General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
Also, it would take about thirty seconds for some geek to figure out you were from the future, since your full-color book would look unlike anything in physical existence at the time.
Plus, y'know, the copyright date says 2008.
Anyway, let's get to the heart of the matter, and assume the books are "translated" into 1970 production values - something on the order of the old red book/blue book sets - and have nothing that identifies them as being from the future.
What I think would happen: People would pick up the books, play them, have fun with them. I do think it would catch on initially. However, the lack of support (no supplements, no adventures) would be an initial hindrance. Much will depend on the legal details of how you set up your "distributor." Who owns the copyright? Is it legal for people to make their own copies and publish them?
Let's assume you set it up as public domain. At that point, everyone will want to know who the hell you are, but you've already vanished in your time machine, so your identity will remain a great unsolved mystery.
A bunch of people will grab the game and start printing it once the initial supply runs out. The initial competition will be on the strength of the supplements and adventures they print to go with the core rules. Eventually one company will emerge as the market leader and that company will take ownership of the core game, publishing new editions; probably with some drastic rewrites in order to have something copyrightable.
As to how the mechanics themselves would evolve... the game would move in a simulationist direction; healing surges would get the axe for certain, encounter and daily powers would be reworked in a way that makes more intuitive sense, et cetera. 1970s-era wargamers were nothing if not simulationist.
In the end I don't think it would look terribly different. The theory of RPG design would still have to be discovered and developed; though 4E might provide some key insights earlier than they would otherwise have come.
__________________ Have you ever known a person who always behaved exactly the way you expected? Real people don't stay in character.
Also, it would take about thirty seconds for some geek to figure out you were from the future, since your full-color book would look unlike anything in physical existence at the time.
Yes, because faced with something you do not understand or haven't seen before, your first reaction is always: "This must be from the future!!!??!!"
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I'm going to go out on a limb and assume the OP meant "1974" and "a manuscript of" not boxes and boxes of 4E books and the year 1970.
Because if the latter is the case I think you'd have people writing you off like a nutcase: nobody would be "in to" RPGs and the 2008 copyright (plus the mostly incorrect anyway history of D&D in the books would just come off as weird)...
anyway.
Firstly, if it were 1974 and it was a manuscript, there's two things you could do with it:
One: give it go Gary, Dave et al at TSR. I'm speculating here but "combat squares" and "push backs" and things like that probably wouldn't fly. The terminology wouldn't. Some (a lot?) of the mechanics might. Again, I'm just speculating.
Two: completely rename everything, strip out parts that make it like D&D and market it as a D&D competitor. It'd probably wind up like TRAVELLER (in a good way!) in that it would have sticking power and be that "other" fantasy RPG. You wouldn't have to do much pruning; rename the stats and a couple of mechanics and you're all set, really.
Parenthetically, photostat copies of the manuscript rules were made, and when the commercial game was published, fans not willing or financially unable to expend the princely sum of $10 for the product did likewise, copying the material on school (mainly college/university) machines. We were well aware of this, and many gamers who had spent their hard-earned money to buy the game were more irate than we were. In all, though, the 'pirate' material was more helpful that not. Many new fans were made by DMs who were using such copies to run their games. - Gary Gygax
An interesting question. Because really, would 4E be the same without DDI? or even the Internet?
I suspect there's loads of folks who play 4e without the DDI. While the DDI is popular, I don't think we have the suggestion that it's popular to the point of hundreds of thousands or millions of subscribers, do we?
And, again, lots of people probably play 4e without the internet - EN World has 80,000+ registered users, many of them are likely inactive, and not all of the active ones are 4e players. A couple other sites may have numbers of the same order of magnitude. But the suggestion is that there are something like one to three million people playing the game - so the internet-site-users are likely in the minority.
Unrelatedly...
Many people have noted 4e has strong wargaming aspects - for some this is a positive feature, to some it is an asset. In terms of marketing it to the 1970s wargaming crowd, though, the map-based skirmish combat aspects are probably an asset.
Last edited by Umbran; 19th October 2009 at 07:29 PM..
Suppose the AD&D1 PHB/DMG/MM had been the first introduction of D&D and RPGs. Would D&D and RPGs have become as popular as fast as they did through starting with the OD&D booklets and BD&D introduction? I think D&D/RPGs would have been seen as too complicated, complex, and vague (with the AD&D1 books) to really catch on as easily as the OD&D booklets did.
Most people getting into D&D in the 80s came through other people teaching them how to play moreso than by picking up the AD&D1 books and reading to learn. And those early teachers came up through OD&D and BD&D before "stepping up" to AD&D1.
