Why D&D?

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Lots of good points throughout this thread.

I think market dominance cannot be discounted. When I was a kid/teen D&D was the only thing on the shelf at the comicbook/gamestore. It wasn't until years later I discovered the genius of CoC and Pendragon and they were single books tucked away on the shelf.

When I went into the local comic/games store a few years ago to check out D&D 5e it was the exact same situation except there was no sign of Pendragon. :sad:

The noted timing of D&D coinciding with the huge popularity of Tolkien can also not be underestimated (and makes the popularity of disclaiming the obvious influence by the OSR all the more ironic).

As for the game itself, the kitchensink nature of its fantasy was an actual benefit; the solid core of AC, HP for a simple combat system; the clarity of running the restrictive setting of a dungeon being a good starter for new DMs; the extensive Monster bestriary and spells/magic items and what I consider the dirty secret of D&D: its steep HP and power curve makes it an effective powerfantasy for kids, teens and adults compared to its 'grittier' fantasy competitors.

I also think the Holmes, Molvay/Cook and especially the Mentzer boxset contributed significantly to the growth and sustainabilty of D&D. I know this will make the Gygaxians gnash their teeth but if all people had was the 1e PHB and DMG I think D&D would have been in much greater danger of being eclipsed by WFRP or RQ.
 
I guess in my perfect alternate universe, supers games would have been the most popular category of RPGs. I don’t know if the murder hobo thing would have been as rampant with D&D not being #1 but we’ll never know.
 
We need a popcorn emoji... okay, since it is the Pub... a pretzel

didnt we use to have one when the Pub started, before on of the system updates? Or am I mis-remembering that?
 
I also think the Holmes, Molvay/Cook and especially the Mentzer boxset contributed significantly to the growth and sustainabilty of D&D. I know this will make the Gygaxians gnash their teeth but if all people had was the 1e PHB and DMG I think D&D would have been in much greater danger of being eclipsed by WFRP or RQ.
This is a really good point - The D&D Red Box still works as an excellent introductory gateway, and one cannot understate how well designed it was for the time.
 
This is a really good point - The D&D Red Box still works as an excellent introductory gateway, and one cannot understate how well designed it was for the time.

I recently got into an internet debate with an OSR designer who insisted the Red Box CYOA was a precursor to the 'linear' adventure design of the hated DL and 2e-era and was shit.

Putting aside the caricature of DL and 2e, that the CYOA structure existed purely to teach newbies and kids on their own how to actually play an RPG seemed to not matter. OSR orthodoxy demands that the actual purpose of that design (to teach the basics) be ignored.

Obviously the answer is to throw a single 10-year-old into an improv sandbox game based purely on random rolls, that would obviously work like a charm right?

He claimed that Keep on the Borderlands was superior because it was a mini-sandbox. Keep... has its virtues but teaching the basics of the game to a single player is not one of them.

I always found the Caves of Chaos a bit naff myself, we'd always end up spending more time fucking around at the actual Keep as the Caves were a bit of a bore.

I think The Isle of Dread was the superior starter sandbox by a significant margin.
 
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Minor nitpick: Robert Jordan and David Eddings are my go-to examples for "non-obviously influenced by D&D, class and level included" fantasy:devil:.
*Cough*Raymond E Feist*Cough*

Actually, maybe that's more along the lines of 'Obviously influenced by D&D.'
 
I think, on the whole, demihumans are just lazy human stereotypes as used in D&D, but the stereotypes themselves make it easy to build a character, cookie-cutter style.
Sure which is why I explicitly incorporated that in my Majestic Wilderlands setting. Many of the sentient races originated as human magically altered by demons into a servitor race. Dwarves, Halflings, lizardmen, centaurs, orcs, goblins, etc, etc. When the demons were imprisoned, those humans were enslaved along with the above races were free to forge their own destiny in the world.
 
*Cough*Raymond E Feist*Cough*

Actually, maybe that's more along the lines of 'Obviously influenced by D&D.'
Yup, Feist's book were set in the past of the World of Midkemia the campaign he was involved with during college.
You can still get Midkemia products. His last Midkemia novel ended with the events that shaped the landscape into what it was when he played the campaign.

The Origin of Midkemia
 
I see their influences more in 60s to 70s fantasy tbh. Terry rooks is more like D&D, but the Shanara series are pretty copy paste from Tolkien in many ways too.

It's the rigid structure and Hard Magic of D&D displayed in D&D books that set them apart imo. They all have a power creep with characters. Those characters obviously have rigid classes and levels with no wiggle room, and character X will be inferior to Character Y because of obvious power levels.
Then take that to extremes... All members of species or city X are the Same. All members of Order Y are the same. You have obvious good guys and obvious bad guys with little to no chance of grey or reform. It's the D&D model...

