There are a wide range of gaming styles and gamers out there. One particular way I tend to categorise games is how emotional or how logical is the approach. This ties in to the old idea (maybe with scientific validity) of the right side of the brain being involved in emotion, intuition and social interaction, and the left side of the brain being used for logic, analyis and spatial awareness.
The old school were definitely veering towards the left side. They came from wargamers where there was no social interaction on the battlefield, only tactics, troop statistics and resource managment. This carried on into the dungeon where a lot of the action was focused on resource management - rations, torches, arrows, memorised spells, hit points, time itself, treasure (the whole point of the exercise and the main way one gained XP and therefore levels) were all expected to be tracked carefully.
You didn't get too attached to your character, at least not to start with, as their life expectancy was short. Character quirks and background were often ignored. You only bothered with that sort of stuff after a few levels of play, and it was often emergent, ideas about one's character coming as a result of interaction in game.
Mapping was a major part of dungeon exploration which partially explains the slightly weird designs of some early dungeons such as B1: In Search of the Unknown. Without VTTs, dungeons were verbally described by the DM and the players would try to map their way - vital if the adventurers needed to exit the dungeon in a hurry.
But as D&D grew more popular the possibilities opened up. Although many would cite the Hickmans with both their Ravenloft and Dragonlance modules as a shift in AD&D in the early 80s, it could be argued that Gary Gygax also took a more right-brained approach in D1-3 (I watched a rather good video about this on Daddy Rolled a 1 on Youtube). In those modules the adventurers' interactions with both the Kuo-Toa and the various drow houses in D2 & D3 are not expected to be hack and slash.
Of course, I1 Ravenloft with its plot-based structure and its charismatic and interactive villain who was more than just combat stats was a landmark in adventure design and approaching play. These days purely map-based dungeon-crawls and hex-crawls are relatively rare: there is nearly always some plot or storyline the PCs are expected to follow. I think one big sign of the changes is how XP is given out. It used to be it was almost all about the treasure, with monster xp a small side dish. Now XP awards are for completing goals which may have nothing to do with monsters or treasure, or even better, XP is ignored in favour of levelling up when the DM (or adventure author) feels like it. One less resource to keep track of!
These days I feel a lot of folks who would have got into the left-side logical analytical side of RPGs find their fix in computer games where a lot of the maths is automated. The Diablo series really has translated the hack and slash approach into a computer game, while World of Warcraft is a little more interactive - having a lot of other players in the same gaming environment encourages at least conversations and connections between players, particularly within guilds. Min-maxing becomes a lot more clear when dealing with computer rules rather than printed rules.
I wouldn't say current D&D has completely switched over to the right side of the brain and become a Ren-fair soap opera - the 5E and 5.5E games I've been running still have plenty of combat, navigation and problem solving. But also since the 2000s WotC has realised that they need to offer a table-top experience that computer games currently struggle to convey - that means the human element, the non-game-mechanical interactions. I do wonder whether AI will be able to run NPCs as effectively as a human DM - just look at the constant development of chatbots. And this is more likely to be in an MMORPG environment than a virtual tabletop.
Where Am I in all of this?
I definitely lean toward the left hand of this scale, though not at the far end. Looking through my blog articles, a lot of them are monsters, spells and map-based (rather than plot-based) adventures. There are relatively few stories and the NPCs I introduce are generally not particularly deep in terms of personality and motivations. I am sometimes baffled by some of the D&D posts on Tumblr about anime-inspired OCs (Original Characters) who are often dressed more for a stroll along a Victorian promenade than into the Temple of Elemental Evil. And the idea that a player's character ought to follow a particular arc seems to clash with my ideas of emergent stories from game play. If you have already decided what is going to happen to your character, write a book rather than expecting the rest of a gaming group to go along with your preconceived story. I think it’s interesting (at least to myself) that the one time I tried writing a blog post from a character’s point of view, Tilphon’s Journal of the Shadowdeep, was intended to be a series. I have not posted the second one - not because I can’t write about the Shadowdeep, but because I find it difficult writing from a character’s point of view.
This fits in with my preferences outside of TTRPGs. I've always preferred documentaries to dramas on TV, and in film I am far more interested in action and science fiction than romance. I have interests in dinosaurs, computing, space exploration and military tactics and equipment. I am not interested in celebrity gossip. I have never watched an episode of Love Island. I'm not even particularly good at distinguishing good acting from bad acting. I suspect there might be a bit of neuro-divergence going on there.
However, I do not tell anybody they are doing it wrong. This is purely a matter of taste and personality, not correctness. Finding the fellow gamers and the right DM who are where you at in this matter is a factor in whether you are enjoying your D&D. I might not get what other folks are doing in D&D but I don't feel the need to tell them (except perhaps in this blog post...).
