D&D General Why do you play Dungeons & Dragons?

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Because it's not just a game...

... it's a universe.

When you look at the whole legacy of D&D - all the products, all the home games, all the stories - there's nothing else quite like it in the RPG world. There's just so much... there... there. The worlds, the adventures... just like Middle Earth, but unlike so many other created worlds, take on a strange kind of reality to me. I feel like I'm delving through a history.

And many others have participated in this universe - so it's easy to bring people to the table and play, whichever edition (and when I say D&D, I include Pathfinder and all the various OSR clones and OGL games). Since it's influenced all of gaming to such a degree, everybody who sits down with you knows what a "hit point" is, a "plus" is, and the six stats. It's a common language. There are many very well designed games out there - the "Esperanto" of gaming. Hardly anyone plays them. There are other games that might be more coherent and elegant, their legacies standardized and refined, the "French" and "Spanish" of gaming. They have lots of fans, but not as many as the big daddy of them all. D&D is the "English" of gaming - love it or hate it, we all know it, it's not standardized, it's a huge glorious mess of a language. But it gets the job done.

English, Windows, the Model T, Starbucks.... not perfect by any means, but they caught fire and conquered their respective worlds because they got the job done sufficiently.

So those are my two reasons. Nothing else has quite the same scope.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Overall, I think the reason that many people stay with D&D is the same reason people still play Magic: everyone else plays it. Very few other games (CCG & RPG) have had the endurance that these originals have had, despite other games having overall better mechanics.

As someone who played a LOT of collectible card games back in the day... at least two dozen...

... I can count the number that I played that were mechanically better than M:TG on one finger, and the number on par on one hand:

Better? Netrunner. And it was designed by the same guy.

On par? Legend of the Five Rings, Middle Earth CCG, and MAYBE Decipher Star Wars (I had a saying about Decipher's CCGs - "Star Wars is a good game, but doesn't feel anything like Star Wars. Star Trek feels like Star Trek - and hence is a terrible game.)

I'd imagine that there have probably been many better CCGs in the last 20 years (so many awful ones were shoveled out in the mid to late 90s) that I've never played, but there's a reason M:TG has had staying power - it is a really, really great design. It was invented by a guy with a math PhD - and it shows. (And Netrunner, of course, has been resurrected as a non-collectible, expandable card game by FFG - because it was too great a design to ignore)

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I own a lot of D&D books, and have a firm grasp of the rules. I have "D&D" groups, all of which have at least some players who are not inclined to buy new materials for a new game. It is easiest to find people for a new group to play D&D. When you find those people they are likely to be more familiar with it, both in the sense of being more likely to have played it extensively and in the sense that first time players are more likely to have at least a little bit of a sense for what they are getting into.

But really I think the key is that it is a good game at leaving me consistently wanting more. As a player I always have 12 more character ideas I really want to try so I'm always eager for a new game. As a DM I don't particularly want the challenge of a new rules system and am confident in changing 5e rules to suit my table where necessary. D&D rules take up enough of my mental energy without adding other rules systems.