# "HF" vs. "S&S" gaming: the underlying reason of conflict and change in D&D



## Zulgyan (Jun 8, 2009)

This article is a repost from my blog: Zeta Orionis

*"High Fantasy" vs. "Sword & Sorcery" gaming: the underlying reason of conflict and change in D&D*

*OPEN AND PUBLIC FIRST DRAFT*

When I was in the process of discovering old-school, there were a couple of forum discussions that had a key role in the deconstruction of my gaming paradigms, and the slow building of a new way of approaching D&D that made me comprehend and enjoy it better. I got them bookmarked and still go back to them from time to time, when I need to clarify some things for myself. 

Many of this discussions predate the old-school renaissance. There was no Labyrinth Lord, no Sword&Wizardry, no Fight On!. The OD&D Discussion forum did not exist (I believe it had an important role in the renaissance), the blog-sphere was very small, OSRIC was just beginning, and so many things we have today where just not there. I believe that this discussions where quite relevant for the understanding of the game to many, but I'll never really know - they where at least very important *for me.* 

Here they are. They are somewhat long. If you want to read them, prepare yourself for a very thought provoking experience. There is a lot you can agree and disagree on, but they are really fascinating discussions. 

Swords & Sensibility: the evolution of the tone of D&D.

Inspirations for D&D setting past and present.

Swords & Sorcery in a Nutshell

Picaro and the "Story" of D&D

*What follows in this blog post will be easier to understand if you have read the discussions linked:*

You might be thinking "hey, but this discussions are more about swords & sorcery than old-school itself!". Yes, indeed they are. But what happened to me is that:

*Once I understood sword & sorcery as applied to gaming, I began to understand so many things old-school D&D is so often criticized for.*

*A non exhaustive list:*
1) Higher degree of player skill involved in survival.
2) Higher degree of luck involved in survival. 
3) Save or die effects (a big one). 
4) Random encounters.
5) Lack of automatically balanced challenges (another big one). 
6) Powerful, impartial, unforgiving DMs. 
7) Lack of "story", as something mostly pre-planned to play itself. 
8) Lack of "adventure paths" or "sagas". 
9) Possibility of playing any alignment, at any time and moment. 
10) Lack of pre-planned rewards everyone should automatically obtain. 

All of which boil down to: Lack of player entitlement.

In "High Fantasy" gaming, as opposed to" Sword & Sorcery" gaming, the PCs, the good guys, are meant to win on the sole reason they are the good-guys, and good should always triumph. If it were to be defeated, it's defeat should be meaningful, it should be a contribution to the ultimate end: the victory over evil. The game starts with the premise that good will finally triumph over evil, maybe after much suffering and loss, but that is the main theme guiding and controlling all what is happening and should happen. 

In sword & sorcery gaming, nothing of that is true. Success is not based upon your goodness, higher morals, or desire of the well being of the world. In sword & sorcery gaming success is based solely on luck, access to resources and sheer ability. Even if your character is good, or the protagonist, that gives him no entitlement whatsoever to success, or to "special treatment". 

Without really noticing it, *many people don't want to play sword & sorcery gaming*. What they want, is to *play a story* about good winning the epic battle against evil. This is what you see many people striving for. It's not that explicit or evident, but it's there. But the true is that, if you want to play *High Fantasy with D&D*, specially old-school D&D, the game *WILL FAIL YOU. *

"How can my character die to the poison of randomly rolled spider?".

"I needed to fudge the dice in order to save the story".

"Every hero should have the appropriate magic items".

"By the moment they reach level 12, I plan the mayor confrontation with their nemesis - so I need them to survive at least until that point, it's the story".

"A character should never die to the random encounter or to mere mooks, his death should be fighting something significant".

"I don't want the DM to ruin my character, he is supposed to mean something, he is the hero".

The *conflict between this two genres* has been, in my humble opinion, a *main factor* driving change thought the history of D&D. It's certainly not the only one, and it might be it's most unperceived, but I really believe it plays an *underlying mayor role*. In many flaming edition wars and D&D hate over the net, *what's really in discussion* is what type of game people want to have: a game of High Fantasy vs. a game of Sword & Sorcery. I think many people don't realize this. Or if they do, they don't put it out so explicitly. 

The main reason many people don't like the older versions of the D&D game, it's because its a game of *sword & sorcery* as opposed to a game of high fantasy. But many people don't realize this is the main reason for their dislike. As they think D&D should satisfy their High Fantasy pretensions, and it fails at it, they think the game is *badly designed. *

In the older versions of D&D, your alignment, or your position as a player/protagonists: "Gave you no entitlement, or right to anything. *No outside support* to achieve your objectives. The only one you could rely on was* yourself.*

And in that way, the *spirit *of sword & sorcery was brilliantly and elegantly captured in D&D.

*High Fantasy Troupes in D&D:*
D&D included from it's beginning troupes that are more common to High Fantasy literature than to Sword & Sorcery literature: elves, dwarfs, hobbits, some of the evil humanoids, unicorns, good dragons, etc.

Sometimes it is believed that playing D&D in the spirit of sword & sorcery means removing the demi-humans out of D&D "because they don't appear in the sword & sorcery novels". I think that is not correct. Sword & Sorcery is a concept HIGHER than the novels in which it concretes itself. What's important is not if the novel has elves, hobbits, or none of those. If it has clerics or not. What's important is the underlying worldview and moral system. 

High Fantasy literature is based on a Christian worldview. According to Christianity, good will finally triumph over evil. God intervenes in history to carry out his plan of salvation. Even more: to many Christian denominations, evil has already been defeated by Jesus Christ on the Cross. 

Sword & Sorcery literature is based on an Atheist worldview. So there is no god to take care of you. No god to be the parameter and judge of morality. No higher force of good that will finally triumph over evil. Humanity is alone. So it's all about power and survival.

So... what makes your D&D a game of High Fantasy or Sword & Sorcery, is *not *if you play with elves, dwarfs, hobbits or clerics. It's about the underlying worldview and moral system of the game setting. The high fantasy troupes are then just cosmetic. What's important is the *spirit *on which the game is played. They rest are *just superficial elements. *

Indeed, you could play d20 Conan in a High Fantasy spirit. The Howardian troupes is not what makes the game sword & sorcery. It's the spirit in which the game is played. 

The few High Fantasy troupes that made their way into D&D, might have been the main source of confusion as to which genre the game was trying to emulate. People expected the game to work like a High Fantasy novel, and it utterly fails at it. 

The game is not badly designed. It is simply *not designed* for High Fantasy gaming. 

The game is designed for sword & sorcery. 

*History of the D&D game under this analytical approach:*
From OD&D to AD&D 1E the game is self-consciously a sword & sorcery game. The cosmetic inclusion of some High Fantasy troupes might be the source of confusion to some, but the game presents itself as sword and sorcery. 

2E wants to be High Fantasy, but it does not have the mechanical support to achieve it. There are nearly no elements of player entitlement. They game fails to achieve it's premise. This is the main reason for the spawning of some many alternatives to D&D, that want to achieve High Fantasy with the mechanical support D&D does not have.  Those games focus on "getting the story right". 

3E wants to go back to it's sword & sorcery roots. But the inclusion of some elements brings some confusion. The majority of fans, many without noticing it, want a game about High Fantasy. THIS is the major underlying source of conflict in all edition wars. High Fantasy elements start creeping into the game, either explicitly in the books, or by the generalized idea of how it is supposed to be played.

4E has more High Fantasy game elements ingrained into the system. But it still has some of the incoherency of 2E and 3E. 

*Old-school and New-school. Concepts that don't work to understand the differences in the game:*
Looking into the future. Could we abandon the use of old-school and new-school as the way of separating the different ways of playing D&D?

Sword & Sorcery D&D vs. High Fantasy D&D would be, IMO, a much better model to understand the differences on how the game is supposed to work.

Ascending armour class, unified XP, etc. are matters that are really secondary in the discussion. What's most important is the SPIRIT in which the game is played

Rules light vs. rules heavy, particular approaches to certain aspects of the rules (AC vs. AAC), are different discussions , and the differentiation should be made.

Old-school and new-school are a mess of ideas and different concepts unnecessarily put together. We need to separate and re categorize the issues and subjects of discussion. Old-school vs. new-school has proven not to work.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 8, 2009)

Some comments I posted on my blog that can help to clarify some points:



> As a disclaimer: I am a Christian. I just find an Atheistic world more fun for gaming.
> 
> Gods in D&D are just super-powerful begins. But they fight each other to control the world, not to redeem it. And they are not the responsible for the existence of the universe.
> 
> This is the sword&sorcery world view.






> Ok, maybe not atheistic. If there is a God in sword&sorcery, it is unlike the Christian God. The sword&sorcery god has left the world alone.




*Should S&S gaming be rules light?*


> Not necessarily. You could have a very complicated and rules heavy system to determine the hit of an arrow. One that could take into account wind direction and speed, quality of the arrow, very detailed armour rules, etc.
> 
> The weight of the rule is not what's key. What's key is that the system gives you no "special treatment" or "plot privileges" for being the good guy, or the protagonist






> S&S is not necessarily gritty/realistic - that's a concretion in most of it's novels. But it can be a high powered, supers game. What's important is the underlying worldview, moral system, and means of success (skill vs. being the good guy).
> 
> I think S&S, IMO, does not work well with a scripted/story path approach. The DM intervening in the story is like the Christian God intervening in history, and that is antithetical with the atheist S&S world view in which history is completely random or the mere story of power struggles between men.






> I think there is no need to apply any of the styles to the extreme. You can go towards one of the two directions, with some small elements of the other. But both in the total extreme are near unplayable


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## The Thayan Menace (Jun 8, 2009)

*RE: Christians vs. Atheists*

Good stuff, my friend.

However, your use of religious references (despite their accuracy) will probably get this thread locked.

-Samir (TM)


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## Aus_Snow (Jun 8, 2009)

I totally disagree.

There are few fantasy RPGs that are _less_ well-suited to S&S roleplaying than D&D. Yes, I mean any edition. Every edition, even.

edit --- . . . without house-ruling them half to death, cutting off 2/3 of available levels, or other such extremely drastic measures.


Anyway, D&D is certainly very much a high fantasy RPG. Sure, slightly more nowadays (i.e., 4e) than some time ago, but still. This is not a condemnation - it's what D&D does well! This should be celebrated, not denied or whatever.


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## JeffB (Jun 8, 2009)

Nice post and generally I agree with you. The last 2 versions of the game are influenced by very different source material from outside the game (i.e. movies, novels, TV, animation, etc).  

Peronsally I'm all for the S&S and when I was running 4E, my games leaned back to the S&S side of things- I've never believed in "player entitlement to winning". I mad thngs tough, I made them rely on player skill just as much as character skill, and they got wiped out a couple of times. Oh well- thats life in a harsh D&D world- grab a new character sheet


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## M.L. Martin (Jun 8, 2009)

This sounds about right--and I say that as someone whose sympathies are overwhelmingly on the 'high fantasy' side, and who has determined that whatever the 'old school' movement is, it is in flavor and thematics generally the opposite of what I want.

It's no wonder that my favorite iteration of d20 to date is Star Wars Saga Edition--Star Wars is pretty clearly high fantasy with space opera trappings, and SWSE is a very good adaptation of d20 to that feel.


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## M.L. Martin (Jun 8, 2009)

Aus_Snow said:


> I totally disagree.
> 
> There are few fantasy RPGs that are _less_ well-suited to S&S roleplaying than D&D. Yes, I mean any edition. Every edition, even.
> 
> ...




Hmm...trappings and 'power level' wise, maybe, but the thematics of the game, especially in 'old school', are very much "sword & sorcery"--Man alone in an uncaring or hostile universe, dependent only on his own strength or cunning, left to carve out his own place and determine meaning for him. There is no good or evil, there is only power and those who lack it, to quote (perhaps inaccurately) a character in a recent work of fantasy. 

Is D&D existentialist?


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## Starfox (Jun 8, 2009)

I'd agree, except in S&S books, the hero is a loner (possibly a duo) that never ever dies. The world can end, but the hero survives. It is in HF that people actually die - it might be meaningful, heroic sacrifices that play a role in the sagas, but main characters do die.

That's at odds with your view.


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## Aus_Snow (Jun 8, 2009)

Matthew L. Martin said:


> Man alone in an uncaring or hostile universe, dependent only on his own strength or cunning, left to carve out his own place and determine meaning for him. There is no good or evil, there is only power and those who lack it



Why then the *Cleric* (replete with numerous Christian-y effects, among other things. . . like ANTI-EVIL spells galore), as one of only *three* PC classes in the original game? So inappropriate for S&S, it's quite hilarious, reading the OP in that light. 

Why are there some distinctly _non-S&S_ (and somewhat religion-based / religion-influenced) sources listed in that reading material list so often mentioned? Or are only some of those 'relevant' all of a sudden as well. . .?

It gets 'worse' _by far_ from there, but that's a start, I guess.


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## Mallus (Jun 8, 2009)

Some observations...

Equating a difference in play goals/styles with a sense of 'entitlement' isn't helpful. In fact, it's a insult (not that I'm insulted, mind you, just sayin').

If you want a game that objectively measures player skill, may I suggest a nice game of chess? 

Old-school D&D requires that players be able to think like the DM. This often gets labeled 'player skill'. It's certainly a valuable thing to have, but it's nowhere near an objective talent, such as being good at chess.

Which is to say old-school D&D is only as challenging and demanding as the person running it makes it (intentionally or not).  Because most of the task-resolution system is the DM's own judgment --which isn't a bad thing at all. 

My experience is that D&D is weird mixture of high fantasy and swords and sorcery (as you've been using the terms), regardless of edition. 

For example, lots of people I know used 1e for high fantasy campaigns, and my group's 4e game has a big, deliberate swords and sorcery feel.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 8, 2009)

I think you might be on to something here but your terminology is wrong. Old school D&D doesn't particularly resemble classic sword & sorcery fiction. I don't remember Conan dying from a poison spider bite in the first story, then being reincarnated as a dryad. Also you're very wrong about the death rate in 3e, the rules don't assume all encounters will be balanced, that's a misinterpretation, and death is quite likely even when they are. Though 3e and 4e both assume the PCs will be good guys, they don't assume they will win, or die a heroic death at the 'right time'.

d20 D&D PCs are mechanically complex, unlike earlier editions. Assumptions in rpgs have changed since the 70s, PCs are more interesting now both mechanically and in terms of back story and personality. So if they die it's a big problem, unlike in old school play. Unfortunately under the 3e rules they die quite frequently. 4e makes death less likely. But it doesn't guarantee success, so even the 4e rules don't support the telling of a story where the good guys win.

You are right to make a distinction between 'karmic gaming universes' where the good guys are certain to win, and non-karmic. But you can't really tie non-karmic to S&S, as the protagonists win in S&S just as often as the protagonists in HF, and they're still much more sympathetic than the bad guys, just not as altruistic as the HF heroes. And 3e and 4e aren't karmic by the rules, that requires GM fudging in every edition. In fact it was probably most strongly encouraged in 2e.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 8, 2009)

Hi.

Just wanted to say, "Interesting discussion".  

AFAICT, though, the S&S genre doesn't come from an athiest POV.  There are "gods" in Conan, for instance, and Solomon Kane certainly is Christian.  The gods in Newhon, like those in Greyhawk, take an active role in the world.

What S&S projects is a world in which there is not an overarching plan, sometimes because there are no gods, sometimes because there are disinterested gods, and sometimes because the gods themselves are not all-powerful, and squabble among themselves.

IMHO, anyway.

For this reason, I have to side with Aus_Snow.  If you are going to define S&S as primarily atheistic in viewpoint, then I am going to have to agree that D&D isn't a very good vehicle for S&S gaming.

If, OTOH, you define S&S as I did above, then D&D is fantastic.


RC


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## catsclaw227 (Jun 8, 2009)

I haven't read through the essays you linked to, so take my comments with that in mind.

It sounds here to me like you are redefining what Sword & Sorcery and High Fatasy are to help support your claims.  Personally, High Fantasy has little to do with Christianity, any more than Sword and Sorcery has to do with Atheism.

Conan, Elric, Fafhrd & Grey Mouser... each are icons of Sword & Sorcery literature (though Elric COULD be considered High Fantasy, as there seems to be more fantastical than grim & gritty.)  But their stories had just as many elements that made sense in 4e as elements that would only be found in OD&D games.  And each were rife with Gods.  Good ones, Evil Ones and even indifferent ones. Ones that stayed out of the affairs of mortals and ones that were actively involved.

In my opinion, your non-exhaustive list are things that differentiate the gaming movements aren't any more important than the following are differentiations:


Unified Mechanics vs. unrelated and inconsistent subsystems
PCs follow/don't follow same rules as NPCs or other "DM" elements
Structured real-world style Ecologies vs. Orcs bunking next to Shriekers next to lurkers and mimics in interconnecting stone 20x20 rooms.
"I can only have an 16 in that stat?" vs "Awesome, a 14!"
APs vs Sandbox vs Delves with Minis
Narrativist vs Simulationist vs Gamist

And yet, NONE of these have anything to do wth High Fantasy or Sword & Sorcery by any definition of the terms that are commonly known by gamers.

We played high fantasy with AD&D back in 1978 and it worked just fine.  And I have run a Swords & Sorcery style game with d20 and OGL games.

I guess, I just don't agree that we need to redefine these terms in an effort to (once again) create another divide between what is fun for two different groups.

Some like "old-school" style rulesets (and I really dislike that term) and some like the OGL edition or the current edition.

I guess what I am asking is...... What is the point of the exercise?

Between a recent Grognardia article and this one, I am starting to feel like there are people that are bent on driving a wedge deeper between disagreeing factions of our hobby.  

I ask.... "To what end?"


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 8, 2009)

Mallus said:


> Equating a difference in play goals/styles with a sense of 'entitlement' isn't helpful. In fact, it's a insult (not that I'm insulted, mind you, just sayin').



I think 'sense of entitlement' may or may not imply an insult, but it would be safer to say players have certain expectations regarding monster power levels and magic item frequency.

Which they have had in every edition. Modules had a recommended level. Monsters were more powerful on deeper dungeon levels. Gary counseled against both Monty Haul-ism and Killer DMing in the 1e DMG. d20 just codified it more.


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## Krensky (Jun 8, 2009)

Well, first off the word you want is trope, not troupe. A troupe is a theater group, a trope is a literary theme, convention, or cliche.

As for your literary analysis, I think you got it wrong.

The protagonists of S&S stories won because they were the protagonists. S&S stories follow many of the same tropes as action movies. The protagonists may not be good guys but the antagonists are worse, violence, seducing beautiful women, and daring do solves all problems. Conan, Elric, Hawkmoon, et all win because they're the protagonists. Winning may be pyrrhic or just surviving, but they still enjoy massive amounts of plot protection.

The nature of morality in High Fantasy is correct, and there is a good bit of Judeo-Christian symbolism in the two earliest recognised works (OK, a lot), but the premise in the genre of good defeating evil is not inherently Judeo-Christian or Abrahamic. While the definition of good and evil changes, it's something inherent to the human condition.

As for S&S being atheistic, most of it's filled to the brim with gods. Made up gods, gods from real world faiths, sometimes even the Abrahamic god in normal form or some sacreligous inversion. Both HF and S&S gods can and often are interventionist, but they show up in a Deist fashion as well. Heck, in Lord of the Rings God isn't particularly invovled in the affairs of the world, Sauron, Gandalf and the rest are angels and fallen angels.

Then look at Solomon Kane. Fights evil, moral rectitude, Christian (Puritan to be precise), etc. It's been a while but I'm willing to be the man prayed and swore oaths to God. God may not have answered, but that has more to do with an interesting story then any beliefs Howard may have had. Plus, as the saying goes, God helps those who help themselves. The protagonist hacking his way through monsters to slay the evil priest is far more interesting a story then one praying to God who makes it all better. This is why Frodo has to carry the Ring and Aslan needs the kids.


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## TerraDave (Jun 8, 2009)

Hmm.

There was a very consipcous attempt to move from a Sword and Sorcery "style" to a High Fantasy one in the mid 1980's, even before 2nd ed. And there have then been various reactions against that over the years, including within 2n ed (ie Dark Sun).

But I think the biggest dynamic has been, from early on, a desire to codify and bring more options into the game. Each edition has in turn absorbed some of these new elements and rejected or modified others, trying to reconcile playability with all the things that had come in the previous wave of supplements. 

I think this dynamic of complicating then rationalizing is much more important then the literary influances, which from early on have been so wide ranging--pulp fantasy, tolkien, mythology, tv and movies (this is not new), comic books, history, non-rpg games....--that it is pretty easy to see a particular style or influance if you look hard enough.  But one could also say that the game really had its own style that was a distinct form of fantasy. 

Finally, as far as I can tell, player entitlment started as soon as people begin making their charecters. Reading EGG/Col Pladohs various article and posting over the years and others about his and other early campaign, he and other players (and he was a player as well as a DM) seemed to feel pretty entitled.


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## Keefe the Thief (Jun 8, 2009)

*Keefe the Thief wanders over to ENworld, scanning the threads. Reads a thread with the title beginning "History - HF vs. S&S gaming..."*

"Why, Keefe," Keefe said to himself. "Look, its one of those threads. You know what you´ll find once you click on it. You´ll find:

a) An OP that is far too long too read.

b) Using ever concieveable way for emphasizing parts of the text: bold, italics, color, using them not in moderation but rather going for the limit.

c) Trying to press the complex, ever-changing development that D&D went through into two distinct, antagonistic camps/styles/ways.

d) Using lots of oversimplifications in the process.

e) Is leaning a lot into one of the two camps it creates, calling one camp the "true" camp, sadly forgotten by those who do not understand D&Ds **real** history. 

f) Making lots of generalizations about thousands of D&D players by saying stuff like "most people don´t want to play X" etc.

e) Ending by stating something similar to this: "..and now you´ll have to see that X was always meant to be Y in D&D, except you didn´t understand that and that is why you´ve been doing far too much Z in your game!"

"Well, Keefe," Keefe said to himself. "Do we want to click on the thread?"
"Yes," answered Keefe. "They are always so much fun."


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## Obryn (Jun 8, 2009)

I think you're using the terms "Swords & Sorcery" and "High Fantasy" in ways that are different from how most of us understand the terms.

Specifically, there's nothing that's Swords & Sorcery about your list.  Howard's Conan stories pretty much set the genre, and others like Lieber have made some excellent contributions.  There's nothing about those stories which emphasizes random encounters or save-or-die mechanics.  They're also written for story - they're far from story-less.  Finally, the heroes most certainly _do_ enjoy plot protection, given that they are the main characters in a series of adventures, and the author has a vested interest in both their success and their survival.

I know what you're getting at, but your terminology is incongruent.  You're taking elements common to old-school gaming, but renaming them sword & sorcery, and I'm puzzled as to why - other than, without it, you would have less reason to write an article pioneering your view as somehow different or innovative.  In short, you're renaming the old-school vs. new-school camps without actually adding anything to the distinctions on either side.

Also - too much bold, font size changes, and colored text.  It makes your wall o' text look a little like crazy timecube ranting.  Throwing religious arguments into it does, too.

-O


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## jdrakeh (Jun 8, 2009)

There has been a big push in the 'old school' community to equate older editions of D&D with Swords & Sorcery genre fiction, but most of the people making that push either aren't very familiar with Swords & Sorcery genre fiction* or have completely redefined the term "Swords & Sorcery" to encompass mechanical conventions of D&D that are _not_ commonly represented in the genre fiction or, alternately, have nothing to do with it at all (e.g., magic as a common instrument of protagonists, frequent protagonist death, random monster encounters, etc). 

Claims that Swords & Sorcery fiction is written from an Atheist worldview (a cursory glance at any Conan story or Fafhrd and Mouser fiction reveals a multitude of deities) or that protagonists don't have plot immunity (what was the name of that story where Conan dies, again?) denote unfamiliarity with the subject matter, IMO. Or, mayhap, a familiarity only with the new 'definitions' of Swords & Sorcery being 'taught' by the folks I mention above. 

*In the past, I've seen many people pushing for this association claim that the primary defining tenets of Swords & Sorcery genre fiction are the simple presence of swords and magic.


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## Remathilis (Jun 8, 2009)

Also, the idea that D&D emulates S&S and is a poor fit for HF is nearly certainly destroyed by anyone who ever ran a successful Dragonlance (HF), Forgotten Realms (HF) or Ravenloft (Gothic Fantasy*) D&D game. 


* Gothic Fantasy actually is a good example of both S&S and HF as the OP defines it living in harmony. While the mortality rate in some GF is quite high and the danger level amped up so that spiders ARE lethal, most GF is VERY character/story driven, hence why most Ravenloft Darklords have better defined backstories than the PCs in the game. In fact, many of RL's mechanics are designed to give plot-immunity to the MONSTERS, not the PCs, which (if we assume true) would lead us to the concept D&D gives an inordinate amount of "fair shakes" to the PCs in non-GF D&D (else why change the rules?)


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## Remathilis (Jun 8, 2009)

jdrakeh said:


> Claims that Swords & Sorcery fiction is written from an Athiest worldview (a cursory glance at any Conan story or Fafhrd and Mouser fiction reveals a multitude of deities) ...




I think the OP was looking for a "classicist" view rather than an "aethist" view. S&S certainly have gods, but unlike the Judeo-Christian "all knowing, all loving" god the OP assigns to HF (the jury is still out on that association, but lets assume he's referring to the Tolkien/Lewis Christian analogy and roll with it). they are not either all knowing OR not all loving (removing the meddlesome rationale for evil & suffering to exist in the world). A character could be favored one moment, cursed the next, and he has no recourse except to accept the fate of the deities because they are more powerful than he. This the worldview of classical Greco-roman faith as well as other panthesitic faiths.

There is certainly nothing that assumes a godless world in S&S, just one where the deities are unknowable or unmoved by humanity at large.


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## the Jester (Jun 8, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> All of which boil down to: Lack of player entitlement.




By the heavy jug of Bacchus, I think you've hit upon exactly the underlying source of what bothers me about a lot of 'modern' gamers and game styles. 

I always preferred the Dark Ages sensibilities of old-skool Greyhawk over the Renaissance sensibilities of the Forgotten Realms. It's definitely a style thing, but I'm pleased to have read your analysis- it's a good, telling one.


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## the Jester (Jun 8, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> I think the OP was looking for a "classicist" view rather than an "aethist" view. S&S certainly have gods, but unlike the Judeo-Christian "all knowing, all loving" god the OP assigns to HF (the jury is still out on that association, but lets assume he's referring to the Tolkien/Lewis Christian analogy and roll with it). they are not either all knowing OR not all loving (removing the meddlesome rationale for evil & suffering to exist in the world). A character could be favored one moment, cursed the next, and he has no recourse except to accept the fate of the deities because they are more powerful than he. This the worldview of classical Greco-roman faith as well as other panthesitic faiths.
> 
> There is certainly nothing that assumes a godless world in S&S, just one where the deities are unknowable or unmoved by humanity at large.




It don't matter to Crom.


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## Rechan (Jun 8, 2009)

Since Player Entitlement is such a dirty word, the opposite is DM Tyranny.


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## the Jester (Jun 8, 2009)

Rechan said:


> Since Player Entitlement is such a dirty word, the opposite is DM Tyranny.




Absolutely agreed.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 8, 2009)

the Jester said:


> Absolutely agreed.





I tried to address these topics here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/257305-intro-materials-rcfg.html#post4819356), and would really like some feedback on my paltry efforts.

RC


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## rogueattorney (Jun 8, 2009)

I think some of you need to give Zulgyan, who I do not believe is a native English speaker, a bit of a break with regard to some of his word choices.  I don't think he was trying to be confrontational with his very thoughtful post.

I'm amused that I was a participant in that first thread he posted some 3 years ago.  Nothing dies on the Internet.



			
				Remanthis said:
			
		

> Also, the idea that D&D emulates S&S and is a poor fit for HF is nearly certainly destroyed by anyone who ever ran a successful Dragonlance (HF), Forgotten Realms (HF) or Ravenloft (Gothic Fantasy*) D&D game.




Dragonlance was the bellweather event in the transition Zulgyan is describing.  You had to alter or ignore a number of 1e rules to run the original 1e Dragonlance modules.  Among them xp for wealth and taking campaign time out to train.  Both of those particular rules were dropped for 2e and the main reason why was to fit the epic campaign paradigm seen in Dragonlance and then emulated in many, many adventure modules thereafter.  In a race to save the world from the Dark Evil Overlord, who has time to scrounge for gp or train?

Other than I6, the other two campaigns didn't have a single thing published for them until 1987, the year before 2e came out.  The big shift had already happened.  They were written with the latter, non-S&S concept of D&D in mind.

Frankly, I don't see why it's controversial at all to say that the folk who came to the game in the mid-80's or later were coming to the game familiar with a fairly different style of fantasy than those who came to the game earlier, and would thus have some different notions of how the fantasy world should work.  I, for one, can say I got a much better understanding of what Gygax and co. were trying to do after finally reading some Lovecraft, Vance, and Anderson.


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## mmadsen (Jun 8, 2009)

Doug McCrae said:


> Old school D&D doesn't particularly resemble classic sword & sorcery fiction.



I think old school D&D _does_ resemble pulp S&S fiction, but any Grand Unified Theory of D&D is going to fall down when it collides with the fact that D&D isn't _just_ any one thing; it's an odd mishmash.


Doug McCrae said:


> I don't remember Conan dying from a poison spider bite in the first story, then being reincarnated as a dryad.



Definitely being reincarnated as a dryad is one of those zany wahoo elements that exemplify that other facet of old school: it often wasn't very serious.

As for Conan not dying from a poison spider bite, true, he didn't, but that is _exactly_ the kind of thing that would happen to _the other guy_: the thief who got there first, his temporary ally, his enemy holding him at spear point, etc.  There was always the sense that life was cheap, and you could die senselessly at any moment.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 8, 2009)

We also have to remember that Conan's story is being told in the past tense; he has already succeeded, and is long dead, before the first word is written.  If he hadn't succeeded, generally, we wouldn't be following his story.

