to imagine those players' characters doing. I can't comment on Skyrim's XP economy, but in D&D XP are earned by succeeding at certain declared actions. It is possible, and indeed quite common, to play D&D without tracking XP. It is not possible to play D&D without player declaring actions for their PCs. When those actions are declared, how are they resolved? Here I think is where we will see that Skyrim and D&D are not all that alike. [/QUOTE]

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