The goal for the game system is created to facilitate great stories. It's art, and no other piece of fantasy lore matches it in depth, breadth and consistency to my knowledge.
The amount of artists and writers who created it makes it art in my eyes. There's no other utility for it other than story telling either. If that's not art, what is it? The snobs at the Pulitzer who haven't even awarded a win to sci Fi novel may think otherwise but to each their own. In terms of the topic at hand, fantasy lore, there's few that can rival d&d.
Let's be real too. Baldurs gate and torment weren't made because of the great d&d gameplay system... The creators wanted to utilize the lore.
Planescape is a good omni-setting for telling whatever type of story in whatever type of genre you want. Other systems benefit from being more focused. Glorantha is better if you want a Bronze Age sword and sandals setting, IMO, but if you want to do funky multiverse stuff it has basically nothing for you.
Anyway, I think the reason literary organizations don’t award settings is because they are generally interested in stores, and settings are just a component of that. I’m sure you could find some industry awards for setting development, and I bet Planescape stuff does well there. They are just not as interesting to outsiders.
Also I want to push back on your “the topic at hand.” I was talking about the stories themselves. You’ve changed the topic to settings. I’m not sure I want to come along on a tangent where we talk about setting in-and-of-themselves. The article was about why game writing is often bad. I think it is not settings, games often have great settings, but poor stories.
The Pulitzer never awarded a sci Fi so it tells you what they think. It's obvious why settings don't get awards it's because world building is sorta niche. Not popular enough to be considered "serious".
Agreed on your last part. Games have great setting and not as good stories.
But my point was d&d is great for what it is: settings for stories rather then the stories themselves. I think you disagree with this, and you think the setting is more subservient to the gameplay but I'll reference Warhammer then. Warhammer clearly has a focus on setting at many times over gameplay. And my argument is that d&d is largely similar.
The amount of artists and writers who created it makes it art in my eyes. There's no other utility for it other than story telling either. If that's not art, what is it? The snobs at the Pulitzer who haven't even awarded a win to sci Fi novel may think otherwise but to each their own. In terms of the topic at hand, fantasy lore, there's few that can rival d&d.
Let's be real too. Baldurs gate and torment weren't made because of the great d&d gameplay system... The creators wanted to utilize the lore.