However, it is noteworthy that there are a fair number of REH stories in which the protagonist does not survive.  And this includes S&S stories.


RC


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## Ariosto (Jun 8, 2009)

Fritz Leiber coined the S&S term with an eye to distinguishing his work from Tolkien's (or at least from _The Lord of the Rings_). Although Howard is widely acknowledged as a -- or even "the" -- master of the subgenre, he also wrote in a wide variety of other modes. His stories of Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn are among those others.

Taking "high fantasy" as a term for the Tolkien end of the spectrum, I would say that among its features is a deep concern with consequences beyond the personal. In TLOTR, Frodo and Samwise are not outsiders but members in good standing of society; their undertaking is not for the sake of adventure, but motivated by concern for the welfare of their community; and its outcome is of truly epic import, determining the fate of all Middle-Earth and ending an age.

Howard's Bran is not so successful in championing the cause of the Picts -- but his tale is a tragedy rather than a farce because of how it is developed.

Such a well-rounded tale may arise despite the vagaries of chance, but those can easily nip it in the bud. So, if one sets out expecting to play a central role in, or to tell, such a story then avoidance of disappointment entails making the necessary elements not subject to such whimsy.

Is that not a general trend in D&D (and other fantasy games) over the past decades?


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## jdrakeh (Jun 8, 2009)

mmadsen said:


> As for Conan not dying from a poison spider bite, true, he didn't, but that is _exactly_ the kind of thing that would happen to _the other guy_: the thief who got there first, his temporary ally, his enemy holding him at spear point, etc. There was always the sense that life was cheap, and you could die senselessly at any moment.




That's a pretty good argument for D&D _not_ modeling S&S genre fiction (or at least Conan) as, in D&D, the PCs are generally taken to be analogous to Conan (i.e., the central protagonist) not the supporting cast.


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## Ariosto (Jun 8, 2009)

jdrakeh said:


> That's a pretty good argument for D&D _not_ modeling S&S genre fiction (or at least Conan) as, in D&D, the PCs are generally taken to be analogous to Conan (i.e., the central protagonist) not the supporting cast.



The very assumption that the *game* is a form of *literature*, and therefore has such a role as "central protagonist", is I think the fundamental departure from the original concept.


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## mmadsen (Jun 8, 2009)

Krensky said:


> Well, first off the word you want is trope, not troupe. A troupe is a theater group, a trope is a literary theme, convention, or cliche.
> 
> As for your literary analysis, I think you got it wrong.
> 
> The protagonists of S&S stories won because they were the protagonists. S&S stories follow many of the same tropes as action movies. The protagonists may not be good guys but the antagonists are worse, violence, seducing beautiful women, and daring do solves all problems.



Well, first off the word you want is _derring-do_, not _daring do_. 

(Isn't that annoying?)


Krensky said:


> Conan, Elric, Hawkmoon, et all win because they're the protagonists. Winning may be pyrrhic or just surviving, but they still enjoy massive amounts of plot protection.



I think the protagonists of _any_ adventure story have "plot protection" to some extent, because they do something dangerous and survive.

The issue is, do we feel like the protagonists survived by being tough and lucky, or do we feel that they survived because it would be _good_ for them to survive?

It gets even weirder when we consider that Conan is fated to become a king, Elric is fated to do all kinds of things, etc.


Krensky said:


> As for S&S being atheistic, most of it's filled to the brim with gods.



I don't think that's what he meant by _atheistic_, that the fictional world lacked gods.  After all, Conan's world is full of priests and gods, but they aren't to be trusted.


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## Dire Bare (Jun 8, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> The very assumption that the *game* is a form of *literature*, and therefore has such a role as "central protagonist", is I think the fundamental departure from the original concept.




I would disagree.  This may be heading somewhat off track, but roleplaying games are most definitely a form of literature.  Board games and miniature games, usually not really (although some miniature games with strong backstory are, like the Warhammer games), but RPGs most definitely.

The collective D&D "literature" obviously goes beyond standard definitions of lit . . . you probably won't study it in lit class in school (yet).  I'll even go so far as to label RPGs as art . . . but that perpetual argument probably shouldn't distract us too much . . .

At its heart, RPGs are all about storytelling, the oldest form of art/literature.


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## Dire Bare (Jun 8, 2009)

Mallus said:


> My experience is that D&D is weird mixture of high fantasy and swords and sorcery (as you've been using the terms), regardless of edition.






rogueattorney said:


> Frankly, I don't see why it's controversial at all to say that the folk who came to the game in the mid-80's or later were coming to the game familiar with a fairly different style of fantasy than those who came to the game earlier, and would thus have some different notions of how the fantasy world should work.  I, for one, can say I got a much better understanding of what Gygax and co. were trying to do after finally reading some Lovecraft, Vance, and Anderson.




I defintely have noticed that popular fantasy literature has changed over the past 30 years or so.  And D&D has evolved or changed right along with it.

But I agree that trying to shoehorn any edition of D&D into a single genre is madness!  D&D has always been its own special mishmash of high fantasy, sword & sorcery, pulp, horror, and other fantastic genres (even sci fi!).  The exact mixture has changed over the years perhaps, but D&D is still both high fantasy AND sword & sorcery, however you define the terms.

I think this is one of the major reasons the game has lasted as long as it has.  No matter what sub-genre of fantasy floats your boat the most, you can run a D&D game of any edition in that style.  You might have to change some of the rules and/or background assumptions slightly, but you can do it pretty easily.

I do think that the balance has moved towards a more high fantasy feel from older editions, but I think this started back with 2nd Edition.  If you want a D&D with some more pulpy S&S feel, you might check out Paizo's Pathfinder.  But both games still show that crazy mishmash of fantasy tropes.


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## Krensky (Jun 8, 2009)

mmadsen said:


> Well, first off the word you want is _derring-do_, not _daring do_.
> 
> (Isn't that annoying?)




Mine was a misspelling, since derring-do means daring to do, and is pronounced the same. His was a completely different word in meaning and pronunciation.



mmadsen said:


> I think the protagonists of _any_ adventure story have "plot protection" to some extent, because they do something dangerous and survive.
> 
> The issue is, do we feel like the protagonists survived by being tough and lucky, or do we feel that they survived because it would be _good_ for them to survive?




It depends on the context. As a reader, the former. Under literary analysis, the later. Looking at the Conan stories mechanically, Conan survives because otherwise Howard would upset his readers and the magazines and starve. Conan was presented and sold as a two-fisted man of actiopn and passion. He is presented to the audience as a man who can not be beaten. If Howard had him fail (in this context, have him die or loose in any meaningful way) he would violate a the implicit contract between author and reader. He would have presented a story as being X, and then made it anti-X. If you sell something to a reader as one thing, and then give them the opposite, you annoy them and they stop reading.




mmadsen said:


> It gets even weirder when we consider that Conan is fated to become a king, Elric is fated to do all kinds of things, etc.




And yet those are both S&S (anti-)heroes. The thesis of the OP was that in S&S the heroes have no guarantee of success or victory. Being fated to do something in the future pretty much is the antithesis of that. They may be fated to fail at that thing, or to bring nothing but sorrow and destruction to those around them, but they'll still survive what they're facing now because otherwise they can't go do that fated thing.




mmadsen said:


> I don't think that's what he meant by _atheistic_, that the fictional world lacked gods.  After all, Conan's world is full of priests and gods, but they aren't to be trusted.




Atheism means gods do not exist. Granted, in the case of Conan there's no real evidence that the gods are gods or even that they exist, a number of other Sword and Sorcery stories (Wagner's Kane series, de Camp's Pusadian series, others I'm surely forgetting) have very real gods (in the classical sense of a god, anyway). On the other side, there's Shannara for a HF or EF world with no gods. Basically, his assertion of religous underpinnings to either sub-genre is completely off base.


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## Cadfan (Jun 8, 2009)

I disagree.  Kind of a lot. 


1. I think this is more of a "just so story" than an actual explanation of the history of D&D.  I simply do not believe that during the design of OD&D actual thought went into differentiating fantasy sub genres.  These sub genres weren't even that widely acknowledged until more recent times.

2. That being said, the fictional inspirations of D&D have changed over time.  Vance and Howard and Tolkien are less central, though certainly still present.

3. Whenever you find yourself using the phrase "sense of entitlement" to refer to someone who doesn't have power, consider not talking.  In that context it is a semi polite way of calling someone "uppity."  

4. I understand why someone from a christian background might perceive the worlds of Howard and company as atheistic.  They're wrong, obviously, but from a christian perspective a god who isn't omniscient and all powerful, and who has foibles, commits sins and crimes, and can be bargained with, isn't really a god in the sense that they traditionally understand.  Such a creature is really more of a very powerful person.  "Atheistic" is still a mislabeling, though, for the obvious reason that not every culture worships the way modern christians do.  Someone who was interested in investigating this topic might make an effort at reading through the old testament, actually.

5. For everyone in the thread who feels that classic Sword and Sorcery is the dark end of the fantasy genre, there's a man here who wants to speak with you about the modern dark fantasy subgenre.  His name is Sand dan Glokta.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 8, 2009)

catsclaw227 said:


> I haven't read through the essays you linked to, so take my comments with that in mind.
> 
> It sounds here to me like you are redefining what Sword & Sorcery and High Fatasy are to help support your claims.  Personally, High Fantasy has little to do with Christianity, any more than Sword and Sorcery has to do with Atheism.
> 
> ...





People look to drive a wedge because we aren't living under the same tent anymore. Back during the 3E/OGL days, vastly different people playing RPGs in vastly different ways could all be playing under the 3E/OGL tent. Simulationist, gamist, old school retro clones, high fantasy, S&S, whatever it was, it could be found somewhere in the 3E/OGL world. 

Then a new edition was released, and 4E D&D removed itself from the 3E/OGL world. Not only was 4E disconnected from the open gaming community, but the game itself was radically changed to the point where it was a completely new game with little resemblance to 3E/OGL RPGs. To top it off, instead of the all inclusive customizable toolbox that 3E strived to be, 4E is a sleek focused ruleset designed to do what it does best at the expense of all else. 

Driving a deeper wedge comes from the fact that a lot of people who have switched to the new edition have left the 3E/OGL world behind(in a lot of cases, never to return), and that fans who still prefer 3E/OGL feel they have been left behind. 

Its like a divorce where both sides need to feel they are right.


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## Rechan (Jun 8, 2009)

Dire Bare said:


> I think this is one of the major reasons the game has lasted as long as it has.  No matter what sub-genre of fantasy floats your boat the most, you can run a D&D game of any edition in that style.  You might have to change some of the rules and/or background assumptions slightly, but you can do it pretty easily.



Aye. Also, that D&D is the ultimate melting pot RPG, _and_ the gateway RPG for any other system. Everybody knows what Dungeons and Dragons is, and anyone who's ever played an RPG has at least rolled a d20 and fought an orc.


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## Rechan (Jun 8, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> Its like a divorce where both sides need to feel they are right.



More like a vocal minority in both camps feel that way, while the majority of either just want to play the game they like.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 8, 2009)

Very good posts all round folks, even those I don't agree on.

Some quick clarifications because I'm a bit hurried. I run the risk of beign unclear, but hey.

1) I don't wish to be controversial. I want, if posible, end with the old school vs. new school conflict and take the discussion a bit higher conceptually, and see where all the controversy comes from.

2) There are some obvious difference bewteen how literature and gaming work. To keep the article shot, I just focused on the similarities. 

3) Conan wins against all odds because he is a literary protagonist, no doubt. But the novels constantly stress that it's all about his own skill, resourcefulness and luck, with no intervention from a Christian-like god how wants good to win over evil. His story is a "success story" that had no guarantees of being that way - that's how the author presents the world. An uncaring, amoral universe. Conan wins because he is strong, not because he is good. 

That can be recreated in gaming, by reducing DM intervention to "keep the story right" and by reducing the system elements that control plot: balanced encounters (even though it might be a misinterpretation of the rules, it is one misinterpretation that is quite widespread), treasure prescriptions, linear adventure design, etc.. If you take distance from story manipulation and you reduce player entitlement, and you just let the players alone with no DM or system help, struggling against a hostile world: the end result will _feel _much more like a S&S novel. All their success will be self gained. 

But don't take this to the extreme of course, we are talking about just an guiding principle that can have it's exceptions. 

2) In S&S literature you have *g*ods with minuscule, not the judeo-cristian *G*od that has a plan of salvation where good will triumph over evil. S&S gods are just superpowerful beings, that commit mistakes, have character flaws, and fight each other to control the world, not to redeem it. And they are not responsible for it's creation either. So they are not really gods the way most modern theology and philosophy interpret it. That's why I used the word atheism, that might have been confusing. But remember that Howard was himself an atheist, and the *g*ods from his novels are a criticism to theism in a symbolical way, because the are either evil or unhelpful. 

3) The cleric class is confusing, but you can interpret their gods as just a powerful beings who can squish vancian spells into your brain.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 8, 2009)

Rechan said:


> More like a vocal minority in both camps feel that way, while the majority of either just want to play the game they like.




Teh Interwebs: Home of vocal minorites


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## Ariosto (Jun 8, 2009)

Dire Bare said:
			
		

> At its heart, RPGs are all about storytelling, the oldest form of art/literature.



That may be how you describe "RPGs", but that is not how Gygax described D&D in its manuals.

OD&D by its own description offers methods for setting up and refereeing "wargames campaigns".

By 1978, the distinction of "role playing campaign" was established. Yet still there is no mention of "storytelling" in the _Players Handbook_ description of the game.

The _Dungeon Masters Guide_ offers this:







			
				Approaches to Playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons said:
			
		

> A few brief words are necessary to insure that the reader has actually obtained a game form which he or she desires. Of the two approaches to hobby games today, one is best defined as the realism-simulation school and the other as the game school. *AD&D* is assuredly an adherent of the latter school. ... *ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS* is first and foremost a game for the fun and enjoyment of those who seek to use imagination and creativity.




Did stories naturally emerge among the participants, just as they do among participants in the events of real life? Were there post hoc narratives, selecting those details that made best for a dramatic presentation? Yes!

That, however, was something after and outside the actual process of playing the game. To call something with such a posterior position the "heart" of the affair is a most curious usage!

Now, it is certainly possible start with a story to tell and arrange things to that end. If you call that definitive of RPGs, though, then the seminal D&D games were not RPGs.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 8, 2009)

Rechan said:


> More like a vocal minority in both camps feel that way, while the majority of either just want to play the game they like.




Hey dude, just sharing a personal analysis some might find interesting, even if they don't agree. I can't care less about how people miles and miles away from me are playing. Each will have fun it's own way and that's great. I don't wish to establish myself as the RPG police. 

I don't consider myself be part of any "movement". You are taking it too seriously. This is just a game.


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## Rechan (Jun 8, 2009)

Cadfan said:
			
		

> 2. That being said, the fictional inspirations of D&D have changed over time. Vance and Howard and Tolkien are less central, though certainly still present.



Not just the fictional inspiration the edition designers pull from, but the inspiration for D&D _players_ has changed. Those in their early 20s have very different reference sources than those who played the game early on. A recent thread asked those who were under 25 what early D&D material they had readl (Vance, REH, etc). Few had read more than 2 or 3. It will dwindle with even newer players. 

So the genre is moving because the next generations of gamers have less experience with the materials of the previous one. They want to emulate what _they_ have read, seen and relate to, instead of what their dad's generation read, seen, and relate to. 

The game reflects that shift.


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## Rechan (Jun 8, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> I don't consider myself be part of any "movement". You are taking it too seriously. This is just a game.



I wasn't replying to you. I was replying to thecasualoblivion's post.

In that post he said:


> Driving a deeper wedge comes from the fact that a lot of people who have switched to the new edition have left the 3E/OGL world behind(in a lot of cases, never to return), and that fans who still prefer 3E/OGL feel they have been left behind.



That sounds like taking it seriously. I was countering his observation with my own.

Besides, the section you quoted, I was saying that the majority _aren't_ part of a movement, they just want to _play the game_. So, your reply seems very out of context to what you quoted. 

Finally, I think "It's just a game" is a copout. To just dismiss D&D as "Just a game" is like dismissing the love of a family pet because "it's just an animal". Yes, D&D is a game with rulebooks. But to _the people who play it_, being a game and being important are not mutually exclusive. It's their favorite pass time. It's something they spend lots of time working on, improving, and engaged in. It's their adolescence and adulthood. It's their fond memories of good times with their friends. It's nostalgia. It's their creations of imagination. 

To someone who has spent every weekend for 10, 20, 30 years playing that game, it is special to them. You'd see the same thing with fans of Football if it was suddenly turned into Soccer - even though those fans do not play the game, they put a lot of stock in the existence of the game itself, because it brings back their days in highschool, or tossing around the pigskin with their friends, or watching the game with their dad, or a sense of pride in their favorite team. Just like gamers, football can be something that is part of their identity.

Yes, it's a game, but games are important to people because they are escapism. You challenge someone's escapism, and they get upset.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 8, 2009)

Ok, I'm sorry then. We agree. 

Let's just keep with the main topic and everything friendly.


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## Rechan (Jun 8, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> That may be how you describe "RPGs", but that is not how Gygax described D&D in its manuals.



I mean no disrespect to the dead, but RPGs are bigger than Gygax. He gets credit for being the _first_ but he's not the beginning and end for who gets to say what something is and isn't. 

Using Gygax's words to disagree with "What D&D/RPG is" is like using Poe's words to say what horror is. Or Washington's words on what a President's is. They get points for being the first, but they're not the only authority.

You might have a point in terms of _D&D_, but when it comes to RPGs, sorry man. There are systems out there that literally say, "This is a story", and are _built_ on the notion that players have the power to change the story. Not only in the agreement between GM and player, but in the _mechanics_. Take Donjon for instance.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 9, 2009)

There is a disconnect between Old School D&D and New School D&D, but I don't think it has anything to do with S&S vs. HF. 

It was an evolution, dating back to the early days of 1E. Old school D&D was very lethal for the characters created for it, and that lethality was part of playing the game. Surviving was its own reward, as you gained experience and became more powerful. It was also a life or death struggle, and the challenge of that was fun in its own way. But then a funny thing happened. Characters who survived the early grind of old-school D&D started taking on a life of their own. People started becoming more invested in that sort of character, and found playing a living, breathing character over a long term campaign more rewarding than the hack and slash grind of dungeon crawling. As a result of this, people started trying to play that sort of game from the beginning. The game rules didn't really accomodate this, so DMs just started houseruling things and going easy on players. Games became more focused on the story and the campaign aspect, as opposed to playing the life or death challenges of the game. 


This evolution was taking place during 1E, and was enshrined by the Dragonlance Saga, which told the epic story of what was essentially a campaign starring D&D characters. When 2E was published, despite generally maintaining 1E's lethal rules most of the advice on how to run and play the game pointed towards going easy on PCs and telling a story over a long term campaign. 3E furthered this trend removing a large part of the lethality of low level AD&D, and 4E finalized things by all but abandoning old school lethality.


This is all about how people played the game, and the insertion of narrativism into the D&D paradigm over time. I don't see where it has anything to do with the flavor of D&D, be it S&S or HF.


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## Umbran (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> 3) Conan wins against all odds because he is a literary protagonist, no doubt. But the novels constantly stress that it's all about his own skill, resourcefulness and luck, with no intervention from a Christian-like god how wants good to win over evil. His story is a "success story" that had no guarantees of being that way - that's how the author presents the world. An uncaring, amoral universe. Conan wins because he is strong, not because he is good.




No - as you noted, Conan wins because he's the protagonist.

Sword and Sorcery fiction is, in part, characterized by being _episodic_, as opposed to being strongly arced.  The main character really doesn't change all that much from one story to the next, other than perhaps a general rise in station.  

The major thing being, nobody ever really expects there's a good chance that Conan, or Elric, or whoever, is going to die - because if he dies the story ends forever.

In that sense, contrary to your suggestions that death comes easy in Sword and Sorcery worlds, for the Protagonists, it is actually hard to come by.  While the author _describes_ it as being a harsh world, the fact of the matter is the heroes have a lot of script immunity.  The protagonist _always_ has the strength/guile/mojo/whatever needed for the job.

So, as far as I am concerned, you can model S&S fiction either with a system that has lots of random death, or one in which there isn't.  Like in the fiction, the DM can _present_ the background world as harsh, and it just happens to be that the PCs always have enough of what it takes.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> 3) Conan wins against all odds because he is a literary protagonist, no doubt. But the novels constantly stress that it's all about his own skill, resourcefulness and luck, with no intervention from a Christian-like god how wants good to win over evil.



You have a point there. In Lord of the Rings, much of the heroes' success is due to having an angel fighting alongside them.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 9, 2009)

In 1e, PCs were motivated by money, like Conan and Cugel. XP was awarded for gold. Now XP is mostly awarded for killing things. Not sure if that makes d20 D&D more like high fantasy, mind you, but it's less swords & sorcery.


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## mmadsen (Jun 9, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> Old school D&D was very lethal for the characters created for it, and that lethality was part of playing the game. Surviving was its own reward, as you gained experience and became more powerful. It was also a life or death struggle, and the challenge of that was fun in its own way. But then a funny thing happened. Characters who survived the early grind of old-school D&D started taking on a life of their own. People started becoming more invested in that sort of character, and found playing a living, breathing character over a long term campaign more rewarding than the hack and slash grind of dungeon crawling. As a result of this, people started trying to play that sort of game from the beginning.



This is _exactly_ how we played the game, back in the day.  First-level characters were expected to die.  Repeatedly.  Then Frodo IV would make it to second level.  If he made it to, say, third level, you quietly erased the _IV_ from his name, and everyone forgot the names of his ill-fated cousins.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 9, 2009)

mmadsen said:


> This is _exactly_ how we played the game, back in the day.  First-level characters were expected to die.  Repeatedly.  Then Frodo IV would make it to second level.  If he made it to, say, third level, you quietly erased the _IV_ from his name, and everyone forgot the names of his ill-fated cousins.




I'd have to say that this comes from D&Ds evolution from a tabletop wargame. In most tabletop wargames, your pieces are all expendible. Early D&D treated PCs as expendible, and expected you to play the game like a wargame. Playing the game as a story came later, and had different demands, one of which was characters that were less expendible.


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

Cadfan said:
			
		

> I think this is more of a "just so story" than an actual explanation of the history of D&D. I simply do not believe that during the design of OD&D actual thought went into differentiating fantasy sub genres. These sub genres weren't even that widely acknowledged until more recent times.



Addressing your second claim first: Fritz Leiber suggested "sword-and-sorcery as a good popular catchphrase for the field" in 1961, responding to Michael Moorcock's request for a term (his proposal being "epic fantasy") for the kind of fantasy-adventure story Robert E. Howard wrote.

In itself, that could be a very broad usage. Indeed, De Camp and Carter used it interchangeably with "heroic fantasy" to refer indiscriminately to the whole spectrum from Fafhrd to Frodo. However, Leiber himself wrote that 







> It strikes me (and something might be made of this) that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are at the opposite extreme from the heroes of Tolkien. My stuff is at least as equally fantastic as his, but it is an earthier sort of fantasy with a strong seasoning of "black fantasy" -- or of black humor, to use the current phrase for something that was once called gallows' humor and goes back a long, long way. ... In a way, they're a mixture of Cabell and Eddison, if we must look for literary ancestors. Fafhrd and the Mouser have a touch of Jurgen's cynicism and anti-romanticism, but they go on boldly having adventures -- one more roll of the dice with destiny and death.




The foreword to the original D&D set suggested:







> Those wargamers who lack imagination, who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste.




"Swords & sorcery best describes what this game is all about," Gygax wrote in the AD&D PHB, "for those are the two key fantasy ingredients." DMG Appendix N, Inspirational and Educational Reading, indicates his sources of inspiration. "The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merritt." There is an entry for

Tolkien, J.R.R. THE HOBBIT; "Ring Trilogy"

but the list is dominated by works that most critics and genre authors would categorize as S&S, horror or "weird tale", SF, or some other category of adventure fiction distinct in theme and temperament from the "high fantasy" of Tolkien. Gygax has indicated that he much preferred _The Hobbit_ to TLOTR.


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## Rechan (Jun 9, 2009)

Mmadsen said:
			
		

> This is _exactly_ how we played the game, back in the day. First-level characters were expected to die. Repeatedly. Then Frodo IV would make it to second level. If he made it to, say, third level, you quietly erased the _IV_ from his name, and everyone forgot the names of his ill-fated cousins.






thecasualoblivion said:


> I'd have to say that this comes from D&Ds evolution from a tabletop wargame. In most tabletop wargames, your pieces are all expendible. Early D&D treated PCs as expendible, and expected you to play the game like a wargame. Playing the game as a story came later, and had different demands, one of which was characters that were less expendible.



You know what this reminds me of? And, I hate to bring it up, but...

Video games.

Or more specifically, 70s-early 80s arcade games. You were expected to die, die, die. And maybe you made it to level 2. At which point it got harder, and you likely died a billion more times, before you reached the 3rd level. The goal was training yourself through countless trial and errors how to survive.

Granted, many of those games were made to eat your quarters.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 9, 2009)

Rechan said:


> You know what this reminds me of? And, I hate to bring it up, but...
> 
> Video games.
> 
> ...




That really hasn't changed for Wargames though over time. I'm still moderately familiar with Warhammer Fantasy/40K, and skirmishes for those games tend to result in an almost 90% casualty rate for the playing pieces. Most tabletop Wargames I've watched people play kill off pieces at an alarming rate, much higher than real world warfare in fact.


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## Lanefan (Jun 9, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> I'd have to say that this comes from D&Ds evolution from a tabletop wargame. In most tabletop wargames, your pieces are all expendible. Early D&D treated PCs as expendible, and expected you to play the game like a wargame. Playing the game as a story came later, and had different demands, one of which was characters that were less expendible.



OK, but let's take a step further back and divorce the individual characters from the players...and show how individual PCs can still be expendable even in a very story-based game:

If I as DM am telling a story, or if the players are building one on their own, or both, it's the *players* (including, here, me as DM) to whom the story is being told and-or by whom the story is being crafted.  The characters, and more importantly the party as a whole, are either way merely the transitory vehicle through which the story is presented.

So, that said, it really matters not whether any particular character survives, as long as the player is still there.  An example of such is my experience playing 3e's _Forge of Fury_ - I went through 4 or 5 characters in that thing but *I as player* was still around at the end and got to see how the story came out.

One might almost say that adventures (the S+S part) are written for characters and stories (the HF part) are written for/by players.  And only a TPK can end the story prematurely, and maybe not even then if someone's got a backup character or two waiting in town. 

Lan-"some stories, however, go on long after they really should have ended"-efan


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

> I mean no disrespect to the dead, but RPGs are bigger than Gygax. ...  You might have a point in terms of _D&D_, but when it comes to RPGs, sorry man.





> So the genre is moving because the next generations of gamers have less experience with the materials of the previous one. They want to emulate what _they_ have read, seen and relate to, instead of what their dad's generation read, seen, and relate to. The game reflects that shift.



That seems to me precisely the point of the OP!

"Bigger than" can have an inclusive meaning, as in "Gygax's D&D is also an RPG". A meaning that excludes it would be like excluding Chuck Berry from rock & roll.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 9, 2009)

Lanefan said:


> OK, but let's take a step further back and divorce the individual characters from the players...and show how individual PCs can still be expendable even in a very story-based game:
> 
> If I as DM am telling a story, or if the players are building one on their own, or both, it's the *players* (including, here, me as DM) to whom the story is being told and-or by whom the story is being crafted.  The characters, and more importantly the party as a whole, are either way merely the transitory vehicle through which the story is presented.
> 
> ...




Characters who were present from the beginning tend to have a larger and deeper role in the story, and their players tend to be more heavily involved and invested in them. A new character who replaced a dead one is at a storyline disadvantage, as there are large parts of the saga that character wasn't present for. Duke Feldegar who sent the PCs into the Caves of Peril back at level 1 will have more to say to the original PCs than he would to replacements, and vice-versa when the PCs return there at level 5. 

I'm saying that these are two different ways to play, and neither is wrong. I will say that RPG players as a whole tended to gravitate towards storyline play with less expendible characters, and RPG design over the past 35 years has followed this trend.


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## Remathilis (Jun 9, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> but the list is dominated by works that most critics and genre authors would categorize as S&S, horror or "weird tale", SF, or some other category of adventure fiction distinct in theme and temperament from the "high fantasy" of Tolkien. Gygax has indicated that he much preferred _The Hobbit_ to TLOTR.




Poul Anderson is S&S?

And while Gygax's list is a great insight into his mindset and reading material as of AD&D's publication, I think it downplays the inspiration drawn from other elements of literature. While I don't see _Beowulf, Le Mort de Arthur, Dracula, Frankenstein, 1,001 Arabian Nights_ or any Greek Mythology on that list, I doubt anyone could create a rationale argument AGAINST their influence on D&D.


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## M.L. Martin (Jun 9, 2009)

Some more thoughts now that I have more time . . . 

D&D is fundamentally a hodgepodge, yes; Old Geezer over on RPG.net (one of Those Who Were There At The Beginning) has said repeatedly that "we made up some [stuff] that we thought would be cool." The cleric, for example, came out of the desire to create a counter to another player's dominating vampire PC, and the Tolkienian races made it into the game because the players pestered Gygax for them. 

For all that hodgepodge, though, I do get the impression that the sword & sorcery elements were Gygax's primary information, and thus form the 'baseline' of the game, influencing more than they were influenced. However, that hodgepodge and the growth of the game also added new genre elements.

I'm going to refer to another game here for some genre definitions. My copy of _Fantasy Hero, Fifth Edition_ defines the following as tropes of the Sword & Sorcery genre:
  [
"Barbarism is the Natural State of Mankind"
Magic, Slow and Difficult
Lack of Heroism (heroism based on survival and ability, not attitude or conduct)
Only the Tough Survive
Short-Term Thinking
Show Me The Money
The Perspective is: Neutral ("Heroes survive through toughness, skill and wits, not because the world tilts in their favor.")