I think even the AD&D1 rule books were just too much (info, concept, price, etc.) to start the hobby and industry. The genre *needed* to start with something very small and easy to grasp -- simple dungeon crawls with simple characters.
So I think trying to introduce the world to D&D and RPGs with the current edition would ultimately fail, as it is far too complicated and complex for a world with no experience with such a concept.
For instance, take an F-22 back to 1900. Such a machine could not start the Age of Air like the Wright Flyer did.
I suspect there's loads of folks who play 4e without the DDI.
I've played in what amounts to an LFR pick-up game periodically and not everyone there has DDI - or even a PHB for that matter. I only recently got DDI myself and only because I needed to send a DM my "character file" (for a non-LFR game).
The service just doesn't appeal to me that much. I still like writing out my stuff by hand on a character sheet (call me CrAzY!) and thumbing through real books (cRaZy!). That's the way I did it growing up, so that process is part of what playing D&D means to me. Dying breed, I suppose.
I'm currently constructing a Tipler Cylinder out of unsold 3.5 books; when its complete (should have enough mass by next Wednesday), I'll head back and see what happens.
Note: I'm just going to tell Gary to fire Brian & Kevin.
Parenthetically, photostat copies of the manuscript rules were made, and when the commercial game was published, fans not willing or financially unable to expend the princely sum of $10 for the product did likewise, copying the material on school (mainly college/university) machines. We were well aware of this, and many gamers who had spent their hard-earned money to buy the game were more irate than we were. In all, though, the 'pirate' material was more helpful that not. Many new fans were made by DMs who were using such copies to run their games. - Gary Gygax
One of the problems I note in the OP & many answers is the implied assumption that 4e is an objectivley better ruleset than 0e or 1e. I, for one, do not share in that assumption.
RC
__________________ [A]ny good dungeon will have undiscovered treasures in areas that have been explored by the players, simply because it is impossible to expect that they will find every one of them.
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One of the problems I note in the OP & many answers is the implied assumption that 4e is an objectivley better ruleset than 0e or 1e. I, for one, do not share in that assumption.
RC
I haven't looked at 4e, but I'm of the opinion that 2e and up were better organized and easier to read to learn how to play.
When I started, we had a mix of the wrong books (ordered 2e, got the 2E DMG and the 1E PH, had to send it back for the 2E PH). The difference in writing was night and day. Character creation was more straightforward, as was gameplay in 2e. Ultimately, I don't think there was anything in 2e that truly changed D&D from 1e, it was just better organized and written for a newcomer. Heck, we used the 1E MMs in our 2E games until we switched to 3E. Nor is this saying there weren't some good sections in the 1E books. 1E was just hard to get started with, which is why most folks learned from other folks.
You could take the 2E rules back (edit and print them out from the RTF files on the Core Rules CDs that TSR put out), and get the same effect.
I think the key effect, of bringing any game back, is that you'd jump start the RPG industry (based on when D&D actually started), and perhaps advance the state of the art a bit sooner. It's not a technology problem of bringing a cell phone to 1970 (they couldn't build or decipher most of an iphone yet). It's a matter of reading the text and getting the gist of the game, and then playing it or making variants.
You could potentially skip the chainmail phase of war-game turned into single-hero campaign, and jump right to playing hereoes from fantasy, because all the material is invented at once (assuming you sent the PH, DMG and MM).
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
I'd like to give the 1970s the benefit of the doubt and say that even bell-bottomed lounge dwellers would think Dragonborn were lame.
Of the two dozen players I have played with in my group(s) since 1997, six of them wanted to either be part-dragon, have dragon abilities, or be a large scalely Lizard-esque race. There has always been a demand for a race like the Dragonborn since I have played D&D. So in my opinion, by making the Dragonborn the baseline for players, the dislike you have now for Dragonborn would be as ludicrious as saying that half-orcs are lame now if you sent 4E back to the 70s
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99% of edition conflict boils down to "For me, there are a lot of things that [Edition] can not do in the way I want them done nearly as well as other systems can."
Of the two dozen players I have played with in my group(s) since 1997, six of them wanted to either be part-dragon, have dragon abilities, or be a large scalely Lizard-esque race. There has always been a demand for a race like the Dragonborn since I have played D&D. So in my opinion, by making the Dragonborn the baseline for players, the dislike you have now for Dragonborn would be as ludicrious as saying that half-orcs are lame now if you sent 4E back to the 70s
Yup and you want to find lizard headed people in myth and legend check out egyptian myth and people descended from dragons check out any number of cultures in the orient... but if you want half orcs.. . ummm well gee orcs are sort of... a generic monster name that was glommed on to by one literary source and he never intimated they could reproduce even on their own necessarily... they were likely created beings.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
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