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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 5059730" data-attributes="member: 957">I think this overstates the case.One does not need to have ever heard of Howard to immediately relate to themes based on Conan, Bran, or Solomon Kane.And one most certainly does not need to have heard of Lovecraft to find horror elements that just happen to be rooted in mythos ideas to be cool.By the same token, I know virtually nothing of Dragonball Z beyond a cultural awareness of its existence as a younger generation cartoon that involves a lot of us/them fighting.  But I'd expect to quickly recognize major archetypes in a game loosely based on Dragonball Z ideas and have no problem.  Whereas I don't think I'd relate at all to a game based strongly on the presumption that I know Dragonball Z specifics.In my personal opinion, some modern games are too hung up on the details of the current kiddie pop culture fad.  It would be absurd to claim that much of old school D&D was not directly ported from popular elements of the time.  But, maybe through pure dumb luck, the older versions don't seem to expect a knowledge of the source material.  It was literally years after I had been playing D&D that I ever even heard of Jack Vance.  Much less "Vancian" spellcasting.  But it didn't matter.  The raw materials of D&D are Tolkien in a box.  But elves and dwarves and evil overlord magi are far more ingrained in fantasy cliche than LotRs.  My older daughter enjoys playing halflings and elves and easily relates to them.  And yet she has neither read nor seen LotR.It seems that old D&D was based on the collective of fantasy ideas throughout modern history up until that point.  And, very clearly, every bit of that is still there in the most recent version of D&D.  But rather than subtley integrating the past thirty years of ideas into the game (for example, Darth Maul is cool, suddenly D&D 3X has double bladed swords as a standard troupe), 4E has taken that base structure and really poured a heavy coat of the last ten years of fantasy fad all over the top.</blockquote>

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