  The first doesn't show up so much in D&D, and the second and fourth are arguable, but the other elements seem to match very well with 'old school' D&D. 

Now, for comparison's sake, here's the lists for Epic Fantasy and High Fantasy from the same volume.

Epic Fantasy contains:


Free Will and Fate
Heroic Qualities and Preserving the Good
High Stakes and Powerful Enemies
The Naive Hero
The Natural World
A Richly-Developed, Well-Ordered World
Starkly-Drawn Characters
A Tragic Note
Wise and Powerful Wizards
The Perspective is: Subtly Beneficient. "Through nobility, valor, heroic determination, and heroic sacrifice, [heroes] can triumph--the 'rules' of the world set things up so that, if sufficiently motivated, they _can_ win despite the odds against them."

High Fantasy, by contrast, includes: 


Dungeons
Gods Walk The Earth
Monsters and Fantastic Creatures
Planar Travel
A Plethora of Races
The Perspective Is: Neutral, though slightly titled towards the heroes

  Now, FH says that 'High Fantasy' is largely defined by D&D, and the list of elements bears that out. so it would appear that D&D can't be S&S, right?

  Using these definitions as a starting point, it is entirely possible for a game to contain strong elements of _both_ High Fantasy and Swords & Sorcery--or, by contrast, High Fantasy and Epic Fantasy. The elements of High Fantasy are largely setting elements, while Swords & Sorcery and Epic Fantasy are defined more by thematic and characterization elements. Therefore, High Fantasy can overlap with either genre. I would submit that D&D, at least as envisioned by the 'old school', is High Fantasy built on a Swords & Sorcery base.

  But what about those who use the game for something that would be more 'pure' High Fantasy, or a High/Epic Fantasy cross? That, I think, can be explained by the looseness and evolution of the game.

  As mentioned, D&D started out as a hodgepodge--one that I submit had a Swords & Sorcery baseline, but added in a lot of other elements, some of which (paladins in particular come to mind) are more High or Epic Fantasy. In addition, the game up through 1E at least was written for an audience that was assumed to be familiar with fantasy, so Gygax didn't spend much time trying to write in Sword & Sorcery play--it seems to have been more assumed than enforced. As the audience shifted, the game shifted with it. I have to wonder how much of the more story-oriented, hero-oriented elements of late 1E and 2E arise from a generation of gamers who grew up on _Star Wars_, which is very much Epic Fantasy with space opera trappings.


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

Gygax said:
			
		

> In fact, all of us tend to get ample helpings of fantasy when we are very young, from fairy tales such as those written by the Brothers Grimm and Andrew Lang. This often leads to reading books of mythology, paging through bestiaries, and consultation of compilations of the myths of various lands and peoples. Upon such a base I built my interest in fantasy, being an avid reader of all science fiction and fantasy literature since 1950. ... but all of the above authors, *as well as many not listed*, certainly helped shape the form of the game.



 (I made that part bold for emphasis.)

Yes, Poul Anderson unabashedly wrote "sword and sorcery" and was a founding member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA).​


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## Remathilis (Jun 9, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> (I made that part bold for emphasis.)
> 
> Yes, Poul Anderson unabashedly wrote "sword and sorcery" and was a founding member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA).​




Hugh. 3H&3L didn't strike me as S&S, but then again, you wouldn't necessarily peg Stephen King as horror if all you read was _The Green Mile_...


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 9, 2009)

Matthew L. Martin said:


> "Barbarism is the Natural State of Mankind"
> Magic, Slow and Difficult
> Lack of Heroism (heroism based on survival and ability, not attitude or conduct)
> Only the Tough Survive
> ...



I really don't think the second is arguable. Magic in D&D has never been anything like Conan. It's flashbang, combat magic from the rarer, more modern S&S stories such as the Dying Earth where the nerdy wizard gets to be the hero. 

3 and 5-7 definitely apply to the Cugel the Clever stories mind you. Definitely not 1 though, Vance's heroes are wordy and super-civilized.


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

To conclude that D&D was not heavily influenced by S&S because the writers of a Hero Games product call it "high fantasy" -- when those writers, in what now becomes a circular argument, define the term by D&D -- would be most fantastic indeed! Nor is a definition of S&S that excludes Vance's (or Michael Shea's) picaresques likely to pass muster in any more serious venue.

One would do better to consult the highly respected _Encyclopedia of Fantasy_ by John Clute, et al.

Flashing Swords - Interviews - Bill King
is an interview with Warhammer writer William King that may suggest how people in the field view the subgenre.


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## nightwyrm (Jun 9, 2009)

Umbran said:


> Sword and Sorcery fiction is, in part, characterized by being _episodic_, as opposed to being strongly arced. The main character really doesn't change all that much from one story to the next, other than perhaps a general rise in station.




Hmm...interesting. So Star Trek is S&S and Babylon 5 is HF?

Forgive me for using scifi examples, but I don't really know any TV series examples for fantasy...well, I suppose Hercules and Xena would be S&S?


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## M.L. Martin (Jun 9, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> To conclude that D&D was not heavily influenced by S&S because the writers of a Hero Games product call it "high fantasy" -- when those writers, in what now becomes a circular argument, define the term by D&D -- would be most fantastic indeed! Nor is a definition of S&S that excludes Vance's (or Michael Shea's) picaresques likely to pass muster in any more serious venue.
> 
> One would do better to consult the highly respected _Encyclopedia of Fantasy_ by John Clute, et al.
> 
> ...





  My apologies if the post was rambling and unclear, and for using an unapproved source for listing genre elements.  Yes, D&D is founded on Swords & Sorcery--but it has a lot of elements that are _not_ Swords & Sorcery, in play it often produces a genre distinct from (if overlapping with) Swords & Sorcery, and in many cases, especially during the 2E era, it was presented and played _without_ S&S elements.

  "Old school" D&D is decidedly S&S--but I think that's as much a reaction against the High/Epic Fantasy flavor of 2E, and the High Fantasy flavor of 3E and 4E, as it is 'the way the game is supposed to be.'

  Or, we could just admit the game is the Platonic Form of Swords & Sorcery, that it should only be played in that One True Way, and start purging it of all heretics and unbelievers. I offer myself as the first victim for the Committee for Proper Gaming to send to the guillotine.


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

nightwyrm said:


> Hmm...interesting. So Star Trek is S&S and Babylon 5 is HF?
> 
> Forgive me for using scifi examples, but I don't really know any TV series examples for fantasy...well, I suppose Hercules and Xena would be S&S?




No, they would be a form of Sword and Sandal. Mythic Fantasy might be a good term.

S&S shows... Galtar and the Golden Lance?


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

Matthew, that is not the point at all as far as I can see.

The point (I think) is that the rules of old D&D make no presumption as to whether it is Frodo or Gollum who falls into the Crack of Doom; the dice decide. It is thus unsurprising that people who desired a game governed instead by the rules of drama found D&D unsatisfactory, and that TSR and WotC altered the game in conformance with those desires.


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## Saracenus (Jun 9, 2009)

To the OP,

To paraphrase Inigo Montoya:

"You keep using _those words_. I do not think _they _mean what you think _they_ mean"

That is all,


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## Tigh (Jun 9, 2009)

*D&D is so much more ...*

d&d is so much more ...


it opened ears
the first hyper virus
lifted the taboo on representing god in the first person ​

Three great things sure, but D&D is so much more.  Written after President Carter and the oil crunch, it was a time capsule to teach the realities of survival in a world without oil.  Written for the day that we came back around to Carters perspective and accept that oil can fix the world or break the world but it can not last.  So is it really so surprising there is a resurgence of old school D&D.  Atheist and Christian alike are finding that their high fantasies of consequence free power are starting to feel hollow.  And, that maybe some attention to a minimum level of decency may be in order.

Is D&D cowboy wisdom? No.  Am I a survivalist?  No.  Am I an environmentalist?  No.

D&D is a point based character development system.  One wrapped around a premise that a dragon is guarding all the gold and if you defeat that dragon you can spend the gold as you see fit.  People from the old school don't chuckle about how everyone in their party died for any less of a reason than it accurately reflects how difficult this task is.  Particularly if one takes the analogy that gold is oil.

In the 80's, with the explosion of rpgs, sometimes the gold analogy was redefined to symbolize something else.  In one setting the analogy was so well redefined that the physical presence of gold was removed from the game.  But everyone still knew what the game was about.  Sence then gold has suffered from creep.  It no longer has any symbolic meaning in the games produced.  The meaning is found elsewhere in less earthly physical terms.

But that unease is still there.  The intangible is not such a sure escape from reality any more.  People want to fly high still, but they are starting to analyze and pick at the minutia.  Its almost like the edges of the garment are starting to frey and no one can find the hem.

So what is D&D.  Are we unified.  Are we divided against ourselves.  I don't know.  Everyone has their own vision of D&D now and I want to respect that.  And now for my theory.

D&D is the emergence of role based society as opposed to the old class based society.  Unfortunately it is called a role playing game but contains the word "classes" to categorize those roles.  They should have been called roles.


Tigh


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## Remathilis (Jun 9, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> Matthew, that is not the point at all as far as I can see.
> 
> The point (I think) is that the rules of old D&D make no presumption as to whether it is Frodo or Gollum who falls into the Crack of Doom; the dice decide. It is thus unsurprising that people who desired a game governed instead by the rules of drama found D&D unsatisfactory, and that TSR and WotC altered the game in conformance with those desires.




But that's not a concern of genre but of delivery, right?

In High Fantasy, the plot dictates Frodo or Gollum's success.
In S&S, the plot dictates Conan's success.
In D&D, the game mechanics determine the PC's success. 

Which makes the "genre" of fantasy D&D emulates a non-issue since the GAME element overrides any genre convictions the game might try to elmuate.

(Which kinda renders the OP's critique invalid: since success or failure determined by game mechanic knows no genre, c.f. World of Darkness, Star Wars, or Chuthulu are all clearly not S&S but yet effective RPGs)


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

> Written after President Carter and the oil crunch



Not in *this* timeline, Doc!


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## Tigh (Jun 9, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> Not in *this* timeline, Doc!




Being off by a decade does not invalidate what d&d is.  Carter didn't reach that position over night.  Everyone already knew he was right.  Politics won.


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## Umbran (Jun 9, 2009)

nightwyrm said:


> Hmm...interesting. So Star Trek is S&S and Babylon 5 is HF?




TOS and TNG are analogous to S&S, yes, as far as my description goes.  DS9, however, broke that mold to a large degree.  B5 would be analogous to HF, yes.



> I suppose Hercules and Xena would be S&S?




For purposes of this discussion, in terms of broad structure, yes. 

The Buffy and Angel series were not fully HF, but were closer than Herc and Xena, for another example.  Currently, Supernatural has progressed to the point where it had become HF.


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## Charwoman Gene (Jun 9, 2009)

Meh, A lot of words which seem to boil down to "I think modern D&D is about player 'entitlement', so I've decided to wrap my argument in bad literary criticism and inappropriate religosity.

Sandboxy, old-school worlds are all about sopping the player's entitlement of control of the story direction.


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## M.L. Martin (Jun 9, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> But that's not a concern of genre but of delivery, right?
> 
> In High Fantasy, the plot dictates Frodo or Gollum's success.
> In S&S, the plot dictates Conan's success.
> ...




   Actually, those examples contain an interesting combination of how mechanics and theme can intersect in ways similar to the OP's post.

   World of Darkness is focused around the character's dealing with life in a horrific world, so it contains means by which characters can quantify personal development and overrule mechanical impacts on their personality (Morality and Willpower).

   Star Wars is a game of Epic Space Fantasy where the heroes are favored by the Force, so important characters can use Character, Force and/or Destiny points to help control the direction of the story and the outcome of specific actions.

   Call of Cthulhu is very thematically similar to some flavors of Swords & Sorcery--man is alone in a hostile universe--so it doesn't include much in the way of player control of the story. 

   Old-school D&D, if one plays with '3d6 straight down, let the dice fall where they may', and so forth, is a game of trying to survive in an uncaring universe. Dramatic or moral concerns don't enter into it. I must say, I was seriously disappointed when I found out 4E's Action Points were limited to 'take an extra turn,' rather than providing more outcome or narrative control.

   I'd like to thank Ariosto and the old-school movement for reminding me that while I like a lot of D&D fluff, I'm not that big on the game itself.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 9, 2009)

Tigh said:


> Is D&D cowboy wisdom? No.



Eh, Keep on the Borderlands, frontier town, what's the diff?


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

> In High Fantasy, the plot dictates Frodo or Gollum's success.
> In S&S, the plot dictates Conan's success.
> In D&D, the game mechanics determine the PC's success.



Unless it's *Tracy Hickman's* version of D&D. 

Maybe the difference between TSR's Dragonlance modules and TSR's Conan RPG is just coincidence. Maybe it's just coincidence how subgenre preferences and rules preferences sort out. Maybe it's just coincidence that the rise of dramatic structure and plot protection in D&D corresponded with the rise of HF and decline of S&S in publishing. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Or maybe a game of careless equanimity and random demises, of thieving and slaughtering adventurers motivated by lust for gold and glory and personal power, of "gods" treated as notably tough but killable monsters, and so on ... is perhaps a bit more in keeping with one side of the spectrum than the other?


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## Tigh (Jun 9, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> the rise of dramatic structure and plot protection in D&D corresponded with the rise of HF and decline of S&S in publishing.




I can agree with this.


Tigh


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 9, 2009)

I don't see any rules for story in 3e. The less killable 4e PCs do support story. When a protagonist dies unexpectedly that's normally held to be unsatisfying.

One could argue that the level track has always been a sort of story. And that the rules for strongholds in old school D&D, probably inspired by Conan, actually support a Conan-esque life story of adventure->politics more than the flat progression of later editions.


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

> I was seriously disappointed when I found out 4E's Action Points were limited to 'take an extra turn,' rather than providing more outcome or narrative control.



Still, can't you say, "You've come a long way, baby"?


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 9, 2009)

Action points are a resource you expend to help your playing piece win, in terms of story control they are no different than a spell, potion or scroll.

A lot less powerful than those old scrolls of protection from X Gary used to place in his dungeons, when the BBEG was an X.


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## jdrakeh (Jun 9, 2009)

Doug McCrae said:


> 3 and 5-7 definitely apply to the Cugel the Clever stories mind you. Definitely not 1 though, Vance's heroes are wordy and super-civilized.




Er. . . in _Eyes of the Overworld_, Cugel tries to rape a woman in a fairly barbaric act of revenge. Likewise, he lies, steals, and cajoles himself back home. He may use big words, but he's far from civilized.


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

Yeah, 4E is still a bit conflicted between the "game" aspect and the "simulating fantasy fiction" aspect. But at least the latter is addressed quite a bit, and with slightly more sophisticated tools for the DM than just hoping for the best and then "fudging" rolls. If there's a one in a thousand chance of a scenario turning out the wrong way and it's played ten thousand times, then odds are it's going to go south at least once.


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

If memory serves, Cugel also murders some utterly hapless creatures in revenge for a harmless (except to his dignity for a moment) practical joke.


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## Keefe the Thief (Jun 9, 2009)

Charwoman Gene said:


> Meh, A lot of words which seem to boil down to "I think modern D&D is about player 'entitlement', so I've decided to wrap my argument in bad literary criticism and inappropriate religosity.




Damn, thats so much shorter than my post. And says it better, too. 



Ariosto said:


> Unless it's *Tracy Hickman's* version of D&D.




Hey, i´ve already wondered when an old-schooler would give Dragonlance a kick. Its the "omg they turned D&D into a story-based game" scapegoat number one. Well done.


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## Hairfoot (Jun 9, 2009)

There's a lot to be said for improving the story element of the game by improving PC survivability, but 4E turns many of us off because it does so by elevating characters to a superhero level of superiority.

Even in a game world which is tilted in the player's favour, I like my PC's survival to be the result of some ingenuity on my part and some Indiana Jones-style heroism by the character.  Regardless of the world style (S&S, HF, EF etc), this was the formula of D&D all the way up to 3.5 core.

A 4E campaign, OTOH, assumes a party of X-Men, far superior to the commoners, cleaving through hordes of foes and threatened only by the strongest of enemies.  I cannot identify with such characters, and they seem more like playing pieces than protagonists I want to weave a story with.

Whether or not that level of power is appealing to an individual player, it's a big leap from anything previous incarnations of the system assumed as the norm.


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## Dire Bare (Jun 9, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> That may be how you describe "RPGs", but that is not how Gygax described D&D in its manuals.




Well, yes . . . that's how I describe RPGs.  I didn't add an "IMO" because it felt redundant.



> OD&D by its own description offers methods for setting up and refereeing "wargames campaigns".
> 
> By 1978, the distinction of "role playing campaign" was established. Yet still there is no mention of "storytelling" in the _Players Handbook_ description of the game.




D&D has been evolving for over 30 years, I don't care what any of the rulebooks from the '70s say about "storytelling" vs. "it's just a game".  Like many seminal inventions, D&D has moved way beyond the initial ideas and intentions of its creators, Gygax and Arneson.

Besides, (not that it matters) did Gary ever claim D&D was *not* art and/or literature?  I know he wasn't a fan of the White Wolf storyteller games (or, I think I remember this).



> That, however, was something after and outside the actual process of playing the game. To call something with such a posterior position the "heart" of the affair is a most curious usage!




Individual D&D games can have varying degrees of storytelling vs gaming, but if you look at the D&D experience as a whole, there is a strong storytelling element.

IMO!


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> Still, can't you say, "You've come a long way, baby"?




Considering that they do less then they did in 3.5 or that similar concepts do in other later generation d20 games, not really.


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## Korgoth (Jun 9, 2009)

jdrakeh said:


> Er. . . in _Eyes of the Overworld_, Cugel tries to rape a woman in a fairly barbaric act of revenge. Likewise, he lies, steals, and cajoles himself back home. He may use big words, but he's far from civilized.




You beat me to the punch on that one. Quite so. Most of the characters in Vance's Cugel stories are barbarians. They're just barbarians who use words like "supererogatory" and "insensate".

In fact, if anything, the point of Vance's satire is that "civilized" men are merely fancy barbarians.

Also: "You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to jdrakeh again."


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

Keefe: That's Dragonlance, Desert of Desolation and Ravenloft. Do you disagree that Hickman introduced a new approach?

Now, there's an even newer one that has been alluded to earlier in this thread: not the DM as Author or Stage Director, but "narrative power" distributed among the players.

I prefer the latter. I have seen too strong a tendency for the former to degenerate into something that is not really a game.



			
				Dire Bare said:
			
		

> Like many seminal inventions, D&D has moved way beyond the initial ideas and intentions of its creators, Gygax and Arneson.



Yep. That's THE POINT! I'm not sure what you think you're arguing against.

Some people like the new direction. Other people are not so enthusiastic. Is this news?

The OP's assertion that the change and conflict have roots in the fantasy fiction shaping different expectations in different demographics is not exactly novel either. This is an old, old issue. (Anyone remember the column on "Tolkien in Dungeons & Dragons"?)


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## Lanefan (Jun 9, 2009)

Doug McCrae said:


> Action points are a resource you expend to help your playing piece win, in terms of story control they are no different than a spell, potion or scroll.
> 
> A lot less powerful than those old scrolls of protection from X Gary used to place in his dungeons, when the BBEG was an X.



Assuming, of course, you found the scrolls before you found the X. 

Lan-"X marks the spot"-efan


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## LostSoul (Jun 9, 2009)

Regarding the OP:

Sounds like the difference between "Step on Up" (aka gamism) and "the Right to Dream" (aka simulationism).

Swords & Sorcery is identified as Step on Up and High Fantasy as The Right to Dream.


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## Baron Opal (Jun 9, 2009)

I like Billy Gibbons and Yngwie Malmsteen, but Billy Holiday kinda bores me. But, it's all rock and roll to me.


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## Betote (Jun 9, 2009)

Doug McCrae said:


> I don't see any rules for story in 3e. The less killable 4e PCs do support story. When a protagonist dies unexpectably that's normally held to be unsatisfying.




You must really hate George R.R.Martin, then


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 9, 2009)

> 1) Higher degree of player skill involved in survival.
> 2) Higher degree of luck involved in survival.
> 3) Save or die effects (a big one).



Player skill and luck are both important to a higher degree? That sounds mutually exclusive. Player Skill directly conflicts with things that are based mostly on luck. And Save or Die effects are the epitome "of luck vs player skill". Player Skill would be avoiding to enter a situation that relies on luck and instead guarantees a positive outcome.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 9, 2009)

Hairfoot said:
			
		

> A 4E campaign, OTOH, assumes a party of X-Men, far superior to the commoners, cleaving through hordes of foes and threatened only by the strongest of enemies. I cannot identify with such characters, and they seem more like playing pieces than protagonists I want to weave a story with.



A 1st level character cleaves through hordes of Kobolds and Goblins. A human guard is a 4th level "monster" that can beat an individual PC up quite easily, possibly in very humiliating ways. 



Ariosto said:


> Yep. That's THE POINT! I'm not sure what you think you're arguing against.
> 
> Some people like the new direction. Other people are not so enthusiastic. Is this news?




It's kinda the fundamental problem in these editions.

"It is not as it used to be!"
"Why should I care? I like it this way!"

"It is not as it used to be!"
"It's finally like I always wanted it!"

But sometimes it is: 

"It is not as it used to be!"
"Funny, it's always as I used to do it!"

When we are talking about "player entitlement", it seems actually more about ... "fan entitlement". 
Either side wants things like they like it. It really does not matter that one side wants it the "old school" way, and the other the "new school" way. 

In the end, both sides (well, there are probably even more than two, but let'S pretend it are two) want something from their game, but these wants are mutually exclusive (if not that, would require a compromise that would make neither entirely happy). 

Now that the "new school" players do have a game their way, the "old school" complains. But seriously, neither side has a specific "right" to have it their way. They only have the right to pick a game or an edition of a game that suits their preferences - if available.

While it might be nice to discuss the theories behind preferences and sensibilities and what-not, never mistake anything of this for a "moral" judgement. It is about personal taste and preference.


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## Rechan (Jun 9, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> While it might be nice to discuss the theories behind preferences and sensibilities and what-not, never mistake anything of this for a "moral" judgement. It is about personal taste and preference.



Silly chancellor. You should know by now that when it comes to personal taste and preference, there's only the speaker's way, and the wrong way.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 9, 2009)

Rechan said:


> Silly chancellor. You should know by now that when it comes to personal taste and preference, there's only the speaker's way, and the wrong way.



That applies to my post as well, so you're wrong.


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## Elphilm (Jun 9, 2009)

Keefe the Thief said:


> Damn, thats so much shorter than my post. And says it better, too.



So I take it that you're now done with the drive-by insults?



> Hey, i´ve already wondered when an old-schooler would give Dragonlance a kick.



You're late for the party.


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## Aus_Snow (Jun 9, 2009)

Elphilm said:


> So I take it that you're now done with the drive-by insults?



What insult, where?



			
				Rechan said:
			
		

> You should know by now that when it comes to personal taste and preference, there's only the speaker's way, and the wrong way.



sigged! (if you don't mind. . .)


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## Keefe the Thief (Jun 9, 2009)

Elphilm said:


> So I take it that you're now done with the drive-by insults?
> 
> You're late for the party.




I´ve insuled people? Where? And i´ve read nearly every "OMG Dragonlance story NO!" essay there is on the net. I know they´re out there. I´ve just counted the seconds until somebody in this thread would make the usual "incidentially, did you know that Dragonlance ruined..." reference. 



Ariosto said:


> Keefe: That's Dragonlance, Desert of Desolation and Ravenloft. Do you disagree that Hickman introduced a new approach?




I think he solidified something that was with D&D from the beginning, and is now used in a positive/negative antagonistic way on many old-school boards. I like when people realize that his adventures were a crossroads for D&D. I dislike when it´s implied that this approach is somehow not "natural" or "healthy" for D&D. Not saying that you did this, just saying that i knew somebody would bring the topic up.


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## Keefe the Thief (Jun 9, 2009)

Gah! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

Good stuff, thanks guys for the responses:

A few notes:

1) I think some are missing the point that, what defines HF vs. S&S is the underlying worldview and moral system - basically: God on the side of good vs. No God, or God takes no sides. 

2) The presence of demi-humans, clerics, vancian magic or not, etc. are all *secondary *to that, IMO. So sword & sorcery is not necessarily about barbarians vs. evil sorcerers. That's how it is in many popular S&S novels, but it does not need to be necessarily that way. You need to look at the higher concepts and themes of the novels. 

3) I agree that D&D and westerns have much in common. Specially the spaghetti-westerns of Sergio Leone: "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", "Fistful of Dollars" and "For a few dollars more". I heartily recommend those films, and their plots are very very D&Desque

4) Yes, RPGs are bigger than Gygax, agreed. But when you analyse the RPG *he authored*, he is a main reference for interpretation, ins't he?. What John Wick says about Houses of the Blooded will be more relevant that what Ron Edwards says about that game.

5) I think that OD&D and 1E as games that captured very close the spirit of S&S, was not *that *intentional on part of Gygax. Not very consciously, IMO, he captured the spirit of S&S because in his game, the fact you where good or the protagonist, made you in no way special.

6) When authors write their novels, they don't justify the survival of their protagonists *solely *on them being them protagonists. They introduce an additional justification, to *create an illusion* that they survive because of *other reasons* than just being the protagonist. On general terms, in HF novels it's because higher forces of good will never let evil triumph. In S&S it's because the protagonist is skillful, lucky and resourceful, not because he receives aid from above. 

Saying that the only survive because they are the protagonist is a very poor reading of the novels. You have to look at the illusionary reason the author uses to justify their success. That illusion tells you a lot about the imaginary world of the author. 

7) 4E is not a pure HF game. To be a pure HF game, you need a mechanic that makes good always win over evil. 4E does not have it, for good IMO. But 4E has introduced some "plot control" mechanics that make the HF premise easier to achieve, the premise being "good will win over evil". 

This are:
1) Automatically Balanced encounters: the game is telling you *when *and *what *should be encountered. That's plot control right there. 
2) Treasure prescriptions: the game is telling when should a magic sword be gained. That's also plot control the way I see it. 
3) Less randomness, more predictability, that will reduce "bad surprises" that can frustrate the fulfillment of the HF premise: good will win over evil.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 9, 2009)

jdrakeh said:


> Er. . . in _Eyes of the Overworld_, Cugel tries to rape a woman in a fairly barbaric act of revenge. Likewise, he lies, steals, and cajoles himself back home. He may use big words, but he's far from civilized.





Korgoth said:


> You beat me to the punch on that one. Quite so. Most of the characters in Vance's Cugel stories are barbarians. They're just barbarians who use words like "supererogatory" and "insensate"



You're right that Cugel is utterly amoral. He appears to rape Derwe Coreme, before selling her into slavery. When I say he's civilized I mean that he comes from civilization, in contrast with Conan the barbarian.

Cugel is verbose, Conan taciturn. Cugel commits complex frauds, Conan raids tombs. Cugel picks pockets, Conan kills. Cugel is urban, Conan is rural. Cugel keeps his clothes on, Conan is forever showing off his thews, described in loving detail by REH.

In REH's Conan stories, barbarism is superior to civilization, which is shown to be decadent and weak. In the Dying Earth tales there is no barbarism in the REH sense, everyone is civilized in this old, old Earth. Even the monsters are wordy. Barbarism the natural state of mankind? It doesn't even exist any more.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

I want to encapsulate the thesis of my article as briefly as possible:

A lot of the changes in D&D during the course of it's history can be explained by the conflict between two fantasy genres that are based on diametrically opposed world-views: High Fantasy vs. Sword & Sorcery.

The game started strong on the Sword & Sorcery genre, but slowly, as a majority fans wanted to play the game in a fashion closer to High Fantasy, elements of plot protection slowly made their way into the game.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> 6) When authors write their novels, they don't justify the survival of their protagonists *solely *on them being them protagonists. They introduce an additional justification, to *create an illusion* that they survive because of *other reasons* than just being the protagonist. On general terms, in HF novels it's because higher forces of good will never let evil triumph. In S&S it's because the protagonist is skillful, lucky and resourceful, not because he receives aid from above.
> 
> Saying that the only survive because they are the protagonist is a very poor reading of the novels. You have to look at the illusionary reason the author uses to justify their success. That illusion tells you a lot about the imaginary world of the author.



I think you're applying different standards to S&S and HF. If you focus on the illusion in S&S, rather than that it's a story where we know the hero must win, then we must apply the same standard to HF. We must look at the illusion.

In LotR, is it necessary that the heroes win, or is it contingent? I would say it was contingent. Despite the help of the angel Gandalf, mortal beings had to do the right thing. Sauron's defeat wasn't, afaicr, prophesied and mandated. If it was, the story would've been rather dull.

You are right though that Conan's independence is particularly noticeable. He usually wins all by himself. When he gets help from Valeria, or in the first story, Phoenix on the Sword, from a wizard, those are notable exceptions. One could argue that makes the team-oriented LotR a better model for D&D, whether old or new school.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> 1) Automatically Balanced encounters: the game is telling you *when *and *what *should be encountered. That's plot control right there.
> 2) Treasure prescriptions: the game is telling when should a magic sword be gained. That's also plot control the way I see it.



In the 1e DMG Gary warns against both Monty Haul-ism - ie giving out too much treasure and magic items - and Killer DMing - making the monsters too powerful, the traps too deadly, etc. Isn't that the same concern as the one expressed in 4e?

The recommended style of play - challenging but balanced - is actually the exact same in 1e and 4e. It's just 4e gives the DM clearer advice on how to achieve it.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

Well, JRR Tolkien did say: 



> The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.



J. R. R. Tolkien - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to Catholicism, even though God respects human liberty, good will *always *finally triumph over evil. In fact, evil has _already _been defeated by Christ on the Cross. So yes... you could read that Sauron's defeat was prophesied or mandated. Gandalf, who is in part an allegory of Jesus, even prophetisizes that "Gollum still has a role to fulfil". So he *knew* how the ring was going to be destroyed beforehand. 



