What makes D&D, well... D&D?

[Doug McCrae]

Actually, it is pre-eminent because it was first, and was able to build a strong customer base before other games appeared. It was also able to use that strong majority to build itself up even more, and being the largest was able to out-compete the competition with more product, a wider diversity of product, etc. than many smaller companies.

Tunnels & Trolls and Empire of the Petal Throne both appeared in 1975, a mere two years after D&D made its debut. I doubt it could have achieved that strong a customer base in that time. Certainly nothing like what it has now. The other games companies combined produce vastly more product than TSR or WotC ever has and yet their sales appear to be far less. It's not about more product or diversity of product.

If other rpgs were superior then people would switch when they were exposed to the better product. And it's certainly not a matter of them never knowing of the existence of GURPS, etc. FLGSs sell much more than just D&D. Everyone I've ever gamed with, which must number into the 100s, played a wide variety of rpgs. One does hear of diehards who'll never try anything but D&D but I've never met anyone like that. I suspect they must be a tiny minority of gamers. OTOH, if such a person has given other games a try but keeps going back to D&D then one must conclude that D&D is the better game. Or at least popular due to its own merits.

Of course, if people were just sticking with what they knew, then everyone would still be playing OD&D.

If no new game can get anywhere then Vampire the Masquerade would not have the success it did.

 

[Doug McCrae]

How is D&D Tolkienesque, though?

Halflings (actually called hobbits in the original game until the Tolkien estate got wind of it)
Orcs
Long-lived elves that use bows, live in the woods in harmony with nature and have pointy ears.
Dour, avaricious dwarves.
Half-elves
Rangers
Balor = Balrog
Wights
Iuz = Sauron
Iuz (the country) = Mordor
Adventuring party = Fellowship
Dungeon crawl = Mines of Moria sequence in LotR

 

[Rasyr]

Tunnels & Trolls and Empire of the Petal Throne both appeared in 1975, a mere two years after D&D made its debut. I doubt it could have achieved that strong a customer base in that time. Certainly nothing like what it has now. The other games companies combined produce vastly more product than TSR or WotC ever has and yet their sales appear to be far less. It's not about more product or diversity of product.

I am sure that there are a lot more factors than those I mentioned, or even the ones you mentioned (and please note that my comments about best game were personal opinion, and were only about current editions).

It is quite conceivable that when AD&D came out it was the best game, that it did have more solid development behind it. I am not arguing that point, just that your comment seemed to be saying that D&D (any version) is and has been the best game always.

If other rpgs were superior then people would switch when they were exposed to the better product.
::snipped stuff from the middle::
OTOH, if such a person has given other games a try but keeps going back to D&D then one must conclude that D&D is the better game. Or at least popular due to its own merits.

Some people DO switch. So, in actuality, "Best Game" should likely be interpreted as "best game for the style of the person who selects it" and not as "best game, period" as was implied. That was all I was trying to say (sorry if I was being confusing....)

 

[Doug McCrae]

Campaign Settings: D&D isn't "the roleplaying game in the world of Adventuria" or something. There is no one fixed game world that is welded to the rules. You can take the rules and bring them to a great number of worlds, with differing game themes - from tolkien-like high fantasy to gothic horror to wuxia.

I don't agree with this. The D&D rules assume a default world which closely resembles Greyhawk or to a slightly lesser degree, Forgotten Realms. The weirder D&D worlds such as Dark Sun, Ravenloft or Planescape deviate more from the base rules.

Okay you *can* take the rules and apply them to any world you like but there will be more and more disconnect the further you go from Greyhawk. To avoid disconnect you have to house rule, which means the rules stop being D&D at some point.

On the Tolkien high fantasy thing - D&D has creatures and a few other things from Tolkien but the PCs and what they do are closer to the works of RE Howard or Leiber. There's no money in Tolkien, whereas money is of great importance in D&D as it is to thieves such as Conan or the Gray Mouser.

And the whole purpose of Frodo's quest in LotR was to *get rid* of a magic item. Absolute anathema to the typical D&D character.

 

[Scribble]

On the Tolkien high fantasy thing - D&D has creatures and a few other things from Tolkien but the PCs and what they do are closer to the works of RE Howard or Leiber. There's no money in Tolkien, whereas money is of great importance in D&D as it is to thieves such as Conan or the Gray Mouser.

And the whole purpose of Frodo's quest in LotR was to *get rid* of a magic item. Absolute anathema to the typical D&D character.

Eh... I'd argue that the purpose of Frodo's quest was to get rid of a CURSED item. and not only that, I'd argue that it was a cursed intelligent artifact... something I'm sure you can see as a D&D quest, and probably have...

In anycase, you can't deny it was influenced by Tolkien. You also can't deny it was also influenced by howard, leiber, Lovecraft, and probably many other authors Gygax and Arneson liked... Even Gygax has said as much.

 

[Doug McCrae]

You also can't deny it was also influenced by howard, leiber, Lovecraft, and probably many other authors Gygax and Arneson liked... Even Gygax has said as much.

