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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 6279648" data-attributes="member: 6688937">YupHonestly, I think that D&D is part of the problem here (historically). I mean, during the (early) 2e era, much was made about how boring and predictably Western-European/Tolkienesque everything was and how awesome Oriental Adventures was...and so they (both TSR and homebrew DMs) produced all sorts of stuff to expand on that from kits and kitbooks to entire settings (the best being Al-Qadim, IMO). Unfortunately, the D&D conceit that every DM has a "world" meant that rather than being entirely new things, all that "exotic" material just kept getting tacked on into one corner of the map or another.  Additionally, D&D (for better or worse) has become such a touchstone for "traditional" fantasy, that these "kitchen sink" type things are back-contaminating that pool.The real problem when comparing D&D's range to the range of fantasy fiction, IMO. Is that almost all of this is really just trappings around the same mechanics which actually kinda tell a pretty narrow (if infinite) band of stories. The core design of D&D (I'm talking "kill&loot->XP->level->repeat" or "HP, AC, damage" core) drives that more than the trappings do. They make it really hard to push the boundaries as far as authors can in books. Making the game less abstract and adding fiddly bits (as the game tended to do, especially in the WotC era) only made that problem worse. Different folks have tried different things to bash that kind of thing around, and some have even enjoyed limited success, but that kind of thing has some pretty profound-yet-subtle impacts on the fiction. "Hero to Zero" for instance, is rather hard to pull off. Which isn't to say that that's horrible or unnecessary thing for other reasons like gameplay and play(er) agendas. Nor am I trying to imply that that band of stories D&D does well is inadequate for entertainment purposes. D&D has a lot of appeal for solid reasons. However, it is part of why I no longer consider D&D a game that's good for scratching much of a story-telling or story-authoring itch (whether that itch be of a group or individual nature).</blockquote>

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