When is D&D not D&D?

[Olgar Shiverstone]

So when is D&D no longer D&D, but another game? What combinations of changes of mechanics and fluff take it from being D&D to being something else? (I'm working from a base assumption that 3E D&D is still D&D, so the pat diaglo answer of "it stopped being D&D when they published Greyhawk" need not apply).

Disclaimer: I'm a D&D grognard, and fear change. And we haven't seen that much, really, of 4E -- and what we've seen seems to emphasize the things that change, rather than the things that remain the same, so it's really hard to judge what the new version of the game will be.

I'm OK with mechanical changes, particularly given the stated goals of the 4E design team. The changes to the "fluff" of the game bother me, though -- not because I can't use different fluff, but just because the changes seem arbitrary. If you're trying to streamline mechanics, why change fluff -- particularly fluff that may link this version of the game to prior versions? With the combination of mechanical and fluff changes, 4E looks to be the most significant change to the game to date -- more so even than the change to 3E, which massively revised the mechanical system but took most of its flavor back to 1st edition. We've been told the d20 system will remain, but what does that really mean? It could mean only that most mechanics are resolved by rolling a d20 plus modifiers, which is all the "d20 system" really amounts to if you're e-writing the mecahnics of the SRD. Ceratinly many flavor tropes are being overhauls, from the cosmology to the definitions of creatures to even the fantasy world population (as evidenced by tiefling and eladrin as core races in the PHB).

Let's face it: if you tilt your head and squint a bit, Das Schwarze Auge, Rolemaster, Tunnels & Trolls, etc all look like D&D, and vice-versa. So when is creating a new edition no longer revising what exists, but is instead slapping a "Dungeons & Dragons" label on something completely different?

 

[Toben the Many]

It's like that old Supreme Court ruling on pornography. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

Whether a game as a D&D "feel" is kind of like that. I agree with you very much. A lot of what WotC is doing seems to be very innovative. And what they are doing seems to make the game more efficient. But one of my greatest concerns is that much of what they are doing makes it sound like the game they are building is not D&D anymore.

For example, careful resource management as always been part of D&D for me, since 1st edition. Now, it seems like that won't be an issue at all. That's totally cool for a cinematic game like Star Wars or the World of Darkness. But that just doesn't feel like D&D, even though it possibly stands to make the game more efficient.

I know that may sound weird, that making the game more efficient removes some of the "D&D" aspects of the game. But that's how I feel. I can't explain it anymore than that.

 

[Snapdragyn]

When is D&D not D&D? When it can no longer hear the sound of one hand clapping.

OK, seriously though - for me it would be if it stopped having a) swords or b) sorcery (not necessarily common, but present). Other than that, I think just about anything goes for me. YMMV.

 

[Desdichado]

It's like that old Supreme Court ruling on pornography. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

Ditto.

Although, honestly, I don't think the changes proposed so far sound even as dramatic as changes we've seen already. If you compare OD&D to Eberron, I think they're both much farther apart from each other in both mechanics and flavor than 4e is likely to be, for example. So I think the whole question becomes somewhat absurd in our current context.

Then again, I'm not a D&D grognard who fears change; I'm a come and go D&D semi-fan who finds many aspects of traditional D&D extremely frustrating, and would love to see them finally jettisoned.

 

[Lackhand]

I disagree with you about tiefling changing the fantasy landscape -- but there's a case to be made for each side, I see that, and don't really have anything invested in it. So sure.

But eladrin? Sure, the race was called "high elf" last time we saw it, but powerful fey beings have been in the game under a variety of different names, sometimes as player characters, sometimes not.

They're in Tolkein.

They're just rising to more prominence this edition. Also, player characters are heroes. While there are doubtless cities of eladrin, there's nothing that says that they leave their mountain fastnesses and head into the world on a regular basis?

But your fear/loathing about the Tiefling incursion makes more sense to me

 

[BlackMoria]

I don't think is going to be a consensus on this. Ask 10 people what is D&D to them and you will likely get 10 different answers. Ask the same people when D&D is no longer D&D and you will get 10 different answers again.

What is or isn't D&D is a personal question that the individual must ask himself. For Diaglo, that line was crossed when OD&D 1974 was supplanted by something else.

If you asking the question, perhaps you think or suspect that 4e will cross that line for you.

