Hypothetical Fun: What If A Different Genre Was The RPG Foundation?

[Celebrim]

Much as I'd love to have seen SF be the first inspiration, I can't; fantasy was more popular.

There has never been a single hard sci fi property that ever really found a place in popular culture. And I don't mean by that a particularly strict definition of hard science fiction, but merely something other than space wizards. If you look at all the popular science fiction to have impacted popular culture they all feature magic with the color of science and rely heavily on fantasy tropes. Star Wars is of course space wizards and knights explicitly in a fairy tale setting. Star Trek, despite some occasional forays into something that might be considered science fiction, features Greek gods, space elves with magical powers, space orcs, and any number of demiurges whose divine powers are explained away with a handwave of gnostic super science. Babylon 5 for all its nods to zero-g and science fiction themes features as it main story an alliance between humans and space elves on the eve of a war between angels and demons and subplots about clerics powered by faith and space wizards. Even 2001: A Space Odessey ultimately is more about its mythical super-advanced godlike beings who work unexplained magic than any sort of story which - as Heinlein put it - "would cease to exist if the science was removed". Most of what passes for "Science Fiction" in popular culture is reframing of ancient myth into a visual framework that is plausible to the modern audience and allows them to believe in fairies, demons, magic, and so forth just by changing the clothes that they wear.

But even if we limit the exploration to sub-genres of fantasy other than the "vaguely medieval inspired by the first birth of Northern European literature and/or it's leading modern voice/advocate/translator JRR Tolkien" I still don't believe that there is anything like the interest that we have for ahistorical anachronistic period pieces. Superhero games have been around since an early point but never caught on. Early experiments in Super Spy games and Western games mostly have shown that those genres were products of their time period and only fell off in popularity as time passed. The only genre that has ever been remotely as successful as fantasy medieval is fantasy horror, which brought us Call of Cthulhu, Vampire the Masquerade, and Deadlands. Two of those three are the only non-D&D inspired games that have ever contested with D&D for the #1 spot in tabletop RPGs, and CoC is I think the clear #2 tabletop RPG after D&D.

I firmly am opposed to the idea that we the primary tropes of D&D play like hit points, classes, levels, and vaguely medieval fantasy are not accidental artifacts of the fact that D&D got their first and set expectation about what an RPG would be like, but rather that they were highly effective low hanging fruits that became baked into D&D because no alternatives to them satisfied as many players. History is filled of examples where the first thing to market was quickly superseded by the second thing to market. The Wright brothers may have invented controlled flight, but they didn't become dominate forces in the aircraft industry. Beta was superseded by VHS, and the 8-track died. D&D didn't hang around because it was first, but because it got so much right and that includes choosing the genre that the is easiest to game in and which the majority of people find the most satisfying - heroic fantasy.

 

[Reynard]

There has never been a single hard sci fi property that ever really found a place in popular culture. And I don't mean by that a particularly strict definition of hard science fiction, but merely something other than space wizards. If you look at all the popular science fiction to have impacted popular culture they all feature magic with the color of science and rely heavily on fantasy tropes. Star Wars is of course space wizards and knights explicitly in a fairy tale setting. Star Trek, despite some occasional forays into something that might be considered science fiction, features Greek gods, space elves with magical powers, space orcs, and any number of demiurges whose divine powers are explained away with a handwave of gnostic super science. Babylon 5 for all its nods to zero-g and science fiction themes features as it main story an alliance between humans and space elves on the eve of a war between angels and demons and subplots about clerics powered by faith and space wizards. Even 2001: A Space Odessey ultimately is more about its mythical super-advanced godlike beings who work unexplained magic than any sort of story which - as Heinlein put it - "would cease to exist if the science was removed". Most of what passes for "Science Fiction" in popular culture is reframing of ancient myth into a visual framework that is plausible to the modern audience and allows them to believe in fairies, demons, magic, and so forth just by changing the clothes that they wear.

But even if we limit the exploration to sub-genres of fantasy other than the "vaguely medieval inspired by the first birth of Northern European literature and/or it's leading modern voice/advocate/translator JRR Tolkien" I still don't believe that there is anything like the interest that we have for ahistorical anachronistic period pieces. Superhero games have been around since an early point but never caught on. Early experiments in Super Spy games and Western games mostly have shown that those genres were products of their time period and only fell off in popularity as time passed. The only genre that has ever been remotely as successful as fantasy medieval is fantasy horror, which brought us Call of Cthulhu, Vampire the Masquerade, and Deadlands. Two of those three are the only non-D&D inspired games that have ever contested with D&D for the #1 spot in tabletop RPGs, and CoC is I think the clear #2 tabletop RPG after D&D.

