A warhammer swings at a monster and misses. Instead of letting the miss just sit there, the dungeon master runs with it: the hammer comes down on the stone floor, shards go flying, the creature is left blinded and reeling. Everyone loves it.
'This,' the player said afterwards, 'is why D&D is so great.'
Is it though? There's no rule that turns a missed attack into a blinding spray of rock. It actually goes against the rules as written. What happened instead is that the dungeon master looked at a failed roll and decided the story was more interesting than the die. The result? A great moment that the player enjoyed deeply. And credit handed to D&D for something that belongs to roleplaying itself.
'You're exaggerating!' I imagine some of you exclaiming, 'They meant roleplaying. It's just that D&D is used as the name for the hobby. Like Bandaids and Pampers.'
But does that actually make it better? This player and countless like them think that D&D is roleplaying because it's the only system they've ever known. In this case that has worked out fine. The player is having fun. But that's hardly true for everybody. There are plenty of people who tried out D&D and felt there was so much combat, so many rule lookups, so many fiddly mechanics, that they decided 'roleplaying isn't for me'. They're lost to the hobby forever even though there are plenty of systems that tackle each of those issues differently.
Think of it like this. Call any diaper a Pampers and nothing is lost: whatever brand you grab does the same job the same way.
Roleplaying systems aren't like that. They don't share a goal, never mind a road to it: one is built for tactical combat, another for grief, another for a single conversation in a single room. Letting 'D&D' stand for all of it isn't harmless shorthand. It hides a huge, varied field behind a single shape.
D&D is not roleplaying. It is D&D.
Now, a quick disclaimer. I'm not saying D&D is a bad system. I personally don't like it. But that's because I want something different from my games than D&D provides. For those seeking a combat-heavy dungeon crawl (fights scaled to the party, play that runs close to a board game), it's a great match.
Nor am I saying that players should not start in D&D. I don't think it's as beginner-friendly as some people maintain, but that hardly matters. Often, it's what you're going to find when you're new. D&D dominates the market.
What I'm trying to say is: people should be made aware there are other choices that don't make the same assumptions D&D is making, so that someone who doesn't like those assumptions doesn't conclude they don't like the hobby.
Because roleplaying is not monolithic and there are many systems that cater to many tastes. When a player doesn't enjoy the game they sat down at, it may simply be that they don't share that group's focus. I've joined plenty of groups, played one session, and never went back. If I hadn't known there were other ways to play, I'd have walked away from a hobby that's now been with me for thirty years.
Each assumption that D&D makes another system breaks.
Most of us already know systems without classes or levels. But did you know there are games with no dice at all? The Quiet Year uses a deck of cards. Dread uses a tower of wooden blocks where one is pulled out at a time. There are games you finish in a single evening (Fiasco), and games meant to be played once and never again (Ten Candles). Games where nobody is in charge and the story belongs to everyone at once (Microscope). Games where you never fight a single monster, where the whole point is a love affair (Star Crossed), or playing a mage's guild over many years (Ars Magica).
Some of these will sound wonderful. Others insufferable. That's the point. They're that different from one another. 'Roleplaying' isn't one game with a house style. It's a medium as wide as fiction itself, and most people never see past the first room.
What's more, the other rooms aren't even locked! Every game named above is real and playable this week: most are a few dozen pages and cost less than a cinema ticket. Some are free! No need for three pricey rulebooks or for each player to be deeply familiar with at least one of them.
Thinking that D&D is roleplaying is like thinking you know board games because you've played Monopoly, and missing everything the field has done in the decades since. It's like deciding you don't like traveling because once you went on one holiday and you ate bad fish.
By pretending that roleplaying and D&D are interchangeable, we're keeping countless people from the joy we so often find when we sit around that table. Again, not because D&D is bad, but because sushi isn't for everyone.
And that, my friends, is a damned shame. So let's not do that, shall we?