The D&D Experience (or, All Roads lead to Rome)

[Dannyalcatraz]

Funny. Every time I read an Ian Fleming Bond, I picture George Lazenby as the actor. I think he actually fits the description best...

I'll grant you that. Perhaps his take on the character as an actor against the backdrop of his appearance led to my disappointment. And the disappointment that led to him being JB only once.

 

[Lalato]

Danny, since you're so married to the idea of defining D&D, why don't you take a stab at it?

 

[billd91]

And I would agree with Aldarc that taken beyond mere affectation, it has a feeling of "obstinate defiance," like saying "Daniel Craig isn't James Bond to me."

Actually, I think the James Bond example is an excellent one. While I love the new direction for James Bond (making him a no-nonsense SAS-type badass rather than the overly patrician Roger Moore type), my mother was never able to see anybody but Sean Connery as James Bond. Simply put, nobody else is really Bond to her. Her opinion doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for Bonds after Connery, though. I like both George Lazenby and Daniel Craig as Bond. I don't feel like my Bond-watching is somehow marginalized by her devotion to the man from Edinburgh.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Danny, since you're so married to the idea of defining D&D, why don't you take a stab at it?

No thank you. I see it kind of like tilting at windmills.

I know from my own introspection that 4Ed doesn't feel like D&D to me; that playing 4Ed feels like playing FRPGs that I would never call D&D; and that my own HERO D&D clones did deliver a substantially D&D-esque experience to me and certain players. I also know that I can and do enjoy 4Ed on the basis of treating it like any other FRPG, but that for some, the game is such a departure, they won't even try it beyond PC design. It actually causes revulsion in them.

Part of that is mechanics...but not all, or the HERO games wouldn't have felt that way.

Part of that is class/level structure...but not all, or I'd have to count games like Palladium RPG, and I don't.

I must therefore admit that a good part of what is going on when I say "4Ed is not D&D to me" is purely irrational, an emotional response...which I have done, numerous times, here and in other threads.

But certain people are unable to see that phrase as anything but a red flag to their inner toro, so Mercurius (laudibly) started this thread in an attempt to find a way to a better resolution than derailed thread after derailed thread. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to agree on anything more concrete than the tautology of "it's D&D if it's been released into the market as D&D."

Beyond that, everything goes to hell.

And the reason is, beyond that, there is no agreement. I was just in another thread and noted that someone posted that D&D was fundamentally unchanged- still a D20 vs target number- from it's earliest days. That there are other games that use that might not matter to him.

 

[Aldarc]

I'll grant you that. Perhaps his take on the character as an actor against the backdrop of his appearance led to my disappointment. And the disappointment that led to him being JB only once.

It was actually Lazenby's agent who convinced him not to do further James Bond films as opposed to the reception of his character.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Didn't know that. Thanks!


(That's a DUMB agent.)

 

[Hussar]

I think your definition of roleplaying is too narrow in the context of D&D.

Over the last week I took advantage of the excellent "Powerlevel Gary" thread and read through all of the Q&A threads that a kind poster linked in from the archives. Fairly regularly through threads lasting for the last 2+ years of his life, Gary expressed a certain derision for the notion of thespianism, improv theatre or play-acting as being part of roleplaying games.

I am usually uncomfortable making an argument based on an appeal to authority; but in the case of a publicy stated opinion of the original creator of D&D, I will do so.

Roleplaying was intended to be the assumption of a race and class and interacting with the world based on that choice of race and class.

There's an excellent series in Dragon, from about 2000 (ish) just after the release of 3e where Gary took a reader poll on what constituted the important elements of an RPG and then he discussed in his Up On a Soapbox column the results. He stated there that he was rather surprised that improv theater ranked number 1 or 2 (I misremember which) as the most important element in RPG's.

I'm thinking that perhaps the definition of RPG has evolved some since the mid-70's.

Ok, and I think that is bending over backward to find offense where there is none.

/snip

Not unlike the way some decided to take offense at every single word that came from WOTC's mouth in the run-up to 4e. Kinda annoying isn't it.

-------------------

Really, this is simply a genre discussion. Or close enough for government work. We can all likely define the far ends, it's just when one genre bumps up against another that things get... sticky.

