By way of general response, what I'm trying to do is loosen up the term "D&D" to be more nebulous, permeable, and multi-faceted, and more of a feeling and experience than a concrete thing. If we see D&D as an experience then we don't need to squabble over what it is, because then it
is personal but also shared. We both experience D&D, but in different ways, but your experience of D&D is not inherently more or less valid than mine, and vice versa.
Now some specifics:
Well, by saying Rome is D&D you exclude all other RPGS. Just say Rome is Goodrightfun and you will be more correct.
Well again, "Rome" means different things in different contexts, and in this context we're talking about D&D, what it is and isn't, etc. If we want to talk about RPGs in general, sure, we could talk about the "RPG Experience" - but that is much more broad and when we get to that point we're talking about much more than just D&D.
The problem with your concept (and i would love if it worked) is that people who say x isn't D&D want to say that x isn't D&D. There is a definitive need to express this that cannot be satisfied with substitutes. But i i really would like this to catch on, because it also could be used to kill the "Real Realms / Shattered Realms" split with fire.
Won't happen, though.
This is a good point. I think my concept potentially separates out those that are emotionally attached to the idea of 4E not being D&D from those that just don't feel it is D&D to them. For the latter, 4E is not a good road to get to the "D&D Experience", which is why I think this idea serves the majority of us and is potentially unifying of this rift.
There's an inevitable problem-of-opinion that's going to arise when it comes to determining what defines the border of the D+D experience.
Some will say it's D+D edition x, period. Others will want to include every role-playing game ever written and probably include LARPs as well. Most will be somewhere in between, but that's still spread out over an awful lot of territory with room for an awful lot of arguments.
Defining Rome had the same problem. Some said Rome was the city. Others said it was the whole Empire. Others saw Rome as the entire world, with non-Romans just Romans who didn't realize it yet. Still others saw one of the above Romes as an idealized concept which the reality never quite lived up to.
Lan-"in some cases it really is easier to just go by what's on the front cover"-efan
Right, and I appreciate your phrase in your name because that
would be the easiest way to go, but obviously some don't buy it so we have this problem which is actually quite poisonous to the community.
But what you're saying is partially what I'm trying to advocate: Allowing "D&D" to be a nebulous, open-ended term that means different things in different contexts. As some have pointed out, to the majority of the world all RPGs are D&D; if I was playing
Mage with my game group and my wife walked in, she would think we were playing D&D (actually, she wouldn't think about it at all!
).
In some sense I'm saying that we should look at D&D not as a game but a Platonic Form. Our experience of it will vary, but it is still "D&D". It is an experience that we all partake of. More on this in a minute.
You could just as easily say that chess, checkers, go, and backgammon are all just board games.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying any one, or any combination of them. But to call them all as just the same is really missing out on the variety.
The problem does not come in when some says that chess is not as fun as go to them. The problem comes in when the chess fan gets emotionally involved in the idea that someone else prefers a different game.
This is back-tracking a bit, Bryon. I am not saying that all editions are the same, but that we all play D&D for what we individually feel is the "D&D experience" - how we get to that experience varies, and we all have our preferred routes, but the experience has a quality that is both universal and unique, shared and individual.
Your last sentence just sounds a bit like baiting. I think most people don't care what game others prefer, they just don't like it when others trash their preferred game or say that it is something different than what they experience it as.
My idea here bypasses all of that craziness because it gives us a shared common ground of this "D&D experience." We all share it, we all play it in one form or another to experience it; we
do experience it in different ways, and we
do get there by different roads...but that's just fine, that's part of the joy of the hobby, really.
Your idea would work except for one thing: we are not all seeking the same singular experience in play. Thus, some would say that certain games are not roads to the experience of D&D, and we'd be still be in the same boat.
Human beings are hard wired to divide the world into Them and Us. You won't "get past" this tendency until mankind ascends, Vorlon-like, to the next stage of development and passes beyond the Rim.
I think I addressed your first paragraph above - I don't see that as antithetical to my idea but actually supporting it. It is almost a paradox: The experience of D&D is both shared and unique to the individual, whether we're talking about EN World or a specific gaming group. As an analogy, when I say the word "apple" we all share the concept of apple - there is only one concept, one Platonic Idea; but there are infinite different variations of it in terms of image and reaction to that concept.
So again, I'm saying that D&D is a Platonic Form or Idea. We play D&D to experience it; what we experience differs individually, but we are all having "the D&D experience." I could say that X-edition doesn't give me that experience but you could say that it does; that has a very different quality than me saying X-edition is not D&D, or not D&D to me. I would be saying that X-edition doesn't get me to that place that I consider to be the D&D experience.
As for you second paragraph, I hear you, but we can try, right?
Unfortunately, all you're doing is using a big analogy which doesn't fundamentally alter the nature of the problem.
If D&D is Rome, then in some meaningful ways, it is also NOT Carthage, Athens, Thebes...those differences should be spelled out. And for some of us, 4Ed has lost its "Roman" identity.
Besides, "D&D Experience" means different things to different people. For some, "D&D Experience" is nothing more than any kind of FRPG gaming. For others, "D&D Experience" is a set of things unique to D&D that distinguish it from all other FRPGs. And quite simply, you're not going to get 100% agreement on what that set is.
Yeah, and that's fine. It is also fine that for some people 4E doesn't take you to Rome, but that's different than saying that
4E is not Rome itself. In this perspective that I'm advocating,
no edition is Rome itself, not even OD&D. Why? Because of the individual. I'll take myself as an example. I was raised on AD&D 1st edition - I was an AD&D boomer, started playing in the early 80s like quite a few of us. To me that is the "primordial," archetypal form of D&D. I never even encountered or knew about OD&D until many years later, decades even. So to me, AD&D feels more liked D&D than even OD&D. On one hand, this is a logical absurdity because in a purist viewpoint you don't get any closer to true D&D than OD&D; everything else is just later modifications.
Many people started playing with 3E. To them, that is the archetypal form of D&D. Believe it or not there are even some folks that started with 4E and feel that it is "real D&D."
My point is that no edition, no version, of D&D is real D&D. But ever edition/version can be a road to what I'm calling "the D&D experience" (although there could be a better term). So when you say that 4E has lost its "Roman identity" I would rephrase that into my analogy as saying that 4E doesn't take you to Rome, it doesn't facilitate your D&D experience, your Rome.
All of this relies upon the understanding that "Rome," in my usage, is both universal/shared and unique/individual. So when I say "Rome" or "the D&D experience" I am talking about something that we share, but we experience uniquely. Again, see my example of "apple."
