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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 4288281" data-attributes="member: 7635">To borrow Lanefan's answer: Dungeons & Dragons is whatever the current IP owners (Hasbro Inc. subsidy Wizards of the Coast) deems it to be. If Microsoft and not WotC had bought D&D, D&D would be a series of highly acclaimed computer fantasy video games. You get my drift.Now, the second answer is too subjective. What makes D&D something unique that C&C, GURPS, or any other fantasy game is something we like to call nostalgia. Whatever you were first introduced to that went by the name "Dungeons & Dragons" is what D&D is for you. Whatever that game entailed (elf as a class, exceptional str, all wpns doing d6, prestige classes, random harlot tables, or per-encounter powers) is what you will forever hold the current game against. For some its an improvement (hey look, they made AC run upwards!) for others its degradation bordering on heresy (a beardless female dwarven wizard?!?) but that is whatever D&D *is* to you.Because no one began with the same edition/house rules/setting, everyone's perception is different. I can argue D&D a fighter, cleric, magic-user and thief and Diaglo would come by and remind me that thief was a poorly-thought out afterthought. I could say D&D is dwarves, elves, and halflings and a legion of kender-loving Dragonlance fan's will come and steal all my d8s. I could say D&D is pseudo-tolkien western fantasy and all the Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, Rokugan, and Spelljammer fans would just roll their eyes. For a while, we all had some vaguely similar experiences (D&D is a 5th level arcane caster shooting 5d6 dice of fire in a circular radius once per day) but now even many of those have changed. (You can't even say Str/Dex/Con/Int/Wis/Cha is D&D anymore, since the explosion of d20 games)So ultimately asking such a question is moot because you couldn't get two people to agree as to what D&D is, let alone a multitude on a messageboard. So D&D is whatever you remember it to be.</blockquote>

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