What defines "D&D" for you?

[Endarire]

With the upcoming release of 5E and various discussions over the years on what is and feels like D&D, it's time for another thread!

For me, D&D is the tabletop experience.  It's part simulation, part narrative, and part game.  I want to be able to explore, have my actions produce logical consequences, and be part of an epic, sweeping plot.  Yes, I want to be a star!

It's a system where pure casters and manifesters rock hard in the later levels and make many of Earth's legends and myths seem low scale.  It's usually a group experience where group dynamics matter, in terms of personalty and stats.  Sometimes, D&D's best entertainments come from going off-book in terms of planned adventures and by conveniently changing rules to make things seem more interesting at the time.

For me, D&D is 3.5 with a lot of house rules to patch holes and make things more fun.  By RAW, it's a system that demands the experts help the newbs tremendously so everyone can have similar levels of fun and contribute something, if only a body or comic relief.

[SolEiji]

D&D is versatility to me.  Its the knowledge that if I want to make a stupid ice fairy, and face her against Vegeta while on a planet made of turnips, I can, because there are either rules for that, or houserules which can be made for it.  Or a social heavy politican drama involving stopping a brain-eating killer from killing the president.  Or this or that or the other.  The big thing here is that it has the open-endedness to do these things, and the rules to support it making it different from a more freeform type of game.

Its also the idea that the class you pick can be modified heavily.  Customization is key.  I can turn a rogue into a beatstick, a cleric into a trapfinder, a ranger into a samurai, or even just reflavoring things like warlocks into saiyan warriors and druids into pokemon trainers.  With a wealth of splatbooks to help, it's something modular.  It's very much "there's an app for that" kind of gameplay.

Besides that its mostly flavor.  Things I'm accustomed to.  There are planes and a great wheel.  There are gods, angels, and demons.  There is golems and magic items, dragons and hoardes, these sorts of things.  Much like Final Fantasy, where I expect chocobos and moogles regardless if it's ancient Ivalice or technological spaceworld, I expect gnomes and illithids and beholders and whatnot regardless what edition we're in.

[phaedrusxy]

What D&D is to me has changed over the years. It used to be sitting around with friends having a good time. We spent as much time goofing off typically as we did actually playing the game. We did have epic adventures that we'd talk about years afterward, though, and one of the things that made them memorable was that you never knew until the dice hit the table how things were going to turn out.

Now that I'm older, and have too many responsibilities draining my time to be able to afford the luxury of sitting around once (or more) a week for hours on end playing an actual table-top game, it has become an entirely online experience.

For a while, it became about digging around finding all kinds of fun (and often overpowered) combos, but that's kind of passed for me, as well. I still enjoy building characters, but often I have some kind of theme in mind, and just optimize around that (and often not in the most powerful way possible).

I've also gotten into homebrew more, as once you master most of the "official" rules, their limitations become more and more constraining and annoying. There are some things that D&D just doesn't actually work very well to do, or holes in the rules that really do just demand to be patched.

I don't think it is required that the "experts" help the "n00bs" out in order for the gaming experience to be fun for all, though. Even though I am capable of breaking the game 50 ways til Sunday, I don't, because it just isn't fun anymore. I'd rather make a quirky and interesting character that can do a lot of things, but not hyper-specialize in one to the point where he trivializes most encounters. As long as you have a kind of gentlemen's agreement not to break the game, things can work fine with mixed groups of optimizing junkies and basket weavers.

[Endarire]

It's awkward for me to have spent years mastering the system then feel a sense of shock when I need to give him an interesting personality to fit into the group.

Still, I did.

I also don't want to fall into "D&D is this, but should be this."  There are a lot of things D&D could be.  Some say that the bad balance, the ambiguous rules, and misleading labels are just part of the game, despite many not wanting them to be.

[Sinfire Titan]

Pure and simple, it's a way for me to enjoy some time with my friends while creating a story. However, I take far more enjoyment from the mechanical aspects of this game than I do from the story aspects. I try not to allow the story to override the mechanics unless the others think it would be fun.


Strangely, my two veteran players have told me I should railroad more for the sake of the story. I don't know what to make of that...

[RobbyPants]

A role playing game featuring high fantasy where you tell cooperative stories with the DM. The PCs are the characters that will have the most impact on this story. Other than that, for it to feel like D&D, I suppose it needs some of the staples from older editions to maintain that feel, and what exactly those are is still up for debate.

For example: I'm not a big fan of alignment, but I could see it being included in future editions so long as the mechanical restrictions are removed, leaving it as more of a flavor thing. I think a lot of existing features could be slightly modified to keep the flavor about the same while changing the game for the better.

[DonQuixote]

Background: I've been playing D&D 3.5 since September 2010.  In that time, I have played in two campaigns: a ten-week campaign that spanned levels 1-10 and a summer-long campaign that put us at 6th-level (gestalt) and in which no levels were gained.  I have also DMed two campaigns: a ten-week campaign that spanned levels 1-10 and a 10-week gestalt campaign that spanned levels 6-20.  In that time, I have also managed to drive myself mad with homebrew, a fact that I mention only because of its relevance to my opinion on D&D mechanics.

