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General Tabletop Discussion
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Hypothetical Fun: What If A Different Genre Was The RPG Foundation?
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<blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9295719" data-attributes="member: 7044704"><p>That accurately describes Space Patrol (later Star Patrol) from Gamescience, which was out IRL in 1977 alongside Traveller and the nearly-forgotten Space Quest. And Flying Buffalo beat them all to the market with Starfarers in 1976. FGU dropped Starships & Spacemen (effectively Trek with the serial numbers filed off) in '78 and Space Opera in '80, with the latter really being the closest competitor to Space/Star Patrol as kitchen sink scifi TTRPGs went in that era.</p><p></p><p>So that type of games were getting made in our own timeline, but never caught on to the degree D&D did. In a world where one of them (or something like them) was THE first TTRPG and fantasy games came along later it's possible scifi could have been dominant as a genre for a while, but given how rapidly RPGs in general diversified from fantasy IRL I'd expect the same thing to happen at similar speeds in a hypothetical "scifi first" timeline. The equivalent of OD&D coming out in 1976 inspired by (say) and early-to-market Space Patrol's success would be pretty plausible - and might result in D&D being remembered as that first largely-forgotten attempt at fantasy the way Starfarers is the first attempt at scifi in our world.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wofano Wotanto, post: 9295719, member: 7044704"] That accurately describes Space Patrol (later Star Patrol) from Gamescience, which was out IRL in 1977 alongside Traveller and the nearly-forgotten Space Quest. And Flying Buffalo beat them all to the market with Starfarers in 1976. FGU dropped Starships & Spacemen (effectively Trek with the serial numbers filed off) in '78 and Space Opera in '80, with the latter really being the closest competitor to Space/Star Patrol as kitchen sink scifi TTRPGs went in that era. So that type of games were getting made in our own timeline, but never caught on to the degree D&D did. In a world where one of them (or something like them) was THE first TTRPG and fantasy games came along later it's possible scifi could have been dominant as a genre for a while, but given how rapidly RPGs in general diversified from fantasy IRL I'd expect the same thing to happen at similar speeds in a hypothetical "scifi first" timeline. The equivalent of OD&D coming out in 1976 inspired by (say) and early-to-market Space Patrol's success would be pretty plausible - and might result in D&D being remembered as that first largely-forgotten attempt at fantasy the way Starfarers is the first attempt at scifi in our world. [/QUOTE]
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