I firmly am opposed to the idea that we the primary tropes of D&D play like hit points, classes, levels, and vaguely medieval fantasy are not accidental artifacts of the fact that D&D got their first and set expectation about what an RPG would be like, but rather that they were highly effective low hanging fruits that became baked into D&D because no alternatives to them satisfied as many players. History is filled of examples where the first thing to market was quickly superseded by the second thing to market. The Wright brothers may have invented controlled flight, but they didn't become dominate forces in the aircraft industry. Beta was superseded by VHS, and the 8-track died. D&D didn't hang around because it was first, but because it got so much right and that includes choosing the genre that the is easiest to game in and which the majority of people find the most satisfying - heroic fantasy.

D&Dnis actually the VHS version, when you consider all the experimentation going on at the time. Gygax and Arneson liberally stole from hobbyists all over the wargame map (literal and figurative) to fill out the transition from wargame to RPG.

 

[Celebrim]

D&Dnis actually the VHS version, when you consider all the experimentation going on at the time. Gygax and Arneson liberally stole from hobbyists all over the wargame map (literal and figurative) to fill out the transition from wargame to RPG.

I have no need to quibble with this description, since even if it is true then all it does is further the idea that D&D succeeded because it was the refined invention that made most of the right choices and that present tropes like the ubiquitousness of the much derided concepts of classes or hit points - or in this case the fantasy setting - are something we accept because they work and not because they are merely what we are used to.

 

[aramis erak]

@Celebrim The board admins haven't enabled the rolleyes response emoji.

I think your apparent key point - most SF isn't really SF - is a worthless deconstruction in this context - it doesn't matter at all, because what the people think of as SF is still largely grounded in the greats of 50's and 60's SciFi/SpaceOpera... while the SFWA's one-time standard of no more than 3 breaks from known reality has narrowed to the point of almost nothing fitting it as various things became tested; it may open a bit soon due to AI... but it's also telling that Asimov, Heinlein, and Niven, arguably the most important and influential authors of that wave, paid only lip-service to it in general. Niven's The Integral Trees being a self-stated exception.

I do think medivalish fantasy is ENTIRELY accidental; Greek-themed and Grego-arabic fiction far outstripped the box-office of vagely medieval, and even Tolkien's premedieval, in theaters until the 21st C. Conan, for example, isn't medieval, it's essentially iron age. John Carter is technofantasy... as is Flash Gordon. And so are a couple of less well known planetary romances, including the much beloved by its fans Trigan Empire. The only notable European medieval themed movies I can think of pre-1975 are Camelot (1967) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949). Tolkien's not even that early on film...

As for the mechanics...
HP? Many people came in with damage steps and stayed happy with that... coming in via: WEG Star Wars; White WolfWoD VTM, WWTA, MTA, WTO... The thing is, the people coming in from these other games just happen to also coincide with the downward slide of TSR, rendering their impact able to be semi-credibly aimed at TSR...

Most of the players I've gamed with don't prefer D&D style climbing HP.

Classes I agree - they're key to easy adoption...
Let's see, the most successful games of the 70's and 80's:

	Classes	Levels	Damage Model	Skill Model	Level Effects
D&D	Yes	Yes	HP, climbing by level	OE: None early AD&D: Atts/background AD&D-3.x: leveled 4e-5e: boolean	HP and caster spells, later weapon proficiency and class abilities, 3.x incremental skills
Tunnels and Trolls	Yes¹	Yes	HP=Con	≤5.0: None ≥5.5: leveled	≤5.5 Attribute increase by level ≥7: more skills,
Traveller	No²	No	damage to atts	leveled, hard to raise	n/a
RuneQuest	No²	no	HP by atts	Leveled, percentile	n/a
Drakar och Demoner	Yes⁷	No	HP by att.	leveled percentile	n/a
The Fantasy Trip	Yes³	No	HP = ST⁴	Boolean, some chained.	n/a
Palladium	Yes	Yes	HP, base = PE, climbing by level	Percentile non-combat, d20 mods and SAs for combat.	All skills increase by skill specific increment⁵, 1d6 HP
Rolemaster	Yes	Yes	HP, climb bought as skill	leveled.	Points to increase skills; HP and MP are raised as skills.
Champions/Hero System	No	No	Dual Att based HP tracks Body and Stun	Leveled.	n/a
WFRP 1e	Yes	sort of ⁶	HP = Att	boolean	n/a
FASA-Trek	MOS	No	HP figured from atts	leveled	n/a
Twilight 2000 1e	MOS	No.	Attribtue derived, by location	leveled	n/a
Car Wars⁸	No	No	fixed HP (3)+ some for certain skills	leveled	n/a
GURPS	No	No	HP by att	Leveled	n/a
WEG Star Wars d6	No²	No.	Damage Steps	leveled	n/a
Cyberpunk 2013	Kind of⁸	No	Damage Steps	Leveled	n/a