The line in the sand is different for everyone. The answer to the question 'when is D&D not D&D' is a question only you can answer for yourself.

 

[GreatLemur]

If fluff changes can make the game "not D&D", then maybe I've never played D&D, 'cause I generally stay far away from the published fluff.

Honestly, I'm not really concerned with whether or not 4e is "really" Dungeons & Dragons. All I care about is that it's a mechanically deep and balanced fantasy RPG with huge publisher support. I just want a set of tools to do my own thing with. If it ends up being a bit less hassle than 3e, that's awesome.

 

[Wormwood]

All I care about is that it's a mechanically deep and balanced fantasy RPG with huge publisher support. I just want a set of tools to do my own thing with. If it ends up being a bit less hassle than 3e, that's awesome.

Aaaaand you summed up my position exactly.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I can't disagree strongly enough that Rolemaster is 'basically D&D,' even if you tilt your head and squint. Still less Vampire, RuneQuest, Exalted, Wushu, Spirit of the Century, Traveler, HERO, GURPS, All Flesh Must Be Eaten or even Star Wars Saga Edition or Mutants and Masterminds.

I'm not familiar enough with T&T and DSA to say about them. Certainly in the 70s and 80s there were games that amounted to direct ports of D&D with the serial numbers filed off. This phenomena is basically over today, however, courtesy of the d20 and OGL licenses.

Every edition of D&D to date has been more similar to all the other versions of D&D than they have been to any other RPG that didn't amount to a direct port with the serial numbers filed off. 3e is closer to 1e than 2e in style, 2e is closer to 1e than 3e mechanically, BECMI is both stylistically and mechanically distinct from its cousins; all of the above are closer in style and mechanics than, say, AD&D 1e and RuneQuest, or AD&D 3e and Exalted.

The Great Wheel is not D&D to me. It's Planescape. BECMI didn't have alignment-based planes wheeling around the Prime Material, in no small part because it had a simpler and much less defining alignment system (one of its many awesome qualities). Eberron and 3e Forgotten Realms don't have the Great Wheel, either; it's already dead except in the nearly flavorless 'core' that was cored out of Greyhawk.

The racial mix is not D&D to me. Dark Sun and BECMI didn't have gnomes. Dragonlance didn't have halflings or even orcs (and hence, no half-orcs), but did have kender, draconians and intelligent minotaurs. Planescape had tieflings and aasimar, Eberron had warforged, changelings, shifters and kalashtar. The likes of tieflings and warforged have a better claim on being "D&D" than Tolkien derivatives Gary Gygax felt compelled to throw in due to the books' popularity.

Of couse, AD&D is not D&D to me. BECMI was, in my opinion, a vastly better game with a far more compelling core setting. Airships, lupins and thouls, conflicts of law and chaos rather than good and evil, ascended immortals rather than primordial gods, unorganized and mysterious rather than ordered and aligned outer planes - that's all D&D to me, at least as much as the detritus of decades of AD&D leftovers.

To me, D&D is classes (probably this has to include the roles of the fighter, rogue/thief, wizard/magic-user and cleric, though the names can and have changed), levels, mind flayers and beholders. Dungeons and dragons have to exist somewhere in the world - hence the name.

And above all, the kitchen sink has to be thrown in, the serial-numbers-filed-off amalgam of the best, and often the worst, that fantasy has produced to date; jotuns and trolls living down the lane from titans and centaurs, with kirin and hopping vampires their neighbors in the next celestial county; not Conan OR Gandalf OR Hercules OR Cloud Strife, but the four of them teaming up to kick ass and chew bubblegum, possibly with Batman's help. Crashed spaceships give our heroes rayguns with which to shoot balrogs (er, balORS), dinosaurs live on lost plateaus overlooking quaint medievalesque villages, worg-riding goblins fight Stygians, and the Argonauts compete with the Knights of the Round Table for the Holy Grail - until the PCs show up and steal it away from both because they need it to kill Cthulhu.

Any given campaign may not incorporate even a fraction of these elements (and most are almost certainly better off not doing so ), but the game needs room for them.

That's the CORE of D&D to me. Classes, levels and the kitchen sink.

 

[el-remmen]

As long as you are fighting things and taking their stuff, it is D&D to me.

I am not even saying that has to be focus or a significant part of your own game, it just has to be there in some form. . . if so, it is D&D.