I see a lot of D&D topics on this site. I never quite got D&D. To me it always seemed like generic fantasy with nothing really special to offer. So what is so special about D&D? And are there any standout original settings available? I am mildly interested in Dark Sun, but that's about it. Obviously I am completely wrong of course.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;785066I see a lot of D&D topics on this site. I never quite got D&D. To me it always seemed like generic fantasy with nothing really special to offer. So what is so special about D&D? And are there any standout original settings available? I am mildly interested in Dark Sun, but that's about it. Obviously I am completely wrong of course.

D&D is an example of an uncommon case where the first to define a category largely gets it right and grows to dominate the ensuing hobby and industry.

The reason it succeeded is that the rules are largely simple enough for a novice to grasp yet there is just enough detail to hold ones interest for years at a time. Doesn't mean that it is the perfect game but good enough to the point that it held on to the share it earned by being first.

You have a class, it defines what you can do. You have levels, at higher levels you can do more things. You roll a d20 to hit. You need to roll equal to higher than a number based on the target's Armor Class, if you hit you do damage. Damage is subtracted from hit points. When hit points reach zero you or your opponent falls down unconscious or dead.  The rest is pretty much details.

Another key to D&D continued success was the focus on the Dungeon. Of all the myriad things that RPGs can do and set campaigns, the dungeon is among the easiest to grasp, make, and master for a novice to the hobby.

Take a sheet of graph paper, make a maze with rooms, add monsters to some room, treasures to others, scatter traps and tricks, and leave some empty. Instructions that are easy grasp and produces a setting that just compelling to hook the person into the larger hobby.

There are few other RPGs that make these claims to simplicity. In most cases it a matter of presentation rather than design or complexity. This mostly happens because alternative try to present themselves different than D&D.

The D&D brand faltered with the 4th edition of the game, however Pathfinder, using the D&D 3.X rules, continued the game's dominance. Now with the 5th edition it looks like we get two great sets of rules to share the crown.

The appeal of 5th edition is that retains some of the customization introduced with 3rd edition but simplifies and streamlines things so that the games runs as fast as classic editions of D&D. More important the D&D Brand is honing its presentation so that there is a path for novices to experience the full game, yet there are options and details for the long term fan of the game.

This is accomplished by supporting a free to download basic version of the 5e rules.  It only differs in terms of the number of the options and details in the document otherwise it is the 5th edition game that in the full Player's Handbook.

Finally because much of the 3.X rules were released under a open copyright license the D&D rules have been hacked, modified, and stretched to cover a bewildering array of genres, complexity, and play styles. This further cemented D&D as the leader both in the hobby and industry.

Because of this every type of setting has some support form D&D somewhere.

Now as for me, for nearly I did not play D&D as my primary system. I played Fantasy Hero, Harnmaster, and a lot of GURPS. I never had any particular problem with D&D except I wanted more detailed combat and more options for creating characters. So starting in the mid 1980s I turned to other system ending up with GURPS Fantasy for a long time.

But Matt Finch's Old School Primer made D&D click for me in a way it never had before. So I started publishing for the game. Because I starting publishing for it, I starting running adventures and campaigns. To eat my own dog food so to speak. I still like GURPS and my experience with the Old School Primer and D&D has helped my GURPS refereeing as well. But I also come to appreciates D&D's versatility and simplicity.  That all I had to do for a more gritty game is run it that way. That if I want character options, I don't have to have mechanics, I can just write details up for players to use on their character sheet. That it is the way I run the game and the background materials I provide that determines the feel and direction of the campaign not the rules.

The rise of Fate pretty confirmed the above for. That game literally boils down to a handful of mechanics. Everything is just made up stuff that players and referee create and write down on the character sheet. Not mechanics in a rulebook.

You start off with the blank slate of generic fantasy (Which is not a bad thing at all. Generic Fantasy is popular for the same reason Westerns were popular for decades: It's a universal canvas for adventure stories), and then you and the players add your personal touches (Sometimes big, sometimes very small, sometimes deliberately, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes just by indulging in what you like) slowly, over weeks or even years or decades of play, until it is anything but generic.