¹: only 4, and they only regulate magic and weapons. They are Warrior, Wizard, Rogue Wizard, and Warrior-Wizard. Non-casters are warriors.... reguardless of other abilities.
²: these games have class-like character gen, but don't have class effects outside char gen.
³: Two: Hero, Wizard. If you're not a wizard, you're a hero.
⁴: I don't recall if it's damage to Att or HP= Att, but we always played it as HP=Att in combat, then refigured "when the adrenaline wears out"
⁵:Early editions table based; later make skills x+y, where X is level 1 and y is per level increase, but keep tables for combat skills with special abilities and modifiers at specific levels.
⁶: Number of careers completed is used in a level-like manner for adventure suitability and campaign longevity bragging; for spell-casters, the sequential 5 to 6 career path is leveled, but primarily affects casting.
⁷: 1st ed has several classes, setting initial skills and maxima for categories
⁸: Each class has a specific special ability as a skill; this augments related skills and provides a bit of extra effect; other than access to those, the game is classless.

All of those are much beloved, by their fans, Only WEG's Star Wars and FASAs Star Trek aren't available legally (but are pirated almost as much as D&D, Pathfinder, and Palladium. All of them have descendants in current availability except FASA-Trek... WEG SW had to drop the label at end of license, but d6 Space is available in PDF, and is what happened with WEG SW 3e when the license was pulled while it was in Dev.
GURPS, TFT, Rolemaster: all three have current editions that are very close to their first edition.
Traveller, T&T, Palladium, RuneQuest, and Champions/Hero System all have current eidtions with significant changes, but largely considered interoperable with their first edition (I disagree strongly on Traveller, but the fans of MGT insist it's compatible).
Twilight 2000, Star Wars, Star Trek: all have new games with the same setting.
Car Wars: some used it as an RPG, and SJ intended it to support RPG-mode play... the current edition is pure boardgame mechanically unrelated, but the final edition of classic is available in PDF, and is just as RPG adjacent as the first deluxe box - only half the skill list is combat related.

The thing is, Most D&D players only ever play D&D, and many drop out of RPGing entirely, often at an edition change or college graduation.
Most Traveller players seemingly didn't.

I'm arguing that HP without penalties until death are dominant because Gygax and Arneson happened to pick that mode, instead of the more-common-in-wargames damage steps (often 2 step: temporarily disabled and off the table, sometimes with campaign rules determining if off the table recovers or dies), not because they're inherently better/easier than damage steps. Note that when I use damage steps, it means damage at a given level doesn't fill in all the lesser levels, but duplication does do a higher level.

Once we get into the 1990's, the move away from no-penalty HP pool has been made by a number of successful (meaning still selling for profit) game lines.
Damage Steps: Storyteller (WoD, etc), several WEG d6 system games, FATE, End of the World
HP with penalties: Prime Directive, a couple WEG d6 system games, LUG Trek, Decipher-Trek, GURPS,
Damage to Attributes: Classic Traveller, MegaTraveller, Traveller T4, Mongoose Traveller
HP with critical threshold: later Palladium (it's a standard option), WFRP1, WFRP 2, WFRP4

D&D 3.X and 5.X have threshold options, as does Palladium. In later Palladium, that threshold is damage to HP, period. (pSDC, however, is also present in those.)

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Reasonable points, but (for purposes of this thread) I reject the assumption that roleplaying games had to arise from any form of existing gaming community. That happened in the real world, sure, but it's hardly the only possibility. There was plenty of fertile ground in thespian improv already, and creative writing communities doing shared world settings were another possibility. That "Marvel Comics invents roleplaying" scenario I posted earlier wasn't wholly a joke. While we all know Gygax didn't invent the concept of roleplaying (nor did any other single creator), a single bright spark ("Garfield Richards") in the right creative community ("the Marvel Bullpen") could easily have triggered a cascade of collaborative ideas that resulted in something equivalent to a rules-light RPG. Without wargamer roots early RP might have been much more accessible to non-gamers from word one, and the early competition might have been reactions to the starting point being too simple and limited.

Would anything like that have been as immediately popular or spread as fast? Maybe, maybe not. If it really was Marvel and DC involved that's some serious recognition factors even in the mid-70s when comics were more explicitly seen as kid stuff. If the conception point was some weird experiment in a shared-world intereactive setting by a fantasy or scifi publisher, it might take longer to get noticed and might even flop after spawning some others to attempt refinements of the idea. Most likely as the concept spread historical/alt-history gamers would have latched on fast and written their own systems that were more to their tastes (and likely much more complex, in keeping with the wargames of the 70s), and the RP concept as a whole would diversify across genres and fan bases much as it did IRL.

Regardless of what soil the roots of roleplaying start from, there's no plausible timeline where a spread across genres and beyond a single company's exclusive control is inevitable. I think that's one thing we can all agree on regardless of other details change, yes?