Which cows are most Sacred

[Lord Zardoz]

In another thread where questions were being thrown at some guy who did a podcast (too lazy to link it), someone though to ask something along the lines of the following question:

What cows are the most sacred for D&D (to the point where changing them makes the game something other than D&D).

So why not yet another useless poll?

END COMMUNICATION

 

[F4NBOY]

Classes, levels and dice rolling.

 

[marune]

Classes + levels.

 

[outsider]

This one was actually pretty hard. D&D just isn't the same without all of them. I put it into a hypothetical for myself, and asked if I could play D&D without each of them. It was tough. The only one that I could say that it absolutely would -not- be D&D without is dungeons. Dungeoncrawling is what the game is all about. Whether that "dungeon" really is a dungeon, or a sewer, or a temple, or a keep, or even a patch of forest. D&D is all about putting yourself into a hostile environment full of challenges, both living and inanimate.

 

[Alaric_Prympax]

I would have picked Other if given the choice...





The Stench Cow. Mooooo....

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I would rank them:

Character classes
Dragons
Hit points

I would add 'levels' at a rank below classes but above dragons, but frankly I can't imagine any of these three going away.

Classes (and levels) are one of the main things that set D&D apart from other tabletop RPGs and tie it to their more successful CRPG brethren. Removing these would greatly alter the game's uniqueness and simultaneously make it far less appealing to pretty much any relevant market of new players.

Dragons are right there in the name, along with dungeons; I make little use of either, but they are definitely necessary to the game's identity. Without them, D&D would at best be an ironic parody of itself.

Hit points are just an excellent system, which both predate D&D and through it have been expanded to a variety of other mediums. Their removal wouldn't be as earth-shaking in terms of the identity of the game, but oh -! It would completely change the game in actual play.

 

[jeffh]

If you're going to phrase the question so that it makes sense to give more than one answer, you should make the poll accept more than one answer.

As it happens, I think only two of those are really sacred, and one is conspicuously moreso than the other. But even so, it would be interesting to see what would come of a multi-choice poll on the same topic.

 

[frankthedm]

Dungeons; some big, some small
Dragons; Most big, some smart, some dumb.

 

[Lanefan]

They're all important.

Thinking about it, perhaps the only one I could live without would be Dragons as monsters, given a hypothetical setting where they were instead deities or divine minions or something similar.

Lanefan

 

[Horacio]

I would have preferred a multi-choice poll, as I find there are several sacred cows.

ITOH, I'm not against some sacred cow slaughtering...
(but I'd like to keep some others )