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View Full Version : What gaming worlds could be fairly called D&D clones?



hamishspence
2008-06-05, 05:50 AM
Fighting Fantasy's World (Titan) has many of the classic D&D tropes: monsters (including dragons of different colours with different breath weapons), dungeons, adventurers, etc. At least one FF book got converted into a d20 adventure (Caverns of the Snow Witch)

Early era Warhammer also has a lot of D&D-ish ness about it: again, dragons, different age categories and breath weapons, the types of monsters, the races and adventurer classes, and so on. Not that surprising given that both FF and Warhammer were founded by the same people.

What other fantasy worlds have this strong D&D-ish style? Conan isn't: the monsters tend to be rather different from D&D.

And what sort of traits does a world neede to be called a D&D clone, rather than just "Generic fantasy"?

Thiel
2008-06-05, 06:06 AM
Well, DnD isn't a world in and of it self, so finding worlds that's cloned of it could be hard.

hamishspence
2008-06-05, 07:15 AM
Mystara and Greyhawk, the classic D&D worlds, both tend to the same tropes, and the vast majority of monsters in both universes are the same.

Examples of the sort of thing that might seem worryingly similar: Dark Elves in Titan are black-skinned, evil, subterranean elves driven below after warring with the normal Elves. Giants coming in Hill, Frost, Storm varieties. Brain Slayer which looks exactly like Miind Flayer. Etc.

If the game was written post D&D, and the world so many similarities in monsters, dungeons, base assumptions, etc that you can barely see any differences, it might be fair to call it a D&D clone, rather than a Tolkien clone. Tolkien didn't have pegasi, medusas, basilisks, lizardmen, etc mixed into Lord of the Rings. Titan does have these alongside orcs, elves, dwarfs, etc.

hamishspence
2008-06-05, 07:23 AM
Which is not to say that cloning D&D is necessarily a bad thing, nor that the world is completely unoriginal (creation myth for Titan is interesting) Just that when you read the books (Titan, Out of the Pit, etc) where most of it comes from is easy to see.

Beside the examples given, what other worlds have a huge amount in common with D&D in most of its incarnations? (not all D&D campaign settings fit the standard. Dark Sun is very different from "normal" D&D)

Bender
2008-06-05, 07:45 AM
Plenty of computer game worlds have suspicious similarities to D&D: Realmz, Blades of Exile, warcraft (I and II anyway, except for the second head on the ogre, I don't know about the more recent versions)...

Mr. Friendly
2008-06-05, 07:46 AM
This is going to be an exercise in futility.

"Dark Eleves" as dark/black skinned elves that live underground are *slightly* older than D&D. By at least a thousand years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Elves).

There is very little in D&D that is actually original, it is from those items you can draw comparisons.

Mind Flayers.

Beholders.

Even the former is kind of a ripoff of Cthulhu. At any rate, start with those first for your comparisons.

Anything that references Dark Elves or even Drow isn't necessarily ripping off D&D.

Matthew
2008-06-05, 08:10 AM
Fighting Fantasy's World (Titan) has many of the classic D&D tropes: monsters (including dragons of different colours with different breath weapons), dungeons, adventurers, etc. At least one FF book got converted into a d20 adventure (Caverns of the Snow Witch)

I have all eight that were produced. They were pretty neat.



Early era Warhammer also has a lot of D&D-ish ness about it: again, dragons, different age categories and breath weapons, the types of monsters, the races and adventurer classes, and so on. Not that surprising given that both FF and Warhammer were founded by the same people.

War Hammer is very D&D inspired, if you're familiar with the origins of the game you'll know that White Dwarf published D&D material back in the day. I once read in a Gygax interview that they were in negotiations to be the British arm of D&D before deciding to go their own way.



What other fantasy worlds have this strong D&D-ish style? Conan isn't: the monsters tend to be rather different from D&D.

Are you kidding me? Conan is pure D&D, it's more D&D than D&D! Okay, modern D&D isn't very Conan, but you really ought to look into the 'pulp' fantasy roots of the game.



And what sort of traits does a world neede to be called a D&D clone, rather than just "Generic fantasy"?

Well, very interesting question. A lot of people seek to pigeon hole D&D, but it's always been a genre bending sort of game, which I think is what irritates its detractors ["D&D just does Dungeon Crawls, it sucks for everything else!"]. Hell, it may suck for everything else, comparatively speaking, but it also was initially conceived to be more than a dungeon hack.

Basically, D&D taps into the same sources as all fantasy fiction, so there are going to be shared traits in evidence. None are likely to be clones of D&D, though some will be more closely related than others. Many fantasy worlds are likely to be similar as much because they tap into the same resources as because they tap directly into the game.

Basically, to do this you need to establish criteria and simultaneously accept that your criteria is likely going to be quite arbitrary.

Dark Elves may be older than D&D, but white haired black faced LotR style Elves who live underground in a matriarchal spider worshipping society sure aren't.

kamikasei
2008-06-05, 08:19 AM
There is very little in D&D that is actually original, it is from those items you can draw comparisons.

Any individual thing in D&D might be unorignal, but a world which combines a whole bunch of them in the same sort of way while leaving out others from the same original sources can fairly be identified as imitating D&D rather than just being inspired by the same myths. (For that matter, given the mix of sources D&D draws on, it's fairly implausible that a non-derivative work would happen to be working from the same weird mishmash.)

Tsotha-lanti
2008-06-05, 08:28 AM
D&D is absolutely based on R. E. Howard's Hyborian Age, yes; 'course that's D&D being a Conan clone, not the other way around. The elves, hobbits, dwarves, orcs, and party structure look like Tolkien, but all the actual concepts and style is from Conan. Similar resemblance to Leiber's Lankhmar novels and Moorcock's Elric novels is obvious.