> You are right though that Conan's independence is particularly noticeable. He usually wins all by himself. When he gets help from Valeria, or in the first story, Phoenix on the Sword, from a wizard, those are notable exceptions. One could argue that makes the team-oriented LotR a better model for D&D, whether old or new school.




Well, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are a duo. I don't think that individuality is necessarily a caracteristic of the genre. Maybe Howard wanted to stress that nobody, nobody helped Conan, that he was all by himself.

But I think that teams can also be part of the S&S genre. Individuality is no essential - it's the means by which they succeed.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

Doug McCrae said:


> In the 1e DMG Gary warns against both Monty Haul-ism - ie giving out too much treasure and magic items - and Killer DMing - making the monsters too powerful, the traps too deadly, etc. Isn't that the same concern as the one expressed in 4e?
> 
> The recommended style of play - challenging but balanced - is actually the exact same in 1e and 4e. It's just 4e gives the DM clearer advice on how to achieve it.




Yes. As I have stated before, both styles, HF or S&S, taken to the extreme are unplayable. So it's all about a general orientation or principles, that can have their exceptions to keep the game playable.

EDIT: But notice how there is a general idea that in 4E the players can DEMAND that treasure prescriptions be respected and followed BTB.


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## Badwe (Jun 9, 2009)

Interestingly, as a side-note to the conflicts of these two gameplay styles, it's worth noting a parallel in computer/videogames.  

In the early days, the most common RPGs were "Rogue-Likes" on personal computers, where players navigated a single character through a randomly generated dungeon that got progressively harder as they descended floors.  There was no promise of success, and in fact there was often no real hope of being able to accrue enough experience to descend completely into the dungeon.

Eventually, of course, as plot began to work it's way into  the mix, we saw the dawn of the "Console RPG" or the "JRPG", which was very much a story on rails, with very specific progression and growth of power and an understanding that you would eventually beat the game.

Ironically, there has even been an age of harkening back to the old-school, as modern "Rogue-likes" like Etrian Odyssey have come into popularity, recreating that old-school danger.


As for the Pen&Paper world, while some may be more satisfied by the premise of S&S and how it is unfailingly impartial, the reality is that the majority of people have drifted towards HF because it lends itself better to gaming.  Now, if you are looking for a simulation of sorts, a "let's see what happens when i do this" kind of vibe, you are likely to gain more satisfaction from doing things in an S&S manner, but honestly you would be hard pressed to make that genuinely work for a group of 4 or 5 PCs for more than a single day.  For people who are planning on playing consistently for several hours at a time every week, HF and all of it's trappings (plot protection, balanced encounters, gradual progression of power and magic) will create a more engaging event for everyone at the table while avoiding issues such as "i'm sitting around for 3 hours because my character died" or "oops, we've been playing for 3 months, the party wiped, and now we're done".

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely see the appeal of S&S and it's "anything can happen" mentality, but just as the stories revolve around solitary characters it seems as though the experience is best left as a solitary rather than group one.  In fact i'd wager that playing something like a rogue-like would be more satisfying because then the "DM" can be truly impartial.  Perhaps we are all too caught up in the trappings of modern game design, but a lot of folks think a game should engage all the players at the table every session.


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## Stoat (Jun 9, 2009)

Other than the Lord of the Rings, what are some examples of "High Fantasy?"


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## Obryn (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> 1) Automatically Balanced encounters: the game is telling you *when *and *what *should be encountered. That's plot control right there.
> 2) Treasure prescriptions: the game is telling when should a magic sword be gained. That's also plot control the way I see it.
> 3) Less randomness, more predictability, that will reduce "bad surprises" that can frustrate the fulfillment of the HF premise: good will win over evil.



I had this same argument about 3e a few years back, and I've heard the arguments trotted back out about 4e.  Automatically balanced encounters, and wealth-by-level (or treasure parcels) aren't rules to the same degree that attack rolls, damage, and armor class are.  A DM can freely ignore these in both editions.

Neither is more substantive than the 1e Monster Levels, or its general advice against giving too much treasure.  It's just spelled out, so a DM who veers sharply from the guidelines knows he's playing outside 3e's or 4e's default assumptions.



Zulgyan said:


> EDIT: But notice how there is a general idea that the players can DEMAND that treasure prescriptions be respected and followed BTB.



Demand?  Never in my experience, no matter what edition we're talking about.

-O


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

> A DM can freely ignore these in both editions.





> Demand? Never in my experience, no matter what edition we're talking about.




Well, if you read boards and blog often, and even the 4E rulebooks, you'll notice that many people don't think you can freely ignore those prescriptions.

What I have tried to identify is "where does that come from?". I believe it comes from people trying to make the game look more like a high fantasy novel.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

> the reality is that the majority of people have drifted towards HF because it lends itself better to gaming.




I think this is just a matter of subjective preference. You can't say that HF is better for gaming as an objective truth. 



> just as the stories revolve around solitary characters it seems as though the experience is best left as a solitary rather than group one.




IMO, as I said above, individuality is not an essential characteristic of the genre.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

Stoat said:


> Other than the Lord of the Rings, what are some examples of "High Fantasy?"




This is quite a fair list:

List of high fantasy fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Obryn (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Well, if you read boards and blog often, and even the 4E rulebooks, you'll notice that many people don't think you can freely ignore those prescriptions.



errrmmm...  I have read the 4e rulebooks.  I've also read the 3e rulebooks.  I've also read the 1e and 2e rulebooks.  Fundamentally, 3e and 4e are pretty close to the same, and really, like I said, all it is, is a set of guidelines saying, "At this level, the game assumes _this._"

I mean, really, this was Complaint Numero Uno of Oldschool vs. 3e back in the day, and it seems to have come back for 4e.  I think everyone who's run 3e knows that it's not a strict rule that the DM must follow.  I think everyone who's run 4e knows the same for 4e.  A DM can freely ignore those guidelines in both 3e and 4e and still run a perfectly good game.

Second - regarding entitled players....  Honestly, I think a sense of entitlement is alot more about the age and maturity of the players than it is the system.  I know that the BX/1e mish-mash I ran in middle school had some very entitled players...  Yes, they can latch onto 3e's Wealth by Level and Challenge Ratings and throw tantrums, but if those charts weren't there, they'd throw tantrums with something else.

-O


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Good stuff, thanks guys for the responses:
> 1) I think some are missing the point that, what defines HF vs. S&S is the underlying worldview and moral system - basically: God on the side of good vs. No God, or God takes no sides.




Fundamentally wrong. Shanarra is high fantasy and has no gods of note. The D&D novels are, generally, high fantasy and have gods on both sides. The Deed of Paksinarrion has Gods on both sides and while Paks is empowered by her god Gird (she is a Paladin, after all) she wins because she endures and is rewarded afterward with healing and more work because of her faith. I stopped reading a few books in, but I don't recall any Gods in the Wheel of Time (other then the characters, that is). The defining differences between Sword and Sorcery and High Fantasy are: Seeking adventure vs having adventure thrust upon you, episodic vs serial, ambiguous morality vs good/evil, personal conflict vs world threatening and that HF is draws more from legend and typically is a form of Campbellian Bildungsroman.



Zulgyan said:


> 2) The presence of demi-humans, clerics, vancian magic or not, etc. are all *secondary *to that, IMO. So sword & sorcery is not necessarily about barbarians vs. evil sorcerers. That's how it is in many popular S&S novels, but it does not need to be necessarily that way. You need to look at the higher concepts and themes of the novels.




Genre is defined by theme, tropes, and trappings. Invented races, magic, wizards, monsters, etc all being "common place", although not necessarily to the hero, are all characteristics of HF. They are not characteristics of  Sword and Sorcery.



Zulgyan said:


> 3) I agree that D&D and westerns have much in common. Specially the spaghetti-westerns of Sergio Leone: "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", "Fistful of Dollars" and "For a few dollars more". I heartily recommend those films, and their plots are very very D&Desque




  Except that none of those (well, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly sort of is) are really westerns. They're samurai films with deserts and guns. Fundamentally they have more in common with Erol Flynn then 



Zulgyan said:


> 4) Yes, RPGs are bigger than Gygax, agreed. But when you analyse the RPG *he authored*, he is a main reference for interpretation, ins't he?. What John Wick says about Houses of the Blooded will be more relevant that what Ron Edwards says about that game.




And yet he wrote Greyhawk, which is High Fantasy.



Zulgyan said:


> 5) I think that OD&D and 1E as games that captured very close the spirit of S&S, was not *that *intentional on part of Gygax. Not very consciously, IMO, he captured the spirit of S&S because in his game, the fact you where good or the protagonist, made you in no way special.




Elves, dwarves, magic, monsters, black and white morality... It's HF. Gritty, bloody, absurd HF sure, but it's still HF. Then again the PCs are assumed to be looking for adventure, fortune and glory. So it's S&S. But it's also HF. It's a mismash of both with Sword and Planet, classical legends, science fiction, strange Japanese toys and a pile of other stuff tossed in. D&D is it's own genre of Fantasy, which is closest to HF. No matter what the edition.



Zulgyan said:


> 6) When authors write their novels, they don't justify the survival of their protagonists *solely *on them being them protagonists. They introduce an additional justification, to *create an illusion* that they survive because of *other reasons* than just being the protagonist. On general terms, in HF novels it's because higher forces of good will never let evil triumph. In S&S it's because the protagonist is skillful, lucky and resourceful, not because he receives aid from above.




As I saiud above, numerous HF stories have no Gods or have good Gods who are essentially powerless because they're opposed by bad Gods. Moorcock has good, bad, and indifferent gods. Conan has cruel, indiffernt gods, malevolent gods, and at least two good gods.



Zulgyan said:


> Saying that the only survive because they are the protagonist is a very poor reading of the novels. You have to look at the illusionary reason the author uses to justify their success. That illusion tells you a lot about the imaginary world of the author.




It's not a poor reading, it's a mechanistic crtique. At the core, Conan survives because he made Howard money. Conana can't loose, because Howard's editors would not buy a story that had that happen, because it would anger the readers and Howard would starve. Primary characters are far more likely to die in HF then S&S.



Zulgyan said:


> 7) 4E is not a pure HF game. To be a pure HF game, you need a mechanic that makes good always win over evil. 4E does not have it, for good IMO. But 4E has introduced some "plot control" mechanics that make the HF premise easier to achieve, the premise being "good will win over evil".




Although I don't like 4e, does not have anything of the sort.



Zulgyan said:


> This are:
> 1) Automatically Balanced encounters: the game is telling you *when *and *what *should be encountered. That's plot control right there.
> 2) Treasure prescriptions: the game is telling when should a magic sword be gained. That's also plot control the way I see it.




You're wrong. The game tells you how to figure out how tough an encounter will be. It recomends you make encounters within certain range so the PCs aren't blithely wading through schlubs or getting slaughtered by things outside their league, but it doesn't stop you from sticking Orcus in the last room of Keep on the Shadowfell. It then goes on to tell you what sort of treasure is appropriate so as not to break the game system. Again, outside of the RPGA you can break this all you want. Neither of these are plot control, however. Adventure! has plot control, Houses of the Blooded has plot control. 4e does not have plot control.



Zulgyan said:


> 3) Less randomness, more predictability, that will reduce "bad surprises" that can frustrate the fulfillment of the HF premise: good will win over evil.




How does that relate? I'm pretty sure 4e has random encounter tables. It's less swingy, because in WotC is of the opinion that most people like things that way. From what I've seen in the way of house rules for 3e, rewrites of d20


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

> Shanarra is high fantasy and has no gods of note. The D&D novels are, generally, high fantasy and have gods on both sides.




I think you are confusing "*g*ods" in lowe-case, with *G*od with capital letter. In High Fantasy, a cosmological higher force of good will not let evil triumph. That is based on the Christian God. The *g*ods from the novels are not *G*ods in the way modern theology and philosophy interpret the concept of *G*od. They are just ultra power beings on different sides of the conflict. 

You say it:



> As I saiud above, numerous HF stories have no Gods or have good Gods who are essentially powerless because they're opposed by bad Gods.




So if these *g*ods are powerless, then they not like *G*od. People call the *g*ods just because they are very very powerful. But they don't have the omnipotence and omnipresence that characterizes *G*od. 



> It's not a poor reading, it's a mechanistic crtique. At the core, Conan survives because he made Howard money. Conana can't loose, because Howard's editors would not buy a story that had that happen, because it would anger the readers and Howard would starve. Primary characters are far more likely to die in HF then S&S.




From this point of view, all literature would be point-less.


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Well, if you read boards and blog often, and even the 4E rulebooks, you'll notice that many people don't think you can freely ignore those prescriptions.




This is the internet. There's someone out there insisting the sky is really mauve with yellow polka dots. That said, many people like to play the rules as written. The reasons for this vary, some good and some bad.



Zulgyan said:


> What I have tried to identify is "where does that come from?". I believe it comes from people trying to make the game look more like a high fantasy novel.




It comes from the popularity of unified rule systems and organized play. The ever increasing equipment thing is peculiar to D&D. Look at the two exemplar of HF you brought up. In Narnia the characters get one set of gear a book, it doesn't even replace their gear from the previous book since they lost that at the end of the last book. In LotR, the hero basically get three equipment upgrades. Once at the barrow, once at Rivendell, and once from the elves. In total, Frodo gets two weapons, one suit of armor, an elven cloak, and a special weapon to deal with a specific foe. Looks nothing like the D&D arms race.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

> organized play.




This indeed another major factor of change in the history of D&D. I agree.

But many many player's don't play in RPGA, and I think their main source of frustration with the older editions, is that they wanted their game to be more like a High Fantasy novel, rather than a Sword & Sorcery one. Even without noticing it. Because many people never read the S&S novels. They just read the HF that are more in fashion today. So they have a certain preconception about how fantasy should work.


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> I think you are confusing "*g*ods" in lowe-case, with *G*od with capital letter. In High Fantasy, a cosmological higher force of good will not let evil triumph. That is based on the Christian God. The *g*ods from the novels are not *G*ods in the way modern theology and philosophy interpret the concept of *G*od. They are just ultra power beings on different sides of the conflict.
> 
> So if these *g*ods are powerless, then they not like *G*od. People call the *g*ods just because they are very very powerful. But they don't have the omnipotence and omnipresence that characterizes *G*od.




I fail to see a difference, but properly answering your argument here would likely violate the board rules. There are numerous other views in theology and philosophy then the Christian one, you should study some other faiths and philosophies before making broad statements like this.

Record of the Lodoss War and the other Forcelia works are High Fantasy, and have no supreme being at all. They don't even really have much in line of deities period really, and I can only really think of one case where one actually interveined, by sending a priestess a one sentence message. Sure, priests and priestess cast spells and they're different sorts then the wizards, but they cast them the same way.

Although it is not, strictly speaking, High Fantasy, many elements of Journey to the West do fit into similar conventions and it has all of the gods and demons subservient to an enlightened man (and later on, an enlightened monkey).

High Fantasy does not require a prime actor, and is not an inherently Abrahamic exercise in morality. Especially since the general concepts of good and evil employed in most are inherent to the human condition, rather then any particular faith. In many cases there's no actual discussion of why the Dark Lord is evil, he just is.



Zulgyan said:


> From this point of view, all literature would be point-less.




No, different authors write for different reasons. Tolkein and Lewis wrote because they wanted to. Conan Doyle wrote because he wanted to. None of them needed to write to support themselves. Howard, Lieber, C.L. Moore, etc wrote because that was wanted to so and in order to support themselves. Proper analysis and critique of a work is helped by understanding the author's motivations for writing a piece. In the case of Conan and many other S&S stories when the genre began, it was to feed themselves. Much like a script writer churning out action movie scripts.

That said, even if the motivation was to make money (note this was Rowling's motivations in Harry Potter, which is High Fantasy), that doesn't make it any less entertaining. Which, contrary to what many academic fiction authors think is the point to writing a book.


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> This indeed another major factor of change in the history of D&D. I agree.
> 
> But many many player's don't play in RPGA, and I think their main source of frustration with the older editions, is that they wanted their game to be more like a High Fantasy novel, rather than a Sword & Sorcery one. Even without noticing it. Because many people never read the S&S novels. They just read the HF that are more in fashion today. So they have a certain preconception about how fantasy should work.




You keep saying that, but you haven't provided any real supporting evidence that 'modern' D&D is any more HF then 'old' D&D, or that 'old' D&D was any more S&S then 'new' D&D.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

The evidence lies on the sources of inspiration Gary used, and the ones used currently.

EGG numerous times said he was *much *more inspired by S&S. That the Tolkien influences were just superficial, cosmetic. To make the game sell better. He said this A LOT.  He even called Tokien's masterpiece "The Bore of the Rings". You can do your research if you want to.

Here is a helpful link: Sources and influences on the development of Dungeons & Dragons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Umbran (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> The evidence lies on the sources of inspiration Gary used, and the ones used currently.




As I think was said upthread - the game was more than Gary's original intent.  

Do remember that Gary was still a novice at RPG design (the first person to do it must, perforce, be a novice), so that his ability to design those early editions to do exactly what he wanted had significant limits.  Even if he wanted S&S, that does not mean that's what he got.

Whatever Gary intended, people did with his rule set as they desired.  I doubt you'll find anything other than anecdotal evidence that people played the game more in one form or another.  If you are correct in your assertion that Gary used a lot of HF window dressing to make it sell argues strongly that he expected people to be interested in that sort of thing - and that they'd thus likely use his game for that sort of thing, whatever his personal inspirations.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

Yes you said it, and I answered above as well.

Generally, the most authentic interpretation of a game, is the one of it's author. That's why his opinions are more relevant towards understanding "what the game was supposed to be". 

Yes, people played D&D as they wanted, and there is nothing wrong with that. And those who played D&D in a fashion more similar to HF, started thinking that some things of the original game needed to be corrected and changed to suite their style better. This gamers were a majority - that's why 3.5 and 4E are the way they are today. There are other many other factors, but this one is relevant.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 9, 2009)

I think 1e vs 2e (or pre-Gary and post-Gary, or pre-Dragonlance and post-Dragonlance) fits the S&S vs HF model better than old school vs new school.

S&S - Protagonists are motivated by greed. Stories are short. Threats are personal. Setting isn't that important.
HF - Protagonists are motivated by altruism or duty. Epic adventures. Threats to the world. Setting uber alles.

In Gygaxian D&D, PCs are motivated mostly by treasure and magic items. XP was awarded for gold. PCs were expected to reach name level after a year of play. Adventures are non-linear and most were standalone, though the GDQ series was the first adventure path.

In 2e there was an increased emphasis on setting. Adventure paths became more common, the DL adventure path was a massive epic. Dragonlance modules were heavily railroaded. From 2e onwards the PCs are assumed to be good guys, there was no assassin in 2e.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

I can agree with you on that. It quite the same thing I'm saying, using different names for the categories.


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## Umbran (Jun 9, 2009)

Keefe the Thief said:


> I´ve insuled people? Where?





From your first post in the thread, your general snarky demeanor and dismissiveness has shown an overall lack of respect for other posters and their opinions - that is insulting.  You should not be surprised if people take exception to being treated this way.  I suggest you stop it.

Here's a hint for everyone - don't dismiss people's points by pigeonholing them.  The fact that you have categorized people and arguments in your own mind does not imply those people and arguments don't have merit.


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> The evidence lies on the sources of inspiration Gary used, and the ones used currently.
> 
> EGG numerous times said he was *much *more inspired by S&S. That the Tolkien influences were just superficial, cosmetic. To make the game sell better. He said this A LOT.  He even called Tokien's masterpiece "The Bore of the Rings". You can do your research if you want to.
> 
> Here is a helpful link: Sources and influences on the development of Dungeons & Dragons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




Pratt is more HF then S&S, Zelazny was all over the map, but Amber is HF, Farmer's all over the map as well. Merrit's pretyt much straight pulp, although many of his stories as S&S in tone and many are more HF in tone, but he really predates the development of a distinction between SF and Fantasy, let alone the development of different genres within those genres. Farmer's pretty much SF or patiches of earlier Pulp stories, although many of his stories fall into the Sword and Planet subgenre. Poul Anderson did S&S, SF, HF, and lots of other things. 

That said, I'm aware of Gygax's statements on the game's inspiration. Dave Arenson, on the other hand stated his inspirations where monster movies, Conana books (which he couldn't tell apart) and, to my understanding, is responsible for D&D as a whole and for the Tolkien influences. Not to mention all sorts of other assorted wackiness (steam power, submarines, aliens, laser guns, space ships, tanks, gunpowder, etc).

If Arneson and Gygax set out to write a Sword and Sorcery, High Fantasy, or any other fantasy sub-genre game, they failed miserably. They succeeded in creating D&D which is effectivel it's own genre due to mashing up and pastiching pretty much everything they though was cool together.

Arenson also said that role play and storytelling were the focus of his games.


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Yes you said it, and I answered above as well.
> 
> Generally, the most authentic interpretation of a game, is the one of it's author. That's why his opinions are more relevant towards understanding "what the game was supposed to be".
> 
> Yes, people played D&D as they wanted, and there is nothing wrong with that. And those who played D&D in a fashion more similar to HF, started thinking that some things of the original game needed to be corrected and changed to suite their style better. This gamers were a majority - that's why 3.5 and 4E are the way they are today. There are other many other factors, but this one is relevant.




You do realize that Gary wasn't the sole author and arguably wasn't even the important one for the booklets, right? Arenson came up with Blackmoor and used a modified version of Chainmail to run it. He then showed it to Gygax and they decided to publish it. Blackmoor and Gygax's Greyhawk are distinctly HF settings.


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## Cadfan (Jun 9, 2009)

I feel like High Fantasy is getting mangled a bit in this thread.

High Fantasy does not have some inherent property that good always triumphs over evil, except in the same sense that Sword and Sorcery has the inherent property that the protagonist always prevails because he's a badass.  Its like there's some shifting of the bar going on... for example, James Bond always wins because he's the protagonist.  But, that sense of "always wins" is a meta-story concept.  Within the actual story his victory is not inevitable, he still has to go out and risk life and limb and actually defeat the bad guys, and if he screws up London will be eradicated with a moon based ketchup ray or whatnot.  

Oh, and christian theology is getting mangled a bit in this thread as well.  I'm not going to go into this too much, but suffice to say christian theology generally does not conceive of the triumph of good over evil as being inevitable in the affairs of men.


			
				Zulgyan said:
			
		

> The *g*ods from the novels are not *G*ods in the way modern theology and philosophy interpret the concept of *G*od. They are just ultra power beings on different sides of the conflict.



You're grouping way too many religious traditions under this weird phrase, "modern theology and philosophy."  There is no modern, religion-independant concept of what god is really like.  There may be a consensus within _christian_ theology, or even judeo-christian theology, which is fine, but theology is not a field like biology or chemistry.  You can't take your theological findings and double blind studies and experimental data and walk over to, say, a shinto shrine and explain to them that their concept of god has been theologically or philosophically disproven.  Theology (almost always) proceeds from initial premises which preclude that sort of universality.

For the record, these statements are not particularly controversial amongst theologians.  The wikipedia article on "theology" is not a bad source if you're looking for a quick summary of how "theology" as a field relates to inter-religious discourse.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

I don't say that D&D was born as a pure pure S&S game. It did have lots of conflicting influences.

But the S&S influence was strong. Or at least stronger than that which is today.


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Or at least stronger than that which is today.




This is the part you haven't proven or even really supported.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

Krensky: I am not saying that D&D was born as a pure pure S&S game. It did have lots of conflicting influences.

But the S&S influence was strong. Or at least stronger than that which is today.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

Krensky said:


> This is the part you haven't proven or even really supported.




To some, proof offered never seems to be enough. I have done what time and energy allowed me. You can continue your research on your own and draw your own conclusions.


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Krensky: I am not saying that D&D was born as a pure pure S&S game. It did have lots of conflicting influences.
> 
> But the S&S influence was strong. Or at least stronger than that which is today.




And you haven't really supported, let alone proved the thesis that 'modern' D&D is any less influenced by Sword and Sorcery then it was in the late 1970s. People's play is less influenced because the genre is not currently in vogue compared to other forms of fantasy, but the rules and setting are no more or less influenced now then they were in the 'old' era.


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## Remathilis (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> But the S&S influence was strong. Or at least stronger than that which is today.




Things go in and out of style, change and adapt.

In the 60's, westerns were the prime source of TV drama from Gunsmoke to the Lone Ranger.

The 70's brought us the Kung-Fu craze.

The 80's was the return of Sci-fi (specifically Space Opera)

The 90's brought us the black trench coat anti-hero. 

Media adapts to the current taste. The taste for S&S died out years ago, and "HF" has grown to dominate modern fantasy. Jackson's LotR. Harry Potter. The Narnia chronicles. All of these are huge (again) and combined with the movies, animation (western & eastern), and video games of today, fantasy is a very different beast then when Gygax wrote his list.

Then again, they're talking about another Conan movie. Perhaps the more things change...


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## AllisterH (Jun 9, 2009)

Hairfoot said:


> Even in a game world which is tilted in the player's favour, I like my PC's survival to be the result of some ingenuity on my part and some Indiana Jones-style heroism by the character.  Regardless of the world style (S&S, HF, EF etc), this was the formula of D&D all the way up to 3.5 core.
> 
> A 4E campaign, OTOH, assumes a party of X-Men, far superior to the commoners, cleaving through hordes of foes and threatened only by the strongest of enemies.  I cannot identify with such characters, and they seem more like playing pieces than protagonists I want to weave a story with.




I think you might want to check out the MM1 and MM2 with regard to the rest of humanity...

A 5th level PC in pre 3e was pretty much stomping the entire town's guard and could pretty much slap around the king's knights etc since they were generally assumed to be non-adventurers and thus 0th level PCs.

The 4e PC will be humiliated if he tries that trick anytime in 4e....The baseline assumption of humanity for example is WAY higher than ever before...Even if you're not a "special little snowflake, a.k.a crazy as all a.k.a the adventurer", a 4e non-adventurer is still expected to be tougher than the riff raff farmer peasant...

If anything, 4e is the one edition where the PCs are definitely not anything special...


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## coyote6 (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> This is quite a fair list:
> 
> List of high fantasy fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




That list includes Erikson's _Book of the Malazan_ and Martin's _Song of Ice and Fire_; by your definition, that means "god" is on the side of the righteous and goodly in those books, and "good" is destined to win. From what I've read of the two series (only two books of Erikson's, but all of Martin's), that's pretty clearly not the case. The "gods" are either absent (in SoIaF) or are at best morally ambivalent (Malazan), and the "good guys" are not destined to win, and aren't always particularly "good" anyways.

So, either those books _aren't_ high fantasy, or your definitions are flawed. Personally, I don't agree with your definitions.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

Remathilis: so we basically agree. D&D changed with the taste of the majority. And that is basically my point.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

> So, either those books aren't high fantasy, or your definitions are flawed. Personally, I don't agree with your definitions.




I didn't analyse the list so profoundly. It is just a guideline, one can disagree on some of it's inclusions.


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

I think the genre divide is not just coincidence, but also not the fundamental reason for conflict and change. "Story first" seems to me more basic, a view that one can have regardless of what (if any) genre fiction one has read.

Just as we can identify precursors of D&D, we can find precursors of Hickman's work. There's a period of relatively unrecognized experiments, and then -- a paradigm-shifting product. Dragonlance was that for "story first" in D&D, and thus (because D&D was most visible) for the RPG hobby.

Now (as demonstrated in at least one earlier post in this thread), some people even consider the approach definitive of RPGs. The original "role-playing" concept has in some quarters been supplanted with an essentially theatrical one.

Once a former innovation has become the long-standing norm, it can be easy to forget that there was a time before it.

Coming from ordinary wargames, one found in D&D something distinctively different. Seeing things from the perspective of one's playing piece was not just a small part of the game -- it *was* the game. Here you are; what will you do? No army to command, no set victory condition, no limit to the field of operations ... no end, really, to the game at which point one could be said definitively to have won or lost. One could indefinitely keep rolling up new characters via which to explore the worlds of adventure.

That was not something one would *expect*, much less take for granted; it was a revelation. (I refer here both to personal experience and to many, many accounts of others.)

The "story first" game -- as distinct from the "emergent story" game of D&D -- was also revolutionary. It was not what one would expect, because there was no previous experience that would lead one to expect it, any more than one would expect a "plot line" in Risk.

Indeed, that there was no predetermined outcome was definitive of a *game*. "White to mate in three moves" was for puzzles, and looking up the solution was not what those were about; it was the resort when one gave up on "playing with" a problem.

I see the methodology of those "plotted" D&D scenarios, which seemed to become very common in the 2E era (in modules, if not in Dungeon magazine), as flawed. There's nothing, of course, to keep other people from finding it quite satisfactory.

To my mind, a design that integrates the "narrative control" concept _as part of the game_ is better than one that subverts the game. When a "good game" requires breaking the rules, I think it's time to change the rules.

In any case, "story first" and "role-playing with emergent story" are rather at odds with each other. I think *that* is the real underlying reason  for conflict and change in D&D.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 9, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> To my mind, a design that integrates the "narrative control" concept _as part of the game_ is better than one that subverts the game. When a "good game" requires breaking the rules, I think it's time to change the rules.



That's very much the Forge position. I see it as being a reaction to the 90s, the era of 2e and Vampire, systems that promoted storytelling in the GM's advice section but the rules were simulationist.


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

There's a middle position of emergent story with presumed protagonists. It may be unknown just what dramatic arc the story of "the heroes" will take -- but it's not going to end in "meaningless" deaths at the toss of a die, because otherwise they would not properly be "the heroes of the story".


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

Also, it can (at least for me) depend on theme. For instance, having narrative control as a player would probably spoil *Call of Cthulhu* for me.


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> Also, it can (at least for me) depend on theme. For instance, having narrative control as a player would probably spoil *Call of Cthulhu* for me.




It depends how it's implemented and what you're defining as narrative control. Dread, for instance, fits some definitions of narrative control, and I understand it would work quite well for Lovecraft.


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## Stoat (Jun 9, 2009)

Earlier, Doug McCrae mentioned the Giants series -- "the first adventure path."  Are those adventures High Fantasy or Sword & Sorcery?  Do they represent a story first outlook or an emergent story outlook?


