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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 2510473" data-attributes="member: 26473">I seem to have read something about this elsewhere - ah, here it is...I agree that D&D is informed by a new generation of fantasists, a generation that has taken a more self-aware view of fantasy, and that the fantastic genre has been influenced by anime and wuxia as readily as Bullfinche's Mythology or The Golden Bough.Doesn't mean I have to like it.The game can, and will, and I believe should reflect the current state of the sub-culture to reach its audience - however, what is popular now isn't to my taste much of the time, so it also means that a game like D&D which attempts to capture that contemporary state of fantasy loses its appeal for someone like me. Feats that bring wire-fu stunt action into the game, manga-influenced art styles, the all-encompassing (and to my mind bland and unfocused) generic blending of fantasy tropes - for these reasons I've moved on to other game systems.It really has nothing to do with 3e D&D in a sense - I can (and I have) created a Tolkeinesque 3.0 campaign, by tweaking the ruleset to meet my needs. The larger problem as I see it, and one that I have experienced as a player, is that the population of gamers out there has an expectation about core D&D that I as a GM have no intention of meeting. IMX most gamers expect prestige classes and item creation feats and harmless technological magic and monster races, because that's what the current iteration of the game offers them. Simply put, they're not buying what I'm selling: magic as rare and dangerous, few monsters (and no monster PCs), limits on access to prestige classes, &c.On the other hand, if I use a game like Castles and Crusades to bring my fantasy vision to life, I'm more likely to attract players with a like mindset, because the tropes of the game are geared to a different style of play, a different expectation of magic and classes, than a player expecting core D&D. In this way I can play the game I want to play with like-minded gamers. In the final analysis, what D&D has become is irrelevant to me.So I ignore Eddings and Feist and Jordan and Lackey and dig deep into Leiber and Howard and Tolkien and LeGuin for my fantasy tropes. I plan my Modern Africa game around Burroughs and Haggard and Cutliffe Hyne and Wren, not Michael Crichton's Congo or Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. About the only genre that finds me siding with more contemporary artists is superheroes: if I run a supers game again, it will be heavily influenced by Kurt Busiek's Astro City.Does this limit me? Perhaps. Does it put me behind the times? Probably. Do I care? No, not deeply. This is all for fun, and I like what I like.</blockquote>

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