What is D&D for you?

[chronoplasm]

I guess what attracts me to Dungeons & Dragons is the fact that we have dinosaurs and greek titans in the same book. It's the fact that, while it incorporates elements of Lord of the Rings, it is not a game about Lord of the Rings, but rather it is a game that incorporates so much more from a variety of sources.
I am attracted to the old books of Mystara with its cities of robots and its hollow world.
I am fascinated by the fact that, even when I am a level 1 common mook with rusty chainmail, I can still be a sword-swinging, spell-slinging, red-caped eccentric who sets out to chase the goblins from his grainery and in doing so, eventually save the world and get filthy rich doing it. After all, what is an Average Joe in a world of dragons and space-alligators and dungeons and electric-zombies powered by techno-voodoo?

I like D&D because it is a game where a cooper and a magic robot can ride on unicorns and shoot rainbow lasers as Aztec orcs to save their super-intelligent pangolin friends in a crazy mixed-up world in the wake of a nuclear holocaust gone horribly awry.

Dungeons & Dragons to me is Gonzo Fantasy. It isn't about becoming more powerful and dominating everybody; it's about strange things that snowball into even stranger things on a larger scale until not even the DM knows what is going on any more.

That's the appeal for me anyway. I don't know about you.

What is it about Dungeons & Dragons that you find compelling? What is it that attracts you to the game, and keeps you playing? What is D&D for you?

[benoist]

I wouldn't go as far as to say that D&D "has to be" Gonzo Fantasy, but the possibility to have Gonzo associations and combos in a D&D game is part of the genre, for me as well. D&D allows us to use a wide range of sources of inspiration to fuel our games, and that makes it special as a game.

D&D is about exploration. Whether it'd be dungeons or wilderness areas, the adventurers discover new places and uncover mysteries, kill monsters, meet new friends and foes in the process. It's about the delve into a world away from the mundane. It's about treasure hunting. About defying dragons and rescuing princesses.

D&D is about collaboration. I feel that the character classes, or achetypes, and particularly the way they combine with each other to create a complete synergy with the concept of exploration detailed above, is what makes the game mechanically interesting to play.

D&D is about imagination. There's nothing quite like building your own dungeons, wilderness area maps, and build a world from there. You can build "plots" or "stories" in other games, but I found it never creates a world quite as open to the creativity of both game masters and players. The concept of "sandbox campaign", in particular, is what makes D&D special in this regard. Nearly all later RPG designs tried to frame the imaginations of their users in some way or another. D&D tried to open the gates of imagination from the start, and it got it right more than any other game out there, in my opinion.

D&D is about enjoying the company of each other. Whether immersive or casual, the game is about getting together and rolling some dice while pretending to be someone else for a few hours. It's not about copying art, not about the emulation of this or that media, not about being "deep", though you certainly can be. It's first and foremost about playing a game together. It's unapologetically social.

I'm going to stop here for now.

[thegreyelf]

D&D to me is about a certain tone and feeling of play that can't really be described properly, but has been lost since 3.5 came out. It's about a legacy. It's about a direct line to the beginnings of our hobby. It's about a connection to, respect for, and honoring of What Came Before.

When I read OD&D, B/X, BECMI, AD&D 1, AD&D 2, and even D&D 3 I get a sense of legacy, of a game that understands what it is and from where it comes, and has great respect for its own history and roots, a proper and direct evolution of What Came Before, though certainly there is an increasing disconnect as time wears on.

With 3.5 there's a definite sense of an embryonic effort to divorce the game from What Came Before. It's still D&D, but somehow something's not right about it. Possibly it's the heavy focus on miniatures, shifting combat to movement in squares, pages upon pages of conditions that provoke attacks of opportunity, things like that. More likely, it's the result of heavy rounds of layoffs in the company that in fact changed the company's face. A lot of the long-time D&D designers were suddenly no longer working for WotC, replaced by people who had no connection to the early days.

And 4th edition, while a solid game if it's what you like, is completely divorced from What Came Before. It has no more in common with What Came Before than does Exalted or Big Eyes, Small Mouth (and indeed, I've often said it reminds me of a d20 version of those games--if it's not WoW the RPG, it's certainly Final Fantasy).

And I think this is deliberate on WotC's part. I think they've decided that the game is theirs, now, and it's time to really make it their own. They've got the right to do that. They bailed TSR out of bankruptcy and kept the legacy going for a long time, and I think they are owed a debt of gratitude for that. If they choose to court a new generation by redefining D&D, by truly making it THEIR property, that's probably great for them--you have to evolve to survive. But while the new generation will embrace it, I'll bid WotC a fond farewell and continue my flirtation with What Came Before.

[ragnorakk]

Interesting question. Coming into the game pretty young, it sort of took my imagination and cubed it.
It's an art and a science (ok - I know it's a game! I'm rhapsodising, do forgive!). It's a community of
variations on similar tropes and assumptions - it's simulation and fantasy, structured imagination.
D&D had a pretty big impact on me (as is evinced by my posting this some 28 years later!). In solitude,
it is something I can craft and invent with. In company, it is shared invention, and at its best, really fun!

