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<blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5404665" data-attributes="member: 80487">Whimsicality specifically as humorous is a perfectly legitimate usage, but a narrower one than the &quot;strange and bizarre&quot; that I got from MerricB's first post.Whatever sense one intends, it is certainly &quot;in the eye of the beholder&quot;.Dave Hargrave -- whose Arduin Grimoire trilogy came out in the same years as the first Advanced D&amp;D books -- saw D&amp;D as becoming dreadfully staid. That his protest often involved humor strikes me as natural. The sense of humor after all depends upon an appreciation of what is out of the ordinary, and &quot;fantasy&quot; must be something else if it is shorn of the fanciful.My understanding is that in the 1980s, the AD&amp;D line was the prestigious one in house, the one for which the people on salary in the TSR offices flocked to fill pages. The D&amp;D line was thus left by default largely to free lances, under an editorial aegis with a distinctly different attitude.Over the decades, I think fantasy in all media got increasingly reduced to genre. D&amp;D from the start was rather a genre unto itself, imprinting its own character on whatever it imported. AD&amp;D was by Gygax's own profession an attempt to define what the game was and was not.To my eye, the effect became a bit too much when (for instance) the influence of TSR's second RPG, Empire of the Petal Throne, got mashed into the pseudo-Tolkien mold to produce Dark Sun. What's &quot;edgy&quot; is as much in the eye of the beholder as what's whimsical.&quot;Dark&quot; and &quot;grim&quot; (and &quot;punk&quot; and &quot;Gothic&quot;) was rather a fad in the game field of the late 1980s and on into the '90s. From Greyhawk to the Third Imperium, classic settings went to wrack and ruin. (Dragonlance had from the start presented a shattered world.)I don't remember any novel series associated with the BECMI line, whereas AD&amp;D brands -- e.g., Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms -- were almost(?) tails wagged by the profitable fiction lines. Tolkien's sagas of Middle-Earth, works of much seriousness, were (and remain) the beaux ideal of genre fantasy novels.All these threads came together in Planescape, which certainly was not lacking in the weird but was (from what I have seen) quite consciously &quot;serious&quot; and literary in intent.The BECMI products -- especially the Known World/Mystara ones -- seemed to cultivate an ethos informed both by mindfulness that D&amp;D is a game and by a drive to incorporate references alike to cultures historical, fictional and &quot;pop&quot;. As much as Planescape was a culmination of AD&amp;D, the Hollow World was a culmination of TSR's D&amp;D.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ariosto, post: 5404665, member: 80487"] Whimsicality specifically as humorous is a perfectly legitimate usage, but a narrower one than the "strange and bizarre" that I got from MerricB's first post. Whatever sense one intends, it is certainly "in the eye of the beholder". Dave Hargrave -- whose Arduin Grimoire trilogy came out in the same years as the first Advanced D&D books -- saw D&D as becoming dreadfully staid. That his protest often involved humor strikes me as natural. The sense of humor after all depends upon an appreciation of what is out of the ordinary, and "fantasy" must be something else if it is shorn of the fanciful. My understanding is that in the 1980s, the AD&D line was the prestigious one in house, the one for which the people on salary in the TSR offices flocked to fill pages. The D&D line was thus left by default largely to free lances, under an editorial aegis with a distinctly different attitude. Over the decades, I think fantasy in all media got increasingly reduced to genre. D&D from the start was rather a genre unto itself, imprinting its own character on whatever it imported. AD&D was by Gygax's own profession an attempt to define what the game was and was not. To my eye, the effect became a bit too much when (for instance) the influence of TSR's second RPG, Empire of the Petal Throne, got mashed into the pseudo-Tolkien mold to produce Dark Sun. What's "edgy" is as much in the eye of the beholder as what's whimsical. "Dark" and "grim" (and "punk" and "Gothic") was rather a fad in the game field of the late 1980s and on into the '90s. From Greyhawk to the Third Imperium, classic settings went to wrack and ruin. (Dragonlance had from the start presented a shattered world.) I don't remember any novel series associated with the BECMI line, whereas AD&D brands -- e.g., Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms -- were almost(?) tails wagged by the profitable fiction lines. Tolkien's sagas of Middle-Earth, works of much seriousness, were (and remain) the beaux ideal of genre fantasy novels. All these threads came together in Planescape, which certainly was not lacking in the weird but was (from what I have seen) quite consciously "serious" and literary in intent. The BECMI products -- especially the Known World/Mystara ones -- seemed to cultivate an ethos informed both by mindfulness that D&D is a game and by a drive to incorporate references alike to cultures historical, fictional and "pop". As much as Planescape was a culmination of AD&D, the Hollow World was a culmination of TSR's D&D. [/QUOTE]

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