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## Ariosto (Jun 9, 2009)

The G modules are less significant in that regard than the D series. Space and time constraints in the latter work more to imply a sequence of events.

A critical distinction is that the game was not rigged to ensure that any particular characters would survive, much less succeed; or that the schemes of the instigating villains would have any particular outcome.

More influential, I think, was the A series. However, that (like a number of TSR modules) was designed for the peculiar requirements of tournament play. A4 was what and when it was for the sake of testing players' skill, and A3 was "rigged" to set it up in the preceding round. Considering it from a narrative perspective, some think that the opening of the final round works better as the beginning of the whole story -- giving a personal motive (revenge) for the characters to pursue the destruction of the villains.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

Here is Conan turned into High Fantasy, as an example that the common tropes of the genre are not what define it:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wqlqy82Snk&feature=related[/ame]


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Here is Conan turned into High Fantasy, as an example that the common tropes of the genre are not what define it:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wqlqy82Snk&feature=related




A genre is defined by it's themes and conventions.

If you change the themes and conventions (the tropes) you change the genre.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

So what would this cartoon be then? A new genre? It certainly does not share the same theme of the Conan novels. It's themes are closer to High Fantasy, even though it does not share it's common tropes.

I think that by your definition of genre, each author is nearly a genre of it's own.


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## Krensky (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> So what would this cartoon be then? A new genre? It certainly does not share the same theme of the Conan novels. It's themes are closer to High Fantasy, even though it does not share it's common tropes.




Well, properly it's Saturday Morning TV, but ignoring that...

It's HF, but it maintains the central themes and tropes of that genre.

Conan has adventure thrust upon him and has a 'mysterious past' (the Atlantis thing), goes on an hero's journey, and defeats the Dark Lord and the Dark Power behind him. He's also morally upright, only interested in one woman, values his friends and the innocent and weak, etc.

The other characters with similarity to original Conan ones are also changed to make them more kid friendly which makes them more similar to tropes of high fantasy. The exiled prince, the rebellious noble girl, the barbarian (not Conan in this case), etc.

Good and evil are concrete concepts, Conan wins not just because of his strength and skill but because of his friends and good deeds. Common place magic and monsters. Fantastical races (There's a pheonix, a dragon, and the snake men)

Pretty standard High Fantasy stuff. It's called Conan and has the some of the trappings of Conan, but none of the central themes, conventions or tropes.




Zulgyan said:


> I think that by your definition of genre, each author is nearly a genre of it's own.




Many authors are genres unto themselves, but that definition isn't mine.

genre - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Particularly:

1     *:* a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content

Now, I did over simplify. A lot of tropes of a work can be changed without changing the genre, but doing so does change the nature of the piece, and there are central tropes that can not changed. However, changing even the most peripheral of tropes can change the genre of a piece radically.


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## No Name (Jun 9, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> What's important is the underlying worldview and moral system.
> 
> High Fantasy literature is based on a Christian worldview. According to Christianity, good will finally triumph over evil. God intervenes in history to carry out his plan of salvation. Even more: to many Christian denominations, evil has already been defeated by Jesus Christ on the Cross.
> 
> Sword & Sorcery literature is based on an Atheist worldview. So there is no god to take care of you. No god to be the parameter and judge of morality. No higher force of good that will finally triumph over evil. Humanity is alone. So it's all about power and survival.




I can't agree with this. It has nothing to do with morality.

People playing S&S are just playing a game. Nothing more. It's no different than playing Monopoly for example. If you roll an 8 and that makes you pay the $75 luxury tax, then tough luck. That's just what happens.

High Fantasy players are participating in creating a myth. I don't want to go into it here and now, but Joseph Campbell has written some excellent stuff on the subject.

That's the difference between the two. One is just a board game, the other is about the hero's journey.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 9, 2009)

> Pretty standard High Fantasy stuff. It's called Conan and has the some of the trappings of Conan, but none of the central themes, conventions or tropes.




I define genres by their central high conceptual themes, woldview, values and morals. I try to make trappings and tropes not that relevant in defining them.

That is why I think that, while old D&D had elves, dwarves, hobbits and clerics, it was still very strong on the S&S genre.


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## Umbran (Jun 10, 2009)

No Name said:


> I can't agree with this. It has nothing to do with morality.




I agree with you that it has nothing to do with morality.



> That's the difference between the two. One is just a board game, the other is about the hero's journey.




I disagree with you here.  Any player can be just playing a game.  And any player could be working on creating a myth.  While Campbell's framework is sometimes compelling, it is by no means exhaustive or definitive.  There are myths that don't fit the Hero's Journey, and there are things that fit the Hero's Journey that are not myths.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 10, 2009)

No Name said:


> I can't agree with this. It has nothing to do with morality.
> 
> People playing S&S are just playing a game. Nothing more. It's no different than playing Monopoly for example. If you roll an 8 and that makes you pay the $75 luxury tax, then tough luck. That's just what happens.
> 
> ...




I can't help but call this post more than a little pretentious


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## Remathilis (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Remathilis: so we basically agree. D&D changed with the taste of the majority. And that is basically my point.




In a large sense, yes, there was a change. There are two caveats to that.

1.) The change is not necessarily "bad" or "wrong" because it does not hew close to Gygax's original concepts and influences, and

2.) Its completely possible to play OD&D as a "high fantasy" game and equally possible to play 4e as "Sword & Sorcery". Though the game may contain lesser or greater influence of one or the other (and even if the terms Zulgyan uses are incorrect, lets assume them for this discussion) the game is not devoid enough of either to make subtle shifts in rules, tone, and playstyle to emulate one or the other. 

What I don't agree on: High Fantasy is synonymous (or even associated with) either "player entitlement" (and the side discussion on how "New School" or 3e/4e fosters such a notion) or it must contain an "all-knowing, all-loving deity" who actively shapes the world. (Though I'll concede HF has more to do with good vs. evil morality, once you move past Tolkien and Lewis, HF is a lot less Christian analogy and more more Campbellian hero-with-a-thousand-faces).

I also reject the notion that D&D is an inappropriate medium to "tell stories" in, but I'll leave that discussion for another time.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

> 1.) The change is not necessarily "bad" or "wrong" because it does not hew close to Gygax's original concepts and influences, and




I never made a bad, wrong, good type of statement in the whole discussion. So we agree. 



> 2.) Its completely possible to play OD&D as a "high fantasy" game and equally possible to play 4e as "Sword & Sorcery". Though the game may contain lesser or greater influence of one or the other




We also agree on this.


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## LostSoul (Jun 10, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> To my mind, a design that integrates the "narrative control" concept _as part of the game_ is better than one that subverts the game. When a "good game" requires breaking the rules, I think it's time to change the rules.




What are you thinking of when you say "narrative control"?



Ariosto said:


> In any case, "story first" and "role-playing with emergent story" are rather at odds with each other. I think *that* is the real underlying reason  for conflict and change in D&D.




Yup.  I think all the genre talk is misplaced; it's about player priorities - and those are bigger than genre.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

> What I don't agree on: High Fantasy is synonymous (or even associated with) either "player entitlement" (and the side discussion on how "New School" or 3e/4e fosters such a notion) or it must contain an "all-knowing, all-loving deity" who actively shapes the world. (Though I'll concede HF has more to do with good vs. evil morality, once you move past Tolkien and Lewis, HF is a lot less Christian analogy and more more Campbellian hero-with-a-thousand-faces).




Do you think that it would be better if I replace "God" with "A cosmological force of good" in my terminology?


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## Remathilis (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Do you think that it would be better if I replace "God" with "A cosmological force of good" in my terminology?




I think the necessity of a Absolute Good and Absolute Evil is a defining feature, even if there is no "higher power" that controls/creates it. That said, your second definition opens up a lot more options (such as _Star Wars' _the Force) than your original premise.


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## Ariosto (Jun 10, 2009)

> What are you thinking of when you say "narrative control"?



What came first to mind was some GM advice in the _Legend of the Five Rings_ game. The designer gave an example of a player choosing to try to kill an important NPC. The advice was to roll dice and _pretend_ to apply the rules, but in fact to make sure the attempt fails so as not to "spoil the fun". As I recall, it was pretty clear that the _player_ was having fun while he thought he had succeeded! The designer got really topsy-turvy, claiming simultaneously that "it's cheating" and "it's not".


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## M.L. Martin (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Do you think that it would be better if I replace "God" with "A cosmological force of good" in my terminology?




   I think the distinction between "an ordered, moral and providential universe" and "a chaotic, amoral and uncaring or hostile universe" gets closer to the roots of the matter, myself.


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## No Name (Jun 10, 2009)

Umbran said:


> I disagree with you here. Any player can be just playing a game. And any player could be working on creating a myth. While Campbell's framework is sometimes compelling, it is by no means exhaustive or definitive. There are myths that don't fit the Hero's Journey, and there are things that fit the Hero's Journey that are not myths.




Absolutely. I don't think I made myself that clear though (nor was I trying to be pretentious).

The S&S gaming style, the way the original post described it, plays like an impartial board game. It doesn't lend itself to myth creation very well. A player can easily have character death due to some random chart roll.

HF characters are meant to face trials and tribulations, but ultimately succeed (or die a hero's death). Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned Campbell, but he pops into mind sometimes when I think about modern D&D.

While any player could be working on creating a myth, if the DM is running a S&S style game, that player will have a tough time of it.

Umbrar (eaten by dragon)
Umbrak (green slimed)
Umbrav (shot by lucky goblin)
Umbran of EN World, Hero of the Realm


I jest.


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## Woas (Jun 10, 2009)

I don't know how off topic this is, but it came to me while reading these 9 pages so somehow to me it seems relevant. If you deem it forkable we can follow it there. But anyway...

I haven't read all the famous Sword & Sorcery stories. But I've read a bunch and one common trope with S&S which I think might come more from an escapism literature base is that of tantalizing sexuality. 
I realize we've all just got done debating Sexism in D&D on another post but I wonder, has any game with clear S&S 'roots' past or present somehow found a way to add that 'reward' sociably and purposefully into a shared game?


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## Ariosto (Jun 10, 2009)

In that L5R example and similar cases, the question that seems obvious to me is _why is the dishonesty necessary?_

A simple rule could be agreed upon: A PC cannot die without the player's consent, nor an NPC without the GM's. The reciprocity is not necessary, but I like it. The point is simply for everyone to agree on the game being played. It's not necessary to lie about abiding by the rules!

If we are not willing to accept the outcomes of algorithms, then why pile them up into a complex structure? Why not turn instead to rules directed at producing the range of results we _do_ want? D&D was originally designed to produce results that can easily overturn any preconceived story. The companions who are "supposed" to end up slaying the Dark Lord can instead fall in a fight with his lowly minions in the first chapter!

The more specific rules get "fudged", the less they really are rules. It's a slippery slope from playing a game to sitting down for the GM's story hour. When I go to watch a movie, I don't expect footage of the director rolling dice before each scene. That would be just a distraction from the story. Likewise, I don't want to spend hours making irrelevant decisions and dice rolls in an illusion of a game. If it's billed as a game, then I want to play for real.

This is quite another matter from the old-style referee's adjudication. When I DM OD&D, I toss dice in plain sight of the players in every case except when it really would give information they should not have -- but then it remains information for _me_ nonetheless. I don't save _any_ figure arbitrarily, because then its demise would also be by my choice (as I chose not to "fudge" that one time). When I make a ruling, there is likewise no need to keep the reasoning secret other  than that the players have not yet discovered the reason for themselves. Barring that, we often consider situations together and come to a consensus on how to treat them. Reasonable people can disagree -- but we can also agree to an extent that might surprise some of the rules-lawyer persuasion.

It is quite possible to have a story game in which the final outcome is not in doubt, in the minds of _any_ of the participants. The meaningful questions to be answered then have to do with the particular route between the story's beginning and end. What happens along the way? Surely there is a field of more and less desirable collateral results, and the game's challenge lies in finding a better rather than worse path through that.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 10, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> In that L5R example and similar cases, the question that seems obvious to me is _why is the dishonesty necessary?_
> 
> A simple rule could be agreed upon: A PC cannot die without the player's consent, nor an NPC without the GM's. The reciprocity is not necessary, but I like it. The point is simply for everyone to agree on the game being played. It's not necessary to lie about abiding by the rules!
> 
> ...




My answer to this is that death isn't necessary to achieve challenge and suspense. The threat of death is enough. I'm running 4E right now, and I find that close brushes with death are a fairly common occurrence, and enough to keep everyone scared. I was inches away from killing our Druid with an Assassin Imp who was more interested in killing a helpless dying enemy than helping his friends this past sunday. Add to this that I've TPK'ed the party twice in a year of gaming, and death isn't far away from my players' minds.


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## Ariosto (Jun 10, 2009)

To clarify what I mean by "narrative control", it is the power to dictate what happens in the story rather than deferring to any rule specific to the situation at hand.

Designing such a game is a matter of deciding how to apportion and limit such power.

Here's as an example of how something like that might play out. There's a GM, whose role in this particular hypothetical game is to have in mind a very general plot structure (in particular, a satisfyingly dramatic climactic scene) and direct the action along those lines with "course corrections". Basically, the GM has narrative control by default.

The GM plans to present a scene in which the heroes get ambushed by Loathly Lurkers, and one of them is sorely wounded with a poisoned arrow, but they slay all but the lead Lurker. That worthy, in his hasty escape, loses a map and missive that the heroes find. Her expectation is that the players will add to the story some solution to the poison problem, then use the map to infiltrate an enemy fortress and rescue the ally indicated in the letter as being held there.

However, when the first arrows fly, a player challenges the GM's narrative control. Chips are bid and dice are rolled, and the player wins. The player says that the arrows have non-deadly tips that inject a poison with a soporific effect. The Lurkers capture the heroes and take them to wherever Ally X is being held. Nobody challenges that.

That scene being resolved, narrative control returns to the GM. The players have ended up where she wanted to get them, but under different circumstances -- and by their choice. It was, in narrative terms, a good strategic choice. If the players had chosen some other direction for the next scene, then the GM would have just had to run with it and see how to use it to advance the plot.


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## JRRNeiklot (Jun 10, 2009)

Doug McCrae said:


> I think you might be on to something here but your terminology is wrong. Old school D&D doesn't particularly resemble classic sword & sorcery fiction. I don't remember Conan dying from a poison spider bite in the first story, then being reincarnated as a dryad.





Conan, no, but Nathan Brazil was.


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## Korgoth (Jun 10, 2009)

No Name said:


> The S&S gaming style, the way the original post described it, plays like an impartial board game.




False. It plays like a role playing game.



			
				No Name said:
			
		

> It doesn't lend itself to myth creation very well. A player can easily have character death due to some random chart roll.




True and true. Random character death is a possibility and "myth creation" is not one of the goals expressed or implied.


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## Krensky (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> I define genres by their central high conceptual themes, woldview, values and morals. I try to make trappings and tropes not that relevant in defining them.
> 
> That is why I think that, while old D&D had elves, dwarves, hobbits and clerics, it was still very strong on the S&S genre.




Then you're defining genre wrong.

D&D is not S&S, it is not HF, it is not SF, or anything other then D&D.


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## Lanefan (Jun 10, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> I think the necessity of a Absolute Good and Absolute Evil is a defining feature, even if there is no "higher power" that controls/creates it. That said, your second definition opens up a lot more options (such as _Star Wars' _the Force) than your original premise.



*Now* we're getting somewhere.

I've been wondering all along what the existence of one or more gods in the setting/novel/game/real world had to do with this discussion at all.

That said, the Force itself in SW-land is not much more than a tool - albeit a really imposing one - used by agents of both Good and Evil (and by agents of neither) en route to attempting to achieve their ends.  In fact, the SW universe follows your idea, that Absolute Good and Absolute Evil reside in mortals rather than anything higher.

Lanefan


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## Krensky (Jun 10, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Conan, no, but Nathan Brazil was.




What does the caretaker of the Well have to do with this? Completely different genre.


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## JRRNeiklot (Jun 10, 2009)

Krensky said:


> What does the caretaker of the Well have to do with this? Completely different genre.




Untrue.  The Well World series is sword and sorcery, and among the suggested reading list in the dmg.


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## Krensky (Jun 10, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> Untrue.  The Well World series is sword and sorcery, and among the suggested reading list in the dmg.




The two Well World series are science fiction.


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## Kishin (Jun 10, 2009)

Not a Name said:
			
		

> _I can't agree with this. It has nothing to do with morality.
> 
> People playing S&S are just playing a game. Nothing more. It's no different than playing Monopoly for example. If you roll an 8 and that makes you pay the $75 luxury tax, then tough luck. That's just what happens.
> 
> ...




Pretending to be elves slaying dragons is pretending to be elves slaying dragons. Or humans slaying dragons in the case of S&S. What exactly makes High Fantasy 'mythbuilding' and S&S 'a game'? It is all a game, no matter how much you want to elevate one over the other. 'I don't want to get into it now' is a lazy way out of it, and presenting Campbell like it is newfound revelatory end-all-be-all scholarship borders on insulting to what is generally speaking a community of very erudite individuals.



JRRNeiklot said:


> Untrue. The Well World series is sword and sorcery, and among the suggested reading list in the dmg.




Um. Rationale? This is a very hard sell considering the trappings of the series include:

A starship
A classic 'planetary distress beacon' trope
An ancient alien race, chock full of *advanced technology*
A living computer
Space colonization

And the list goes on. Arguing that Well World is sword and sorcery seems almost as preposterous as Rowling's assertation that Harry Potter is not fantasy when it contains wizards, dragons and werewolves.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Krensky said:


> Then you're defining genre wrong.
> 
> D&D is not S&S, it is not HF, it is not SF, or anything other then D&D.




You deny ANY kind of influence of the literary genres on the game??


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## WayneLigon (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> You deny ANY kind of influence of the literary genres on the game??




I think any significant influence has long since been diluted to the point of uselessness. Obviously the game has roots in both HF and S&S, as well as historical/fantasy like King Arthur and Robin hood, but really they're more like homages than real influences, and even they've taken a far back seat to 'being D&D'. Even in the early days of The Dragon is was pretty obvious that D&D was well on the path to being 'it's own thing', it's own brand of fantasy.

Just for example: If S&S was a true influence on D&D, then we wouldn't be playing spellcasters: almost all the spellcasters in classic S&S are evil npc-types. There would be no divide between mage and priest, either; Conan and other sources from that time use the terms interchangably. We'd have had something like Iron Heroes from the get-go.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Lanefan said:


> *Now* we're getting somewhere.
> 
> I've been wondering all along what the existence of one or more gods in the setting/novel/game/real world had to do with this discussion at all.
> 
> ...




We should take into account that many HF authors are Tolkien imitators. They may have "watered down" the Catholic influence on their novels, but the most basic premises are still there, maybe weakened, but still there.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

WayneLigon said:


> I think any significant influence has long since been diluted to the point of uselessness. Obviously the game has roots in both HF and S&S, as well as historical/fantasy like King Arthur and Robin hood, but really they're more like homages than real influences, and even they've taken a far back seat to 'being D&D'. Even in the early days of The Dragon is was pretty obvious that D&D was well on the path to being 'it's own thing', it's own brand of fantasy.
> 
> Just for example: If S&S was a true influence on D&D, then we wouldn't be playing spellcasters: almost all the spellcasters in classic S&S are evil npc-types. There would be no divide between mage and priest, either; Conan and other sources from that time use the terms interchangably. We'd have had something like Iron Heroes from the get-go.




What about the novels of Jack Vance?? He's protagonists are spell casters. 

Also, keep in mind that Conan himself (in "Beyond the Black River") uses a bit of sorcery.

The Gray Mouser was a mage apprentice at the beggining of the series too. And uses some magic in the course of his adventures.


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## Krensky (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> You deny ANY kind of influence of the literary genres on the game??




No, I deny that D&D rules are (as distinct from the games people play with those rules) belong to any particular genre, unless "Gygax, Arneson, et. al. thought this was cool" counts as a genre. OD&D was influenced by an insane hodgepodge of historical, speculative, and classical literature. It's not HF, it's not SF, it's not S&S, or any other genre of it's source material. It's all of them and none of them. It's D&D, a genre unto itself.

Arguably, D&D has influenced modern S&S and HF far more the the reverse. The Deed of Paksinarrion came about because Elizbeth Moon was annoyed at how people played Paladins. The Record of the Lodoss War series is a novelization of Ryo Mizuno's D&D campaign. There are other examples, but that's off the top of my head.



Zulgyan said:


> We should take into account that many HF authors are Tolkien imitators. They may have "watered down" the Catholic influence on their novels, but the most basic premises are still there, maybe weakened, but still there.




Mercades Lackey and others would disagree. Well, when they aren't hanging a hat on it in the Heirs of Alexandria series.



Zulgyan said:


> What about the novels of Jack Vance?? He's protagonists are spell casters.
> 
> Also, keep in mind that Conan himself (in "Beyond the Black River") uses a bit of sorcery.
> 
> The Gray Mouser was a mage apprentice at the beggining of the series too. And uses some magic in the course of his adventures.




Most of Vance's work is Science Fiction. Dying Earth is Science Fantasy not Sword and Sorcery, and Lyoness is High Fantasy (although it might be Science Fantasy since there's some implication that it takes place in the same universe as the Dying Earth books).

It has been a very long time since I read Conan and they tend to blend together, but Conan doesn't use sorcery, he uses an Elder Sign analog to delay the forces of his enemy.

I never read the Lahnkmar stories, but WayneLigon was slightly off. It's not that magic is the purvue of the villians, it's that it's something unatural. It has a cost and most of it is not particualrly useful when an angry swordsman charges you. Mouser, to my understanding, looks and acts nothing like a D&D wizard.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Yes, D&D had influences from almost any kind of source.

But, in the D&D version published in 1974, the underlying worldview and morals of the world that the rules present, shares a lot with the S&S genre.


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## Remathilis (Jun 10, 2009)

Korgoth said:


> False. It plays like a role playing game.
> 
> True and true. Random character death is a possibility and "myth creation" is not one of the goals expressed or implied.




While I don't necessarily agree that D&D is a perfect vessel for "myth creation", you can't deny there is a strong appeal to use it as such, and the game should be able to supply such an experience as easily as it can supply a "life is cheap, save vs. poison" experience?


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Why "D&D _should _ also provide myth creation"? There are lots of other games out there better suited.


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## Remathilis (Jun 10, 2009)

Lanefan said:


> That said, the Force itself in SW-land is not much more than a tool - albeit a really imposing one - used by agents of both Good and Evil (and by agents of neither) en route to attempting to achieve their ends.  In fact, the SW universe follows your idea, that Absolute Good and Absolute Evil reside in mortals rather than anything higher.




Actually, that can get dicey...

The Force as originally conceived in SW IV: A New Hope is much more of a force of "good" that allows free-will (users can chose to fall to the dark side at any time) but also controls the user's action (hence the emphasis on prophecy/destiny) but Lucas (in many of his interviews) specifically tried to keep the Light Side and the Dark Side as "separate" voices which speak to a Force User unconsciously and try to influence him one way or the other.

That gets VERY convoluted when you enter the Expanded Universe, with the concept of the Unified Force (in a nutshell: there is no light/dark, there is the Force, and how a person uses it makes it light/dark). Lucas has for the most part ignored it (and some EU contradicts the idea) but its inclusion allows for a more S&S styled "individual morality, Force a tool" method of looking at it. 

So depending on how you look at it (and what sources your citing) the Force can be EITHER an absolute good/evil force OR an immoral tool of which human morality can be imposed. The former tells a better HF morality play, the latter opens the door to concepts like Imperial Knights (Jedi not dedicated to the Order but to a government) and Force traditions which are neither good nor evil.


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## Remathilis (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Why "D&D _should _ also provide myth creation"? There are lots of other games out there better suited.




Why should Toyota provide a pick-up truck when there are plenty of other car companies that do so?

Brand name. 

D&D's name is synonymous with RPGs in a way countless other fantasy heartbreakers aren't. The owners of the IP (as early as Dragonlance, and perhaps eariler with the Realms) figured out there is a strong vein of players who want to merge the conflict resolution and fantasy hodge-podge of D&D with the "high-fantasy" concepts of THEIR favorite literature (or media). 

As you pointed out, D&D has changed thematic elements since its inception. It would have been left to the dustbin of history if there wasn't enough people interested in the changes to continue supporting it. (Or, to put it another way, if the tropes of HF weren't popular, the game's flavor wouldn't have changed, and we wouldn't be having this discussion).


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Krensky wrote:


> Except that none of those (well, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly sort of is) are really westerns. They're samurai films with deserts and guns. Fundamentally they have more in common with Erol Flynn then




So here you accept that the common tropes are not really what define the genre??


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Why "D&D _should _ also provide myth creation"? There are lots of other games out there better suited.



And there are no games that are able to pull off Sword & Sorcery better? What for example is with Warhammer?


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## Ariosto (Jun 10, 2009)

D&D is really a genre unto itself. To go off in the direction of simulating *any* fiction is to depart from the game as conceived. There are both potential rewards and hazards in that.

It was not designed for a single epic quest like that in TLOTR, after which, as Rob Kuntz put it, "There was not a continuing story line possible, for the story line itself was in fact based around the destruction of the Ring and all those events which were spawned from it. As we would say at TSR 'END OF ADVENTURE'." Perhaps even more to the point, the D&D system could end such a story quite prematurely.

It was not designed for the convenience of lone wolves or dynamic duos, or for "the party" as a singular entity with members advancing in lockstep. It was not designed to give much chance of survival to _any_ particular first-level figure. What else is one to make of a 58% chance of death from a single hit? At high levels, combat can feasibly be an objective in itself -- but it is by design not a very rewarding one.

It was not designed for a lot of things, and the mismatch between the designers' goals and some players' goals is a driving force not only in the arising of other games by other names but in the appearance of different games by the same name.


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## Fanaelialae (Jun 10, 2009)

I agree with the others who have stated that D&D is a genre unto itself.  Although D&D has always contained (to varying degrees) elements of HF and S&S (and probably other fantasy sub-genres as well) I don't believe that it is predisposed enough toward any single genre to say that "edition X is clearly genre Y".

Some significant D&D tropes include "Lemmings: Meatgrinder Edition" and "The Christmas Tree Effect".    I, for one, cannot recall encountering any such tropes in any of fantasy literature I've come across.  One of the more significant distinctions of 4e is a near abandonment of the meatgrinder trope (frequent, arbitrary PC death) that was a fairly common 'default' property of the earlier editions.  Though a DM could certainly downplay these elements (as well as encourage or discourage aspects of certain literary genres), it was up to the individual DM to do so.  (I firmly believe that a DM who set his mind to the task could create a 4e meatgrinder without excessive effort).  

I don't believe that that's changed much since the beginning.  Certainly the rules themselves have changed, in that 4e requires different modifications than 1e but it still remains that, IMO, the D&D tropes remain the dominant ones (within the 'default' game).  DMs have run HF 1e games despite claims that 1e is a S&S game, and DMs run S&S 4e games despite claims that 4e is a HF game.  I'm dubious about the idea that running a "true" HF 1e game requires significantly more modification than a "true" S&S 1e game.  For my group at least, D&D has embraced elements of both genres while remaining something uniquely "else".

I don't believe that the D&D rules are particularly better at modeling HF than S&S (or vice versa).  You can play D&D in a high fantasy style or with a sword & sorcery flavor, but in the end it is D&D.  Frodo wasn't killed by a stray arrow, and neither was Conan, though either could have been (if you ignore that it would have been bad for the story).  In the end, literature is literature and D&D is a role playing game.  Distinctions certainly exist between editions, but I think that attempting to categorize them as either HF or S&S is doomed to be "a loose fit, at best".


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## Krensky (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Krensky wrote:
> 
> 
> So here you accept that the common tropes are not really what define the genre??




Where on earth do you get that idea?

Cowboys, Indians, Mexicans and gun fights do not a western make.

The plot of Die Hard can be viewed as a western. Hud can be viewed as a western. The Seven Samurai can be viewed as a western. Art is oftern incestiously circular like that.

Wild Wild West (TV or Movie) take place in and have the trappings of a western, but are not because they're spy stories.

Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Magnificent Seven are almost shot for shot remakes of Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and The Seven Samurai. Spaghetti Westerns in general eschew all but the broadest and most generic conventions of the Western, and typically replace the conflicts between East and West, Rancher and Industrialist, Rich and Poor, and Settler and Native and morality play plot structure with blood, grit, and violence. Sergio Leone was a great director, and in the case of the three movies listed he was cribbing from a master.

You keep confusing tropes with style and trappings. The Knight Errant is trope. A cowboy on a horse with a sixgun is rendition of it. So is Sanjuro . So is Don Quixote or Sir Gallahad. So is Zatoichi. Different trappings, same tropes.

As I've said before, genre is composed of tropes, trappings, and conventions. D&D is a genre unto itself which is informed and inspired by S&S, HF, and tons and tons of other things. There is no drift from one chunk of that to another the way you theorise. I don't see it and you certainly haven't given any meaningful supporting evidence to that theory, let alone provved it. OD&D does both equalkly well and doesn't really favor either style, and the same holds true right up to 4e.

Your theory is unsupported, and wrong in both detail and as a whole. D&D has not changed genre, it is still D&D.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

So what characterizes and defines the D&D genre, if it is so unique?


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## Desdichado (Jun 10, 2009)

Krensky said:


> Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Magnificent Seven are almost shot for shot remakes of Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and The Seven Samurai.



That doesn't make them samurai films.  Kurosawa was widely criticized by Japanese film critics, for instance, for making western films that just happened to take place in Japan and feature samurai as characters.  Also: shot by shot remakes is a bit thick on the hyperbole.

Anyway; the many, many problems with the assertions in the first post have been pretty thoroughly hashed out by now, so I won't add to them at the moment, but I will state that in the early and mid 80s when I was playing BD&D and AD&D, I approached it from more of a high fantasy perspective.  Now that I'm playing 3.5, I approach it from a sword & sorcery perspective.  I don't think that perspective is influenced by, nor even has anything to do with, the rules themselves.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

> I will state that in the early and mid 80s when I was playing BD&D and AD&D,




And that is precisely the time in which the shift slowly began.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Krensky said:


> Your theory is unsupported, and wrong in both detail and as a whole. D&D has not changed genre, it is still D&D.