Don't use a pre-packaged setting: Download a single sheet of hex paper off the net and make your own little county or shire or island (You can then set this in a bigger setting if, say, you really like the Forgotten Realms or something). Your own little sandbox fairyland for players to root around in and manipulate. After a few sessions the balls start bouncing off each other. After a year or two it feels as alive and self-perpetuating as anything on a server.  

I like 5e D&D, but I can see how a newcomer might find it overwhelming. If that's the case, go for the Swords & Wizardry Whitebox or Labyrinth Lord, both of which are wonderful, very much "D&D" in style and play if not brand-name, and far simpler.

There's so many handles on D&D that tons of different kinds of people can grasp it. That's why D&D and retroclones.

I agree with estar. What makes D&D special is that it came first, there was nothing else like it at the time, and it worked. It set the stage for everything else. You can argue about the details, and my friends and I did argue, a lot, but the whole of it works well and was simple enough for most to understand rather quickly. Maybe 6 stats is not right for you, maybe alignment fails your smell test, maybe armor class and saving throws and hit points had their quirks you wanted to change, but that's alright. You could make changes without breaking the game.

It helped too that the early supplements were fun to look at and use. From the Monster Manual to Dungeon Geomorphs to The World of Greyhawk to modules like the Village of Hommelet, all that worked too.

Personally I think the game became dated and other systems improved on it, I moved on and didn't look back. But it still holds a place in my heart just because it was first. If you don't care about such things then true, it is generic (kinda had to be to attract new players back in the day) and not too special anymore.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;785066So what is so special about D&D?

I think D&D is special as it has a long history of being whatever you want to make of it

Quote from: jan paparazzi;785066And are there any standout original settings available?

I suspect Planescape, Birthright, and Ravenloft may be of interest to you. My favourites are those that embrace the "being whatever you want to make of it" such as Greyhawk and Nerath.

Yeah, I get all this. Pick a class, enter a dungeon, kill some monsters and loot the room. Done plenty of this stuff with Warhammer FRPG and with all those pc games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. But are there any settings that stand out? Interesting worlds and cool backstory, that kind of stuff.

Quote from: Skywalker;785085I suspect Planescape, Birthright, and Ravenloft may be of interest to you. My favourites are those that embrace the "being whatever you want to make of it" such as Greyhawk and Nerath.

Ok there are already a few names I dont know anything about. Nerath and Birthright are unknown to me.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;785089Ok there are already a few names I dont know anything about. Nerath and Birthright are unknown to me.

Nerath is the default setting for the 4e rules, it was never fully collected into one place, but rather spread out among various books and articles. It's set in a dark age following on from the fall of a large empire, with other empires in its more distant history.

Birthright is focused on the PCs as divinely-chosen rulers of small domains. It's... somewhat more mythic and political in nature.

I think you might also like Eberron, it's sort of an unusual, pulpy setting where magic has spawned an industrial revolution and it takes place in the aftermath of a sort of 100-year-long fantasy World War 1.

D&D settings? Planescape is incredible. Once you have moved behind the whole magitech thing, Eberron is quite something as well.

Both are a far call from "Enter dungeon, kill things, take stuff."


D&D itself?

It may well be the first place "standard fantasy" as it is known today first convalesced into one genre.

But the fun thing is, once you get into D&D you realize that it is in fact a genre in itself and a very fun one at that.

Empty your mind of all prejudice, jump into D&D and prepare to be amazed, because it is batshit fucking awesome insane.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;785089Ok there are already a few names I dont know anything about. Nerath and Birthright are unknown to me.

Birthright is sort of Game of Thrones D&D.

Nerath was a essentially "not a setting" but hints of setting that existing in the 4e material. I liked it as it reminded me of early Greyhawk, which I learned through experiencing the world through playing my PC rather than a setting book. There is something remarkably organic about that approach - to discover the world and fill in blanks as you go.

