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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5456541" data-attributes="member: 59082">Ah, I see you've taken Psych 101. Nothing like a bit of unasked for psychotherapy in the mornin', thanks! I'm wondering why this sort of thing is tolerated on EN World - it is actually a subtle form of aggression (you pretty much called me a neurotic; hey, guilty as charged!). But rather than psychoanalyze me (whom you know nothing about, except for a couple posts on EN World in which you seem to think are someone representative of who I am), why not ask yourself why one would feel the need to put others into psychological categories, especially when you don't know said others? Or did they not talk about that in Psych 101? Maybe it was 201? It came to me after reading this that we're looking at a "Platonic Form" in a slightly different way. First of all, remember that a Platonic form is an ideal, not an actual, particular version of that ideal. But because it is an ideal, it is inherently flexible or at least without a solid, concrete, and narrow definition. Perhaps the word "archetype" is more useful for what I'm getting at.Now we could say that if I want to be more accurate with my analogy, what I mean by "D&D Experience" is both the ideal itself and a particular (personal) version - both at once. The ideal is the idea or archetype of D&D itself; the particular is one's own individual version. There is one idea of D&D but infinite possible particular expressions. I am reminded of Hindu ontology in which the soul "drop" (Atman) is both within/part of the "ocean" of spirit (Brahman) and synonymous with the ocean itself. To put it another way, one cannot really meaningfully talk about D&D outside of one's own experience. Thus one could say that D&D is what a D&D player says it is, as long as when we make such statements as "4E is not D&D to me" what we are really saying is not that 4E is not D&D, but that 4E is not synonymous with one's own definition and experience of D&D.In other words, D&D is both my own personal definition and the sum total definitions of everyone who has ever thought of it. Or maybe I'm too much of a 21st century Wikipedia/Urban Dictionary approach to epistemology? <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />Now it may be that we simply have two different types of thinkers with regards to this issue, those that choose a "big umbrella" approach and those that are more specific and want something more concrete. Speaking for myself, I have a hard time saying that any form of D&D is "not D&D to me" because I just don't think that way. I tend to take a big umbrella approach and feel that "D&D to me" has less to do with the specific edition or version and more the experience that I get, which could theoretically come from just about any rules set. I mean, you could play Savage Worlds with beholders, drow, and fighter/magic-users and it could quite easily feel like D&D.So in a sense I'm baffled that someone could not take the 4E rules and create a game experience that "feels like D&D," especially considering I think I could easily do so (for me) with anything rules system (or maybe even no rules system at all). It may come down to the fact that some people's experience is more or less tied to the rules system they are playing with than others in terms of feeling, rather than--as in my case--the tropes, themes, and ideas that are used, which are rather flexible and not inherently tied to system. I think rules matter, but not as much (evidently) as someone that says "X-edition doesn't feel like D&D to me." But as some have said, it depends upon what we mean by "D&D" when we refer to it in the feeling domain. That is why I've been pushing the experiential aspect and why I feel that it is important to keep it at least somewhat nebulous, because that means it is also flexible and customizable to the individual. That's the easiest way to go about it and I'm personally fine with it.</blockquote>

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