Social Aspect: D&D is a fantastic way to spend time with people once a week, and an amazing way to explore ways in which you express yourself.  It's good, clean fun--as long as your players aren't of That Sort--and everyone works together to spin a compelling and enjoyable story.  Building interesting characters, playing them, discussing them, and exploring the game together is an incredibly rewarding experience.

Mechanical Aspect: One of the big things for me is the diversity of class mechanics.  I'm not talking about "wizard casts spell, fighter swings sword."  Rather, I'm talking about how a wizard prepares spells in spell slots, a swordsage learns maneuvers and prepares some of them, a psion knows powers and has access to power points, and so on.

Classes working in different ways contributes hugely to them feeling different, in my opinion.  Not only is this nice from the viewpoint of diversity in play experience, it also allows you to focus yourself on behaving in-character.  Since your wizard has to prepare his spells in advance, you have to think and plan like the massively intelligent character he is.  And so on.

Moreover, the diversity in actual class chassis allows for much more breathing room in writing original homebrew.  While that may not be a hugely important consideration from the designers' point of view--after all, they do not directly benefit from us writing custom material--it makes the game mechanics much, much richer to me.  For a not-so-humble example, when I decided that I wanted to play a magic-user, but also knew that I didn't like the feel of spellcasters, I was able to base a magic system off of a combination of warlocks and martial adepts.  The fact that I can do that--make my concept happen, even if it happens to not fit into the class structure that has been provided--means that I don't end up banging my head against source books while trying to build a simple-but-interesting fire caster.

Admittedly, this leads to a few hiccups, such as the level of difference between the tiers.  I can easily see why homogeneity would be simpler to balance.  I'm not contesting that.  However, the richness of a diverse set of class mechanics is something that I feel is worth the effort and risk.  Part of the reason that I love D&D 3.5 more than any other system that I've been exposed to is that I can interact with the system itself on a much deeper level.  I don't have play sessions every night.  However, every night, I can, if I wish, throw together interesting builds or write up an interesting ability, class, or what have you.

[linklord231]

D&D for me is about escapism.  It's so easy to create a character deep enough and a world immersive enough that you can temporarily forget about your real-world problems and just worry about dealing with the dragon that's menacing your town. 

I also agree 100% with DonQuixote, especially about the mechanical aspects.  The biggest turn off from 4th edition for me was that all the classes functioned mechanically the same.  This made it feel like it didn't matter what class you were actually playing, they all felt the same.  I absolutely love going through all the 3.5 splat books, because almost every single one introduced some new mechanic that made it unique.  You can come up with a character concept, and even if there's not a combination of base classes and PrC's that fits it you can easily homebrew something that does by modifiying existing mechanics.

But as far as things that make D&D instantly recognizable, I think Mike Mearls's list is mostly right.  It just isn't D&D any more without 6 attributes, classes, levels, and the iconic monsters. 

[bhu]

For me dnd is defined by pointless rules arguments, DM's who wouldn't know reason if it bit them in the ass, and clueless bastards as fellow players.


Thankfully me experiences here are somewhat making up for that...

[caelic]

Well...hmm.

To be honest, I'm tempted to offer responses similar to some that have already been listed...but those are more "What defines a roleplaying game" for me.  The total freedom to tell the story I want?  I can get that in other games, too, and those games aren't D&D.

So...what defines D&D for me?

D&D is a very specific type of fantasy.  It's not exactly swords and sorcery, it's not exactly high fantasy or epic fantasy; it's a mishmash of these with liberal doses of chivalric romance thrown in.

D&D is generally about a group, not an individual.  It's about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.  It's about working together as a team to overcome obstacles too formidable for any one hero.

D&D is a world where orcs are generally cannon fodder, giants aren't to be taken lightly, and dragons are badasses.  If the rules don't reflect that, then the rules are out of line with what I consider to be D&D.

D&D is a world where you should NEVER take kobolds for granted.

D&D is a world of ten-foot corridors where the lighting is SFTOID (sixty feet, trailing off into darkness.)

D&D is a world where there's adventure around every corner.  The innkeeper always has rumors of strange goings-on in the nearby wilderness, the mysterious dark-cloaked figure in the corner always has an agenda, and the hills always have a dark, mysterious cave.

D&D is a world where you're a lot more likely to find yourself wandering windswept mountain peaks, scorching deserts, and sweltering jungles than well-tended farmland.  The well-tended farmland is there, of course, but it's usually not where the adventure is to be found.

D&D is a world where the city probably has cavernous sewers big enough to comfortably fight in, the sewers probably have monsters, and the thieves' guild almost certainly has their fingers in every pot.

[dman11235]

D&D to me is the social experience.  A great way to enjoy the company of friends.

It's a mix of every setting you could ever want to play, and the creatures that flesh out those settings.

It is customizability in role playing.

[Unbeliever]

I think Don Quixote captures a lot of what separates D&D from other RPGs.  It's a game filled with fiddly bits.  This leads to interesting nooks and crannies, which helps fuel the optimization forums, but also has its own headaches as well. 

Also, as Caelic notes, it's got it's own brand of fantasy.  It's ... whatever the opposite of gritty is, a game where you can expect to fight 40 orcs in the morning and then 4 giants after dinner.  It shares DNA with Diablo and similar games and worlds. 

[veekie]

Likewise, DonQuixote pretty much nailed my opinions on the matter.