D&D is a state of mind.
I’m weighing in on this whole “what is D&D?” trend. I think this differs pleasantly from edition/OSR wars in that it is a philosophical exploration of a concept, rather than dirt-slinging.
I hear a lot of people judging whether 4ed is or is not D&D. One camp will site rules changes, how the material encourages a style of play, or various other elements that make it “not D&D.” The other camp will retort that rules have always been changing, that you have a choice to your personal style of play, and other such counters.
I think I have concluded that D&D is a state of mind. At this point, “D&D” has become a cultural icon–more a concept, memory, and feeling than a physical set of rules. Are you using GURPS to fight goblins, explore a dungeon, and loot dragon hordes? Then you very well could be playing D&D.
As a state of mind and an emotion, different people find their D&D in different ways. The new rules and new presentation of 4ed kills that feeling for some people, just like 3ed killed it for some people. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who can look at 4ed and still get in that state of mind.
I’m sure if you look close enough at most arguments over editions, you will find that people are ultimately trying to defend their emotions about the game. It is almost the same as trying to explain why one likes chocolate more than vanilla, or why one likes country over hip-hop.
Chocolate or Vanilla? I’ll take my strawberry, thank you very much. And in country over hip-hop I’ll go with jazz.
Good post, and I agree, D&D is a state of mind.
Sounds like Zombo.com to me…
Nice to hear a voice that’s actually stopped to ponder these things instead of the usual emotional ranting.
I believe you’ve hit it on the head that the arguments have turned into semantic bickering, not over the content of the game, but over the right to define the term “D&D”.
To go even further, I would say that such linguistic territorialism is a cognitive disonance that’s plagued mankind for at least as long as there have been dictionaries. Back in my college days, I took a survey-of-philosophy course, and quickly concluded that most of the “great” philosophical treatises ever written boiled down to word games that all sprung from one basic premise: that language is somehow a mystical encapsulation of reality in which each word somehow contains the core essence — the soul — of that which it is attached to. Included in that conceit is the unspoken understanding that there can be exactly one of these “souls” contained in each word, thus enabling an individual to score some sort of victory by unlocking the riddle of it and laying it bare for public examination.
“If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?” The real answer to that question is, “Stop spouting nonsense riddles in an effort to make yourself look clever, ’cause it’s not working.”
In truth, all human language is just an arbitrary wilderness of sounds and symbols grown organically over the course of millenia as we struggled to influence and educate one another. It evolved into what it is. It’s still evolving today, with every utterance we make. And just because you say the word “clock” when you’re thinking of Big Ben doesn’t make me an idiot when a vision of the digital time readout on my cell phone is the first image that springs to my mind.
So it goes with “D&D”. If you want to take a good, hard, semantic look, WOTC owns the term, ergo, “D&D” is exactly what WOTC says it is at any given moment, and no one else has a leg to stand on when it comes to claiming otherwise. But language refuses to remain constrained by things like logic or legal mumbo-jumbo, so — as you say — D&D does and will continue to mean something unique to each person who uses the word. And gamers will go right on fighting over which of them should wield the power over the one “true” definition for as long as they can muster the energy to care.
How dare you sully the good name of GURPS like that!
I think for many people the argument does stem from the defense mechanism that you allude to. However, some people, myself included, just enjoy a good debate. While I don’t enjoy debating which edition of D&D is the “correct” one I have no doubt there are people that do. Edition X versus edition Y is D&D’s answer to Kirk versus Picard.
…and we’re all aware Captain Picard is the superior officer.
Nothing wrong with a good debate. It’s just that when the words themselves become sacred cows to be fought over, all real logical discourse gives way to heated name-calling, and it ceases to be a debate. All you’ve got left is a sadly under-funded political campaign without yard signs or any hint of a concession speech.