Warhammer definitely is a D&D-based setting. You've got all the same cliches and races, pretty much straight from D&D (although with the amount of names they lifted right out of LotR, it's hard to be sure; they might just be even more blatant about ripping off Tolkien!).

The Dark Eye is a D&D clone, but maybe also a bit of a subversion.

The Exile / Avernum game series are very D&D inspired, to the point of containing blue-skinned ogre mages and such. The Ultima games are another obvious example, with beholders (gazers) and ropers (reapers). Computer RPGs in general tend to be about 50% D&D, down to the monsters. Dungeon Master, anyone? Even the name...

I think the fighter-cleric-wizard-thief structure (Dungeon Master again) is one of the biggest signs of a D&D clone. There's plenty of unique fantasy where you don't see that; in Glorantha (RuneQuest/HeroQuest), everyone fights, uses magic, and knows many skills. Even MERP / Rolemaster tastes more like D&D than like Middle-Earth, with clerics, raise dead spells, and magic items aplenty (especially in ICE's adventures).

bosssmiley
2008-06-05, 08:33 AM
Almost any and all modern fantasy RPG worlds (for a given value of D&D).

Bearing in mind how many different genres D&D has touched on in its time: everything from Leiber's low fantasy to Mystara's bizarro fantasy, from the quasi-historical 'expansion' societies of the Forgotten Realms to Ravenloft's gothic horror, from Dark Sun's survivalism to Greyhawk's gritty world of war and cosmic horrors, from Spelljammer's elves in SPAAAACE! to Eberron's contemporary pulp FF-isms.

It can reasonably be said that all modern fantasy - everything from Warhammer and Titan to Warcraft, Secret of Mana and FF, from Eddings to Gemmell and Martin - owes a huge debt to the game that took fantasy out of the genre ghetto and made it mainstream. :smallcool:

Mr. Friendly
2008-06-05, 08:50 AM
Any individual thing in D&D might be unorignal, but a world which combines a whole bunch of them in the same sort of way while leaving out others from the same original sources can fairly be identified as imitating D&D rather than just being inspired by the same myths. (For that matter, given the mix of sources D&D draws on, it's fairly implausible that a non-derivative work would happen to be working from the same weird mishmash.)

Erm, no. That mishmash from which D&D is a derivative work is almost entirely Tolkien, Howard and actual Earth mythos. Tolkien and Howard both drew upon Earth mythos, so I kind it a bit incredulous to say that the mishmash of those things is somehow a unique attribute of D&D. Tolkien and Howard and several others were, for a very long time, pretty much it for serious fantasy.

There is really no clear way to establish one thing or another as derivative of D&D since D&D is itself so derivative.

However D&D does have its unique elements, I was simply advocating that you look first at truly unique D&D things, then expand that field as you go. Otherwise you end up with same sort logic that created "ZOMG 4e = WoW!!111"

If you go with broad, sweeping definitions, then *everything* ends up as being "derivative of D&D".

That's all I am saying.

hamishspence
2008-06-05, 09:02 AM
its not so much the things themselves, but the combination of all of them together. Greek fantasy doesn't often have dragons by colour, for example. Many countries have their own mythologies, The blend of monsters favoured by D&D draws from all.

What were the d20 Fighting Fantasy products? and does 4th ed actually fit Fighting Fantasy slightly better than 3rd (less spectacular magic for PCs, for example)?

ashmanonar
2008-06-05, 09:34 AM
its not so much the things themselves, but the combination of all of them together. Greek fantasy doesn't often have dragons by colour, for example.

Why, that's because Dragons in DnD are color-coded for your convenience! (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0207.html)

Mr. Friendly
2008-06-05, 09:39 AM
And I will give you that color coded dragons are a unique D&D item. So are Beholders, Mind Flayers, Umber Hulks....

Jack Mann
2008-06-05, 09:51 AM
Even the former is kind of a ripoff of Cthulhu. At any rate, start with those first for your comparisons.

Nah. Mind flayers are much more a rip-off of Thrintun than Cthulhu. Indeed, the gith are explicitly based around the Tnuctipun.


D&D is absolutely based on R. E. Howard's Hyborian Age, yes; 'course that's D&D being a Conan clone, not the other way around. The elves, hobbits, dwarves, orcs, and party structure look like Tolkien, but all the actual concepts and style is from Conan. Similar resemblance to Leiber's Lankhmar novels and Moorcock's Elric novels is obvious.

I'd say Lankmar and Vance's dying Earth novels are the strongest influences, honestly. Granted, those were strongly influenced by the Conan novels themselves.

sonofzeal
2008-06-05, 09:56 AM
This is going to be an exercise in futility.

"Dark Eleves" as dark/black skinned elves that live underground are *slightly* older than D&D. By at least a thousand years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Elves).
Actually, there's a very credible argument that states that the "Dark Elf" in Norse mythology was actually another name for Dwarves - short, greedy humanoids with the most advanced metalworking skills in that cosmology. So if you're willing to assume that Drow and Dwarves are the same thing......

Matthew
2008-06-05, 10:01 AM
I'd say Lankmar and Vance's dying Earth novels are the strongest influences, honestly. Granted, those were strongly influenced by the Conan novels themselves.

I think you mean Conan short stories. :smallwink: I am pretty certain that Howard's Conan stories had a very strong influence on D&D, just on different aspects than Vance and Leiber. Some of the stories feel very dungeoneery.

Jayngfet
2008-06-06, 01:18 AM
The original drowtales took everything from DnD, the new version makes new material up though.