# What is the Hardest Genre For a D&D Player to Adapt To? tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/dnd ![[DND Rules Cyclopedia (cover).jpg|400]] ![What is the Hardest Genre For a D&D Player to Adapt To?](https://x.com/LawDogStrikes/status/1858193553731592200) I don't think of it so much as difficulty adapting to a genre, so much as it is difficulty adapting to a different mode of engagement with the world. You can map the traditional **[[Dungeons and Dragons|D&D]]** "party structure" onto just about any kind of genre you like. You can do horror in D&D. You can do superheroes in **D&D** (and some would suggest that has already occurred in the way that **D&D 2024** and effectively everything after 3.5 has been assembled). Genre doesn't seem to be the hurdle. Things like authorial integrity and control. Things like maintaining a social position that actually has teeth within the context of the mechanical architecture. Things like being the drivers of the experience rather than passive receivers of the experience—all those things seem to be real issues for traditional **D&D** players a lot more than any particular genre. Taking a bunch of **D&D** players and dropping them into a situation where they have an actual chain of command and responsibilities that come down from on high to them, that can blow their tiny little minds. Putting them in situations where they are responsible for the well-being of a group of other people for whom they actually have some sort of emotional commitment — good luck even trying to get them into a game like that. I don't think the problem is *genre*. I think the problem is an inability to imagine outside of the ruts of the road they've been driving down for so long, coupled with a disinterest in doing so. --- ## PostScript for the Garden Ultimately, this is a really interesting question. Not *just* for the particulars of the game on the table, but as a general criticism of traditional RPG architectures and why they often get stuck in ruts with a particular style and genre of play, that they never deviate from and never seem to want to deviate from. From my perspective, the problem is that they never seem to want to deviate from a very narrow path of accomplishment and achievement, and it's endemic throughout a lot of the community. Giving it reflection for a few minutes, it's obvious that part of that is self-selection bias. The ones that do want to do something else have 10,000 games they can choose from which still touch on the genre themes they are fascinated by, but which are clearly doing something different in structure and style. So they go off and play those games because they feel more free and more comfortable to pursue that kind of play. A long-time traditional **D&D** player who is exposed to the idea of social connections being important mechanically to gameplay is probably not going to try and jackhammer them into their **D&D** game because they are playing with a group and more than likely a DM that already has a style of play.^[Well, okay, *some* will try and jackhammer them in but that's [*Fantasy Heartbreakers*](http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/9/) and a subject for another day.] If they do, they will find that those mechanics don't actually fit very well and don't have a good place to be positioned within the flow of play. So they'll go off looking for other games and other groups that already exist, which have those sorts of experiences and mechanical support built in. They don't stay traditional **D&D** players. A lot of you weren't around for one of the early great transitions that happened in the tabletop RPG space: the rise of White Wolf and the *[[World of Darkness]]*, particularly **[[Vampire - the Masquerade|Vampire: the Masquerade]]**. Dark, edgy, overtly sexual, extremely social, and politically inclined with a deep meta history that was guaranteed to keep continuing forward. That was new stuff in a lot of ways, and it made a huge splash because: - It did something very new with high production values - It wasn't **D&D** Could it have been just another fantasy RPG with much more socially facing mechanics? Sure. Absolutely. **[Vampire: Dark Ages](https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Ages:_Vampire)** gave that a go. It wasn't nearly as successful as **Vampire: the Masquerade**. My feeling at the time (and still) is that it just simply wasn't different enough from the fantasy settings that already existed and were dominant to be a good pitch. If you're going to make a significant change, it's important to fully commit and execute it thoroughly. Doing so will maximize your appeal and effectiveness. Stated like this, it becomes a bit of a gedanken experiment to consider what might have been: > What if Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro recognized that they wanted to do a more socially conscious, social mechanic-forward approach to **D&D**, but realized the people currently playing weren't interested in that sort of thing, and you couldn't make them interested in it? > > What if they had split off a spur of **Dungeons and Dragons** as an IP and focused on smaller, "cozier," less traditional **D&D** stories, while still leveraging the history and settings that people already enjoyed? Simultaneously maintaining the more action-filled, conflict-forward core **D&D** line, could that have been successful? I suspect it would have at least had a chance. The world will never know.