D&D is a Feeling, Like Happiness, or Rage

June 22, 2009 16 comments

A few people have stated that you can’t run or play a Dungeons & Dragons-style game without using some actual form of the D&D rules. Allow me to debunk this myth.

There have been several games called “Dungeons & Dragons” over the years, from White Box “OD&D” to the current 4th edition rules. Many of these editions are incompatible with one another to the point that they are essentially different games. They are all still D&D, however. Therefore, there are similarities and common elements between these editions that must form the heart of what D&D means. If you sit a bunch of D&D fans down at a table and ask them to define what those elements are, you would find some commonalities, but you would also find disparity. “D&D” means different things to different people. It’s like porn; you know it when you see it. Some people will state that D&D-style means classes and levels. Others will say killing things and taking their stuff is D&D-style gaming. Other will refer to dungeon delves and maps or other stuff. But it all fits. You don’t need to have all of those things at once, but some of them will “feel” D&D to most people.

D&D-style is a sub-genre of heroic or “high” fantasy. It has tropes that can be pointed to, and you can say “yes, that right there, that makes it D&D”. But like any genre, there is a range of tropes that are broad and deep and inconsistent. Let’s look at the science fiction genre as an example. You’re got stories about aliens, stories about robots, stories about time travel, stories about rocket ships, and more. But not all stories have all of those elements. Some science fiction stories have none of those elements, yet they still feel like science fiction, and can be classified as science fiction.

With settings, we have things as wildly different as Ravenloft and Dark Sun’s Athas. They’re both D&D. Greyhawk and Eberron are really different. Both D&D. Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Dragonlance, Blackmoor, Spelljammer, a bunch of third-party settings, and million homebrews. All D&D. Sure, you can argue that they all use the same rules. But, oh, wait, they don’t. Even settings released within the same edition of the rules are heavily hacked. Magic works differently in Ravenloft than it does in Athas, and both of their magic systems are different than the 2nd edition rules as written. Each setting ends up with unique classes and playable races and spells and “house rules”. But all of them are still D&D.

We’ve got the Old School movement and the Edition Wars, which acknowledge that there are wildly different styles of play and very different rules. No one disputes that any particular edition is D&D from a legal perspective – TSR, Wizards of the Coast, and Hasbro have made those calls over time. People will argue that “that’s not D&D to me” because certain elements or tropes have been changed or are missing. There are retro-clones, which attempt to emulate one form or other of D&D-style play through the replication of the rules. There are OGL fantasy games that have spun the rules in new directions or simply created knockoffs. There are games, like Wandering Monsters High School, which add new rules to old tropes for a D&D-style experience.

In the end, D&D is a feeling. Something you love. Something you hate. Memories, experiences, styles, social interactions. It’s different things to different people. Your D&D-style play isn’t required to be my D&D-style play, and thank heavens for such diversity!

So, at the end of the day, while he’s over there running a 4th edition Eberron game, and she’s over there running a 2nd edition Spelljammer game, and they’re over in the other corner running a homebrew 3.5 game using only the PHB and a stack of 3rd party materials, if you tell me that the high fantasy game I’m running using FATE, or Risus, or Savage Worlds, can’t truly be called a “D&D-style game”, I’m going to just point at you and laugh hysterically.