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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 9187517" data-attributes="member: 996">You know something that lets players with somewhat different preferences use and enjoy the same game?  Balance.There is no need to give up theme or imagery for balance.  The opposite is true:  a better balanced game can deliver more choices that remain viable, so they can actually see use in play, and meaningful, so they can support theme & imagery.How do non-viable choices provide imagery or support theme?  How do meaningless choices?  Why would a game need to punish players who fall for trap choices, to support a theme?  Is the theme just "lol, sucks to be you?"I think your guesses would be wrong.  D&D is pretty terrible at emulating classic fantasy fiction, precisely because it gives it's magic users far too much and underrates heroism.Defenders of the D&D status quo tend to resort to claiming that D&D has forged a genre of it's own, which is not an unfair claim, really, it's persistently failed to emulate the fantasy genres that preceded it, and  has, mainly through being adapted to far more popular video games, influenced current fantasy sub-genres - ironically, most dramatically in anime based on video games.Not that a faithful representation of classic fantasy - with an heroic-warrior Main Character, and other archetypes more likely in supporting roles - would work that well in a TTRPG, as it would also be imbalanced!  Something Gygax realized when he chose the 'relatively short spoken spell' he attributed to Vance, as the model for D&D magic, so magic-users could keep up with fighting men.  Turned out he overcompensated.</blockquote>

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