Why D&D is slowly cutting its own throat.

[ThirdWizard]

If I had meant 'published adventures' I would have said published adventurers, or even modules or something. What I said was that the game was adventures and not a set of rules (or at least not a fixed set of rules). What adventures that those happen to be doesn't really matter to me.

Then why are published adventures so important? Everyone plays adventures.

See, there is were we actually disagree. I don't care what campaign setting you are using - homebrew or published. But as long as we are looking at hyperbole, I can't imagine anyone saying with any seriousness that the game is the core rulebooks, but then there it is. That's like saying that you aren't playing D&D unless your playing with the official published rules, and how bizarre of a notion is that.

Okay lets say there's an adventure called. "Orc Uprising." I play it twice. Once under Rolemaster and again under D&D rules. In one instance I'm playing Rolemaster and in the other I'm playing D&D. The difference being the rules. The rules arn't important to roleplaying in general, but they are important to Rolemaster and D&D.

So D&D isn't the adventure. D&D is the rule system.

 

[buzz]

If that many people were actively buying WotC fiction then those novels would be #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list every month.

There have been many FR novels that have been on the NYT list. Practically everything Salvatore writes makes the NYT list. In the fantasy category, at least...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

While I don't read them, I know that stat is pretty accurate- lots of people DO read those books.

 

[Hussar]

*snip*
See, there is were we actually disagree. I don't care what campaign setting you are using - homebrew or published. But as long as we are looking at hyperbole, I can't imagine anyone saying with any seriousness that the game is the core rulebooks, but then there it is. That's like saying that you aren't playing D&D unless your playing with the official published rules, and how bizarre of a notion is that.

I'll second Diaglo on that one. If you're playing a game that in no way refers to any of the three core manuals, (depending on edition), you aren't playing DnD. DnD is a set of rules. Those rules can be applied to homebrew or published material, but, the rules remain. It isn't the published modules that make people stay with the game, it's the rules. If rules didn't matter at all, then people would play entirely without them. Since you cannot play DnD without at least referring to the rules slightly - be it with character creation, combat, critters, whatever - I fail to see how saying, "you aren't playing D&D unless your playing with the official published rules" is not accurate. While a group may not play with ALL the published rules, there is going to be at least a nod in the direction of the core rules whenever you're playing DnD.

In other words, if you were to sit at a gaming table without knowing what game they are playing, how would you find out which game they are, in fact, playing. Well, if you see people rolling a bag full of d10's, then it's likely Vampire, if it's a handful of d6's, it's something from Steve Jackson, and, if it's a d20, then, if it's fantasy, it's most likely DnD.

The game is made by it's rules, not by the settings or the modules.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

D6's could also be HERO, Space 1899, the original Prime Directive from Task Force Games or something from FASA (Shadowrun, Earthdawn, MechWarrior).

 

[S'mon]

I can't imagine anyone saying with any seriousness that the game is the core rulebooks, but then there it is. That's like saying that you aren't playing D&D unless your playing with the official published rules, and how bizarre of a notion is that.

Um... of course the game is the core rulebooks - well, in 3e really the core of the game is the Player's Handbook and maybe a few bits from the DMG, but the full standard game is in the PHB DMG & MM... I'm not sure if you were kidding or not... :\

 

[MonsterMash]

i'll say it.

you aren't playing D&D unless the referee is using the 3 booklets.

OD&D(1974) is the only true game. All the other editions are just poor imitations of the real thing.

Applauds Diaglo's persistence

 

[MonsterMash]

To me D&D is a game with a ruleset with certain standard tropes(dice based resolution of actions, level based advancement, characters defined by a standard set of abilities, fire and forget(Vancian) magic) set in a a pseudo-medieval world, everything else is a pale imitation.


Seriously though if I use the D&D rules in a modern setting to me that's a game with D&D rules not D&D per se due to the setting - I stress this is in my opinion YMMV.

 

[Hussar]

^ Well there's some truth in that. If you took the characters out of a pseudo-European setting and played them using DnD rules, it wouldn't really be all that DnD anymore. Of course, it probably wouldn't make a whole lot of sense either. Trying to play a ranger in a Star Trek setting wouldn't be all that much fun I'm thinking. Nor would playing a Barbarian in a Spycraft game. So, to apply DnD mechanics to a completely different genre, you'd have to massively redo basic rules. And, you wouldn't be playing a DnD game anymore. You might be playing D20, but you're not playing DnD.

Some of those mechanics are pretty much hardwired into DnD. The basic classes for example. While you can still play DnD without those classes, there is always the realization that you are playing a variant of core rules. When you play in an Oriental Adventures setting, the players realize that, while it's DnD, it's a somewhat different sort of DnD. How far you can stray from the base and still call it DnD is different for each person. Personally, I have no problem saying Hackmaster is DnD. Nor do I have a large problem with Arcana Unearthed being billed as a DnD game. Others might.

The trick is, the baseline is ALWAYS the core books. Anything else is a build from that same starting position. Every time a new "variant" rules system get's trotted out by this or that company, they are always going to build from the same base - now being the SRD. Until Malhavok decides that the Arcana Unearthed stuff is OGL, no one else is going to publish stuff for it. However, you've got umpteen companies publishing stuff for DnD. DnD will always be the baseline, because that's the mechanics and assumptions you have to start with if you're going to stray away from that baseline.

 

[buzz]

Okay lets say there's an adventure called. "Orc Uprising." I play it twice. Once under Rolemaster and again under D&D rules. In one instance I'm playing Rolemaster and in the other I'm playing D&D. The difference being the rules. The rules arn't important to roleplaying in general, but they are important to Rolemaster and D&D.

Indeed, if anything is portable between systems, it's adventures. If I convert Keep on the Borderlands to Burning Wheel, am I still playing D&D? Of course not. Ergo, it's not the adventures that make D&D D&D.

Really, the fluff and surface feel of D&D has been changing constantly over the course of its history. Blackmoor is not quite Greyhawk is not quite Forgotten Realms is not quite Ravenloft is not quite Planescape is not quite Dark Sun is not quite Eberron (and we're not even touching OGL settings). Yet it's all been D&D, even across multiple editions, because the core rules assumptions and goals (even from OD&D to 3.5) have remained essentially the same.

It isn't the published modules that make people stay with the game, it's the rules.

And if it was all about adventures, system wouldn't matter, and poeple woudl flock to whatever adventure was the best. I.e., we'd all be playing WFRP's Enemy Within campaign, and D&D would be a distant memory.

(That or, Atlas' Penumbra line would be the most popular d20 products out there.)