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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7347387" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, obviously any look at any GAME is subject to "when used like this..." qualifications. Techniques and procedures may have various purposes as well, etc. I think we all understand this. 2 points are worth touching on:1) D&D (refer to any of the various prefaces and introductory material for pre-2e versions of D&D) is explicitly described as a heroic adventure game. This would reasonably be the expectation of anyone who looked at the material and decided to play pretty much ANY edition, but Gygax certainly stated it this way with no reservations. (I agree, mechanically it doesn't always live up to this).2) The subject of the thread itself was to elicit answers to the question "what is world building for." It wasn't really stated this was limited to certain types of play.Beyond that, I don't really think that the idea that PCs in D&D are anything less than very special (whether you use the word 'hero' or not for this is your choice) is viable. They are spell casters, very skilled warriors, accomplished thieves, etc right from level 1. Its pretty clear that AT WORST they have skills that only maybe one in a thousand people possess even at their initial levels of ability. Beyond that they are outright stated to be almost unique in their ability to advance and participate in the adventuring life. In 1e you can hire henchmen who have the ability to advance in level, if lead by a PC and then at half the normal PC rate, but again these are quite rare, a whole city might have single-digit numbers of such people in it (going by the charts in the DMG). So, I think it IS justified, going by the material in D&D specifically, to expect that characters lead unusual lives and are likely to be singled out by fate. Rare enough that we cannot even point out equivalent sorts of people in the real world, which indicates to me that they ARE special.I just don't buy the assertion that some people have made that somehow the vast majority of players want to pretend to be just any old guy. I think most players actually want to play 'special' characters. They may want to identify with them and connect them to everyday life in some sense, but I don't think that's the same thing as the idea that somehow the world cannot single them out. In all my years of running campaigns I never heard someone say such a thing at the table, and I've played with a pretty good variety of people.</blockquote>

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