For example, I think we'd all agree that 2001 A Space Odyssey is SF and LotR is Fantasy. But, there's a whole host of works in between those two points. Is Star Wars SF or Fantasy? Depends on who you ask (and don't think coming down on one side or the other of THAT fence won't start paroxysms of nerdrage. )

I think we'd all agree that if you're sitting at a table with Gary Gygax, a bunch of dice and OD&D books playing through his version of Greyhawk, you're playing D&D. OTOH, if you're sitting down with John Wik and a JENGA tower, you're probably not playing D&D.

The thing is, there's so much in between those two extremes. People talk about the differences between 3e and 4e. Yet, mechanically, 3e is miles closer to 4e than it is to OD&D (or Basic D&D for that matter). 1e and 2e are fairly close mechanically, but, to fans of either system, there are gigantic differences. And, stylistically, they've got a point - 1e was heavily influenced by pulps and S&S fiction, 2e draws much more heavily on epic fantasy traditions.

The trick is, people draw the lines based mostly on their own preference. "I don't like X, therefore X isn't something that I like". It's tautological. I don't like 4e, I like D&D, therefore 4e isn't D&D. And D&D fans have done this since AD&D was released. Just ask Diaglo.

How many people do you see who like an edition that claim that that edition isn't D&D? (and no, a single example does not disprove my point. This was meant to be rhetorical. sit down in the back there, you.... sigh. )

 

[Lanefan]

You are wanting to get to Rome after it burned, or before, you don't care. I was hoping to reach Rome before it burned.

I just want to be the one that burns it down.

Over the last week I took advantage of the excellent "Powerlevel Gary" thread and read through all of the Q&A threads that a kind poster linked in from the archives. Fairly regularly through threads lasting for the last 2+ years of his life, Gary expressed a certain derision for the notion of thespianism, improv theatre or play-acting as being part of roleplaying games.

I don't think I'd have lasted long at his table, then.

Lan-"all the world's a stage, no matter whose world it is"-efan

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Personally, I draw the line at wearing costumes at the table. Won't do it.

 

[pemerton]

So the D&D feel is strictly about the rules?

I don't think so. Look at the differences between the original Greyhawk and Blackmoor campaigns. Both used OD&D as common starting ground but the games were different.

Great post, can't posrep you again yet.

Then there is nothing to debate (unless we want to talk about whether Pathfinder or Labyrinth Lord are D&D). Or is there? Are you looking for an interpersonal agreement as to what "feels like" D&D?

I'm looking for people to stop trying to tell me that 4e is primarily a tactical skirmish game, or that a game run without a pre-build setting cannot be anything but a series of hack-n-slash random encounters not much different from a game like Talisman.

Now someone might turn around and say that when a poster says "4e is just a skirmish game" what they're really saying is "4e is just a skirmish game for me", or "I can't see any way to run or play 4e other than as a skirmish game." But I don't buy it. In particular, the tone of "I can't see any way to run or play 4e other than as a skirmish game" is something like a confession of an inability, or of a desire to learn - it invites a response of "OK, fair enough, but here's how I do it, maybe you could try that if you were interested". But the tone of "4e is just a tactical skirmish game" isn't like that at all. It's pretty clearly an attack on the game, with an implied criticism of the players of the game as not being real roleplayers.

And it irritates me, because I like to come here and participate in a forum where posters ranging from The Shaman and Lanefan and Raven Crowking to Hussar and LostSoul and others share ideas on how to run roleplaying games that use various techniques to produce various experiences. I want the sorts of discussions that led me to try running a non-sandbox exploration scenario. Or to think harder about how to run skill challenges, as has come up in this thread. And being told that I'm really just playing a tactical skirmish game and not an RPG gets in the way of these discussions I want to have, as well as really rubbing me up the wrong way.

And for completeness: the lowpoint of those sorts of jibes is when roleplaying in 4e is compared to speaking in a funny voice while moving the boot around the monopoly board. Which example I have seen put forward, on multiple occasions, as a real contribution to the analysis of the nature of roleplaying in 4e. That sort of nonsense isn't just about someone not feeling like playing 4e, or not knowing how to run or to play in 4e, and it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise.