I'm with Spike. Words are our servants, not our masters, so "D&D" could be applied to a car and still be "D&D," if we so chose. More significantly - and more, I think, in tune with the original question - the philosophical question is, I think, unanswerable. If you take the back off a chair, is it a chair, or a stool? What if you remove one of the legs? In the end, absent a Platonic Absolute of "D&D," it's just a semantic - or, more specifically, branding - question.

Quote from: estar;278470The difference is in branding. The specific list of races, monsters, classes, and the graphics and specific wording that makes up the whole package. There are plenty of D&D-like RPGs but only one D&D brand. Of the game vs the brand, the brand is more important than the game in establishing D&D's identity in the market.

I'm not denying that.  My point had to do with people who claim that the 'essence' of D&D consists in certain game features (classes, levels, etc.).  

Perhaps it would be useful to think of 'D&D qua game system' versus 'D&D qua genre' versus 'D&D qua brand'.  For me, 'D&D' is a mix of the first two things (system and genre).  

If a kind of soap or car was given the name 'D&D' by the brandname owners, it would not be 'D&D' (to me). It seems absurd IMO to maintain otherwise.

Quote from: Engine;278479... In the end, absent a Platonic Absolute of "D&D," it's just a semantic - or, more specifically, branding - question.

This is incorrect.  Simply because there is no 'Platonic Form' for 'horse' or 'knife' doesn't mean that those terms can't be used incorrectly -- e.g., someone is incorrect when they use the term 'horse' to refer to an ant, and they use the term 'knife' incorrectly when they use it to refer to a spoon.  They  use these words incorrectly because they use them to refer to things that are not their actual referents.

A term like 'D&D' is more vague, no doubt, but if the owners of the brandname used it to refer to a car I should think that they don't have any idea about what they're doing.

A few years back I visiting New York City. And one evening we went to the Birdland club, one of the holiest shrine to jazz in the world. The act I saw was good, but I could have seen the same act closer to home (and indeed I have). What made it special was that it was the actual Birdland.

I don't know but I think D&D has the same effect on some people. When a player get's to cast a "Delayed Blast Fireball" or encounter a Beholder, the thrill is not so much that it's a powerful spell or interesting monster, many systems will have equivalents. The thrill is that these specific spells and mosnters are part of the D&D lore. They are things which they first read about 20 or 30 years ago. They are the D&D player's Birdland.

Or maybe not. I'm not really a D&D buff myself, it's just something I seem to have noticed.

To me, "D&D" is a name given to any incarnation of the game Gary Gygax wrote.

I feel as if OD&D, Holmes, B/X, BECMI and RC D&D, and 1e/2e AD&D, are "D&D".  I don't feel that 3.0, 3.5 or 4e are D&D at all, regardless of what it says on the label.

I feel that 3.0 and 3.5 are a sort of hybrid with D&D memes and tropes bolted onto the base system of Rolemaster 2, except rolled on a d20.  4e is, at least, an apparently original game.

Quote from: Spike;278287D&D is not a specific thing beyond a name...

I think mostly that's true, but there are some things which have remained the same from edition to edition and which, speaking just for myself, make D&D D&D: classes, the core classes, hit points, levels, etc..

Seanchai

Quote from: Akrasia;278483Simply because there is no 'Platonic Form' for 'horse' or 'knife' doesn't mean that those terms can't be used incorrectly -- e.g., someone is incorrect when they use the term 'horse' to refer to an ant, and they use the term 'knife' incorrectly when they use it to refer to a spoon.

Ah, but should I breed a sort of ant and call it, "Horse," would it be a horse? Well, certainly, yet it is not the same species of animal we also call "horse." Hence my statement, "In the end, absent a Platonic Absolute of 'D&D,' it's just a semantic...question." The usage of "horse" to mean this species of ant is not incorrect, it is simply different from the previous usage. Of course, calling an ant which is not my "horse ant," a horse would be terribly incorrect, just as calling Shadowrun by the name of D&D is incorrect.

My tongue is a bit in my cheek, mind you, but my point is unchanged: D&D has no independent reality, and thus what we choose to call D&D is simply a question of semantics, in this case, branding.

Quote from: Akrasia;278483A term like 'D&D' is more vague, no doubt, but if the owners of the brandname used it to refer to a car I should think that they don't have any idea about what they're doing.

I would certainly agree, excepting situations in which someone is trying desperately to break into the much-valued "28-34 year old roleplayers" demographic with their automobiles.

edit: Hmm. I've been reading Jon Stewart today, and it seems to have made my writing [and thinking] more whimsical [than usual]. I don't disagree with you meaningfully on any particular point, Akrasia; my intent is more to point out the essential hopelessness of that old philosophical question of the difference between the thing itself ["das ding an sich," if you will] and our names for things.

Quote from: P&P;278496...
I feel that 3.0 and 3.5 are a sort of hybrid with D&D memes and tropes bolted onto the base system of Rolemaster 2, except rolled on a d20...

I've had this view since I first read the rules for 3e.  Strangely, despite liking both pre-3e D&D and Rolemaster 2e quite a bit, I'm not very fond of D&D 3e.

Quote from: Akrasia;278481I'm not denying that.  My point had to do with people who claim that the 'essence' of D&D consists in certain game features (classes, levels, etc.).  

Perhaps it would be useful to think of 'D&D qua game system' versus 'D&D qua genre' versus 'D&D qua brand'.  For me, 'D&D' is a mix of the first two things (system and genre).  

If a kind of soap or car was given the name 'D&D' by the brandname owners, it would not be 'D&D' (to me). It seems absurd IMO to maintain otherwise.

My opinion that if D&D lost classes, levels, and a handful of other characteristics it would severely damage it brand as the market would perceive it as soap or a car.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!;278435I'm with Narf.  To me, D&D is almost as much a game system as it is a genre...but it's more the latter than the former.

...And speaking of RPGs, are you still in the Risus game?

Quote from: Soylent Green;278486A few years back I visiting New York City. And one evening we went to the Birdland club, one of the holiest shrine to jazz in the world. The act I saw was good, but I could have seen the same act closer to home (and indeed I have). What made it special was that it was the actual Birdland.

I don't know but I think D&D has the same effect on some people. When a player get's to cast a "Delayed Blast Fireball" or encounter a Beholder, the thrill is not so much that it's a powerful spell or interesting monster, many systems will have equivalents. The thrill is that these specific spells and mosnters are part of the D&D lore. They are things which they first read about 20 or 30 years ago. They are the D&D player's Birdland.

Or maybe not. I'm not really a D&D buff myself, it's just something I seem to have noticed.

You're not wrong.  I know one of the easiest ways to satisfy the group I'm "currently" playing with (were on hiatus) is to throw in a monster they all know but have never fought before.

I ran an adventure with Dire Corbies and my players just about wet themselves, and 9/10ths of their excitement was they ALL remembered the Dire Corby from the 1E Fiend Folio but none of them had ever fought one.

I figured this out after they fought an otyugh -- another stand-out creature that rarely gets used -- and got very excited.  In later adventures they fought more otyughs and found them more tedious, the thrill of going there was gone.  Not that I care, I'm incapable of not having an otyugh appear when players go into a sewer.  I just love the damn things.

Quote from: estar;278294From 1974, 1st Edition, B/X, 2nd Edition, 2.5 Power & Skills all close members of the same family of RPGs.

3.X could be played like the previous family but the addition of mechanics like feats, ascending armor class made it's developed form vastly different than previous forms took. Of the previous edition 2.5 Power & Skills edition came the closest to what 3.X turned into.

4th Edition shares elements with 3.X but not with the earlier system. It is no more related to the early editions of D&D than Rolemaster or any other class and level system. It has many common elements with 3.X.

That's pretty much how it cuts for me. If I read you right that is...

3.x made some -major- changes to the game mechanics, but the underlying way the game played out remained the same. It had the same 'feel' to it in many ways.

4.x feels completely divorced from the 'feel' of pre 3.x. It has some of the old core mechanics, but little else. In fact what portions it does have are things found in many RPGs that neither have nor claim any relation to DnD.

Much like Rolemaster - some of the core things are the same, but there is just something different in the feel of it that marks it as a very different game.

3.x may have jumped the Grand Canyon, but it didn't jump the shark. 4.x did.

That says nothing about how good of a game it is. Frankly there are a lot of games I think are better than DnD. 4.x is a good game, but so are Fantasy Hero and Rolemaster, and GURPS (I'll admit Rolemaster is a good game, and I don't even like it personally).


I do have to say that I'm surprised this topic is still current, this many months after 4.x came out. The first time I've looked at a table top RPG board in months, and this is the topic I find on page one.

I think all the editions up to (and grudgingly including) 2e core were  variations on the same game.  3.x and 4e broke with that, and moved into "different, but related, game" territory, to one degree or another.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;2786253.x and 4e broke with that, and moved into "different, but related, game" territory, to one degree or another.

The 3.0 books looked to me like somebody heavily houseruled version of AD&D. A some things I thought "I wish I thought of that it would make running AD&D a lot more fun." The elements I would have imported in are ascending Armor Class, and multi-class system. I would have switched over to using a d20 roll high skill check for the Thief classes and other resolution stuff.

The emphasis on prestige classes and feats definitely made 3.X at the end of it's published life a very different game than prior editions. I feel that 2.5 of AD&D had the same issues when the Skill and Power stuff came into full flower.