D&D General What do you actually like about D&D?

[Warpiglet-7]

Not to call you out, but I find it interesting you don't actually answer your own question and explain what it is you like about D&D -- other than it being formative (which a lot of us in this thread have been saying, even if D&D is not the only RPG we like to play). So what about D&D do you actually love?

I don’t like D&D. I love it.

Wow. Alll of the things folks said upthread are true. I play with dudes I played with in childhood and early adolescence. Now my kids are going to play. A couple spouses have joined here and there and another child of a friend…my brother plays and I introduced him when he was like 8!

All of that is big. And the shared language…we all know what a beholder is…and mind flaters and clerics. We have built in metrics and comparisons like other people and football positions.

There are tons of memories. From struggling with the Satanic panic to getting LJN figures on Christmas…

The old artwork defined fantasy for me…weird WEIRD erol otus full color paintings and fighters with winged—bat-winged! Helms and wizards with weird garb and hats…

The weird spells and characters…Iuz and paladins and evil clerics…I like fantasy but realize I compare it all to the mishmash cobbled together into D&D.

I like D&D and it’s weirdness specifically.

I enjoy combat a lot and the exploration and discovering things is great. A few holy %#+= moments in game are burned it to my mind.

It in its history and various reincarnations lives and grows in my brain unlike any other IP. Much more than any other IP.

For these and many other reasons, when people talk about the game’s flaws…it only makes me want to play. If I could play every damn day I would. With time excepted for
Family friends and the natural world and my pets…but video games, boardgames, sports etc. are good but my number one pass time remains unchallenged.

For my upcoming bday which is a “big one” I just want to flipping play. Period. Some good eats would be cool but if it’s one or the other I can do Taco Bell before I start chucking dice.

Hopefully this does not sound nuts but if it does I still have D&D

 

[Aldarc]

It has nice alliteration.

 

[Cadence]

Does that mean 5e? Its not like we have a 5e section.

I think we do? We at least have different tags for D&D General and D&D 5E.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

i've been playing long enough that i'm pretty comfortable with the system. i've got a great group i play it with. it's malleable enough to do some really wacky stuff with it without completely breaking the game (my dm dropped a doomslayer ripoff in the middle of our last session, complete with a BFG and everything). while i would prefer 5e be a lot more customizable, what's there still allows for making fun and interesting characters. also for 5e specifically, d20s combined with bounded accuracy make it easy to understand how good a given modifier is or how hard a given DC is. i like power fantasies and big damn heroism. i can (theoretically) punch a god (at [near-]max level).

 

[delericho]

Are we just talking about 5e? Then my answer would mostly be it's the easiest game to get players for.

I think people can talk about any edition or editions they like. My answer was about 5e specifically for two reasons: it's the only edition I've played in some years now, and consequently it's the edition I've been most critical of over those years. Plus, my answer would be a bit different for some other editions.

 

[mamba]

I took this as being about 5e, that is certainly what my answer referred to. Not sure there are many recent discussions about other versions of the game the OP could refer to in the first few sentences.

 

[MichaelSomething]

DM empowerment! We can easily ignore all the things we don't like and are free to make the game into whatever we desire!

 

[cbwjm]

You know how you can go on a trip with friends have a fun time and then talk about that shared experience months or years later? That's one of the things I love about dnd, all imaginary but it's a shared experience that my friends and have joked about years later.

 

[Yora]

Some of the old campaign settings.

Many of the monsters.

The B/X rules are a pretty good game if you fix the mechanics for rolling attack.

 

[Vael]

First ... DnD got me through the those first years of the pandemic. Discord allowed my regular group to keep playing and let me make a second group to keep in touch with friends while we were all locked down and isolated.

Second, DnD exists within in a weird sweetspot hybrid of gamesmastery and let's pretend that crunchier and more narrative games sometimes miss.

Third, the IP itself. A lot of the DnD monsters are unique and fun. I love the Eberron campaign world, I don't just want to game there, I want to write stories in that glorious sandbox. The other settings ... I have a love/hate relationship with Forgotten Realms, hate that it's the DnD world, but otoh, both BG3 and the DnD movie were awesome uses of that setting. I enjoyed Dark Sun in 4e, and generally find a lot of settings interesting.