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

[Nagol]

Nope. I'm trying to put a delimit on future editions. If no one is in that understood role, I will not agree that it is D&D.

What about those few solo adventures issued by TSR?

 

[Gryph]

[MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] and @RC: We're in agreement here I think. Other FRPG's certainly use class the same way D&D does. They are "deeper in the onion" as it were.

[MENTION=5875]dan[/MENTION]ny: I only partially agree with you re. HERO. You certainly can do it that way, but it is a limiting effect on the system and I think you are being arbitrary in application of XP if you have class emulation drive character progression. HERO is a great toolbox, I love it for a lot of genres including fantasy; but I don't think you can fairly say it is a class based system.

How about I slightly amend the data point to state that class is the primary and most important method of defining a character?

@RC: I agree with a GM led game being a core data point.

I propose another data point. Combat resolution is highly abstract and the many factors that might represent a characters ability to continue to fight are represented by a single mechanical factor, Hit Points.

 

[pawsplay]

In the context of my thread title, D&D is Rome. What are the roads, you say? The infinite ways to play D&D, and that includes not only the canonical editions but the countless house rules and fantasy heartbreakers, from slight tweakings to major revisionings.

The beauty of this framework--that D&D is Rome and all editions and variations are different roads "to" Rome, or "ways to get there"--is that it takes away any edition from being D&D; editions are ways to "get to" D&D, to play and invoke the D&D experience. So no edition is "true D&D", yet all editions - and all variations - are valid and legit ways to invoke that experience, although there is no one size fits all. We all have our own, unique configuration. Different variations will speak to each of us, well, differently. We don't need to say "4E isn't D&D to me" because it isn't D&D to anyone, but it is a way to play D&D that some find adequate to invoking the D&D experience (and some don't).

I agree there are some commonalities across all forms of D&D. Let me pose a question. I feel Pathfinder is "more D&D" than 4e is, to me. Is Pathfinder Rome?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That's all fine and good. Personally, I would include all examples of something, even derivative works, to help me define a thing. And I would gather all the qualitative data points instead of trying to quantify it some futile effort to define its "essence."

By doing so, you do a disservice to the meaning of "definition." Certainly, SRV, King and Zep are part of the blues tradition. They do not define it's core, however- what makes the blues the blues- as opposed to blues with some R&R thrown in.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You certainly can do it that way, but it is a limiting effect on the system and I think you are being arbitrary in application of XP if you have class emulation drive character progression.

No, you're not. It's part of the core game concepts & base mechanics. They first showed up formally as "package deals" in either the Adventurer's Club periodicals- their equivalent to Dragon- or HERO 3rd or 4Ed, but that was just giving a name to one way of using the rules.

A "class" in a HERO D&D sim is no more arbitrary than any other package deal in the game, like "policeman," "reporter," "scientist," "elf," "werewolf" or what have you- which you can see in the core handbook. Each package deal is a set of defined skills, powers, limitation and whatnot that you improve upon by spending XP on within the package.

The only real diffference is that you'd be limiting when players could spend XP to improve their PCs, since the default is that you can spend them anytime between adventures.

IOW, it is not a class based system, but contains within it the ability to be run as such.

In addition, I'm surprised that Mercurius hasn't squawked on this- one key contention of his was that the essence wasn't dependent upon mechanics.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I propose another data point. Combat resolution is highly abstract and the many factors that might represent a characters ability to continue to fight are represented by a single mechanical factor, Hit Points.

You might want to rephrase that in the light of 4Ed's Healing Surge mechanic, unless you just view that as a shift from casters to all classes of the ability to heal.

On the whole, though, I don't see how that's going to weed out a lot of RPGs.

 

[Gryph]

No, you're not. It's part of the core game concepts & base mechanics. They first showed up formally as "package deals" in either the Adventurer's Club periodicals- their equivalent to Dragon- or HERO 3rd or 4Ed, but that was just giving a name to one way of using the rules.

A "class" in a HERO D&D sim is no more arbitrary than any other package deal in the game, like "policeman," "reporter," "scientist," "elf," "werewolf" or what have you- which you can see in the core handbook. Each package deal is a set of defined skills, powers, limitation and whatnot that you improve upon by spending XP on within the package.

The only real diffference is that you'd be limiting when players could spend XP to improve their PCs, since the default is that you can spend them anytime between adventures.

OK, I see where you are coming from there. I don't really see the package deals being a good analog to classes for a couple of reasons. First, there isn't really a progression built into most of them. Some have optional points that could be spent later but that isn't universal or definitive. Second, I don't really think they qualify as archtypes. Policeman, reporter, and such are bundles of skills that represent a job not a character type.

Perhaps it is my own bias, because I reach for HERO when I want a game that is distinctly not D&D; but I don't believe point based systems, even in emulation mode, make the core D&D experience.

 

[Nagol]

You might want to rephrase that in the light of 4Ed's Healing Surge mechanic, unless you just view that as a shift from casters to all classes of the ability to heal.

On the whole, though, I don't see how that's going to weed out a lot of RPGs.

A large number of RPGs split hit points into two factors, a quick recovery section variously termed Vitality, Fatigue, Stun, Exhaustion etc. and a slow healing factor name Hits, hit points, Body, etc.

I'm uncertain if it is a good axis to use since a lot of published alternative rules for D&D offered the same split and the newest version of D&D does something somewhat similar with Healing Surges and hit points where healing surges take longer to recover and hit points are the temporary pool and the ability to convert from surge to hit points.

 

[Gryph]

You might want to rephrase that in the light of 4Ed's Healing Surge mechanic, unless you just view that as a shift from casters to all classes of the ability to heal.

On the whole, though, I don't see how that's going to weed out a lot of RPGs.

I guess I would classify Healing Surges as a recovery mechanic since they require some event to access them, even if its just a short rest after combat.

It weeds a handful that use split vitality/endurance type structures; HERO, the old DragonQuest, SAGA, for example.

[MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]: This might cause some squawking, but I am comfortable with the notion that alternate rules that replace core D&D pieces rather than adding to them, even when they come from the publisher, moves the game out of the core experience.

 

[Gryph]

I agree there are some commonalities across all forms of D&D. Let me pose a question. I feel Pathfinder is "more D&D" than 4e is, to me. Is Pathfinder Rome?

In a discussion of the "soul", "feel", or "core" D&D experience, I doubt that I would exclude any of the direct clones. So OSRIC, C&C, Pathfinder, maybe others I haven't read.

They wouldn't satisfy a legal definition of D&D, but their stated purpose is to replicate a D&D experience from a specific time period of the hobby.