What is D&D about?

There is a rather interesting forum thread on the Dungeons & Dragons Next forums, discussing what D&D is about.
Quote: Mike Mearls: "I agree that 4e had very clear goals, and that was a strength if those goals matched what you wanted. What we've learned is that people play D&D for a staggering variety of reasons."

For me, 4e's very clear goal was to make a game about fantasy combat. Mearls seems to have recognised that thousands of people play D&D for a staggering variety of reasons beyond 'fantasy combat'.

What is D&D about, for you?
This describes very well why I like 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons. It has clear goals, which were about making great tactical fantasy combat, it succeeded very well with these goals, and they were exactly what I wanted. Having said that, of course Dungeons & Dragons is not only about tactical combat for me. There is roleplaying, story-telling, problem-solving, and just hanging out with friends and having fun together. But that is "D&D - The Experience", which should not be confused with "D&D - The Product".

Imagine a pen & paper adventure which is all about story-telling, roleplaying, political intrigue, and the like. What kind of rule system would you need to buy to play it? Once you think about that question, you will realize that you don't need any rule system to play this. If there is no combat, you don't need combat rules, and then most of the rest of the rule system isn't needed either, as there is no use for experience points and levels in an adventure that is just about roleplaying. You could play that adventure with various rule systems having rules for social skills or for spells that would help in roleplaying situations. But frankly, that sort of rules is more likely to detract from the fun than add to it. If you have a murder mystery, you don't really want a spell that allows you to see what happened, or a social skill that tells you unerringly whether somebody is saying the truth or not.

Thus when I buy a rule system as a product in a shop, I don't worry about the roleplaying aspects. Those simply aren't in the rules, they are in the people you play with. When I buy the product, the most important aspect of it is the combat rules. Everything else depends on the combat rules. Even character classes are mostly defined by what they do in combat. Yes, I can imagine playing a game without combat, just like it is possible to play World of Warcraft without combat. But it is safe to say that combat is an essential part of fantasy roleplaying games for most people, which is why the combat rules are so important.

I do think that 4E could have used a bit more work on the out-of-combat part. For example the "backgrounds" of D&D Next are a clear improvement over the skills and feats of 4th edition in providing a reason why a certain character would have certain skills. The 4E rulebooks and adventures could have stressed roleplaying a bit more in the explanation on how to play. But in the end the roleplaying is what I need to add to any rule system. So I'd rather start with a rule system which got the fundamentals right, has good tactical combat, and balanced character classes. And 4th edition is doing that just fine.

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