I also liked Al-Qadim, which was a very well written Arabian Fantasy setting.

Quote from: Gold Roger;785099D&D itself?

It may well be the first place "standard fantasy" as it is known today first convalesced into one genre.

But the fun thing is, once you get into D&D you realize that it is in fact a genre in itself and a very fun one at that.

That's really true. In 1974, there was no "standard generic fantasy setting."  As much as any other cultural artifact, D&D set the standard.

D&D has allways been at its core a "make of it what you will" sort of blank slate if you so desired. I DM is mostly as a low to mid fantasy setting. Magic is not everywhere doing everything up to magic is more common but still not yet crawling out of the woodwork.

Settings.

Greyhawk/Blackmoor: This is the standard low to mid fantasy setting, depending on the era. Its a post-apoc reconstruction era setting with alot of open area and alot of feudal kingdoms and magic. Often a darker setting too on one side and weirder on the other.

Karameikos: The BX setting. Standard Low fantasy and rather spread out unsettled frontier feel till BECMI. The land originally had very large groupings of races rather than other settings scattershot or melting pot feels.

Forgotten Reamls: Mid to very high fantasy setting with alot of fantastical activity at every corner. Lots of ancient mysteries and plots by gods and otherworldly forces sprout up fairly regularly.

Mystara: BECMI/Cyclopedia. Mid fantasy setting based off Karameikos. More settled and now a post magitech disaster setting. Oddly its got alot of gradiose events, yet never really edges into high fantasy feel.

Dragonlance: This one is a tough call, its mostly a low fantasy setting, but has some mid fantasy elements. Plays very differently from other settings initially with a fluid alignment system and magic based on the waxing and waning of three moons. Dragons return after a thousand years and war breaks out. The setting was ruined in later editions and lost its unique feel over time.

Dark Sun: A really weird experimental setting. Mostly low fantasy and exceedingly deadly. A world utterly devastated by irresponsible magic and psionics use. Mostly a desert planet now of oft brutal savagry.

Ravenloft: Another odd experiment. A gothic horror dimension. This one had a mid to low fantasy feel to it overall.

Spelljammer: D&D in space. A really fun setting that is much wrongly maligned for its linking various settings and fleshing out those settigngs solar systems. Fun space travel and evocative ships both mundane and fantastical. Very much a high fantasy setting with lots of room for exploration, intrigue and space wars.

Red Steel: A sort of sub-setting for Mystara. Parts of it have a Swashbuckler feel and parts have nearly a Wild West feel. Gunfights with hand crossbows.
There were also some other odd sub-settings like an aztec setting whos name eludes me at the moment, Hollow World, Thunder Rift,

Birthright: A sort of kingdom level setting with some wargame elements.  Mostly a Mid fantasy feel from what Ive read.

Planescape: The outer planes as if it were fantasy Victorian England in Sigil and no less odd around the ring. Pretty much wall to wall high fantasy as you walk the streets with elementals, demons, celestials and everything else. And alot of normal folk treating it like it was just another street corner.

Eberron and others I have had no personal experience with at all so cannot really say.

Quote from: estar;785079D&D is an example of an uncommon case where the first to define a category largely gets it right and grows to dominate the ensuing hobby and industry.

Love this.

Quote from: LibraryLass;785096Birthright is focused on the PCs as divinely-chosen rulers of small domains. It's... somewhat more mythic and political in nature.

Think Highlander meets Game of Thrones (with really nasty, xenophobic elves).

QuoteI think you might also like Eberron, it's sort of an unusual, pulpy setting where magic has spawned an industrial revolution and it takes place in the aftermath of a sort of 100-year-long fantasy World War 1.

Think Indiana Jones meets Lord of the Rings (with magic, sentient robots).

These two are my favourite official D&D settings. They are not generic, both are very much their own thing.
If there's something that I don't like about them it would be that they feel a bit over-designed. (I like "organic" settings better, like the inofficial D&D settings Lüdinn or Pelinore.)