Well... then, under your parameters, I can consider you haven't proved me wrong either... 

And saying that D&D of the 70s, is the same D&D of today... hmmm... try to prove and support THAT.


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## Obryn (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Well... then, under your parameters, I can consider you haven't proved me wrong either...



Is the burden of proof really on him, though?

-O


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Well... most is one me, you are right.

But some statements and arguments need backing. 

If you say D&D is a totally unique genre, then back it up.

And saying that what I say is totally unsupported is very unfair. Because it isn't. A little research about the history of early D&D and EGG support me. Follow the links on my initial post. 

He is using that as a retoric weapon.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 10, 2009)

Saying that D&D is a melting pot of different influences(two of which are "HF" and "S&S" mixed into a stew isn't a stretch. I would assert that the 1E AD&D PHB/DMG/MM themselves are proof enough of this(I'm not really familiar with the original pamphlets). 

I'd also say that the "HF" vs "S&S" had little effect on the changing game mechanics of D&D. For the changes to D&D during my gamer existence, I would postulate:

1. AD&D 1E to AD&D 2E--Biggest change was the emphasis on "Story First" and Hickman style campaigns

2. AD&D 2E to D&D 3E--Biggest changes was the empowerment of players, making character creation and progression the centerpiece of the game, and the attempt via the toolbox approach and the D20/OGL to make D&D a universal system

3. D&D 3E to D&D 4E--Streamlining the game to focus on what it does best, and throw the rest to the curb.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

I can agree with that.

But when D&D became more "Story First", the _type of story _they where trying to make, was a HF one: Dragonlance.


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## Ariosto (Jun 10, 2009)

To many people, a game in which tropes of the original game have been undermined or even inverted can "feel like D&D" because enough *trappings* of its eclectic and sometimes eccentric brand of fantasy are retained. There's a sense in which it is a "world" of its own. Look, for instance, at the "properties" WotC never made Open Content. Some of those may be shameless ripoffs of things created elsewhere, yet they have come to be clearly associated with the D&D brand.

Look again at the countless "fantasy heart-breakers" produced with an obviously D&D-derived mix of fantasy elements as the default. One after another has featured the quasi-Tolkien races, similar character types (often down to sharing the class names and essentially duplicating most of their abilities and limitations), the same takes on monsters (rather than going back to the sources), sometimes even spells and magic items derived from D&D prototypes.

People whose fantasy creation started prior to, and developed independently of, D&D produced notably different imagined worlds. Take Greg Stafford's Glorantha, for instance; his Elves and Dwarfs and Trolls have a character all their own. M.A.R. Barker's Tékumel retained its exotic quality even when translated into game mechanics spun off directly from D&D for TSR's second RPG.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

The way elves are presented in D&D is very sword & sorcerish. They are in deep dirty dungeons scavenging gold and wandering around human towns looking for mercenary type jobs. The cast on you a fireball, a tasha's hideous uncontrollable laughter, and they protect themselves with mirror image and a fly spell. They are very different from HF elves.


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## catsclaw227 (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> The way elves are presented in D&D is very sword & sorcerish. They are in deep dirty dungeons scavenging gold and wandering around human towns looking for mercenary type jobs. The cast on you a fireball, a tasha's hideous uncontrollable laughter, and they protect themselves with mirror image and a fly spell. They are very different from HF elves.



You just described 3.x elves too.  Doesn't that contradict your assertion that modern D&D is HF and not S&S?


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan, the main problem you've had in this thread and the one you haven't proven or successfully argued is that there is a connection between "S&S" and the old school D&D style, defined as high body count, sandbox dungeon crawling, and emergent storyline and roleplaying, and on the reverse "HF" and later D&D's story first, PCs have some level of plot immunity, Hickman styled epic campaign arcs/adventure paths.


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## Desdichado (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> And that is precisely the time in which the shift slowly began.



I think I was unclear, though... my point was that that was the baggage _*I*_ brought to the gaming table, not something that the game itself inculcated in me.  Plus, it's the exact opposite as what you posit.  I found that AD&D and BD&D worked reasonably well for High Fantasy (my disatisfaction with the game back then wasn't genre emulation, anyhow) and I find now that 3.5 works really well for a more S&S themed game.  You're trying to tell me that I should have gotten the exact opposite result.  I haven't.

Of course, as has been hashed out multiple times by now, that's largely because your criteria of what is S&S doesn't actually have much to do with _actual_ S&S, but I'm not sure I want to get too deeply into that at this point, given the already prodigious length of the thread.


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## Krensky (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> The way elves are presented in D&D is very sword & sorcerish. They are in deep dirty dungeons scavenging gold and wandering around human towns looking for mercenary type jobs. The cast on you a fireball, a tasha's hideous uncontrollable laughter, and they protect themselves with mirror image and a fly spell. They are very different from HF elves.




 Because they're not elves, they're humans in funny makeup.


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## Mallus (Jun 10, 2009)

Zul, how would you classify my campaign?

It's 4e, the default assumption is that characters will gain levels and won't die (as you would say, there's player entitlement), but there is no overarching story, no Manichean battle between good and evil, almost everything is driven by the players, the setting is completely amoral, as are the PC's. And, while God certainly exists in the campaign setting, he is, in fact, dead, His skeletal corpse lying in a faraway lake in a land that's actually the inside of His gradually decaying mind.  

Zul, the trouble with your analysis is it's too neat. Things don't map so easily between the literature and the game(s) it inspires. For example, a lot of players I know prefer low PC mortality. That has nothing to do with preferring epic campaigns of Good vs. Evil where Good ultimately can't fail (your a default Christian worldview). It has nothing to do with any of the characteristics of literary High Fantasy. They simply enjoy playing the same characters over a long period of time. 

I think you're over-thinking a lot of this.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

> old school D&D style, defined as high body count, sandbox dungeon crawling,




I don't agree on high body count, and dungeon crawling - you can see in my blog that my campaign is mostly city and wilderness adventuring - Wilderlands of High Fantasy style.

And as long as players play well and are lucky enough, they won't die. 



> Zulgyan, the main problem you've had in this thread and the one you haven't proven or successfully argued is that there is a connection between "S&S" and the old school D&D style




They only thing you got to do is get the AD&D DMG and check out the inspirational reading list. Check out the early Dragon Magazines, what kind of literature is discussed there, and the dozen of EGG articles saying that D&D is NOT TOLKIEN. 

You can read the Q&A threads of EGG here at ENWorld, when he speaks about the main inspirations for the game, how it was much more rooted in S&S rather than HF, how he called Tolkien's masterpiece "The _Bore _of the Rings", how he said hundred of times the Tolkien races where there just to make the game sell better. 

I thought this was much more common knowledge that what I supposed.


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## Obryn (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> If you say D&D is a totally unique genre, then back it up.



Well, I think it's more like, "Show me that it isn't."

Off the top of my head, I see the following influences:

* Conan
* Vance
* Tolkien
* Whatshisface with the monks
* Sci-fi with psionics, Barrier Peaks, etc.
* Lovecraft
* Gygaxian weirdness (beholders, mind flayers, drow, brain moles)
* Completely gamist Gygaxian inventions because they'd be fun in dungeons (gelatinous cube, trapper, lurker above, etc.)
* Completely gamist Gygaxian inventions to trick players and challenge their assumptions (rust monsters, gas spores, etc.)
* Weird stuff that's uncategorizable (most of Fiend Folio)

If this doesn't make it a genre all its own, I don't know what does   I think the Gygaxian weirdness in particular is what defines the D&D "genre" more than anything else - and those were primarily invented for game-play purposes more than for any ecological reasons.  (Although I should note that you can play D&D _without_ playing in the Gygaxian genre - for instance, in Dark Sun.)



> And saying that what I say is totally unsupported is very unfair. Because it isn't. A little research about the history of early D&D and EGG support me. Follow the links on my initial post.
> 
> He is using that as a retoric weapon.



No, I don't think it's completely unsupported.  In fact, I think there is evidence to support what you say, to an extent.  On the other hand, there's also _counter-_evidence you're ignoring.  In short, I think you're getting tunnel vision because you're very emotionally invested in this classification.

Like I said before, I don't know that it brings anything to the table that oldschool vs. new-school doesn't.

-O


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> The way elves are presented in D&D is very sword & sorcerish. They are in deep dirty dungeons scavenging gold and wandering around human towns looking for mercenary type jobs. The cast on you a fireball, a tasha's hideous uncontrollable laughter, and they protect themselves with mirror image and a fly spell. They are very different from HF elves.




If you read my post all along this thread, I never say that any edition is pure S&S or pure HF. Some lean more towards one of the genres, but none of them are 100% of them. 

I also say in my OP, that 3E tried to get back to it's original S&S roots. 

On elves, I would also like to add:

There used to be no need of drows to have an evil elf. 



> Because they're not elves, they're humans in funny makeup.




I agree, and that makes the game closer to S&S.


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## Desdichado (Jun 10, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> 1. AD&D 1E to AD&D 2E--Biggest change was the emphasis on "Story First" and Hickman style campaigns



I'm curious; do you think there was a mechanical aspect to this, or is it just a question of presentation?

Because I wonder how much presentation affects gamers, unless they're new to the game being presented.  I don't imagine many gamers who played 1e played 2e significantly differently than they did 1e.  Unless they got kinda swept away by one or more of the campaign settings and the ideas it espoused.


> 2. AD&D 2E to D&D 3E--Biggest changes was the empowerment of players, making character creation and progression the centerpiece of the game, and the attempt via the toolbox approach and the D20/OGL to make D&D a universal system



I'm also curious what you mean by player empowerment.  I don't think I disagree with what you're saying, at least with my interpretation of the words, but my interpretation isn't the only one out there, as I've seen on many an OSR screed.  I like to think that 3e made character more mechanically interesting, gave a lot of interesting choices to players building their characters, and delegated a fair amount of the busywork of running the game to the players.  In that respect, it was empowering.  I don't think of it as a zero sum game where empowering players means emasculating DMs or something, though.

No offense intended to women DMs.


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## Mallus (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> They only thing you got to do is get the AD&D DMG and check out the inspirational reading list.



Which includes a _lot_ of different kinds of fantasy literature, including science fiction/science fantasy. 



> Check out the early Dragon Magazines, what kind of literature is discussed there, and the dozen of EGG articles saying that D&D is NOT TOLKIEN.



Yes, but that hasn't stopped D&D players from using the game to re-create Tolkien since the very beginning. Note EGG's own players nagged him to put more Tolkien bit into his own campaign. 



> ... how he said hundred of times the Tolkien races where there just to make the game sell better.



Which would indicate a demand for Tolkienesque (ie, High Fantasy) elements in D&D, from the very beginning, wouldn't it?


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## Desdichado (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> They only thing you got to do is get the AD&D DMG and check out the inspirational reading list. Check out the early Dragon Magazines, what kind of literature is discussed there, and the dozen of EGG articles saying that D&D is NOT TOLKIEN.
> 
> You can read the Q&A threads of EGG here at ENWorld, when he speaks about the main inspirations for the game, how it was much more rooted in S&S rather than HF, how he called Tolkien's masterpiece "The _Bore _of the Rings", how he said hundred of times the Tolkien races where there just to make the game sell better.
> 
> I thought this was much more common knowledge that what I supposed.



That is common knowledge.  However, what the game _says_ it's doing (in one, confined, narrow place) and what it's actually doing are not necessarily the same thing.  Saying that D&D is S&S because look at Appendix N; it's full of S&S influences is, at best, a very circular argument, proving nothing.

At best.  And for a "best" scenario, that's obviously not very good.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Obryn said:


> Well, I think it's more like, "Show me that it isn't."
> 
> Off the top of my head, I see the following influences:
> 
> ...




I can agree with this list, and that the whole beautiful mess makes D&D unique.

But so Hyboria is unique.

And Newton is unique.

But they all have some deep similarities in their higher concepts, worldviews, etc. that you can group them all under a man-made label called S&S, that has quite an important consensus on how it is supposed to be.


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## Remathilis (Jun 10, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> Look again at the countless "fantasy heart-breakers" produced with an obviously D&D-derived mix of fantasy elements as the default. One after another has featured the quasi-Tolkien races, similar character types (often down to sharing the class names and essentially duplicating most of their abilities and limitations), the same takes on monsters (rather than going back to the sources), sometimes even spells and magic items derived from D&D prototypes.




Why mess with success?

Somehow, D&D's unique brand of tropes (fighter, thief, healer & mage, elves & dwarves, orcs & goblins, color-coded elemental dragons, XP, HP, and GP) seemed not only to satisfy the necessary tropes of a fantasy game, they came to define its own brand of fantasy (which helped spawn things like Record of the Lodoss Wars, Final Fantasy, Eragon, and Warcraft, proving things go full circle). 

My personal theory is D&D didn't start out a S&S-based game and then magically switch gears to HF circa 1985, but elements of both genre's existed from inception, and the balance shifted over time to favor one over the other as a response to the type of fantasy players like and want modeled. Perhaps one day, it will shift back. I don't see a problem with the shift, I LIKED the shift to a more narrative, character-based game from the "give me 3d6, lets see how long THIS lemming lasts" game of yore. That's a personal preference, and its one I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with me on.


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## rogueattorney (Jun 10, 2009)

Hobo said:


> I'm curious; do you think there was a mechanical aspect to this, or is it just a question of presentation?
> 
> Because I wonder how much presentation affects gamers, unless they're new to the game being presented.  I don't imagine many gamers who played 1e played 2e significantly differently than they did 1e.  Unless they got kinda swept away by one or more of the campaign settings and the ideas it espoused.




It's already been mentioned in this thread by me and others...
1.  Xp for gp was done away with in 2e.  Where in older versions of D&D grabbing cash was supposed to account for 70-80% of your xp awards, in 2e it became 0%.  That right there promotes a fairly different play style.

2.  Training rules that took pcs out of action for weeks at a time were done away with in 2e.  In episodic S&S styled adventures, it doesn't particularly matter if the pcs go out of action for a month or two between adventures.  In epic quest style adventures, it can be very hard for the campaign to fit around the pcs taking a few months off when the Evil Overlord and his Apocolyptic Artifact of Doom are on the march.


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## rogueattorney (Jun 10, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> My personal theory is D&D didn't start out a S&S-based game and then magically switch gears to HF circa 1985, but elements of both genre's existed from inception, and the balance shifted over time to favor one over the other as a response to the type of fantasy players like and want modeled.




So in what way are you disagreeing with the OP?  Because this is exactly what he's saying.


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## Krensky (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> I agree, and that makes the game closer to S&S.




It makes it closer to Star Trek.

I'm not even sure elves or fae are appropriate for S&S in the first place. Other types of low fantasy, sure, but they don't really seem to fit in S&S.

That said, a S&S elf would be uncanny, alien, and amoral (at least from the human perspective). Honest in a purely literal sense, indifferent to man or his affairs beyond sources of entertainment and servants. Mercurial, Machiavellian, and altogether not human. And bored. Utterly bored.

D&D elves have never been this. They have always been humans in funny makeup with cool powers.


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## Obryn (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> But they all have some deep similarities in their higher concepts, worldviews, etc. that you can group them all under a man-made label called S&S, that has quite an important consensus on how it is supposed to be.



I don't think you really can for this list, though.  Yes, there are definite S&S elements in it.  There are definite non-S&S elements, too.  There are also definite gamist elements.

You're narrowly focusing on S&S without showing the gameplay elements of old-school D&D which make it so.  Your listing in your first post isn't about S&S elements - it's a list of oldschool gaming elements you've _labeled _S&S.

Also, there's another argument here - that it's somewhat irrelevant how Gygax himself played the game.  If other players used the OD&D rule-set for different play-styles, Gary's is not somehow more legitimate just because he originally wrote the game.

-O


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## Fanaelialae (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> They only thing you got to do is get the AD&D DMG and check out the inspirational reading list. Check out the early Dragon Magazines, what kind of literature is discussed there, and the dozen of EGG articles saying that D&D is NOT TOLKIEN.
> 
> You can read the Q&A threads of EGG here at ENWorld, when he speaks about the main inspirations for the game, how it was much more rooted in S&S rather than HF, how he called Tolkien's masterpiece "The _Bore _of the Rings", how he said hundred of times the Tolkien races where there just to make the game sell better.
> 
> I thought this was much more common knowledge that what I supposed.




Gygax wasn't the sole creator of D&D though, a fact which you seem to be ignoring.  Dave Arneson had a large hand in the original game as well.  

S&S acting as one of the inspirations for D&D is not the same thing as D&D being a S&S game.  One could as easily say that D&D is a wargame, since wargames also inspired and shaped D&D.  IMO, that is a gross oversimplification.


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## Remathilis (Jun 10, 2009)

rogueattorney said:


> So in what way are you disagreeing with the OP?  Because this is exactly what he's saying.




Didn't say I was.

I was disagreeing with some other opinions that because it started out "S&S", it should have STAYED there and that the change toward HF is what "ruined" D&D.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> I don't agree on high body count, and dungeon crawling - you can see in my blog that my campaign is mostly city and wilderness adventuring - Wilderlands of High Fantasy style.
> 
> And as long as players play well and are lucky enough, they won't die.
> 
> ...




Dungeon crawling maybe less so, but high body count? If you play the game as written, there is no avoiding the high body count. Death is random and unavoidable, and luck is the only savior. Smart play can only reduce the number of death rolls. As for Tolkien, his books have always been bigger than the entire S&S library, and was inserted into D&D by player demand. D&D has always been in the hands of the people playing it, not Gary's. Gary has a voice, as does Howard and Tolkien, but the people sitting at the table have always been the loudest. Because Gary said so is a lame justification for anything, especially considering how early D&D was the wild west, with everybody doing their own thing probably moreso than any time since.



Hobo said:


> I'm curious; do you think there was a mechanical aspect to this, or is it just a question of presentation?
> 
> Because I wonder how much presentation affects gamers, unless they're new to the game being presented.  I don't imagine many gamers who played 1e played 2e significantly differently than they did 1e.  Unless they got kinda swept away by one or more of the campaign settings and the ideas it espoused.




In my 2E gaming experience, thanks to DM intervention, the survival rate for 1st level characters defined as living until 5th level or until they leave the campaign, whichever comes first, was about 75-80%. The survival rate for 5th level characters and up was much higher, even before Raise Dead. Characters were given second and third chances by DM fiat, because players preferred playing one character over a long period of time. Aside from the introduction of negative HP, which I believe was an optional rule, the system was just as deadly. The presentation of the game and the expectations of the people playing it changed the game to match a different ideal, in contrast with the actual system.





Hobo said:


> I'm also curious what you mean by player empowerment.  I don't think I disagree with what you're saying, at least with my interpretation of the words, but my interpretation isn't the only one out there, as I've seen on many an OSR screed.  I like to think that 3e made character more mechanically interesting, gave a lot of interesting choices to players building their characters, and delegated a fair amount of the busywork of running the game to the players.  In that respect, it was empowering.  I don't think of it as a zero sum game where empowering players means emasculating DMs or something, though.
> 
> No offense intended to women DMs.




By player empowerment, I mean a combination of giving PCs game breaking powers well beyond what they had in earlier editions, while basing the system on the PCs and the DMs NPCs using the same rules on an even playing field. Players were given the power to bully DMs within the system for the first time.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Hobo said:


> That is common knowledge.  However, what the game _says_ it's doing (in one, confined, narrow place) and what it's actually doing are not necessarily the same thing.  Saying that D&D is S&S because look at Appendix N; it's full of S&S influences is, at best, a very circular argument, proving nothing.
> 
> At best.  And for a "best" scenario, that's obviously not very good.




I did some analysis of the game itself on the OP. Ok, I'll expand.

In AD&D by EGG:

1) Being good or evil is just the same for survival, progression and success. Being good or even beign the protagonist, grants you no special consideration. You are all by yourself. The system or the DM does not help you out. 

2) Power and luck is the only thing that will define a battle, not your higher or better morals. There is no cosmic justice in the D&D world. If you are stronger, more resourceful and lucky, you win and nothing will punish you for that aside from an revengeful enemy. 

3) Advancement is by killing and looting (1 XP for 1 GP). Killing an evil or a good guy is just the same. Looting from an evil temple or from charity is just the same - no moral judgments on the source of XP and $$$.

4) No XP given for quests. So if you help the peaceful villagers, they is no XP from that aside from what they pay you. If you kill them and take their stuff, you'll win just the same XP and the extra XP for the villagers. Then you can go kill the evil monster and take his stuff as well. Nothing in the system punishes you for doing that. 

"Quest" is a spell 5th level cleric spell that works like a curse, more than something noble and idealistic to do. 

5) Gods have stats and can be killed. They are just super-powerful monsters. 

6) Nowhere it says that being evil is against the premise of the game, as the 4E books say. You even have an evil-only class: the assassin. 

7) Guidelines for demon summoning, totally available for the players. 

8) More randomness, more unbalance, more weird unexpected stuff. No forced balanced encounters, no prescript treasure. 

9) The only reason for being good, is to have access to the nifty paladin and ranger abilities, and too be able to use some magic items reserved for the good guys - so it's totally in self interest, no real altruism. 


That makes the game strongly sword & sorcery in my eyes.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> Didn't say I was.
> 
> I was disagreeing with some other opinions that because it started out "S&S", it should have STAYED there and that the change toward HF is what "ruined" D&D.




PLEASE quote where I said that, and I will ask for pardon.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> I did some analysis of the game itself on the OP. Ok, I'll expand.
> 
> In AD&D by EGG:
> 
> ...




Non-S&S parts of AD&D:

1. Non-human races with special powers

2. Ranger class, which was an almost exact ripoff of Aragorn from LotR

3. The Monk, based on the martial arts genre

4. Spellcasting, the power and scope of which go beyond both S&S and HF as you level up

5. Magic items that let you turn invisible, fly, have 18/00 Str, or shoot 100 Fireballs useable at will or nearly so. 

6. Science fiction inspired Psionics

7. Exotic monsters with strange powers, like Beholders, Mind Flayers, Basilisks, Demons, Devils, Dragons, ect.

8. If we are talking about Gary's writing, add in the Greyhawk setting, which is far more HF than S&S.

I'm sure there are more, but those are off the top of my head from memory, since I don't have the books handy and haven't read them in over 10 years.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

I will repeat what I said before:

1) I never said OD&D or AD&D were 100% sword & sorcery. They just leaned more strongly towards it, than today's D&D. 

2) Many of the stuff you mention are just trappings and cosmetics. 

3) Also, you are falling in the "Howard is the only S&S" mentality. S&S is much more diverse than just Howard-like S&S.


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## Remathilis (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> 1) Being good or evil is just the same for survival, progression and success. Being good or even beign the protagonist, grants you no special consideration. You are all by yourself.




Did I miss the special "good heroes have +10 hp" rule in 3e or 4e? As far as I know, a 3e fighter starts with 10+ con mod hp, wether they are LG or CE...



Zulgyan said:


> 2) Power and luck is the only thing that will define a battle, not your higher or better morals. There is no cosmic justice in the D&D world. If you are stronger, more resourceful and lucky, you win and nothing will punish you for that aside from an revengeful enemy.




That hasn't changed either. My good alignment isn't granting me that +10 hp, nor a +2 to hit, damage and AC. Again, this hasn't changes from OD&D to 4e.



Zulgyan said:


> 3) Advancement is by killing and looting (1 XP for 1 GP). Killing an evil or a good guy is just the same. Looting from an evil temple or from charity is just the same - no moral judgments.




Well, we did away with the "getting rewarded twice" rule for gp and instead allowed purchasing of magic (which is a power-up akin to levels, if you think about it) but XP is determined by CR, Level or HD again with no concern to alignment of the subject. 



Zulgyan said:


> 4) No XP given for quests. So if you help the peaceful villagers, they is no XP from that aside from what they pay you. If you kill them and take their stuff, you'll win just the same XP and the extra XP for the villagers. Then you can go kill the evil monster and take his stuff as well. Nothing in the system punishes you for doing that.




As Far as I can tell, Quest XP was an optional rule in 2e, 3e, and 4e. You can play all of those editions with straight "monster kills" and "obstacles overcome" XP. In 4e, quest XP is just a "monster level" the PCs get for doing X, add a monster of the appropriate level and you don't even throw off the XP chart. And 3e's quest XP was an "ad-hoc" rule with nothing even acting as a guideline. 



Zulgyan said:


> "Quest" is a spell 5th level cleric spell that works like a curse, more than something noble and idealistic to do.




Notice in 3e, it got combined with Geas? 



Zulgyan said:


> 5) Gods have stats and can be killed. They are just super-powerful monsters.




::Looks at 3e Deities & Demi-gods:: Did you know Thor's AC is 75? 



Zulgyan said:


> 6) Nowhere it says that being evil is against the premise of the game, as the 4E say. You even have an evil-only class: the assassin.




And yet 4e has tieflings and infernal warlocks...



Zulgyan said:


> 7) Guidelines for demon summoning, totally available for the players.




Summon Monster? Check. Planar Ally? Check. Planar Binding? Check. 3e's good.

Summon Abyssal Maw (Wizard 5: Daily, Arcane Power). Ok here too! 



Zulgyan said:


> 8) More randomness, more unbalance, more weird unexpected stuff. No forced balanced encounters, no prescript treasure.




I don't consider "more randomness" a good thing, I REALLY don't like "more unbalance". Weird and Unexpected is still in the game (grab any 3e/4e Goodman DCC module) and balanced encounters and prescript treasure are guidelines. Ignore them if you like. WotC won't come and confiscate your d20's if you make 1st level PCs fight Orcus or get a Staff of Power (though you might have some confused Players)



Zulgyan said:


> 9) The only reason for being good, is to have access to the nifty paladin and ranger abilities, and too be able to use some magic items reserved for the good guys - so it's totally in self interest, no real altruism.




And the reason to be evil is... Right. Oh, and there are no forced alignments in 4e: Feel free to play an unaligned ranger or CE paladin. 



Zulgyan said:


> That makes the game strongly sword & sorcery in my eyes.




Sweet! D&D is still S&S! 3e is S&S! 4e is S&S! (though both lose a little for the transition) You've completely undermined you own argument. I'm with you that D&D moved from S&S to HF, but when you equate game mechanics like this (esp ones still used in the game) your argument loses steam.


----------



## Mallus (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Being good or even being the *protagonist*, grants you no special consideration.



Protagonists (ie player characters) can advance in level. That seems like 'special consideration' to me.



> There is no cosmic justice in the D&D world.



The presence or absence of cosmic justice is up to the individual DM. It has nothing to do with edition. 



> No XP given for quests.



While this is technically true, most of the people I gamed with used 'quest XP' long before it was officially introduced in 2e. 



> Nowhere it says that being evil is against the premise of the game, as the 4E say. You even have an evil-only class: the assassin.



Again, true. But note that while 4e _says_ playing evil is antithetical to the game, it removes any alignment restrictions from the classes, including the beloved-by-some paladin. 



> More randomness, more unbalance, more weird unexpected stuff. No forced balanced encounters, no prescript treasure.



More-or-less balanced encounters have been a staple of every edition of D&D. Why do you think they printed suggested PC level ranges on the covers of all those classic AD&D modules?  



> That makes the game strongly sword & sorcery in my eyes.



AD&D resembles swords and sorcery in _some_ ways --well, in the rather loose way a set of game rules can be said to resemble a literary subgenre--  but not in others.


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## Remathilis (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> PLEASE quote where I said that, and I will ask for pardon.




Follow the quote links back to see who I was responding to...


----------



## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Guys, when I made the list, it was to give proof that AD&D was strong S&S, not to say that 3E or 4E was not. The guy I quoted asked me for something, and I answered. 

Again, I never said that 3E or 4E was pure HF. 

I say that many people want D&D -any edition- to work more like HF game. This is undeniable, you see it all around the net. You see it in published modules, in adventure paths, published campaign sagas, etc. etc. And D&D was never quite suitable for that, because it still maintains many S&S elements! As you guys have answered. 

That is why -my thesis- in order to make the current prevalent campaign and adventure design work, one that is more rooted in HF than in S&S, the system has incorporate rules to make everything easier to archive and more automatic, so that the "story" or "campaign saga" doesn't get spoiled by character deaths, lack of appropriate treasure at the right time, facing the arch-enemy when they aren't high level enough, etc.


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## Fanaelialae (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> I did some analysis of the game itself on the OP. Ok, I'll expand.
> 
> In AD&D by EGG:
> 
> ...




The following is my comparison to 4e, based on your analysis.

1) Being good still offers no mechanical advantage over being evil.  (Same)

2) (Same)

3) Last I checked, there was nothing in 4E to prevent people from getting xp for killing "good guys".  The only significant difference is that you don't get the piddly 1xp for each orphan you slaughtered, since that orphan probably isn't considered an "xp-worthy" challenge under the 4e system.  The only difference is a minor, gamist one.  (Effectively, same)

4) Fair enough, quests are new (or rather, an old house rule made official).  Nonetheless, players are encouraged to create their own quests (DMG pg 103).  An evil PC, insulted by the insignificant payment the townsfolk offered him, might make a quest out of destroying the village.  Whether he gets xp for the townsfolk themselves depends on how tough they are relative to him.  Nonetheless, I doubt you will argue that player-driven quests are anti-S&S.  (Genre neutral, depending on the quests themselves and how they are motivated)

5) Gods are still super-powerful monsters.  (Same)

6) 1e didn't have to be politically correct.  Back when the game was first created, there was no bad publicity about it being "the devil's game".  The world (and it's perception of D&D) is different from when the game was first created.  WotC is just covering it's own behind (see, the kids playing this game are heroes, so it isn't a bad influence on them at all).  There's absolutely nothing stopping anyone from playing evil characters.  With the removal of alignment restrictions, it's actually easier to be evil now than it was then, since I don't have to choose between playing a Paladin OR being evil.  You can even play a Warlock who draws his power directly from the Abyss.  (On the surface looks different, but look any deeper and you realize that not only is this the same, being evil just got easier)

7) Not in the game, I suspect for the same reasons as 6.  (Here's an actual difference, but I don't think you can argue that this is a deal breaker on it's own; certainly not all S&S characters summoned demons- most knew better)

8) This is just a viewpoint.  What you call "random and unbalanced" I call a lack of guidelines.  I don't recall an elder dragon flying across Conan's path and eating him the first day he entered the wide open world.  (I fail to grasp how random and unbalanced equates to S&S; IMO, this point is irrelevant)

9) Now you can be an evil ranger or evil paladin.  (Even better than the original)

According to your analysis, what makes 1e S&S in your eyes seems to apply to 4e as well.  Note, I don't actually think 4e is a S&S game any more than I believe that any edition of D&D was hardcore S&S.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

See my above post. I was not comparing AD&D to 4E. I stating characteristics that made AD&D strongly S&S.

