Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?

[RazorChain]

I don't think the wargaming roots are a problem. Some roleplayers like combat and DnD is very combat focused, then we have the others that don't like that combat focus. The problem is that DnD is often the gateway for people to start roleplaying and therefore many new players think RPG's are about combat.


DnD has always encouraged 2 things, loot and combat.

You get XP for killing things. Through XP your character grows stronger.
You get loot for killing things. Through loot your character grows stronger.

If you look at the DnD parts of these forums there are always plenty of posts about character builds. Character build is a term I use in computer games where I like to min/max, when I'm roleplaying I use the term character concept. Those builds always focus on combat and classes are even rated for their combat viability.

The entire ruleset when I started was about combat, exploring and loot. I don't have my 2nd ed. PHB anymore but I vaguely recall non weapon proficiencies as a skillset....If you were lucky you would start with 4 of them. In the redbox which I started with, there was no mention of skills IIRC. It was only mentioned in Mystara supplements.

This colored my early games which were about killing and looting. It wasn't until I got in contact with other systems that weren't all about killing and looting that I started to get into the noncombat aspects of roleplaying.