The main character is a paragon of an archetype. The side characters are flawed but also obvious archetypes. Some may switch archetypes at the main's lead. Enemies are all monolithic with no variation, and Bad guys are over the top bad. Your species encounters will also be copy pasted from one another with the odd token deviant to guide the story. The other thing I noticed about D&D style books is that the universe itself revolves around the characters and their actions.

This is my opinion and take away from reading numerous series, however.
I mean, you could argue that all fantasy in the last 40 years has a D&D influence, and there is probably arguments for it... It's just this though. We hold D&D up as gamers, but in reality... it's just not that big of a cultural influence overall. More people will associate fantasy with earlier works like Howard and Tolkien over silly old D&D.

Feist absolutely was a gamer. He wrote the Midkemia role Playing game before he wrote his Magician or riftwar series. But Is till don't see the influence of D&D in his work. Influence of a gamer, sure, but not D&D specifically.
 
It's not fair to refer to anything which is a preference as lazy.
It's not lazy to put your own take on what you enjoy... doing otherwise is a disservice to your intention.
Saying that using something is lazy is actually just a condescending way to tell people that they should do things like you prefer instead. I don't agree it is a valid or genuine argument to make to anyone.
 
I hadn't considered the dungeon crawl as being a good entry point for new gamers. I do remember being utterly confused when my friend tried to explain to me that D&D was like a board game without a board. "Oh, like charades? Or Yahtzee?" Like a lot of groups, we diligently kept maps of dungeons as we explored them, which served as our 'board'.

But I'm not convinced that was responsible for D&D's sustained success. In the 70s and 80s, it was a good mechanism for introducing players into the game... both wargammers and complete newbies alike. But by the 90s, playing styles had evolved and tastes in media had changed. There was a 'boom' in Vampire fiction and movies, Peter Jackson's LotR was still years away and Vampire the Masquerade (at least in my area) was pretty big. A lot of D&Ders switched to Magic, gutting a lot of roleplaying clubs of their traditional members, while the Goths moved in. No one was playing D&D except for a few old neck-beards. If you weren't into V:tM, you maybe played Call of Cthulhu while the anime guys tended to favour Palladium games and the sci-fi geeks played Star Wars. Again, that was in my neck of the woods, others may have different stories.

Obviously, as history shows, Wizards stepped in and ultimately saved TSR. But by that point,

(a) the hobby was well established, people in that particular sphere knew what RPGs were, and dedicated game shops were far more common. TSR's superior distribution became less of an advantage

(b) existing players had a chance to try different games and enjoy them.

By the mid- to late-90s, D&D was and at one of it's lowest points and yet it still didn't get toppled.

A lot of the explanations in this thread relate back to D&D's earlier years, but not the 90s. I wonder whether Baldur's Gate had a defining impact of some kind? By the time Baldur's Gate was released in 1998/1999, my group was well and truly through with D&D. But we all played the heck out of BG and the various sequels and spin-offs.
 
I recently got into an internet debate with an OSR designer who insisted the Red Box CYOA was a precursor to the 'linear' adventure design of the hated DL and 2e-era and was shit.

Sounds ike a fun designer who makes really great stuff

original.gif
 
I think it’s fine that somebody likes the Moldvay B/X or earlier sets for its more matter of fact presentation but it’s a known thing that CYOA books were a gateway into RPGs for hundreds of thousands of players. Mentzer was no fool and knew what he was doing. One of the many reasons why the Red Box is the best selling RPG product of all-time (5e PHB may have beaten it but I would want to see proof).
 
It's not fair to refer to anything which is a preference as lazy.
It's not lazy to put your own take on what you enjoy... doing otherwise is a disservice to your intention.
Saying that using something is lazy is actually just a condescending way to tell people that they should do things like you prefer instead. I don't agree it is a valid or genuine argument to make to anyone.
Well, 'short-hand' then. I think that basically most gamers, and fantasy enthusiasts, understand the stereotypes of each of the Tolkienesque Demihumans, and can play them accordingly without need of heavy research or the like. That isn’t, for me, an issue of preference - I’m perfectly happy playing D&D that way, although for a fantasy setting used in a novel or in a game bought to achieve some depth, then I probably wouldn’t want to include them as a trope. I’d criticise Castle Falkenstein as an example of a preferred setting for me, that I thought shouldn’t have included Tolkienesque Dwarves.
 
Lots of good points throughout this thread.

I think market dominance cannot be discounted. When I was a kid/teen D&D was the only thing on the shelf at the comicbook/gamestore. It wasn't until years later I discovered the genius of CoC and Pendragon and they were single books tucked away on the shelf.

