D&D General Why the resistance to D&D being a game?

[Thomas Shey]

There definitely are people who genuinely feel that way, but I think those people are mostly playing FKR rather than D&D 5e.

There's a lot of it apparently in the OSR at least. And I'd have to assume the OSR returnees.

(As I noted, its not exactly unknown outside the D&D sphere either, far as that goes).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I usually do ok with TotM with just the general feeling of the rough positions. It's almost like someone else is keeping track for me inside my head since I know what is closest to what and who is surrounding who - but I don't have any picture of the map or other characters.

I can't even keep track of that. Its bad enough as a player, and pretty much an impossible thing as a GM.

 

[FrogReaver]

D&D is a game. So why do people object to it being treated like a game?

I’ve read the whole thread and thought a bit on this. I don’t understand what you believe is required to treat d&d like a game that others object to?

 

[Cadence]

I can't even keep track of that. Its bad enough as a player, and pretty much an impossible thing as a GM.

I never put it together until tonight what others actually saw in TotM (I had all the separate facts, just didn't connect them). Googling around , apparently for some people who can visualize, miniatures actually throw them off.

I made a poll about it:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-do-you-see-in-your-head-in-totm.699565/

 

[pemerton]

I'm prepared to assert that, to a certain extent, it is about a sense of exclusive ownership.

<snip>

I just don't think we can get from "having a set of gameplay preferences with respect to playing D&D" to "continually arguing against other people with different gameplay preferences getting more of what they want out of D&D" without a need or desire to have a sense of exclusive ownership over the game.

I've enjoyed your posts in this thread. In this post, I want to suggest an additional consideration that relates to some of what you've been saying, and also to @overgeeked's OP.

To start, an example of "modularity" in a RPG, drawn from 4e D&D.

The core 4e D&D rulebooks set out the "tiers of play". This is an idea about the sort of fiction that is appropriate to PCs of different levels. Roughly, at low-to-mid levels PCs do heroic save-the-villagers and rescue-the-prisoners sort of stuff, and fight Kobolds, Orcs, Ogres and the like. At what the game used to call name levels, which 4e called Paragon, PCs save kingdoms, fight Drow and Illithids and demons and giants, and don't really need to worry about where their next meal is coming from. And then at epic tier, PCs travel the cosmos, deal with and sometimes fight Gods, seal the Abyss, restore the Lattice of Heaven, etc. The Monster Manual is written to support these tiers of play, in so far as it assigns appropriate levels to the appropriate sorts of creatures and NPCs.

The Neverwinter supplement mixes this up: it offers new monster stats, which are designed to compress the story of the first two tiers of play (as per the core books) into the first 10 levels - so it gives us Drow, Ilithids etc which are statted out differently - at lower level - than in the core MM, and offers scenarios in which PCs who are mechanically of the lowest tier engage in adventures that, in story terms, belong to the Paragon tier.

(I would say that 4e Dark Sun mixes up in the opposite direction, stretching the fiction of Paragon tier into the mechanical zone of epic tier; but the books is less over about this, and because the execution of this is probably a bit more challenging I'm not as sure that it fully succeeds.)

This modularity requires recognising that what level a Drow is, or a lich, or an Illithid, etc, and how one stats it up, is to some extent arbitrary. It's just a gameplay device. Likewise on the player side of things: whether my fighter who can (to use 4e language) Shift the Battlefield (1x/day solid damage AoE with forced movement) or (to use 5e languuge) perform 3 attacks in a round is a village saver (like Robin Hood) or a kingdom saver (like Achilles) is to some extent arbitrary. Again, it's just a gameplay device.

But that aspect of the 4e approach (and the other aspects of 4e that underlie it, like the system of minion vs standard creature statblocks) was wildly controversial. There are a lot of D&D players who are insistent that the game tell them what level an Illithid really is (or how many HD it really has), how many attacks Sir Lancelot can really make in a single combat round, etc. The idea that you can just toggle these things around, to support different relationships between the mechanics of PC or NPC/creature build and the associated fiction is anathema.

The same thing applies to your suggestion about equipment. The idea that there is no truth or reality about what difference it makes if you have "shovel" written on your PC sheet under "Equipment" is anathema to some considerable chunk of D&D players. They are insistent that the game rules tell us what a shovel really is in the context of the game.

And this, I think, is the source of some of the resistance to thinking about D&D as a game.

 

[Shardstone]

Presentation is god. No more, no less.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

A game also being/creating a story, is still a game.

I honestly cannot understand the issue here. Art, can still be a game, or a game can also be art. A game can also be a performance, or have a component that is a performance.

Game, is not some 4 letter word. Look at the games we have throughout our history as a species, games ARE an art.

D&D absolutely is a game.

I don’t think anyone is bothered by that.

I only object when people act like it is just a game or even primarily a game, as that implies it isn’t any of those other things.

 

[Scribe]

I don’t think anyone is bothered by that.

I only object when people act like it is just a game or even primarily a game, as that implies it isn’t any of those other things.

Yeah it can absolutely be all those things.

 

[Reynard]

Presentation is god. No more, no less.

So only perfect presenters should GM?

 

[Shardstone]

So only perfect presenters should GM?

I'm referring to why people bounce off of ttrpgs when they seem to game-like.

What an accusatory way to ask me what I meant.