Why is fantasy the dominant RPG genre?
- Thread starter Chainsaw Mage
- Start date
I think D&D's dominance has more to do with the trappings of the game's design than it has to do with the fantasy genre.
In D&D you have character classes that provide players with fairly clear-cut roles--warrior, healer, nuker, expert, and so forth. Note that there's no real attempt to be faithful to the fantasy genre here: it's not like Tolkein, Moorcock, Howard, or Leiber ever wrote about such a mix of diverse characters banding together and raiding dragon lairs for loot. But it works as part of a game, allowing even groups of strangers to quickly throw together a party and start killing baddies and amassing treasure.
In D&D, magic keeps the game moving. If you get hurt, you can be cured. If you get killed, you can be raised. If you need to know something, it can be augured, divined, or communed. If you need to get somewhere quickly, you can be teleported. There's a way to fix anything that might sideline a player or stop the action. Again, this isn't really true to the genre. In the majority of fantasy fiction, death is actually a major inconvenience with some long-lasting ramifications (paticularly for the individual who died). But it works as part of the game, and keeps the party rolling forward, killing baddies and amassing treasure.
I could go on, but the point is that it is D&D (and by extension, d20) that's popular, not fantasy. Plenty of fantasy games that tried to be more faithful to the genre (or at least some subset of the genre) have gone down the tubes. D&D provides a simple, efficient formula for assigning roles to individuals and objectives to the group. It's not perfect, but it's expedient and that's ultimately what makes it work.
In D&D you have character classes that provide players with fairly clear-cut roles--warrior, healer, nuker, expert, and so forth. Note that there's no real attempt to be faithful to the fantasy genre here: it's not like Tolkein, Moorcock, Howard, or Leiber ever wrote about such a mix of diverse characters banding together and raiding dragon lairs for loot. But it works as part of a game, allowing even groups of strangers to quickly throw together a party and start killing baddies and amassing treasure.
In D&D, magic keeps the game moving. If you get hurt, you can be cured. If you get killed, you can be raised. If you need to know something, it can be augured, divined, or communed. If you need to get somewhere quickly, you can be teleported. There's a way to fix anything that might sideline a player or stop the action. Again, this isn't really true to the genre. In the majority of fantasy fiction, death is actually a major inconvenience with some long-lasting ramifications (paticularly for the individual who died). But it works as part of the game, and keeps the party rolling forward, killing baddies and amassing treasure.
I could go on, but the point is that it is D&D (and by extension, d20) that's popular, not fantasy. Plenty of fantasy games that tried to be more faithful to the genre (or at least some subset of the genre) have gone down the tubes. D&D provides a simple, efficient formula for assigning roles to individuals and objectives to the group. It's not perfect, but it's expedient and that's ultimately what makes it work.
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Orius
Unrepentant DM Supremacist
Corinth said:
Are you going for the name recognition angle? Because I was going to bring it up anyway.
As Dancey explains in the interview, D&D has the greatest name recognition in the entire industry. Non-gamers likely haven't heard of CoC, GURPS, RIFTS, Shadowrun, Traveller, Gamma World, or any of the other really big RPG settings out there. Star Wars is known primarily as a series of 5 movies, and some people might have heard of V:tM, but probably not the rest of the WoD. But to put it bluntly, very few "mundanes" have never heard of D&D, whether good or bad. Like Dancey says, D&D overshadows all the others and by a very large degree.
G'day
Perhaps I'm atypical, but I wouldn't say that fantasy quite dominated by RP experience. I've GMed at least as much SF, so when you throw in modern adventure, historical adventure, horror, and superheroes RP fantasy must would out well less than half.
As for why fantasy is as popular as it is, I think this has to do with the succeess of fantasy publishers in establishing strong genre conventions. People avoid real-world settings because they are afraid that what they make up or assume will violate the SoD of other players who know stuff about the real world. Which leaves fantasy and SF as allowing a cleaner slate for people's imaginative input and larger-than-life ambitions. Then as between SF and fantasy, people tend to prefer fantasy because they feel that they can get started with a minimum of orientation, whereas SF would require them to detail or discover quite a lot about the world and ithe way things work.
Regards,
Agback
Perhaps I'm atypical, but I wouldn't say that fantasy quite dominated by RP experience. I've GMed at least as much SF, so when you throw in modern adventure, historical adventure, horror, and superheroes RP fantasy must would out well less than half.
As for why fantasy is as popular as it is, I think this has to do with the succeess of fantasy publishers in establishing strong genre conventions. People avoid real-world settings because they are afraid that what they make up or assume will violate the SoD of other players who know stuff about the real world. Which leaves fantasy and SF as allowing a cleaner slate for people's imaginative input and larger-than-life ambitions. Then as between SF and fantasy, people tend to prefer fantasy because they feel that they can get started with a minimum of orientation, whereas SF would require them to detail or discover quite a lot about the world and ithe way things work.
Regards,
Agback
WayneLigon
Adventurer
Something else that occurs to me: genre is also influenced by factors that we may never be able to fathom. Why does something become popular? People tear their hair out trying to answer that question. Tens of Billions of dollars hang in the balance every day because of that question. Careers and lives have been made and ruined because of the way popularity works.rounser said:
We may never know what makes Fantasy the number one choice.
Ten years from now, it might be a different thing altogether.
Orius said:
Yes, but once a person starts to play D&D, they do have opportunities to hear about other game brands. If there was a more appealing system out there, they'd start pulling it off the shelves.
Like I said, D&D just has a solid formula. Another important design concept I only touched on before was that of rewarding success. RPG's may be more advanced than Monopoly, but players still want some basic way to measure how well they're doing, and they want to keep doing better. Most other genres--supers, science fiction, horror--don't offer much in the way of a built-in reward system, outisde of just a sense of personal accomplishment. With D&D, OTOH, a good chunk of the DMG is devoted to giving players nice shiny new toys with go-faster stripes.
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GuardianLurker
Adventurer
Teams...
Well, all of the reasons above probably apply, but for me personally, it comes down to something else entirely.
Writing adventures for teams of players. Once I move away from my D&D roots, it gets harder and harder for me to find inspiration for team adventures. I also have trouble balancing the few adventures I do find.
A large part of this is due to the length of my D&D experience (over 20 years, gah!), but another is that sci-fi and genre fiction tends to focus on the single uberadventurer, not teams. Even when their are multiple characters in the fiction, they tend to perform individual quests/tasks, not act as dedicated teams.
There are exceptions (anime, military fiction [though not espionage fiction], superheroes), and not surprisingly, it's pretty easy for me to set adventures in those genres.
Well, all of the reasons above probably apply, but for me personally, it comes down to something else entirely.
Writing adventures for teams of players. Once I move away from my D&D roots, it gets harder and harder for me to find inspiration for team adventures. I also have trouble balancing the few adventures I do find.
A large part of this is due to the length of my D&D experience (over 20 years, gah!), but another is that sci-fi and genre fiction tends to focus on the single uberadventurer, not teams. Even when their are multiple characters in the fiction, they tend to perform individual quests/tasks, not act as dedicated teams.
There are exceptions (anime, military fiction [though not espionage fiction], superheroes), and not surprisingly, it's pretty easy for me to set adventures in those genres.
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