When I went into the local comic/games store a few years ago to check out D&D 5e it was the exact same situation except there was no sign of Pendragon. :sad:

The noted timing of D&D coinciding with the huge popularity of Tolkien can also not be underestimated (and makes the popularity of disclaiming the obvious influence by the OSR all the more ironic).

As for the game itself, the kitchensink nature of its fantasy was an actual benefit; the solid core of AC, HP for a simple combat system; the clarity of running the restrictive setting of a dungeon being a good starter for new DMs; the extensive Monster bestriary and spells/magic items and what I consider the dirty secret of D&D: its steep HP and power curve makes it an effective powerfantasy for kids, teens and adults compared to its 'grittier' fantasy competitors.

I also think the Holmes, Molvay/Cook and especially the Mentzer boxset contributed significantly to the growth and sustainabilty of D&D. I know this will make the Gygaxians gnash their teeth but if all people had was the 1e PHB and DMG I think D&D would have been in much greater danger of being eclipsed by WFRP or RQ.
I agree with pretty much every word you just wrote here :thumbsup:
 
D&D is just to RPGs what Saturday Night Live is to TV sketch comedy.

Reminds me of Chris Rock's great monologue for one of their anniversary specials where he kept riffing on how SNL was only really good 'for the first 4 years.'

Actually that could almost be the motto for some of the OSR as well. :eat:
 
*Cough*Raymond E Feist*Cough*

Actually, maybe that's more along the lines of 'Obviously influenced by D&D.'
Well, when someone writes a fantasy novel based on the events of his campaign, the influence of D&D is kinda obvious:smile:.

And unsurprisingly, robertsconley robertsconley has already provided us with links, too:wink:!
 
Sounds ike a fun designer who makes really great stuff

original.gif

Actually, ironically, I think he does create great stuff. But I find that's true across the OSR: great creativity, great thinking on games, not so much.

Recently on Twitter there was a bit of a debate about why there isn't really good rpg criticism. I would say that this designer's attempts at criticism are a good example of the problems in the OSR in that area.

As we've discussed here in terms of 'theory' and game design the OSR has reached a consensus and been spinning its wheels for a long time now in that area.

A lot of OSR 'criticism' now boils down to looking at an adventure and making sure it checks the OSR orthodox boxes in terms of design (sandbox/pointcrawl/hexcrawl), premise (non-heroic) and layout.

Now that has the advantage of having some clear standards and in general I agree with most of those design ideas...for D&D.

But when they look at something that is from a different kind of game, say CoC or a more narrative rpg, they try to fit the game into the OSR holes and when it doesn't fit declare it 'shit.' They mistake their design goals as the goals by which all rpgs are to be measured.

Attempts at OSR criticism therefore often fall into what Paul Mason identified as the taxonomy 'trap' where one defines different playstyles or games as inferior.

I think the issue is that contra what many may claim designers are not neccessarily the best at being critics. One being that a real critic needs 'critical' distance for all sorts of reasons but also because the skill of a critic and a designer/artist are distinct as the forms (a game vs. a critical essay) are different.

There have been some great writers and filmmakers and game designers who were also great critics but they (e.g. Godard, Truffaut, Scorsese, Costikyan, Laws, Mason; among writers only the sf writers Adam Roberts, Thomas Disch and Delany come to mind) are the exception not the rule.
 
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Well, 'short-hand' then. I think that basically most gamers, and fantasy enthusiasts, understand the stereotypes of each of the Tolkienesque Demihumans, and can play them accordingly without need of heavy research or the like. That isn’t, for me, an issue of preference - I’m perfectly happy playing D&D that way, although for a fantasy setting used in a novel or in a game bought to achieve some depth, then I probably wouldn’t want to include them as a trope. I’d criticise Castle Falkenstein as an example of a preferred setting for me, that I thought shouldn’t have included Tolkienesque Dwarves.

During my time in the SCA I had a viking persona. It was heavily criticized because vikings were considered easy... tunic dress/t tunic, wool pants, act like a drunken asshole...
So, naturally, the Machiavellian and the Tudors and whatnots stuck their noses up at the viking reenactors.

HOWEVER the group here has done far far far more research into the proper viking society than all those other groups combined. So at the end of the day we had a very true to research image of a proper viking culture. For example. Vikings did no go around bare chested with loose fur coverings while wantonly slaughtering everyone and everything.
Viking was something that they did, not something they were. Fur was used in the form of reindeer jackets where the fur faced inside towards a lining. Things like that.

