Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 2514907" data-attributes="member: 8158">Well, imagine my surprise to see a quote from me become the basis of a multi-page thread.Howard and Leiber are two names I dropped specifically because they preceded D&D and had a clear influence on what the genre was for the folks who got the game off the ground. If you want to insert a couple of other modern names like Jordan or Martin for a more  young, hip fantasy crowds, feel free. The point about D&D slowly developing into more of a slow video game than being influenced by literature or cinema remains. Well, I don't know who any of those folks are besides Martin, and I didn't really enjoy his stuff. All the same, I will bet that D&D's designers aren't paying any of those folks any heed either, so if the basis of this thread is to take a deconstructive approach to my comments, what's your point? D&D cannot afford to be inaccessible to fantasy fans, whether that be a fan of Conan or Scribbledeedoo the earthy priestess-heroine of some other more modern and politically-sensible fantasy series. Specific names had little to do with what I was discussing. Is the creation of a magic item special in those worlds, Merric, or does everyone have an extensive panoply of magic toys? So much so that possessions eventually eclipse the characters who possess them? Is there some point where every major character, from barbarian to wizard, can take to the sky with a ring of flying like they were in the Legion of Superheroes? Is every major character individually more wealthy than the GNP of the three richest countries of their world? Are there adventures ultimately free of any consequences--death included--other than monetary expenses? Are they solving every mystery with the casting of a spell and then teleporting to wherever they need to go so they can cut to the chase, eliminate the boring stuff, and get down to what matters: blowing stuff up and killing things?Now, I have to be clear here: those questions are more of a rhetorical nature. Their purpose is to be demonstrative, not inquisitive. I say this because I expect the usual battery of deconstructive response from folks iif not necessarily Merric, quoting each sentence above individually and picking nits and going on about rule zero, etc. rather than actually trying to address the actual source of my consternation--namely, that D&D is adopting the conventions of a video game. That's not healthy, because no matter what lengths the designers go to provide easy methods of removing long-term consequences for players' actions, no matter how much they encourage a "cut-to-the-chase" mentality, the pace of RPG's just don't move fast enough to compete with that market. Moreover, removing those long-term consequences and cutting to the chase constantly does decrease its accessibility for some, even to someone like me who's been playing a long time. Now, how many "some" represents is wide open to speculation.</blockquote>

Verification