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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CruelSummerLord" data-source="post: 3961351" data-attributes="member: 48692">I'm not a gamer; I'm a writer.  And yet, oddly enough, and despite the fact that most role-playing fiction is pretty bad, in D&D I see a very rich, ready-made mythology just waiting for anyone to flesh it out, to give it depth and characterization.  Creating a mythos from scratch is no easy thing-I've tried it myself, and every time I end up scrapping it because it feels contrived and fake.  And yet the plain vanilla fantasy stereotypes of D&D hold more appeal to me than the more unique fantasy mythos of other writers.  Here, I feel, is something I can build upon and make my own; if I did not create the whole, I can nonetheless put my own spin on things and make them my own.  I can't remember if it was Isaac Asimov or Isaac Newton who said that he had suceeded because he stood on the shoulders of giants; but in any case, I have done the same.  Gygax and his successors took the myth of a variety of cultures and authors both ancient and modern, blending them into the setting I now know and love.  And, if I continue on in this vein, continuing to incorporate ideas from the histories and myths of real-life cultures, including and especially non-European ones, it can only become stronger for the influence.  Most people love D&D for gaming; I love it because it just stimulates my creativity and gives me ideas for narrative fiction.</blockquote>