Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 2629219" data-attributes="member: 22779">Well, actually, I think you illustrated my point quite nicely.  'Open' systems lack mechanics which dictate setting.  DnD is most certainly not an open setting.  My mistake was in a rather general statement, however, in the case of DnD it applies.  If you have to strip, remove, tweak, bend or somehow revise the rules in order to make it open enough that it can encompass another setting, you're obviously playing a reinterpretation of a particular game.  It's the same game, although heavily modified.  Well, I've seen in the earlier posts how people were raising issues about how you cannot play DnD in a Conan setting or a Middle Earth setting without making large changes.  The justification I saw was the proliferation of magical items.  Conan doesn't hump around a bag full of potions, therefore, in a game where characters may do just that, you cannot get the "Conan feel".  My point is that magical items in novels are plot elements.  Yes, they can be part of the setting, but, I'm talking about magical items that can be used by characters in the story.  An author doesn't hand the protagonist a brilliantly glowing lumpy metal thing in chapter 6 and then go the rest of the book without the protagonist using that lumpy metal thing at least once to overcome some form of obstacle.Magical items in novels are pure plot devices by and large.  While some may exist as part of the setting, personal magical items are placed in novels as part of the plot.  In the game, this is not true.  Magical items are placed in the game as a reward for the players.  The players choose whether or not to use the magical item, not the DM.  Unless the DM wants to script out very, very carefully where each and every magical item he gives out is used, magical items cannot be a plot element.  Sure, that shattered crystal of Nef is a plot device.  But, that potion of Jump certainly isn't.</blockquote>

Verification