Unfortunately, Tolkein already did much of that research on his races, so there is little room for improvement, just change.
So, the same can be true for any fantasy race that has roots in reality. Dwarves... absolutely. Were they all little drunken Scottish brawlers... absolutely not. So it really does matter what you do with what you use... not if you use it at all.Sometimes the exploration of a thing leads to something original too.
 
Well, when someone writes a fantasy novel based on the events of his campaign, the influence of D&D is kinda obvious:smile:.

And unsurprisingly, robertsconley robertsconley has already provided us with links, too:wink:!
In his case, I see that as coincidence and not causality. He was a Gamer, but he wasn't only a gamer. his stuff had a lot more depth than a typical D&D novel and was more reminiscent of typical fantasy than typical D&D love letters.
 
In his case, I see that as coincidence and not causality. He was a Gamer, but he wasn't only a gamer. his stuff had a lot more depth than a typical D&D novel and was more reminiscent of typical fantasy than typical D&D love letters.
Sure, but it was influenced by events in the campaign, most characters fit easily into classes, and so on. I call that "obvious influence", and I doubt Feist himself would have tried to deny it.
He did the best he could do with the above elements, and please note that I'm not saying his books are worse because of it:thumbsup:!

Then again, he notes that "they've mostly replaced the rules with their own houserules", and we don't know how much of D&D remained after that, but some influence is still "obvious", which is what I was claiming:shade:.
For the same reason I would add Vlad Taltos and Traxas to the list of "obviously influenced" books. Whether I like or dislike them (one of them more than the other) has no bearing upon that.
 
Sure, but it was influenced by events in the campaign, most characters fit easily into classes, and so on. I call that "obvious influence", and I doubt Feist himself would have tried to deny it.
He did the best he could do with the above elements, and please note that I'm not saying his books are worse because of it:thumbsup:!

Then again, he notes that "they've mostly replaced the rules with their own houserules", and we don't know how much of D&D remained after that, but some influence is still "obvious", which is what I was claiming:shade:.
For the same reason I would add Vlad Taltos and Traxas to the list of "obviously influenced" books. Whether I like or dislike them (one of them more than the other) has no bearing upon that.
Okay, fair enough. I see what you are getting at.
I think this topic by nature is highly subjective, but I can agree with you here. :smile:
 
I'm trying to remember the first 'fantasy' I was aware of. Probably fairy tales, children's books, Disney movies... TV show reruns like Bewitched and I Dream Of Jeannie.
The real fantasy on I Dream Of Jeannie is that Larry Hagman somehow resisted the charms Barbara Eden.
 
I'm trying to remember the first 'fantasy' I was aware of. Probably fairy tales, children's books, Disney movies... TV show reruns like Bewitched and I Dream Of Jeannie.
The real fantasy on I Dream Of Jeannie is that Larry Hagman somehow resisted the charms Barbara Eden.
For TV and movies... fraggle Rock piqued my interest when I was a little kid, beast Master and Krull sealed it. I was on a freefall into fantasy ever since.
For books... grade 3, The Gammage Cup. Man that book caught my attention like no other since.
My cousin loaned me Forgotten realms Spellfire in Grade 4, and I read the entirety of published Pern books in Grade 5. Since then... I have lost count but its been a great ride. My mom and big brother are sci fi geeks. My dad, while a true hardcore political conservative still fiercely believed in aliens and conspiracy theories. So suffice it to say... I was raised into geek culture.
 
Also... This!




So weird seeing that in English. In Ontario, early 80s, that was one of the cartoons on Sunday morning, which was always the French version of Saturday morning cartoons, usually meaning a bunch of really weird European stuff I couldn't understand but would watch anyways because, well, cartoons I guess?
 
In terms of D&D and fantasy, I think D&D did have a tremendous influence in the 80s on the more commercial/neo-pulp YA and 'adult' end of fantasy writing.

But there's another stream of fantasy writing led by Gene Wolfe, Le Guin, Karl Earl Wagner, Alan Garner, Lloyd Alexander, Sullivan, White, Bellairs, Susan Cooper that was continued by Robin McKinley, Patricia McKillip, Geoff Ryan, Peter Dickinson and others who were of a generation little touched by D&D in their writing from what I can see.

I also think Leiber and Vance left significant marks on the genre (Leiber is one of the most universally praised fantasy authors you can find) that one may mistake for D&D.

Later I think D&D would have a more overt influence on more literary fantasy writers like R. Scott Baker and perhaps (I suspect only) Steve Erickson, Glen Cook, Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, etc. Some of them seem to be trying to combine the D&D influence with a more purely literary fantasy standard and tradition.
 
Just spitballin' here...

