Why the Game Exists

[wedgeski]

The game exists as a diversion, entertainment, fun, a way to make its creators money. All of the usual things. In the process, it adopts certain assumptions, but it doesn't exist to promote them. It's not polemic, but it can't help but advocate certain things.

Objective evil? We kill stuff because it's bad, we don't agonize over every choice... or at least, we're given an out if we want it. If you don't want disintegrating a black dragon to be murder, it doesn't have to be. It's okay.

Humano-centric world view? Well, aesthetically, no, humans don't have to be in your campaign at all. But essentially like you say all races are just figments of a human being's imagination, and therefore by definition a reflection of humanity. You can't get away from it. Roleplaying is an *excellent* way to explore the human psyche.

 

[jokamachi]

It's all about friends.

 

[Barastrondo]

The game exists to be played. It requires players to give it form and function. And any implanted ideals are worthless if the players reject them and substitute their own (as they often do, and as they should). You can decide that the game is fundamentally about humans, but then a bunch of players decide that an all-dwarf game would be fun. Or you can say that gods exist for the purpose of serving a mechanical function, and the players build an elaborate, Sepulchrave-ish construction of philosophy and metaphysical debate.

You can describe the ideals of a game as you perceive them however you like, but that will tell me a lot less about how it's played than if you were to tell me about what the ideals of your group are and why they're playing RPGs in the first place.

 

[haakon1]

I think Gygax created it as a game of medieval fantasy pulp, which I think fits closer to a "certain ideal". The Tolkienesque good and evil stuff is not precisely what he had in mind, but I don't think he objected much. And certainly, from what I've heard him say here, he was no moral relativist, either in game or in real life.

But the game has always had a "woohoo" anything goes streak to it too, and I think perhaps that's more pronounced in how WOTC thinks of it now. That probably makes commercial sense, at least in the short term -- I think a "woohoo party of cantina-races with the newest classes" group would like and need new crunch (new races, new classes, new rules in general) a lot more than "medieval fantasy grognard" types such as myself.

3.5e PHB + DMG +MM + Greyhawk + a few supplements + ton of adventures is all I have and all I need, so I wasn't too lucrative a customer for WOTC, I suppose.

 

[Jack7]

"Golden Wyvern Adepts," "tiefling tails" and "half-orc armpit hair."

I don't know why exactly but the way you said that made me laugh.

But the game has always had a "woohoo" anything goes streak to it too

I think that there is a certain truth in that observation. To me the game at base is a game about certain ideals, but the means of expression of those ideals can have a lot of variation in the overlay (the exact forms this takes). I also think that this is why the game was first popular, because you could take it and so easily "mix forms" so to speak that it was Virtual Reality of the Imagination that the end-user could write for himself. In short it was the first "programmable game of the imagination."

And any implanted ideals are worthless if the players reject them and substitute their own (as they often do, and as they should). You can decide that the game is fundamentally about humans, but then a bunch of players decide that an all-dwarf game would be fun. Or you can say that gods exist for the purpose of serving a mechanical function, and the players build an elaborate, Sepulchrave-ish construction of philosophy and metaphysical debate.

That's an interesting observation as well.

 

[jdrakeh]

The Tolkienesque good and evil stuff is not precisely what he had in mind, but I don't think he objected much.

I know Gary said that in later years but the inclusion of specific named races from Tolkien's novels in the original edition of D&D seem to contradict it. Treants? Check. Hobbits? Check. And in Chainmail, Heroes even have a chance to one-hit kill dragons with an arrow (ala Smaug). Most of that stuff in D&D can be directly linked to Tolkien and, it seems, to Greyhawk.

On the other hand, Blackmoor has spaceships, frogmen, tech-priests, and other overtly non-Tolkien elements more in common with the pulpy sci-fantasy of authors like Vance and Lin Carter. Almost all of D&D's 'woo-hoo' features and science fantasy elements seem to have been introduced by Dave Arneson and confined to specifically the Blackmoor campaign.

I think that this is also a pretty good example of how, at its core, the basic D&D system can accommodate two (or more) entirely different styles of play very well. All it takes is a little modification.

 

[Evil DieM]

The game exists so that the feral trolls won't go hungry. I mean, what are they going to eat if they don't get their regular helpings of foolish adventurers? Do you know how useless vegetarian trolls are to anybody?

Oh, and it also makes the minions feel useful for a change. For them, there is no higher purpose than to become one's fodder.