Something I'd like to add:

In the "save or die" discussions, one argument you CONSTANTLY hear is:

"I don't want a single die role to "ruin the story"".


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## Desdichado (Jun 10, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> By player empowerment, I mean a combination of giving PCs game breaking powers well beyond what they had in earlier editions, while basing the system on the PCs and the DMs NPCs using the same rules on an even playing field. Players were given the power to bully DMs within the system for the first time.



Yeah, see, I wondered if maybe that's what you meant.  So I do disagree after all.  How did players "bully" DMs because of something in the game itself?  That seems an odd and certainly unproveable assertion to make.  If DMs let themselves be bullied, I don't know how playing OD&D, BD&D, 1e, 2e, 3e, or 4e is going to have any effect on that.


Zulgyan said:


> 1) Being good or evil is just the same for survival, progression and success. Being good or even beign the protagonist, grants you no special consideration. You are all by yourself. The system or the DM does not help you out.



And that's different than today's game... how?


			
				Zulgyan said:
			
		

> 2) Power and luck is the only thing that will define a battle, not your higher or better morals. There is no cosmic justice in the D&D world. If you are stronger, more resourceful and lucky, you win and nothing will punish you for that aside from an revengeful enemy.



If anything, the de-emphasizing, neutering and almost complete abandonment of alignment as a game element in 4e speaks much more strongly to this idea than anything in 1e or before.


			
				Zulgyan said:
			
		

> 3) Advancement is by killing and looting (1 XP for 1 GP). Killing an evil or a good guy is just the same. Looting from an evil temple or from charity is just the same - no moral judgments on the source of XP and $$$.



And that differs from today's game... how?  I mean, I get the detail of xp = gp, but what moral judgements does 3e or 4e make about who you decide to fight?


			
				Zulgyan said:
			
		

> 4) No XP given for quests. So if you help the peaceful villagers, they is no XP from that aside from what they pay you. If you kill them and take their stuff, you'll win just the same XP and the extra XP for the villagers. Then you can go kill the evil monster and take his stuff as well. Nothing in the system punishes you for doing that.



Should it?  And what does that have to do with high fantasy or sword & sorcery?  That's a game element that does not map to a literary genre.  In other words, I could just as easily have said that in a more modern game, nothing in the system punishes you for _pretending_ to kill the evil monster and conning the townspeople into giving you reward.  It's still a challenge overcome.  XP and loot.  Woot!  Or, nothing punishes you for killing the monster and then going back to the town and shaking them down for protection money.

Just because you presented an arguably "high fantasy" example doesn't mean that a "sword & sorcery" example can't be just as easily implemented.  


			
				Zugyan said:
			
		

> 5) Gods have stats and can be killed. They are just super-powerful monsters.



The only reason that's nto true for 4e is because they haven't gotten around to it yet.  :shrug:  3e had a _Deities & Demigods_ book too, y'know.


			
				Zulgyan said:
			
		

> 6) Nowhere it says that being evil is against the premise of the game, as the 4E books say. You even have an evil-only class: the assassin.



I'm not very familiar with 4e, so help me out here.  4e says this?  Even while it eliminates, say, alignment requirements for paladins making the classic anti-paladin a playable class right from the get-go?  

Like I said; I'm not super familiar with 4e, but I suspect you're just flat-out wrong here.


			
				Zulgyan said:
			
		

> 7) Guidelines for demon summoning, totally available for the players.



And if you mean to say that that's unique to OSR games, you're also flat-out wrong.


			
				Zulgyan said:
			
		

> 8) More randomness, more unbalance, more weird unexpected stuff. No forced balanced encounters, no prescript treasure.



That's a game element that has nothing whatsoever to do with sword & sorcery or high fantasy or any other genre either, for that matter.


			
				Zulgyan said:
			
		

> 9) The only reason for being good, is to have access to the nifty paladin and ranger abilities, and too be able to use some magic items reserved for the good guys - so it's totally in self interest, no real altruism.



Hah!  And in 4e you can get those abilities _without_ being good.  That's an example of the _opposite_ of what you claim it is.


			
				Zulgyan said:
			
		

> That makes the game strongly sword & sorcery in my eyes.



Well, clearly.  I don't see how a single one of those is relevent to sword & sorcery, and for that matter, I think a good half of them are just flat out incorrect to boot.


----------



## Desdichado (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> See my above post. I was not comparing AD&D to 4E. I stating characteristics that made AD&D strongly S&S.



Uh... what?  Then you missed the point of my question.  And apparently forgot the point of the entire discussion... which... you... started.


----------



## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

You have to post my complete quote dude, not just the beginning...

You even took away a coma and replaced it with a period. Dishonest quoting pal...


----------



## Mallus (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Again, I never said that 3E or 4E was pure HF.



Good, because they're not . 



> I say that many people want D&D -any edition- to work more like HF game. This is undeniable...



Yes. It's also undeniable that some people prefer more S&S-influenced campaigns. But that doesn't automatically indicate a preference in _edition_.



> That is why -my thesis- in order to make the current prevalent campaign and adventure design work, one that is more rooted in HF than in S&S...



Zul, I don't think you've correctly demonstrated there is a greater demand for High Fantasy today.

Players might indeed want lower PC mortality and treasure parcels. That doesn't mean they want all the trappings of high fantasy (sweeping sagas, showdowns between Good and Evil), it doesn't even mean they want an emphasis on story.


----------



## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Ok... which edition supports better a HF style campaign?


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 10, 2009)

Hobo said:


> Yeah, see, I wondered if maybe that's what you meant.  So I do disagree after all.  How did players "bully" DMs because of something in the game itself?  That seems an odd and certainly unproveable assertion to make.  If DMs let themselves be bullied, I don't know how playing OD&D, BD&D, 1e, 2e, 3e, or 4e is going to have any effect on that.




I call it bullying, but that isn't quite the right word. I'm not sure what word would be the right one. The phenomenon, which to me is unique to 3E, is where a player coud have greater system mastery than a DM to the point where the DM could be so overwhelmed that the only way to challenge the player outside of DM Fiat. I've seen it happen. In 1E/2E, the system wasn't deep enough to hide this level of system mastery, and DMs were not limited to using the same mechanics PCs use and its hard for a player to dominate a DM with system mastery when the DM has permission from the system to just make stuff up. In 4E, things go in the other direction, as the power level of the game is very predictable from the DM's chair, with creature/character level being such a strong indicator of power that system mastery can't really challenge it. At the very least, system mastery cannot challenge things to the point where the DM is threatened with losing control of the game.


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## Krensky (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Ok... which edition supports better a HF style campaign?




HF as a literary style? All of them do it equally poorly. They places where they fall short or get wonky differ from edition to edition though.


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## Desdichado (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> You have to post my complete quote dude, not just the beginning...



Huh?  Are you talking to me?  In any case: FAIL.  No, you need to only quote the part that's relevent to your response.  Otherwise, you're messing up the thread with giant walls of quoted text, which doesn't do anyone any favors.


			
				Zulgyan said:
			
		

> You even took away a coma and replaced it with a period. Dishonest quoting pal...



??  Huh?  Are you saying that for real?


Zulgyan said:


> Ok... which edition supports better a HF style campaign?



Also not sure who you're asking this of, but my whole point is that no edition of D&D more strongly supports high fantasy or sword & sorcery, because most of the mechanics are gamist, not genre emulation.  I've played games taht were similar to both genres in multiple iterations of D&D and never once thought that one edition "supported" one fantasy subgenre better than another.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 10, 2009)

Hobo said:


> Also not sure who you're asking this of, but my whole point is that no edition of D&D more strongly supports high fantasy or sword & sorcery, *because most of the mechanics are gamist, not genre emulation*.  I've played games taht were similar to both genres in multiple iterations of D&D and never once thought that one edition "supported" one fantasy subgenre better than another.




I have one thing to say to this:

/thread


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## Fanaelialae (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Guys, when I made the list, it was to give proof that AD&D was strong S&S, not to say that 3E or 4E was not. The guy I quoted asked me for something, and I answered.
> 
> Again, I never said that 3E or 4E was pure HF.
> 
> ...




While I can only speak for myself, I think you may confusing an increasing interest in certain HF elements with a dislike of S&S.  I don't think that D&D is any worse at modeling HF than it is with S&S.  I also have doubts that people want to play "pure" HF, particularly as you define it.

I enjoy continuous storylines.  I enjoy epic storylines.  I enjoy creating a character with personality and background depth (which I find rather difficult when creating a "disposable" character).

That said, I also enjoy being challenged, both as a character and as a player.  I enjoy the threat of death, and I've enjoyed the deaths of quite a few of my characters, despite that they were characters who I enjoyed playing.  I don't want the divine Creator (or the DM) to hand me success on a silver platter regardless of whether I act cleverly or like an idiot.  I want to _earn_ my success, though I'd prefer it with only one or two character deaths at most (in other words, I enjoy a challenge but the DM ought not to make things "stupid hard" so long as I don't do something really stupid).

IMO, my group uses elements of both HF and S&S in our games.  I think the flexibility of D&D, to play to a particular group's preferences, is a strength rather than a flaw.  I suppose that if there are those who want to play D&D as close to HF as absolutely possible, some house rules might be in order, but I honestly think that changing the game itself (ie, making 5e a "true" HF game) would be a mistake.

Don't confuse an increasing trend towards aspects of HF for a general dislike of S&S.  Plenty of people like both to varying degrees.  I'm not sure there is as significant a divide between HF and S&S as you seem to believe.


----------



## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

> I enjoy continuous storylines. I enjoy epic storylines. I enjoy creating a character with personality and background depth (which I find rather difficult when creating a "disposable" character).




Well, this is much more in vein with HF. Nothing is wrong with that of course.

S&S is more characterized by a short narrative structure, short stories, and less in depth analysis of character personality and background. Some characters were featured in so many stories (like Conan), that we know a lot about them. But what you get from them in each story is little. Is the sum of all that makes it big.



> Don't confuse an increasing trend towards aspects of HF for a general dislike of S&S. Plenty of people like both to varying degrees. I'm not sure there is as significant a divide between HF and S&S as you seem to believe.




If you accept that old D&D editions were strong S&S, and that the current 4E is more like 50%/50%, they you would have to agree with me.

People seem to read everything with an extremist interpretation.

I basically say that HF elements in D&D increased in it's history. Do you agree with that?


----------



## Fanaelialae (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Well, this is much more in vein with HF. Nothing is wrong with that of course.




Yes, I _personally_ am more of a HF style person, particularly according to your definitions.  That doesn't mean that I don't deeply enjoy S&S elements as well.  One of my favorite campaigns was structured in a S&S manner with an overarching "HF" plot in the background.  Nonetheless, victory was far from assured and, in fact, our PCs had numerous opportunities to screw the world rather than save it.



> S&S is more characterized by a short narrative structure, short stories, and less in depth analysis of character personality and background. Some characters where featured in so many stories (like Conan), that we know a lot about them. But what you get from them in each story is little. Is the sum of all that makes it big.




Yes, but if that were the entirety of what defined the S&S genre, there would be no need for this discussion, as every edition of D&D can be equally episodic.



> If you accept that old D&D editions were strong S&S, and that the current 4E is more like 50%/50%, they you would have to agree with me.




I don't agree with this at all.  IMO, it is more like D&D has always been 90% the D&D genre, with the remaining 10% split up differently.  Sure, maybe you could say that 1e is 7% S&S and 3% HF while 4e is 5%/5% (or whatever), but does it honestly matter that AD&D had 2% more S&S than 4e?  In the end, IMO, the genre is primarily one that is uniquely D&D, not HF or S&S.



> I basically say that HF elements in D&D increased in it's history. Do you agree with that?




Yes.  However, as I stated above, I remain unconvinced that it was a meaningful increase.


----------



## Kishin (Jun 10, 2009)

Krensky said:


> Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Magnificent Seven are almost shot for shot remakes of Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and The Seven Samurai.




Whoa there. This isn't a Kurosawa thread, but, I will say, that's a pretty bold statement.

I otherwise agree. D&D is now and has been for some time, its own brand of fantasy. It synthesizes and builds upon elements from across such a wide base of influences (Lovecraftian horror, science fiction, sword and sorcery, pulp adventure, etc. etc.) that it has become something else entirely, that isn't readily able to be slotted into any of these categories.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 10, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Ok... which edition supports better a HF style campaign?



2nd ed


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## Zulgyan (Jun 10, 2009)

Doug McCrae said:


> 2nd ed




I said something about this on the OP:



> 2E wants to be High Fantasy, but it does not have the mechanical support to achieve it. There are nearly no elements of player entitlement. They game fails to achieve it's premise. This is the main reason for the spawning of some many alternatives to D&D, that want to achieve High Fantasy with the mechanical support D&D does not have.  Those games focus on "getting the story right".


----------



## Ariosto (Jun 10, 2009)

Remathilis said:
			
		

> I was disagreeing with some other opinions that because it started out "S&S", it should have STAYED there and that the change toward HF is what "ruined" D&D.





			
				Remathilis said:
			
		

> Follow the quote links back to see who I was responding to...



... and find that the one in question expressed no such opinions. Indeed, the passage you quoted appears to be in agreement with your first paragraph in that post. Perhaps you are as confused as the one you seem to be attacking?


----------



## Ariosto (Jun 11, 2009)

The S&S influence is in my opinion just loosely associated, perhaps symptomatic but not causal. It's one of those "You might be an X if ..." kind of things. A deeper and clearer influence, I think, is historical wargaming. The roleplaying game was a big enough leap in the 1970s. What has developed in 2E, 3E and 4E has come largely from people to whom D&D was already an established game culture quite distinct from the one from which it emerged.

I see a parallel of sorts in the vogue for card-driven games (CDGs) on historical subjects. The World War One game _Paths of Glory_ is less historically accurate than _The Guns of August_ -- and that's a good thing if one prefers a game that is not a senseless, dull grind of mostly static positions and offensives that produce little but casualties. More generally, though, CDGs tend not to scratch the grognard's itch and old-style designs tend not to be so well received by more casual wargamers with less military-historical interest.


----------



## thecasualoblivion (Jun 11, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> The S&S influence is in my opinion just loosely associated, perhaps symptomatic but not causal. It's one of those "You might be an X if ..." kind of things. A deeper and clearer influence, I think, is historical wargaming. The roleplaying game was a big enough leap in the 1970s. What has developed in 2E, 3E and 4E has come largely from people to whom D&D was already an established game culture quite distinct from the one from which it emerged.
> 
> I see a parallel of sorts in the vogue for card-driven games (CDGs) on historical subjects. The World War One game _Paths of Glory_ is less historically accurate than _The Guns of August_ -- and that's a good thing if one prefers a game that is not a senseless, dull grind of mostly static positions and offensives that produce little but casualties. More generally, though, CDGs tend not to scratch the grognard's itch and old-style designs tend not to be so well received by more casual wargamers with less military-historical interest.




I have said many times that the high casuality rate, challenge by death style of Old School gaming is something that was inspired by historical wargaming, not any fictional genre.


----------



## Krensky (Jun 11, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> I have said many times that the high casuality rate, challenge by death style of Old School gaming is something that was inspired by historical wargaming, not any fictional genre.




I think a lot of it had to do with Gygax's play style as well, which is admittedly influenced by war gaming.

Everything I have read about Arenson's games though tells me his table was story focused with a good bit of amateur theatrics.


----------



## JRRNeiklot (Jun 11, 2009)

Kishin said:


> Pretending to be elves slaying dragons is pretending to be elves slaying dragons. Or humans slaying dragons in the case of S&S. What exactly makes High Fantasy 'mythbuilding' and S&S 'a game'? It is all a game, no matter how much you want to elevate one over the other. 'I don't want to get into it now' is a lazy way out of it, and presenting Campbell like it is newfound revelatory end-all-be-all scholarship borders on insulting to what is generally speaking a community of very erudite individuals.
> 
> 
> 
> ...





So does Star Wars, yet it is considered fantasy.

The Well World series has centaurs, lizards, shapechangers, sword fights, teleportation, etc.  Yes, the underlying principle behind it is science, but it's still deeply in the realm of fantasy.  Blackmoor had laser guns, expedition to the barrier peaks had a spaceship, yet they are still fantasy.


----------



## Ariosto (Jun 11, 2009)

But Arneson's game also featured "critical hits" that could slay the mightiest figure with one blow. His idea for level advancement was not more HP but better saves to avoid HP loss. That probabilistic approach is less conducive to long term character survival than the management of a growing resource in Gygax's design.


----------



## Desdichado (Jun 11, 2009)

Krensky said:


> Everything I have read about Arenson's games though tells me his table was story focused with a good bit of amateur theatrics.



Really?  I didn't know that.  That's interesting.


Ariosto said:


> But Arneson's game also featured "critical hits" that could slay the mightiest figure with one blow. His idea for level advancement was not more HP but better saves to avoid HP loss. That probabilistic approach is less conducive to long term character survival than the management of a growing resource in Gygax's design.



All that means is he liked that mechanic better for whatever reason.  And I also think you're hanging too much importance on the probability that a single mechanic would introduce and what that means to the bigger picture of genre emulation preferences.  In other words, I don't think it has any relevence to that question.  Also, I never get the impression that the early designers did much probability analysis in their mechanics design anyway; they came up with mechanics that they either liked for their flavor, aesthetic or elegance.  

Also, survivability depends on too many things.  I've played Call of Cthulhu campaigns that had better PC surviveability than D&D campaigns.

:shrug:


----------



## Krensky (Jun 11, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> So does Star Wars, yet it is considered fantasy.
> 
> The Well World series has centaurs, lizards, shapechangers, sword fights, teleportation, etc.  Yes, the underlying principle behind it is science, but it's still deeply in the realm of fantasy.  Blackmoor had laser guns, expedition to the barrier peaks had a spaceship, yet they are still fantasy.




Star Wars is Space Opera. It's not even Science Fantasy, it's straight Space Opera.

Both Well World series are science fiction. All of the fantastical things you mention are explained by science (well, hand wavy science) not the supernatural. Next I suppose you'll say that Darkover is fantasy. Or that the Council Wars with it's orcs and elves and dragons and ixth... ixcth... manta monsters, and psychotic minilop is fantasy (it's not, it so, so is not). Or that Pern is fantasy.

As for Blackmoor, it's such a crazy mash up that it gets labeled fantasy after the primary element for ease of use.


----------



## Ariosto (Jun 11, 2009)

> And I also think you're hanging too much importance on the probability that a single mechanic would introduce and what that means to the bigger picture of genre emulation preferences.



NONE AT ALL is "too much importance"??? I did not say a thing about genre emulation! And it's more than a single mechanic; I mentioned two -- and that's leaving out hit locations, for a start on other Arnesonian rules. I've played Arneson's _Adventures in Fantasy_, and I've played _RuneQuest_; my statement on the consequences of the "any hit can kill" approach is well founded.


----------



## Ariosto (Jun 11, 2009)

Nothing I have read about Arneson's campaign suggests that it was more "story focused" than Gygax's. _The First Fantasy Campaign_ reveals a setup with a grand-strategic focus on military and economic factors -- in the hands of players, not the GM! If indeed his game was more plot-driven, then one might (if one wished to make much of the "genre" business) wonder whether it is also true that he was more a fan of TLOTR.


----------



## Krensky (Jun 11, 2009)

Some interesting reading about the other first designer:

Interview with Dave Arneson « Kobold Quarterly


----------



## Kishin (Jun 11, 2009)

JRRNeiklot said:


> So does Star Wars, yet it is considered fantasy.
> 
> The Well World series has centaurs, lizards, shapechangers, sword fights, teleportation, etc.  Yes, the *underlying principle behind it is science*, but it's still deeply in the realm of fantasy.  Blackmoor had laser guns, expedition to the barrier peaks had a spaceship, yet they are still fantasy.




In the bolded text, you highlight with certainty why it is SCIENCE FICTION.

Star Wars is fantasy in only as much as it shares the common fantasy convention of a hero from backwater mcbumpkinville rising up to save all of us. Otherwise Star Wars is the definitive space opera, as was pointed out, which makes it science fiction. Again, science is the driving force of the world/universe/milieu. (The Force is even science! Yay midichlorians! Errr, I mean...not talking about that...)


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## Ariosto (Jun 11, 2009)

"Doc" Smith's "Lensmen" series (from which Star Wars appropriated elements, from the psychic-powered elite to planet-sized fortresses and planet-smashing weapons) is a much more legitimate claimant to the title of "definitive space opera" (as well as the runner-up to Asimov's Foundation Trilogy for the 1966 Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award).

What makes it SF is that Edward E. Smith, Ph.D., devoted some attention to the ramifications of his "what if" postulates. The physics is, if not air-tight, then at least carefully considered. His future society is in a sense an escape from the real future (our present) that was closing in, but the epic has some internal plausibility and a scope (extending into the past as well) almost rivaling at least a chapter of Olaf Stapledon's cosmic stories.

Star Wars chucks all the science for pure movie magic, eschews the forward-looking aspects and takes the atavistic ones to a blatantly medieval extreme. It's no coincidence, I think, that "magic swords" are the weapon of choice for the Young (Jedi) Knight and the Dark Lord. It's the highest of high fantasy in a vehicle propelled at rocket velocity, searing almost archetypal images into the brain through the eyes.


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## Lurks-no-More (Jun 11, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> "Doc" Smith's "Lensmen" series (from which Star Wars appropriated elements, from the psychic-powered elite to planet-sized fortresses and planet-smashing weapons) is a much more legitimate claimant to the title of "definitive space opera" (as well as the runner-up to Asimov's Foundation Trilogy for the 1966 Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award).



That depends. I agree that hardcore SF fans and SF authors may find _Lensman_ a definitive Space Opera work, but for the average SF fan, _Star Wars_ beats it handily by being current and much, much better known.


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## Krensky (Jun 11, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> "Doc" Smith's "Lensmen" series (from which Star Wars appropriated elements, from the psychic-powered elite to planet-sized fortresses and planet-smashing weapons) is a much more legitimate claimant to the title of "definitive space opera" (as well as the runner-up to Asimov's Foundation Trilogy for the 1966 Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award).




This I would agree with.



Ariosto said:


> What makes it SF is that Edward E. Smith, Ph.D., devoted some attention to the ramifications of his "what if" postulates. The physics is, if not air-tight, then at least carefully considered. His future society is in a sense an escape from the real future (our present) that was closing in, but the epic has some internal plausibility and a scope (extending into the past as well) almost rivaling at least a chapter of Olaf Stapledon's cosmic stories.




What makes it SF is that it's a Space Opera. What makes it a Space Opera is that it's a colorful, dramatic, melodrama that takes place in space with a large scale.



Ariosto said:


> Star Wars chucks all the science for pure movie magic, eschews the forward-looking aspects and takes the atavistic ones to a blatantly medieval extreme. It's no coincidence, I think, that "magic swords" are the weapon of choice for the Young (Jedi) Knight and the Dark Lord. It's the highest of high fantasy in a vehicle propelled at rocket velocity, searing almost archetypal images into the brain through the eyes.




Thereby relegating Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, John Carter, Eric Stark, and dozens of others to 'non-SF'. Along with most of the works of Phillip K Dick, a good chunk of Andre Norton and Heinlein. Both Galacticas, Farscape, Firefly, Leiji Matsumoto'a Harlock works (including the Yamato works) or Kawamori Shoji's Macross works. The works of Keith Laumer, Cordwainer Smith, Gordon Disckson, and Alfred Bester are no longer science fiction by your reckoning. Your comments sound a lot like Brin's 'anti'-Star Wars rants.


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## Mallus (Jun 11, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> "Doc" Smith's "Lensmen" series (from which Star Wars appropriated elements, from the psychic-powered elite to planet-sized fortresses and planet-smashing weapons) is a much more legitimate claimant to the title of "definitive space opera".



As a few others remarked, the Lensman series would be definitive if it were better known. 



> The physics is, if not air-tight, then at least carefully considered.



Surely you are kidding.  



> Star Wars chucks all the science for pure movie magic...



And the Lensman books chuck science in favor of grandiose pulp sci-fi magic. 



> It's no coincidence, I think, that "magic swords" are the weapon of choice for the Young (Jedi) Knight and the Dark Lord.



And Galactic Patrol marines in Lensman fight with 'space axes'. Not to mention the Lensman themselves, who have magic crystals Lenses, which focus the Force mind powers, given to them by a whole race of Gandalfs the Arisians. 

Don't get me wrong, I think Doc Smith is great, and I love the Lensman saga (despite being written in a prose style that can induce ocular bleeding among people sensitive to the misuse of the English language). But to suggest the Lensman and Star Wars are cut from a wholly different cloth is ridiculous.


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## Melan (Jun 11, 2009)

Krensky said:


> Thereby relegating Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, John Carter, Eric Stark, and dozens of others to 'non-SF'.




Well, they aren't - they are generally considered "sword&planet" stories or "planetary romances", a subgenre with period SF trappings but little attention paid to (or even _interest in_) actual science. Star Wars is an offshoot of the same family with a strong infusion of Tolkien's dark lords and the whole "youngest son" thing.


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## Krensky (Jun 11, 2009)

Melan said:


> Well, they aren't - they are generally considered "sword&planet" stories or "planetary romances", a subgenre with period SF trappings but little attention paid to (or even _interest in_) actual science. Star Wars is an offshoot of the same family with a strong infusion of Tolkien's dark lords and the whole "youngest son" thing.




Sword and Planet is a subgenre of Science Fiction. Some argue that S&P is a subgenre of Space Opera, but I tend to disagree with them. They are Science Fiction however. Buck and Flash are space opera or pulp science fiction (depending on the author and story), not S&P. Stark is Planetary Romance, not S&P. Technically Carter isn't S&P since that genre properly refers to the genre of stories from the 1960s on recreating the style and conventions of John carter and his pulp era imitators mixed with things from the pulp era S&S stories. I'm not entirely sure they're planetary romances either, but it's a convenient place to stick them.

And it's not Tolkien's, it's Joseph Campbell's. Lucas specifically cited Campbell as an influence and his monomyth work predates Lord of the Rings by up to a decade in places.


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## Krensky (Jun 11, 2009)

Mallus said:


> Don't get me wrong, I think Doc Smith is great, and I love the Lensman saga (despite being written in a prose style that can induce ocular bleeding among people sensitive to the misuse of the English language). But to suggest the Lensman and Star Wars are cut from a wholly different cloth is ridiculous.




Don't mistake me here, Smith's prose is... uniquely special. I'm not sure, however it's the brutalization of English you imply. For it's time anyway. Smith developed his style almost a hundred years ago and there has been a bit of drift.


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## Desdichado (Jun 11, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> NONE AT ALL is "too much importance"??? I did not say a thing about genre emulation! And it's more than a single mechanic; I mentioned two -- and that's leaving out hit locations, for a start on other Arnesonian rules. I've played Arneson's _Adventures in Fantasy_, and I've played _RuneQuest_; my statement on the consequences of the "any hit can kill" approach is well founded.



Oh.  Well, in that case, your post seems to be a non sequiter, completely unrelated to the discussion in which it appeared.


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## Desdichado (Jun 11, 2009)

There's not as sharp a divide between various subgenres of science fiction and fantasy as a lot of these most recent posts are implying.  Star Wars isn't _definitively_ science fiction because it has the trappings of science fiction.  It's not _definitive_ space opera and therefore can't be High Fantasy even though the plot and just as many of the trappings are pulled right outta King Arthur.

This overt dismissal because of overly tight genre stipulations isn't really helping discussion, nor is it really accurate anyway.  It relies on a very facile approach to genre boundaries that I don't think most lit/film critics would recognize.


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## Mallus (Jun 11, 2009)

Krensky said:


> I'm not sure, however it's the brutalization of English you imply.



It's probably not. I think I have a specific allergy to his prose. As I was reading the Lensman cycle I kept thinking "Why can't a different writer have your ideas?!".

To give you some context, I really dig Samuel R. Delany, and my favorite Golden Age SF author is Cordwainer Smith.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 11, 2009)

If D&D is a unique gerne, what are it's caracteristics, what defines it?


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 11, 2009)

Being identified as belonging to a particular genre or group of genres doesn't follow conservation laws.  It is quite possible for a work to belong to multiple genres.


RC


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## Zulgyan (Jun 11, 2009)

Ok, to which?


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## Remathilis (Jun 11, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> If D&D is a unique genre, what are it's characteristics, what defines it?




Primarily, its a mash-up of a bunch of different elements of fantasy, myth, and hints of sci-fi and horror all rolled up into a "kitchen sink" of ideas, which the DM can use as many or as little of as he wants. Its the genre were feudal samurai, Celtic druids, Arthurian paladins, knights-templar, Tolkien hobbits, and thewy barbarians all join together in taverns to fight Hammer-horror vampires, Chuthulu-inspired aberrations, Greek medusae and whatever Chinese toy Gary bought in a Five-n-Dime. 

Specifically though, if you want some of the genre tropes...