Moorcock. Vance. Paladins and regenerating trolls are apparently from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions though I've never read it.

 

[Scribble]

Oh yeah, I also meant to reply to a few other things...

D&D is an intellectual property. Any of those things that are listed in this thread could be changed in a future edition of D&D, and if the owners of the IP say, "this is now D&D" then guess what? They'd be right.

So again back to another piece of artwork... If I bought the rights to a book and rewrote the whole thing, would it still be that book?

You see it as art. I see it as invention.

Art is to be admired. Invention is to be used. After so many years and so many users, sooner or later they're going to want improvements. Invention must then evolve and progress.

Art is what it is. You don't get a lot of use out of it, just draw certain emotion or mood from the audience.

But can not the two ever overlap? Take for instance Architecture. There are some modern homes and building that I see as a work of art. But they are still used.

The lists of things integral to D&D

But all of these things I see as what makes this Fantasy RPG not another Fantasy RPG. But these things have changed throughout the history of the different editions. So how can that be?

Take the Model T for instance. It was in fact an Automobile. When the next version came out, it was also an automobile, but it was not the Model T.

If we say D&D was a fantasy RPG, Then doesn't that assume that 1e 2e 3e and 3.5 are Fantasy RPGs but not D&D?

But then I guess we aren't saying they are D&D are we? SInce they have edition numbers?

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I think the probem with the original analogy is that D&D is a genre of art, like punk or dada, not a work of art. In each case, a bunch of guys (in Wisconsin, London, or Paris) get together and do something no one has ever done before. Then some of them give the new thing a name and publish a manifesto that says, in essence, Here's a cool new thing, here's what it's called; you should do it too, and here's how.

The manifesto is itself a work of art -- but when we talk about punk, we think of the music, not what Malcolm McLaren said about it. Likewise, when we talk about D&D, we think about what people are actually doing while they eat Cheetos and roll dice, not what the books say D&D is.

One way punk is like D&D: Each new generation of fans has a version that's meaningful to them and scorned by those who grew up with earlier kinds.

One way punk is not like D&D: People get together to recreate specific works of art, like the Sex Pistols' appearance on Saturday Night Live (like a tribute band crossed with a LARP: someone plays Sid Vicious, someone plays Chevy Chase in the audience, and someone plays the guy Sid threw up on backstage; everyone stays faithful to the script of what actually happened that night). Even if there are people who remain true to the OD&D manifesto, not even diaglo is re-creating specific games that Gygax DM'ed in 1976. (Although if I'm wrong, please invite me - that sounds cool!)

 

[Scribble]

I think the probem with the original analogy is that D&D is a genre of art, like punk or dada, not a work of art. In each case, a bunch of guys (in Wisconsin, London, or Paris) get together and do something no one has ever done before. Then some of them give the new thing a name and publish a manifesto that says, in essence, Here's a cool new thing, here's what it's called; you should do it too, and here's how.

But my response to that is that the Genre of art they created wasn't D&D it was Roleplaying Games. D&D was their Specific piece within the Genre. As far as individual games being different, I see as the same thing as the differnt meanings people take from any artwork. You and I could read a poem and have an entirely different response to that poem even though it's the same poem.

 

[Desdichado]

So again back to another piece of artwork... If I bought the rights to a book and rewrote the whole thing, would it still be that book?

I've actually already posted my opinion on that question; in fact, it's right there in the portion of my post that you quoted. I think the analogy of D&D to a classic work of art, if you'll forgive my saying so, is a bit pretentious. Something like the Mona Lisa; it's been what it is for hundreds of years, and it's so recognizable in Western civilization that any deviance from it is clearly a copy, parody or homage; not the thing itself.

D&D has no such attributes. In 30 years, it's gone through more than half a dozen significant revisions -- OD&D, 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5, Rules Cyclopedia, extreme variants (Planescape, DarkSun, etc.) and more. Furthermore, it's not the work of a single artist, as much as Gary Gygax may have made that implication in the early days of the game. It's a game and as such, it belongs to the players, not the creator. I've never yet been in a group that didn't have a house rule or two (or two dozen) and despite the "default" playstyle that many believe is intrinsic to the game itself, I've seen it played many, many different ways, and have done so since the early days.

So what makes D&D D&D? A few things have to happen, but in my opinion they will continue to happen regardless of what the rules actually are, or the content of the game actually is. 1.) The owners of the IP have to put something out to market and say, "this is D&D now," and 2.) the market has to react positively to such a statement and say, "yep, this is D&D." That's happened before with the change from OD&D to the Basic sets, with the significantly different AD&D versions, with the change to 2e, the even more significant change to 3e and even, for the most part, the newer change to 3.5. It'll likely, in my opinion, still happen with the future changes to 4e, 5e, 6e, or whatever other future versions you want to speculate to see in your lifetime. And even if one of those distant versions does away with everything we associate with D&D now; hit points, levels, classes, dungeons, elves, Vancian magic, whathaveyou... if the two conditions I spelled out above remain true, it'll still be D&D.