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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Akrasia" data-source="post: 2840180" data-attributes="member: 23012">When I played 1e AD&D and Basic/Expert D&D back in the day, there was no expectation that characters were meant to 'emulate' fictional heroes.  D&D was its own genre, and didn't do a good job of 'emulating' any great fantasy fiction (despite some hamfisted attempts in the 'special printing' of D&DG, and the Lankhmar material).This is still true.  The D&D 3e magic system doesn't resemble anything in fiction, and the characters created in a standard D&D campaign do not resemble traditional fictional heroes at all (D&D PCs have way too much magic on average, for one thing).Back in the day, if we wanted to emulate certain fictional worlds, we turned to other games -- games specifically designed for the fictional world in question.  So for Elric's Young Kingdoms, we played Stormbringer, for Middle-earth we played Middle-earth Roleplaying, for 'mythical history' games we used GURPS + appropriate supplement, and so forth.Same thing today.  I wouldn't use D&D 3e for Middle-earth -- it is a horrible system for trying to emulate Tolkien.  Likewise, for Conan I would use the Mongoose game (or, if I had time, a modified version of Eden's Cinematic Unisystem).Many standard D&D archetypes do not even exist in fiction -- e.g. the cleric class.  D&D is its own genre.  Trying to bend it to reflect some other genre, or an established fantasy setting, without radical changes (essentially creating a new game, e.g. Conan or Lonewolf OGL), you're likely to simply break it and end up with a mess.</blockquote>

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