* Arcane/Divine Magic split. Arcanists use magic to attack, Priests use magic to heal.
* Magic is not good or evil; it exists. Heroes and villains can use it alike. 
* Arcanists are weak, frail, and bookish. 
* Rest to recover magic, or some other limit on magic use per day.
* There a hundreds of sentient "near human" races, each with one or more traits exaggerated to create a "niche" for the race. (Elves are graceful and wise, hobbits small and plucky, orcs brutish and strong, etc). 
* The Four-man party: Warrior, thief, arcanist, priest.
* Dungeons as underground fun-house of monsters, traps, mysteries, and mazes, often with more emphasis on player-challenge than on any given purpose. 
* Color-coded elemental-based dragons
* Magic items Galore, to the point of characters being overladen with them

I'm sure there are more.


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## Mallus (Jun 11, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> Ok, to which?



Well, swords and sorcery and high fantasy, for starters. Then there's that persistent hint of both science fiction, particularly Planetary Romance, horror, and Westerns. Also non-literary genres, such as small-unit tactical wargame and puzzle/brain teaser games.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 11, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> Primarily, its a mash-up of a bunch of different elements of fantasy, myth, and hints of sci-fi and horror all rolled up into a "kitchen sink" of ideas, which the DM can use as many or as little of as he wants. Its the genre were feudal samurai, Celtic druids, Arthurian paladins, knights-templar, Tolkien hobbits, and thewy barbarians all join together in taverns to fight Hammer-horror vampires, Chuthulu-inspired aberrations, Greek medusae and whatever Chinese toy Gary bought in a Five-n-Dime.
> 
> Specifically though, if you want some of the genre tropes...
> 
> ...




While all this trully makes a unique WORLD, I don't see it as making up a new genre.

Narnia and Middle-earth are two unique worlds, that belong to the HF genre.
Hyboria and Newton are two unique worlds, that belong to the S&S genre.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 11, 2009)

Mallus said:


> Well, swords and sorcery and high fantasy, for starters. Then there's that persistent hint of both science fiction, particularly Planetary Romance, horror, and Westerns. Also non-literary genres, such as small-unit tactical wargame and puzzle/brain teaser games.




We agree D&D has recieved all those influences. 

My point is that during it's history, the S&S influence got reduced, and the HF one increased.

And that also brought rules changes


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## Desdichado (Jun 11, 2009)

Rem; that's all the specifics of the "D&D mileu".  Setting stuff.  That's not sufficient to call it a new genre.

Then again, the fact that D&D has _never_ mapped all that well to highly differentiated and somewhat esoteric subgenre definitions makes categorization of it difficult anyway.

It's probably best to just call D&D a fantasy game and not even try to map it to High Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, Dark Fantasy, Epic Fantasy (which, as defined, pretty much overlaps with High Fantasy too much to deserve it's own label anyway, IMO), Romantic Fantasy or any other subgenre of fantasy, and leave it at that.

I guess you can definitively say that D&D isn't meant to emulate urban fantasy, though.  For whatever that's worth.  Anita Blake and Harry Dresden ain't D&D characters.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 11, 2009)

D&D fantasy:

Large number of protagonists
Clerics - holy men in plate armor who cast healing spells
Vancian magic
Large zoo dungeons
Tremendous variety of monsters
Tremendous number of magic items
Mixing of numerous other genres and time periods. As Remathilis says, it's a genre where Conan, Turjan, Bilbo, Sir Galahad and Getafix team up to fight Count Dracula, a Norse fire giant and something from an AE Van Vogt story.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 11, 2009)

Hobo said:


> I guess you can definitively say that D&D isn't meant to emulate urban fantasy, though.



Or two world fantasy where kids from our world travel to Fairyland and sort out their problems. Narnia, Oz.


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## Ariosto (Jun 11, 2009)

Getting too hung up on theoretical dividing lines can indeed be unhelpful. "We like _both_ kinds here, Country _and_ Western," though -- and as a fan of both, I find that Star Wars works (for me) much, much better as a fantasy than as science fiction. The purposes are different. SF considers what could be and comments on what currently is; fantasy deals at once in things that never can be and things that always have been.

Doc's prose can be torture to some, unfortunately. Cordwainer Smith's work is perhaps beyond easy categorization, being in a class of its own (and an enduring love of mine).


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 11, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> While all this trully makes a unique WORLD, I don't see it as making up a new genre.



It's not just the world. D&D has a story of its own. Multiple protagonists adventuring together, quite rare in fiction, go into massive monster, trap and treasure filled holes, existing almost nowhere else in fiction (except the film Cube, one of the closest things to D&D I've ever seen) and have fight after fight after fight after fight after fight...


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## Mallus (Jun 11, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> And that also brought rules changes



That's the big point of contention. I don't see anything particularly high fantasy about latter-edition D&D, particularly about 4e. 

(Or 3e. Or 2e, for that matter, which was supposed to be some kind of turning point toward HF, but was nearly identical to 1e, rules-wise). 

Basically, your evidence that supposedly demonstrates 4e being more 'high fantasy' can be explained/understood better other ways. For example, PC's do start tougher, but that has nothing to do with any sort of implied cosmic worldview, or the inability for evil to triumph over good. That change was made to alter the dynamics of the _wargame_ part of the game. It's an entirely gamist decision.

Again, the change had nothing to do with helping D&D players reenact the Lord of the Rings. If anything 4e does high-action, amoral pulp sword and sorcery _better_ than old-school D&D. It's can be just as episodic,challenging, and un-Christian. In fact, in 4e, you don't need to lug around a pseudo-Templar to heal your characters!


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 11, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> * Dungeons as underground fun-house of monsters, traps, mysteries, and mazes, often with more emphasis on player-challenge than on any given purpose.



Yes, Acererak and Halaster Blackcloak aren't characters, they're the DM.


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## Krensky (Jun 11, 2009)

Not an exhaustive list of elements of the D&D pseudo-genre:

Dungeons And Dragons - Television Tropes & Idioms


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 11, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> "We like _both_ kinds here, Country _and_ Western,"





You deserve XP for the Blues Brothers reference, but unfortunately I cannot give them to you.


RC


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 11, 2009)

Mallus said:


> In fact, in 4e, you don't need to lug around a pseudo-Templar to heal your characters!



Haha, good one. Zulgyan does have a point I think (provided you accept his highly questionable definitions of S&S and HF), but the path from S&S to HF has more twists than he makes out.

In Gygaxian D&D, the rules assumed the PCs were amoral looters, hence XP for gold. From Dragonlance onward, the default PCs were good guys. 2nd ed supported this with some rules - no xp for gold and no assassin class. This also made progression slower, making campaigns more epic.

3e brought back the assassin and level progression returned to the Gygaxian rate, making the game more S&S again. 3e remained lethal and fudging was no longer implied. 3e lost 2e's emphasis on story and setting so the game had, imo, become a lot more S&S, as Zulgyan defines S&S. Characters were more interesting mechanically but interesting characters aren't a HF trope. They're a trope of good fiction.

In 4e although there are warlocks and tieflings, they are just emo. PCs are still good guys, but some wear black. In 4e it's harder to die, so the game has become a bit more HF, epic quests are better supported.

But 4e is points of light, action is the most important element, not setting. In HF, setting is of supreme importance. The epic quest is really just an excuse to show off the geography and history of the author's beloved world.

In conclusion, 2e was the high point (or nadir) of HF in D&D. 3e is slightly more HF than 1e, purely because the PCs are assumed to be good, and 4e becomes a little more HF (but still less than 2e) because epic tales are better supported than in 3e.


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## Ariosto (Jun 11, 2009)

Mallus said:


> That's the big point of contention. I don't see anything particularly high fantasy about latter-edition D&D, particularly about 4e.
> 
> (Or 3e. Or 2e, for that matter, which was supposed to be some kind of turning point toward HF, but was nearly identical to 1e, rules-wise).
> 
> ...




That 2E pounded the square peg of legacy mechanics into the round hole of a new concept of what the game was about was for many (on both sides of the divide in opinion of the new concept) a bit of a problem.

Vulnerable player-characters and wide swings of fortune were not very conducive to the "heroic saga". The first factor could be greatly ameliorated simply by starting characters at a higher level. The second called for either railroad-style fudging (a la 2E) or revision of mechanics (a la WotC's designs, especially the latest).

Where the genre correspondence comes in -- and I hasten to repeat that I don't see this as any more than a side-effect -- is in one being primarily short form and the other long (and seemingly ever longer). An "S&S" story can quite properly finish with a protagonist coming to a bad end (not unknown in Dunsany, and common enough in C.A. Smith, I think). Such an incident, though, would be but a chapter in the epic novel form that has come to epitomize HF.


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## Remathilis (Jun 11, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> While all this trully makes a unique WORLD, I don't see it as making up a new genre.






Hobo said:


> Rem; that's all the specifics of the "D&D mileu".  Setting stuff.  That's not sufficient to call it a new genre.
> 
> Then again, the fact that D&D has _never_ mapped all that well to highly differentiated and somewhat esoteric subgenre definitions makes categorization of it difficult anyway..




Well, D&D didn't revolutionize the literary world, but its not a book is it. But check out what it DID inspire.

* Countless other Fantasy RPGs: from Palladium to MERPS, they all owe something to the original.
* Video Game RPGS: Plenty of video games emulate the D&D tropes. Final Fantasy (white mage/black mage, etc) did it back in late 80's. Warcraft did it in the 90's. Everquest, Ultima and countless MUDS, MOOS, and other MMORPGS all owe many of their concepts to the "kitchen sink" approach of D&D.
* J-Animation like Lodoss Wars, Slayers, Bastard!, Beserk and more all take elements (some overtly, like Lodoss) from the concepts of D&D. 

There are probably a few more there too. 

The trick is that D&D's genre IS all other genres (well, choice bits of them) without emulating ANY of them perfectly. It takes tropes of S&S, HF, Sci-Fi, Westerns, Samurai stories, Myth, Horror, etc and mashes them to the point they become no single genre, but a blending that is uniquely D&D. While I listed some the traits that have origin in the game (and thus the "world" of D&D) they have become so synonymous with the concept of "generic fantasy world" that when healer-priests show up in Worlds of Warcraft or shapechanging druids fight for the cause of balance, we don't bat an eyelash that "D&D helped define that trait."


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## Zulgyan (Jun 11, 2009)

Doug McCrae said:


> D&D fantasy:
> 
> Large number of protagonists
> Clerics - holy men in plate armor who cast healing spells
> ...




IMHO, all this stuff is secondary, accessory, cosmetic. In D&D, stuff from other places gets "adapted" to the D&D world. It does not enter it, unchanged.

For example, the Medusa, a unique mythic ultra powerful monster of ancient Greece, in D&D is just more canon fodder that will be encountered in 2d4 numbers on a swamp. They are degraded (for good gaming) when they enter the D&D world. They are not incorporated AS IS with all their true significance.So the incorporation of stuff into D&D is no AUTOMATIC - it adapts to it's caracteristics.

So D&D is not ALL genres. It takes inspirations from other genres and sources and modifies the stuff to adapt it.

So, to know what a genre is, you don't have to look at this secondary, accessory stuff, you have to look at it's underlying world view, morals, values, high concepts and themes.  



> 3e lost 2e's emphasis on story and setting so the game had, imo, become a lot more S&S, as Zulgyan defines S&S.




Yes. And in the OP I said, that IMO:



> 3E wants to go back to it's sword & sorcery roots. But the inclusion of some elements brings some confusion. The majority of fans, many without noticing it, want a game about High Fantasy. THIS is the major underlying source of conflict in all edition wars. High Fantasy elements start creeping into the game, either explicitly in the books, or by the generalized idea of how it is supposed to be played.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 11, 2009)

Zulgyan said:


> So, to know what a genre is, you don't have to look at this secondary, accessory stuff, you have to look at it's underlying world view, morals, values, high concepts and themes.



D&D fantasy's world view is that the purpose of life is to kill things and take their stuff. There are no morals. Money, magic items and killing things are of value. It's a deeply primitive genre, which is probably why it's used mostly for games, not novels.

Even in post Gygaxian D&D, which assumes the PCs are of good alignment, these 'good' people kill hordes and hordes of sentient beings and rob them. Ostensibly in a good cause. Post-Gygaxian morality is something of a figleaf.

You're wrong about the importance of trappings, they're an important part of most genres, particularly in the case of D&D fantasy, which is probably most notable for its quite bizarre trappings. Sword & sorcery with no pre-Renaissance combat and no magic isn't sword & sorcery.

By contrast horror and noir are genres that can take place anywhere. They are trapping free, relying on mood and atmosphere.


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## Mallus (Jun 11, 2009)

Doug McCrae said:


> In Gygaxian D&D, the rules assumed the PCs were amoral looters, hence XP for gold. From Dragonlance onward, the default PCs were good guys. 2nd ed supported this with some rules - no xp for gold and no assassin class.



My impression was that most D&D players wanted to play 'the good guys', who also happened to loot and kill a lot (why hello alignment system!), that the archetypal D&D character was a semi-moral looter, or an amoral looter with an ability to rationalize their deeds at the cosmic level .

Ultimately, D&D PC's are just corpse looters. Even the ones in sweeping, epic high fantasy campaigns full of Manichean struggles where good triumphs over evil. They also do bad thing to live flesh with flaming oil. 



> In 4e it's harder to die, so the game has become a bit more HF, epic quests are better supported.



Note that being hard to kill is also a characteristic of popular swords and sorcery heroes. 



> In conclusion, 2e was the high point (or nadir) of HF in D&D.



I ran a sweeping epic using 2e for many years, but it bore little resemblance to Zul's definition. It certainly wasn't Judeo-Christian, it certainly was tough, there was a overarching set of stories, but nothing was plotted out, and I didn't run it because of Dragonlance, I had just gotten sick of the disconnected dungeon-crawls of my youth. 

BTW, I think too much gets made of Dragonlance. While it's certainly the D&D version of the Lord of the Rings (for better or worse... wait, make that worse), I see it primarily as a reflection of what a lot of D&D players were _already_ doing; running high fantasy in the D&D idiom. 

Dragonlance didn't introduce high fantasy to D&D. Tolkien did.


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## Mallus (Jun 11, 2009)

Doug McCrae said:


> Post-Gygaxian morality is something of a figleaf.



Nicely said.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 11, 2009)

Mallus said:


> My impression was that most D&D players wanted to play 'the good guys', who also happened to loot and kill a lot (why hello alignment system!), that the archetypal D&D character was a semi-moral looter, or an amoral looter with an ability to rationalize their deeds at the cosmic level .
> 
> Ultimately, D&D PC's are just corpse looters. Even the ones in sweeping, epic high fantasy campaigns full of Manichean struggles where good triumphs over evil. They also do bad thing to live flesh with flaming oil.



You're right, things haven't really changed. Old school D&D should be praised for at least being honest about it.


Mallus said:


> Note that being hard to kill is also a characteristic of popular swords and sorcery heroes.



Yes. I was, for the moment, accepting Zulgyan's (wrong) definition of S&S.


Mallus said:


> BTW, I think too much gets made of Dragonlance. While it's certainly the D&D version of the Lord of the Rings (for better or worse... wait, make that worse), I see it primarily as a reflection of what a lot of D&D players were _already_ doing; running high fantasy in the D&D idiom.
> 
> Dragonlance didn't introduce high fantasy to D&D. Tolkien did.



I agree with this too. I think a lot of people (including Gary to some extent) got bored of the Gygaxian style at various points. The transition in the published materials can be seen throughout the 80s, Dragonlance is just a point on a path, and maybe earlier if you look at GDQ, RuneQuest, Chivalry & Sorcery and Empire of the Petal Throne.

I mean people can't just keep dungeon bashing for 35 years and not get bored, right?


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## Ariosto (Jun 11, 2009)

> Nicely said.



Darned right. Ms Pac Man is basically D&D (over-)simplified. It was designed to be a game first and last. Alignment, even in the later forms (with a Good - Evil axis), served primarily as another factor in creating challenge for player skill. There's a pretty natural evolution in the course of play to see more than just the game factors, but putting a lot of emphasis on the inferences can lead to dissatisfaction. One may find that "it would be an excellent game, if not for the dungeons, and the dragons, and ..."


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## Mallus (Jun 11, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> That 2E pounded the square peg of legacy mechanics into the round hole of a new concept of what the game was about was for many (on both sides of the divide in opinion of the new concept) a bit of a problem.



That 'new concept' was formally introduced to the game 5 years prior to the publication of 2e. And I'd argue it was informally introduced by gamers long before that, seeing how influential Tolkien was, even with Gary's own players. 

And can a whole system be called legacy mechanics? There really isn't much difference between 2e and 1e. 



> An "S&S" story can quite properly finish with a protagonist coming to a bad end (not unknown in Dunsany, and common enough in C.A. Smith, I think). Such an incident, though, would be but a chapter in the epic novel form that has come to epitomize HF.



Perhaps the comparison should be between swords and sorcery stories vs. series fiction? Some D&D players want the risk and danger of being the protagonist of a Clark Ashton Smith one-off set in Zothique and others want the relative stability of being Conan (or James Bond, or Kirk)?


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 11, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> Darned right. Ms Pac Man is basically D&D (over-)simplified.



Early videogames, with their frequent protagonist death, would count as S&S by Zulgyan's definition. In fact Ms Pac-Man would be more S&S than Conan, where the protagonist doesn't die.


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## Mallus (Jun 11, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> Ms Pac Man is basically D&D (over-)simplified.



Dying is easy. Comedy is hard. 



> Alignment, even in the later forms (with a Good - Evil axis), served primarily as another factor in creating challenge for player skill.



Absolutely right! Good guys hunt bad guys and bad guys hunt good guys when they get in their way. It's all good, or, rather, it's all (usually?) a series of inherently amoral power fantasies in semi-boardgame form. 



> One may find that "it would be an excellent game, if not for the dungeons, and the dragons, and ..."



This is why I've all but removed both dungeons and dragons from my D&D campaigns.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 11, 2009)

Is this a good time to mention that there are variant d20 systems published under the OGL that are specifically devoted to the Swords and Sorcery genre? That these games, which I'm not familiar with even by name though I'm pretty sure they exist, most likely put OD&D/1E to shame when it comes to modeling S&S?

I think the whole OD&D/1E was S&S and 2E/3E/4E was HF idea is a load of crap. I'm not familiar with OGL S&S games, but I'm sure comparing them with OD&D/1E will illuminate how un-S&S OD&D/1E could be.


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## Ariosto (Jun 11, 2009)

> I mean people can't just keep dungeon bashing for 35 years and not get bored, right?



I don't see that as "the Gygaxian style" of D&D; if anything, recent versions of the game have _downplayed_ the other elements. I don't know how long it lasted, but there was a period of at least a couple of years when players in the Blackmoor campaign chose to focus on the dungeons.

There's also the old view of D&D as "an amusing and diverting pastime, something which can fill a few hours or consume endless days, as the participants desire, but in no case something to be taken too seriously". In that light, there is no more reason to get bored of exploring the dungeons than to get bored of pushing pawns, drawing cards, or looking for a chance to lay down tiles on score-multiplying squares.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 11, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> I don't see that as "the Gygaxian style" of D&D; if anything, recent versions of the game have _downplayed_ the other elements. I don't know how long it lasted, but there was a period of at least a couple of years when players in the Blackmoor campaign chose to focus on the dungeons.
> 
> There's also the old view of D&D as "an amusing and diverting pastime, something which can fill a few hours or consume endless days, as the participants desire, but in no case something to be taken too seriously". In that light, there is no more reason to get bored of exploring the dungeons than to get bored of pushing pawns, drawing cards, or looking for a chance to lay down tiles on score-multiplying squares.




I always considered the main point of difference between old school/gygaxian and modern D&D/RPGs was the question of whether the game treats PCs as disposable or valuable. Its interesting to note that the game rules of 2E and 3E tended to fall on the side of disposable PCs, while most people tended to play contrary to it.


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## Ariosto (Jun 11, 2009)

> And can a whole system be called legacy mechanics? There really isn't much difference between 2e and 1e.



The lack of difference is what I _meant_ by "legacy mechanics"!


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 11, 2009)

Mallus said:


> There really isn't much difference between 2e and 1e.




There is if you go beyond the PHB, MC/MM and DMG.  New classes, new races, different forms of magic, kit-bashing, very different bard, very different psionics, specialty priests, lots of changes in subsystems, called shots, etc., etc., etc.  1e modules can be used as-is in 2e because 1e is almost the same as _*baseline*_ 2e.  

But 2e added a lot to that baseline.....A number of those additions being influential in the design of 3e.


RC


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 11, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> I always considered the main point of difference between old school/gygaxian and modern D&D/RPGs was the question of whether the game treats PCs as disposable or valuable. Its interesting to note that the game rules of 2E and 3E tended to fall on the side of disposable PCs, while most people tended to play contrary to it.




The DMing advice in 2e is explicitly to avoid making the PCs disposable.


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## Mallus (Jun 11, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> The lack of difference is what I _meant_ by "legacy mechanics"!



Yes. I realize that. 

What I meant was that I've heard the term 'legacy mechanics' used to describe a few subsystems retained in what otherwise is a new system. When the whole new system is a 'legacy mechanic', I think it's time to find a better term.


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## Mallus (Jun 11, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> There is if you go beyond the PHB, MC/MM and DMG.  New classes, new races, different forms of magic, kit-bashing, very different bard, very different psionics, specialty priests, lots of changes in subsystems, called shots, etc., etc., etc.



Isn't that effectively true for 1e as well? People added a lot to it, too.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 11, 2009)

Mallus said:


> Isn't that effectively true for 1e as well? People added a lot to it, too.




Ummm......No.

If I add a million things to 4e -- including varient magic, Vancian casting, etc -- that doesn't change the _*4e system *_itself.  It just changes _*my*_ game.  Indeed, the game might not even be recognizable as 4e if I change it enough.

If WotC adds a million things to 4e, _*4e*_ changes.


RC


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## Mallus (Jun 11, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> Ummm......No.



Didn't the Dragon continually add optional material to 1e for years? Like a decade? And that's just a single source. I'm not sure I see your point.

And why does source matter? Baseline 1e is very close to baseline 2e. It was common practice to heavily mod each system. Where those mods came from is irrelevant.

Modded 2e might not resemble baseline 1e anymore. Then again, modded 1e might not resemble baseline 1e anymore.


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## Remathilis (Jun 11, 2009)

Mallus said:


> Modded 2e might not resemble baseline 1e anymore. Then again, modded 1e might not resemble baseline 1e anymore.




**Cough, Cough, UNEARTHED ARCANA Cough, Cough**


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 11, 2009)

Mallus said:


> Didn't the Dragon continually add optional material to 1e for years? Like a decade? And that's just a single source. I'm not sure I see your point.




In the 1e era, simply appearing in Dragon did not make something an "official" rules addition.



> And why does source matter?




If it doesn't, then the OP's initial statements must be true, even if you don't believe it to be true of the baseline.  Or anything else I say about any edition of the game, for that matter, good or bad.  After all, where those mods came from is irrelevant, right?


RC


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## Ariosto (Jun 11, 2009)

Yes, there was a lot of new (or not so new, if one had S4 and the Dragon issues) and significantly game-changing material between the covers of UA ... until the pages fell out of the cheap binding. The Survival Guides introduced "non-weapon proficiencies". _Oriental Adventures_ was a case of "never the twain shall meet" unless one was (I think) foolhardy.

Some folks call "the orange spine books" (perhaps including the MM2) the 1.5 edition.

There are actually quite a few differences in detail in the 2E core rules, for better or worse (or both in different ways) depending on perspective. Some monsters (such as dragons and giants) got notably beefed up. However, it is pretty trivial to use a 1E module with 2E rules, or vice versa; and one might get the best of both worlds by treating the newer volumes as complimenting, rather than replacing, the older.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 11, 2009)

Raven Crowking said:


> The DMing advice in 2e is explicitly to avoid making the PCs disposable.




To a lesser degree, 3E did this as well. Looking at the systems independant of the DMing advice, both systems were meatgrinders for PCs, especially at the lowest levels. You had to run the game contrary to the system(or the dice) to avoid making the PCs disposable, and most people in my experience did just that.

4E was the first edition of D&D to truly embrace non-disposable PCs at a system level, with its bend but don't break PCs that are easy to thrash but hard to finish off.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 11, 2009)

Doug McCrae said:


> D&D fantasy's world view is that the purpose of life is to kill things and take their stuff. There are no morals. Money, magic items and killing things are of value. It's a deeply primitive genre, which is probably why it's used mostly for games, not novels.
> 
> Even in post Gygaxian D&D, which assumes the PCs are of good alignment, these 'good' people kill hordes and hordes of sentient beings and rob them. Ostensibly in a good cause. Post-Gygaxian morality is something of a figleaf.
> 
> ...




The way you describe D&D, which I agree with generally, is pretty much sword & sorcery to me.


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## Zulgyan (Jun 11, 2009)

> Note that being hard to kill is also a characteristic of popular swords and sorcery heroes.




EGG said that an 8th level Fighter in OD&D would be like Conan.

That's also very hard to kill in OD&D.


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## Melan (Jun 12, 2009)

No kidding, even with Bledsawian level demographics (i.e. a lot of NPCs who are 2nd to 4th level PC-classed types), a 8th or 9th level fighter can wipe the floor with a whole lot of opponents. Alone. I have seen this, and it wasn't pretty.


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## JoeGKushner (Jun 13, 2009)

> Sword & Sorcery literature is based on an Atheist worldview. So there is no god to take care of you. No god to be the parameter and judge of morality. No higher force of good that will finally triumph over evil. Humanity is alone. So it's all about power and survival.




I find this amazingly laughable.

Jirel of Jorey, Elak of Atlantis, Swordsman of Mars and dozens of other Sword & Sorcery style heroes survive because of... "DM Fiat." The characters are indeed often helpless in many situations and rely on outside sources. It may not be god, but it is a higher force that saves the day. I can't count the number of times Dalan (powerful druid spellcaster) saves Elak nor how many times Jirel is powerless agianst some 'potent sorcerery' or how even Conan is saved by the Phoenix Sword when necessary.

These entities may not be the good but they are certainly heavily used to enforce "the GM said so." attitude that may have been very common in early gaming.


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## thecasualoblivion (Jun 13, 2009)

Nothing in this thread has convinced me that the OD&D/1E was S&S more than later editions, or that changing fantasy tastes away from S&S drove the evolution of game mechanics.


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## LostSoul (Jun 13, 2009)

That's because the divide has nothing to do with genre tropes and everything to do with player priorities.

The first post does a good job of outlining those priorities, but then gets it confused with a specific genre.  Whatever.  You can play a game with all the HF tropes and still cater to the player priorities that the OP calls Sword and Sorcery.


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## Ariosto (Jun 13, 2009)

I think that an "adventure path" should be easier to manage with the tools in 4E (in the sense of reducing the need to "fudge"). That's a boon for "high fantasy" if by that one means a grand saga. One can come to that approach with all sorts of fiction-genre influences, though.

If the heroes are more clearly "larger than life" from the start, then that may veer away from an "everyman turned hero by necessity" theme that seems to me prominent in Tolkien's works and their emulators. It suggests to me rather the heroes of mythology, often demigods, from which I see a direct line to at least a prominent strain of S&S. "Coming of age" stories do not seem to figure much in the latter. We tend to meet the great adventurers when they are already in their primes, suggestive to me more of *Traveller* than of any edition of *Dungeons & Dragons*. In a modern epic of Good versus Evil, the ilk of Conan or the Gray Mouser is likely to be not the main protagonist but one of the supporting cast.

(Lin Carter's "Thongor of Lemuria" cycle comes to mind as just such a melange as seems to me evocative of D&D.)

I think key differences in expectation between the original game and the new have much to do with the wargame context of the former (from which our term "campaign" derives). Many aspects of the old rules make much more sense when seen from that perspective, just as many newer rules are more sensible when viewed in light of a concept of a "story game".


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## Desdichado (Jun 15, 2009)

Ariosto said:


> If the heroes are more clearly "larger than life" from the start, then that may veer away from an "everyman turned hero by necessity" theme that seems to me prominent in Tolkien's works and their emulators.



That depends on whether or not you look at Lord of the Rings from the perspective that Frodo is the "hero" or Aragorn is, though.


			
				Ariosto said:
			
		

> (Lin Carter's "Thongor of Lemuria" cycle comes to mind as just such a melange as seems to me evocative of D&D.)



Not surprisingly.  Lin Carter was (notoriously, in my opinion) famous for ripping off elements of earlier (and more talented) writers and essentially retelling them.  He was able to get away with it, in part, because his emphatic fanboyism of the source material he was copying was at least somewhat charming.

As opposed to, say, L. Sprague de Camp, who did the same thing except with a pretentious, "these guys messed stuff up, so I'm going to 'do it right' complete with a self-righteous and dry lecture on where Howard, Burroughs, etc. did stuff 'wrong' which proves that I don't actually understand what makes these writers successful in the first place."

In that respect, Lin Carter reminds me of Gary Gygax in a lot of ways; an admiring fan who's tribute was to retell and re-use past masters's works in new ways.  Gary, by converting them from literature into a game, did something much more innovative than Carter did, but I still think that the two of them were very much peas in the same pod in a way.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 15, 2009)

Hobo said:


> Lin Carter was (notoriously, in my opinion) famous for ripping off elements of earlier (and more talented) writers and essentially retelling them.  He was able to get away with it, in part, because his emphatic fanboyism of the source material he was copying was at least somewhat charming.
> 
> As opposed to, say, L. Sprague de Camp, who did the same thing except with a pretentious, "these guys messed stuff up, so I'm going to 'do it right' complete with a self-righteous and dry lecture on where Howard, Burroughs, etc. did stuff 'wrong' which proves that I don't actually understand what makes these writers successful in the first place."




Hey, whata ya know, Hobo.  We agree on something here.  

Of course, I disagree with you re: Gary (saving your opinion of the "admiring fan who's tribute was to retell and re-use past masters's works in new ways" for those who later decided to make "new" and "better" types of D&D.....including, of course, myself).

Post-Gary D&D is very much a pretentious, "this guy messed stuff up, so I'm going to 'do it right'" complete with a self-righteous and dry lecture on where Gary did stuff 'wrong' which proves that they don't actually understand what mades D&D successful in the first place.  

RC


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