[blackbarn]

I think it's cool that D&D does include basically everything, but personally, I have never seen it as a game where everything in the books should be used in the same campaign world. It's more like a menu from which you pick the things that will define your own version of D&D.

While growing up, we never used a lot of things that some people would probably say were essential to D&D (for example, I can't recall anyone ever playing a cleric.) We took most of our ideas about fantasy from things like the Savage Sword of Conan magazine, and played D&D accordingly. So to me, D&D is humans (fighters and thieves, mostly) adventuring across the land, lots of urban adventures and wilderness treks, with occasional towers or dungeons to explore. Magic using classes are usually NPCs, when they appear at all. The rules are used loosely, never overriding what makes sense.

And it's a lot more about having fun with friends than about immersion in a fictional world, although I believe imagining it as a real world with people living in it is preferable to imagining it as a story from a novel, TV show, movie, etc. Stories are far more limited than what D&D offers.

[machfront]

blackbarn. Posting so I don't have to!


Seriously. Everything he posted is very much my view of D&D and the experiences are 99.9% the same (never had any Cleric PCs, mostly humans, mostly fighters and thieves, MUs have always been NPCs if at all, dungeons are far from the 'core' adventuring area, etc.).

[howandwhy99]

D&D for me is the hobby side of military roleplaying. They play soldiers at war and we play fantasy warriors living in a dangerous world. They become better soldiers and we become better in more general ways, at the aspects we actually roleplay.

[gkaralunas]

As I stated earlier I played in the late '70s, and being a fan of Sci-Fi paperbacks & in the Military, I needed a escape valve !,

Think about it? We were a RDF (Rapid Depolyment Force) that had to be On-The-Ground in 72 hours anywhere in the world. Mon-Fri as PSNCO (Admin Supv.) I worked a avg of 18-20 hours a day and the need for 'down-time' was needed.

What suprises me now is that here in the Heart of Texas the military personnel don't seem interested in downtime, i.e. War Gaming or RPG,
or maybe it's because I've not been looking that hard <grin>

George

PS: I'm from the era of Fidonet so I don't use Smilies.

[Deleted]

It is an escape for me. I take care of sick preemies and I game to put out of my mind that, a few hours earlier, somebody's little boy or girl went to live with the angels in spite of everything my co-workers and I could do.

My job is harsh, so I like my entertainment rather light.

[Finarvyn]

I'll probably get choked up as I ponder this further, but here goes...

1. D&D is a way for me to express my creative side.

2. It's a way for me to escape with freedom to come up with ideas rather than to experience a book or a movie full of someone else's ideas.

3. It's a social thing. I had gaming groups in high school who played almost daily, gaming groups in college who played every week or two. I sponsored a game group where I teach for a while, and they met weekly. I have gotten to meet lots of wonderful people through D&D.

4. It's a lifelong journey. In high school my mother told me D&D would be "a phase" and not to fixate too much on it. Thirty years later she admitted to me that it was more than that and was actually a genuine interest.

5. It's a way to share time with my kids. They like playing RPGs and they like to spend time with me as they do it. My gaming group is usually wife, kids, sister, and a few friends. That's really special.

6. It's something for me to do in my later years. I figure I have 12 to 15 more working years before I retire from my teaching job, and D&D will provide some entertainment for me when I suddenly have this time on my hands.

I feel fortunate to have discovered D&D all these years ago, and even more fortunate to have had the opportunity to tell both Dave and Gary about my love for what they created. I got to chat with Gary at MilwaukeeCon years ago and exchanged some e-mails with Dave last year about the same thing. It's nice that they knew what their creation meant to all of us.

[delve]

D&D to me is a great hobby to harness ones creativity and keeps it flowing. I like the *wonder* aspect of searching for ancient items,explore old fallen kingdoms. The strategy problem solving of working together to bring down some monster or gang of brutes, the ideas that pop up are sometimes brilliant or just hilarious. Example: we had a party that was dangerously wounded and the magic-user suggested they hide in a room with only one exit and he created an illusion of a wall over a door so no one would find them as they healed and *Simple but it WORKED!* or one of my favs, The whole plot of this one adv was to confront this dragon lord, and he was tough!!, well during the confrontation and the players were being whooped. The one fighter says. "ah screw this!* takes off his helmet and throws it at the dragon lord, *rolls a 19* knocks him off balance and through a stain glassed window. The dragon lord plummets from the high tower to his untimely end. A silence fell across and everyone started laughing. Slain by a HELMET!!.

It is also a great social barrier breaker. I have not seen many games that attract various social classes to sit at the same table together and have fun together. To sum it up D&D - is a good game.

[oldgamergeek]

I first played in late 1974 after a bad accident involving me, a tobaggon and a large pine tree. When I got that white box set it was like wow I can make up worlds and adventures and put my over active imagination to work. This met with my parents approval like nothing else ever did and it was fun. Then came the 80's and High school and the satanic panic and it was more fun to watch my dad torture the school counselor, teachers and the principle. the best part my pastor recommended the game to my parents