I tend to think of the fantasy authors whose works originated in the 1960s and 1970s (even earlier) as having influenced D&D, as many of them are listed in the D&D Appendix. Tolkien, Howard, Vance, Leiber, Moorcock, Le Guin, Donaldson, McCaffrey, Zimmer-Bradley, etc

I guess some of the authors who wrote fantasy in the 1980s were then in turn influenced by D&D, although I'm not sure if this group is as large as some people feel, but the influences seemed to be there to some extent, lesser or greater.
I guess this will be where the likes of Brooks, Feist, Weiss & Hickman, Jordan, Eddings, etc fit in. There also remained many who kept on a different path as well, although I suspect many of them had been writing in the 1970s as well.

I think by the late 1990s onwards, many fantasy were probably influenced by some of the concepts of the fantasy rpg zeitgeist (but not specifically D&D), and many may not have been influenced by it at all. I'm thinking Cornwall, Gemmell, Erickson, Mieville, Abercrombie, Martin, etc
 
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I'm not convinced that was responsible for D&D's sustained success. In the 70s and 80s, it was a good mechanism for introducing players into the game... both wargammers and complete newbies alike. But by the 90s, playing styles had evolved and tastes in media had changed.
Well, I would say the 90s are possibly D&D’s lowest ebb so far. Interest amongst establish players was dropping, though D&D remained an easy game to get into, which means a new source of players to counter the attrition of people moving in to another game.

This was perhaps the time when, briefly, it looked like Vampire might indeed topple D&D as the king of the hill. But then WotC bought the brand and managed to resurrect it with 3e. If that hadn’t been successful, then D&D would have been consigned to the graveyard of dead games, with staunch fans, no doubt, but no new product. Given that 3e ultimately birthed the OGL which kicked of the OSR and other retro clone initiatives who can say where we would be today?

Another powerful aspect of D&D is the baked-in ‘team sports’ element. Niche protection means that a group can form and have distinct and valuable things to contribute to a shared goal. I think that is far from universal in RPGs, though I am not sure I would go as far as saying it is ‘rare’. By contrast, I would say games like Vampire often feature intra-party conflict (as does Ars Magica, in my experience). Games like Call of Cthulhu seem to lack distinct roles for characters (beyond the academic / investigator split which seems common). I think this makes it easier for people to grok D&D.
 
I think market dominance cannot be discounted. When I was a kid/teen D&D was the only thing on the shelf at the comicbook/gamestore. It wasn't until years later I discovered the genius of CoC and Pendragon and they were single books tucked away on the shelf.

More specifically (I used to be in the book trade) distribution dominance. D&D were very good at getting their books into mainstream bookstores over here, rather than just hobby stores. Interestingly, I didn't see that again until the aforementioned Vampire the Masquerade. In a town with no games store, I was still able to pick them up at non traditional gaming outlets like Joseph's Toy Store. https://www.sunderlandecho.com/news/toy-shop-which-made-your-childhood-extra-special-359566

(Really sad to see that Joseph's have closed. Haven't thought about the place for years).
 
I think I got most of my White Wolf books from Waldonbooks and B Dalton at the malls.
 
Tunnels and Trolls could have been a good contender had the spell names not been open to being called silly and childish that combined with the simplified rules made it easy to dismiss as a lesser game.
I don’t know what the fuck people are thinking when they make their game a joke. Paranoia and Hackmaster are one thing, they’re designed as parodies. The joke crap was one of the reasons I flushed T&T after one flip through in 1985. It’s not a board game. I’m supposed to be pretending to be a character in a setting that is a comedy skit. No thanks.

That’s what held back RuneQuest. Just imagine. You are paying to put your ads in Dragon Magazine and the thing you decide to lead with artwise are the Ducks and Walktopus. What.the.Literal.Fuck. In 2010 pitching MRQII, one of the players referred to RuneQuest as “that duck game”.
 
I don’t know what the fuck people are thinking when they make their game a joke. Paranoia and Hackmaster are one thing, they’re designed as parodies. The joke crap was one of the reasons I flushed T&T after one flip through in 1985. It’s not a board game. I’m supposed to be pretending to be a character in a setting that is a comedy skit. No thanks.
Perhaps they find it fun.
 
Perhaps they find it fun.
Well, obviously, but T&T isn’t really a parody or satire game. Whimsy and humor are one thing, Full.Xanth is another. Who is going to continually run a joke game over weeks, months, years. Not many. They’re going to be side games, something to do for fun every once in a while.

T&T set itself up to be a second tier game. By making people think Glorantha was that way with their ads, a lot of people thought RuneQuest was too.

It’s just a shame, because they didn’t have to be.
 
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