Are there dungeon crawls in Game of Thrones? I've never read/watched it.

Quote from: jeff37923;849951Just as clarification, while this exploration of fantasy literature origins is Good Stuff, I was thinking of D&D as its own genre of role-playing games from a standpoint of rules and not setting.

  Ah. I believe we call that 'Old School'.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;849953Martin is part fantasy/part historical fiction. It has the grittyness of the latter.

Harry Potter are typical children's books. I don't see a lot of LotR in there. No sword fights, no endless orc killing, no large scale battles. It has more in common with Roald Dahl than with Tolkien.

I have to admit that I can't remember the details, but when reading the first HP book and watching the movies, it sort of struck me in some places. I think it was mostly the humor (which is kinda similar to the Hobbit, maybe a British thing for all I know), and some of the horror-ish elements.

I fully agree that D&D is it's own genre of RPG fantasy. There are a plethora of D&D-isms that don't exist in fantasy movies, comics or literature...and that's cool.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;849956Ah. I believe we call that 'Old School'.

I would agree here, but as D&D rules changed so did the "footprint" of the genre.  In the brief example I gave d20 Star Wars was D&D, which reflects the D&D genre changing with the advent D&D 3.x. By the same token, Blue Rose is D&D because it uses derivative but still recognizable rules of D&D 3.x.

Quote from: Simlasa;849955Are there dungeon crawls in Game of Thrones? I've never read/watched it.

I don't think so.
By there are several chapters in Tolkien's works that could qualify.

Quote from: Trond;850023I don't think so.
By there are several chapters in Tolkien's works that could qualify.

The Hobbit book is nothing more than one mighty long dungeon crawl.

Quote from: estar;849863In short Dungeons & Dragon is the central definition of fantasy in the modern era. Of course there are other types of fantasy genres and sub-genres. In most people's eyes the alternatives are defined more by how they are different than they are from the definition of fantasy set by D&D.

I agree with this, though many won't necessarily know it by name or label - we know it by the label.

Early computer games influenced later ones that came out on consoles, handhelds, as well as MMOs, and along with these latter developments, more people were exposed to it as they gained wider acceptance.

The LOTR movies and Game of Thrones are then perceived as alternatives by the general audience, though they might not recognize where all the original tropes came from.

Quote from: Simlasa;849955Are there dungeon crawls in Game of Thrones? I've never read/watched it.

The incidents that comes to mind are when Sam Tarly goes into the Nightfort's tunnels to pass underneath the water.

The cave where the Greenseer (I think that the title) is residing when Bran arrives.

The only out and out "dungeon" adventuring is when Daenarys entered the House of the Undying.

While not a dungeon adventure the ranging by the Night's Watch led by Mormont north of the way is pretty much traditional D&D fare.

Quote from: Lynn;850068The LOTR movies and Game of Thrones are then perceived as alternatives by the general audience, though they might not recognize where all the original tropes came from.

Both the original LoTR and GoT are excellent in their own right. But it was the how Peter Jackson and the GoT team handled the adaption that vaulted their influence.

After the first LoTR film, I start to notice a difference in how other fantasy films and tv shows were produced. In my opinion for the better and certainly better looking as people starting to look for better locations that looked decent and evocative of whatever they were trying to do. I know people joke that the LoTR films are half New Zealand travel advertisement. But I think he really did an outstanding job of presenting the landscape as Middle Earth.

As for the GoT series, it seems that genre films work better when they are X but with fantasy tropes. That one of the secrets of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and for GoT it is a complex soap opera at it's core.

It seems to me that people are getting better at picking the right tropes from different genres and the resulting mash ups are interesting to view.

Quote from: estar;850107As for the GoT series, it seems that genre films work better when they are X but with fantasy tropes. That one of the secrets of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and for GoT it is a complex soap opera at it's core.

It seems to me that people are getting better at picking the right tropes from different genres and the resulting mash ups are interesting to view.

It is story telling for the right medium (and along with it, target audience).

MCU & GoT have to have complex, personal character interactions. I don't think its soap opera per se, but rather that soap operas are almost purely driven by personal character interactions and devoid of anything imaginative outside of those (Dark Shadows being a kind of exception). Soaps historically have also been limited by tight budgets - one reason why Dallas was such a big deal in that it was a soap with a huge budget.

MCU and GoT must have them, otherwise they'd risk becoming as shallow as the effects driven Transformer movies.

A parallel example - consider the Boorman Excalibur movie. It takes the classic story, and it complicates the relationships in interesting ways. It is a fantasy movie, but being a movie, its got to be more than just what's in the story.

Quote from: Brad;849873D&D is Plato, all other RPGs are footnotes. I am not being snarky whatsoever: other RPGs literally depend on D&D for their existence.

This is largely true, yes.

I've always wished that would change.  I long believed that D&D dying would actually improve the hobby.  Fourth edition proved me wrong.