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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The Early "Design Principles" of D&D, and their Lasting Legacy
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<blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 8596221" data-attributes="member: 6799660"><p>Well sure, but this was spun directly off of a wargame because what they were trying to do with it needed to work for something different -- this funny little dungeon-crawling thing that had spun off of mining/counter-mining that people found so fun they ignored the larger siege. It is using a wargaming-centric framing to attempt to solve (well, play) a different challenge. I guess if you called <em>Diplomacy</em> or <em>Braunstein</em> the dominion-level portion of wargaming, then you would call early D&D the dungeon-crawling and adventuring portion of wargaming (that people previously hadn't realized was part of wargaming). That so many people went on to just do the dungeon- (and later hex-) crawling portion of it indicates at least possibly that it was a bad fit for the wargaming-centered game experience. </p><p></p><p>I think if the war part of D&D were more baked-in, such that the PCs had to have been army pieces that then got individual-focus in a constrained environment, I'd more buy that the game was really a wargame in disguise. They have those -- Mordheim is one (and people pretty generally say it is in the wargame camp, not the RPG one). Early D&D... well, soo much of the rules portion really are procedural components for doing this other dungeon-crawl thing. It is its own type of game and related to wargames mostly in who plays them and maybe the kind of worlds in which they exist.</p><p><span style="font-size: 9px">Obviously these distinctions are at the gut level rather than the definitional.</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Willie the Duck, post: 8596221, member: 6799660"] Well sure, but this was spun directly off of a wargame because what they were trying to do with it needed to work for something different -- this funny little dungeon-crawling thing that had spun off of mining/counter-mining that people found so fun they ignored the larger siege. It is using a wargaming-centric framing to attempt to solve (well, play) a different challenge. I guess if you called [I]Diplomacy[/I] or [I]Braunstein[/I] the dominion-level portion of wargaming, then you would call early D&D the dungeon-crawling and adventuring portion of wargaming (that people previously hadn't realized was part of wargaming). That so many people went on to just do the dungeon- (and later hex-) crawling portion of it indicates at least possibly that it was a bad fit for the wargaming-centered game experience. I think if the war part of D&D were more baked-in, such that the PCs had to have been army pieces that then got individual-focus in a constrained environment, I'd more buy that the game was really a wargame in disguise. They have those -- Mordheim is one (and people pretty generally say it is in the wargame camp, not the RPG one). Early D&D... well, soo much of the rules portion really are procedural components for doing this other dungeon-crawl thing. It is its own type of game and related to wargames mostly in who plays them and maybe the kind of worlds in which they exist. [SIZE=1]Obviously these distinctions are at the gut level rather than the definitional.[/SIZE] [/QUOTE]
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The Early "Design Principles" of D&D, and their Lasting Legacy
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