D&D General What makes a TTRPG a "D&D Variant" to you?

[Distracted DM]

Is DCC a DnD variant?

It has classes and levels.
It uses a d20, but it also uses a ton of weird (zocchi) dice.
It has 6 attributes, but they don't fully map to 5e (luck, primarily).

I'd like to say yes, but gosh how are we defining DnD variants? Ha, that's what this is all about, eh?

 

[Tonguez]

If it has:

• Elves of any kind (from Tolkien to Vulcans),
• Swords of any kind (from longswords to lightsabers),
• Magic of any kind (elemental, arcane, The Force, tech-babble, etc.),
• Dragons of any kind (classic, or kaiju, or dinosaurs, or other Big Terrible Monsters),
• EDIT: and uses polyhedric dice for RNG resolution,

...it's a "D&D clone" as far as I'm concerned.

That pretty much covers every single rpg in existence - your edit cuts it down to maybe 90% of them
I suppose "its all D&D" is a valid poisition to take

Mechanical Characteristics of D&D:

• Class & Level Progression
• Six(-ish) Ability Scores
• Hit Points - Damage chips away at a single pool
• D20 - Roll 1d20 + modifiers vs. a target number
• AC - Armor makes you harder to hit, not mitigating damage

Play Experience Characteristics:

• Kitchen-Sink High Fantasy
• Mixed Archetypes - A fighter, a wizard, a sneaky rogue, and a holy healer all work together
• GM vs. Players Structure - GM presents the world; each player run sa single PC
• Power Curve - Low-level fragility to mid-level heroics to high-level demigods

If it has nearly all of those, or slight variations of them, it's D&D. Taking the mechanics only and using them in a different play experience (e.g. mutant post-apocalypse, space, etc.) stops it being D&D and makes it a d20 game.

If I went to a movie marketed as "A D&D movie", and it was based on Gamma World or Starfinder, I would feel misled (but possibly happier)

would you place Spelljammer as not DnD or is it still Kitchen-Sink High Fantasy?

 

[CleverNickName]

That pretty much covers every single rpg in existence - your edit cuts it down to maybe 90% of them
I suppose "its all D&D" is a valid poisition to take

Yeah, that was my intent. I feel like almost every tabletop RPG out there is a variant of Dungeons & Dragons, just reskinned and reflavored for different audiences and participation levels. And this is a good thing. It's a useful touchstone that everyone in the hobby can relate to and compare against. It's an open door...a gateway, if you will.

Wil Wheaton had an interesting definition, too. "If I can play The Keep on the Borderlands with it, it's D&D."

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is DCC a DnD variant?

It has classes and levels.
It uses a d20, but it also uses a ton of weird (zocchi) dice.
It has 6 attributes, but they don't fully map to 5e (luck, primarily).

I'd like to say yes, but gosh how are we defining DnD variants? Ha, that's what this is all about, eh?

It's based on the 3.5 SRD. Doesn't that make it a D&D variant by default?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, that was my intent. I feel like almost every tabletop RPG out there is a variant of Dungeons & Dragons, just reskinned and reflavored for different audiences and participation levels. And this is a good thing. It's a useful touchstone that everyone in the hobby can relate to and compare against. It's an open door...a gateway, if you will.

Wil Wheaton had an interesting definition, too. "If I can play The Keep on the Borderlands with it, it's D&D."

The problem with this is all the people who like RPGs but don't like D&D. Are those people just kidding themselves under your definition?

 

[Reynard]

Wil Wheaton had an interesting definition, too. "If I can play The Keep on the Borderlands with it, it's D&D."

This is an interesting definition. Let's unpack it a little.

Is it literal. Do you (or Will) mean you have to be able to open up KotBL and be able to run it as is on the fly?

What about reskinning? Are you allowed to make it a cyberpunk or post apocalyptic milieu?

What even does "play KotBL" mean? As an old school module, it is more sandbox than plot.

 

[CleverNickName]

The problem with this is all the people who like RPGs but don't like D&D. Are those people just kidding themselves under your definition?

Of course not. (sheesh)

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course not. (sheesh)

Well then what's going on, if everything is a version of D&D?

 

[CleverNickName]

This is an interesting definition. Let's unpack it a little.

Is it literal. Do you (or Will) mean you have to be able to open up KotBL and be able to run it as is on the fly?

What about reskinning? Are you allowed to make it a cyberpunk or post apocalyptic milieu?

What even does "play KotBL" mean? As an old school module, it is more sandbox than plot.

Is it literal? It's hard to say. He wrote that on his blog a few years ago during one of the big edition changes in D&D...I think it was 3E, but it might have been 4E or Pathfinder, or during the early "D&D Next" days of 5E. Anyway, lots of folks in the hobby were complaining about how that new edition, and how it "isn't D&D anymore," like they always do. Wil weighed in on his own blog, with his own two cents. "If I can play The Keep on the Borderlands with it, it's D&D," he wrote. I took that to mean that he didn't care what system he was running, so long as he could still play one of his favorite adventures with it.

I don't think Wil was talking about reskinning anything, at least not in that quote. (He does reskin things all the time, though, so it wouldn't surprise me.) He's written about running classic D&D modules before in different non-D&D systems, and he used to have a show on Geek & Sundry called "Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana" that used the Fantasy AGE system from Green Ronin.

As for any deeper meaning? I have no idea. I just know it's his favorite classic adventure.

 

[Morrus]

If it has:

• Elves of any kind (from Tolkien to Vulcans),
• Swords of any kind (from longswords to lightsabers),
• Magic of any kind (elemental, arcane, The Force, tech-babble, etc.),
• Dragons of any kind (classic, or kaiju, or dinosaurs, or other Big Terrible Monsters),
• EDIT: and uses polyhedric dice for RNG resolution,

...it's a "D&D clone" as far as I'm concerned.

Tolkien? Your position is that in 1937's The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien cloned TSR's 1974 game Dungeons & Dragons? And then did it again in 1954 with Lord of the Rings?

That dastardly time-travelling Tolkien! How dare he!

And also Beowulf in the 5th and 6th centuries with its cloning of D&D dragons, Star Wars in 1977 (at least that didn't involve time travel, but it was ripping off those damn medieval samurai who were totally cloning D&D!)... wait, hang on, you also included any dinosaurs! And Godzilla?

And that Albert Friedenthal who cloned D&D's polyhedral dice in 1904, and Yasishi Ishida, who had the temerity to clone the actual d20 in Japan in 1950!

The fact that Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson didn't meet until 1969 is probably their fault.