Let's talk about which 4th edition element comes from where

[mkill]

I don't think I surprise anyone when I say that most things that were new in 4th edition have their roots in all kinds of sources, like older D&D editions, indie RPGs, european boardgames, and MMOs. This is mainly an attempt at RPG history. I'm not interested in your opinion whether a certain element is good or bad (I think we've had enough discussion about that in the last 2 years), I just want to create an overview where stuff comes from.

Game rules and concepts

- Shift: 5 ft. step in 3.0 edition
- Immediate Reactions and Interrupts: European-style boardgames and Magic: the Gathering
- Minor action: swift action in 3.5 edition
- Feats: 3.0
- Martial powers: Tome of Battle
- Combat roles: Explicit in World of Warcraft. Of course, defender = fighting man, controller = magic user, leader = cleric and striker = thief. Note that WoW is based on Diablo, which is based on older rogue-like games and MUDs, which are based on D&D and date back all the way to 1975.
- Minions: Feng Shui RPG (1996), but could be older

Races

- Dragonborn: Dragonlance setting (called Dragonmen then), published 1984
- Goliath: Non-psionic version of the Half-Giant, Dark Sun setting, 1991, edit: Races of Stone
- Tiefling: Introduced with the 1994 Planescape setting
- Shifter, Warforged, Changeling: Eberron setting, 2004
- Eladrin: The high-elf / wood-elf split goes all the way back to the Lord of the Rings, 1954

Classes

- Ranger: The Strategic Review - Volume 1, Number 2 (197?)
- Bard: The Strategic Review - Volume 2, Number 1 (197?)
- Monk: Blackmoor supplement, 1975
- Assassin: Blackmoor supplement, 1975
- Druid: Eldritch Wizardry supplement, 1976
- Barbarian: Dragon #63, July 1982
- Sorcerer: 3rd edition PHB, 2000
- Warlock: Complete Arcane, 2004
- Swordmage: inspired by the AD&D Bladesinger, the 3rd ed. Duskblade and the many different 3rd edition Gish builds
- Warlord: Based on the Marshall (Miniatures Handbook, 2003) and the Tome of Battle White Raven style

 

[Mengu]

Probably not where you're going with this but...

Combat roles: Cavalry, Archers, Infantry, General. Seems like much older concepts than WoW.

Minions: Red shirts are one recent incarnation. I'm sure there were many before, if you look at stories going back the the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Feats: Tangential, but Hercules had a few.

Barbarian: Cave men could be called that.

Changeling: Old European folk tales refer to these guys.

It's hard to put a license time stamp on a concept.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Probably not where you're going with this but...

Combat roles: Cavalry, Archers, Infantry, General. Seems like much older concepts than WoW.

Minions: Red shirts are one recent incarnation. I'm sure there were many before, if you look at stories going back the the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Feats: Tangential, but Hercules had a few.

Barbarian: Cave men could be called that.

Changeling: Old European folk tales refer to these guys.

It's hard to put a license time stamp on a concept.

You win the thread. Much of the stuff in D&D, as well as other games, looks to history, myths and legends for inspiration. The Fey and all that they represent dates way back to European myths and legends about things like Sprites, Brownies and Fairies. Classes like the Paladin have their origins in things like King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table (not only were they knights in shining armor, literally, but they end up on a religious quest for the holy grail...can't get much more like a Pally than that).

In fact, one could look at things like Star Wars and see where it got it's inspiration form some of these same sources. You can pick apart almost anything and relate it to something else that came before. In fact, according to one man, there's only 36 possible plot points in any story...which really puts a damper on creativity if you expect every movie or book to be 100% original.

The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[FireLance]

- Martial powers: Tome of Battle

Arguably, these were in turn inspired by fantastic martial arts from wuxia books, TV shows and movies and manga/anime, as well as the deeds of legendary (but still human) folk heroes.

- Dragonborn: Dragonlance setting (called Dragonmen then), published 1984
- Goliath: Non-psionic version of the Half-Giant, Dark Sun setting, 1991

The 3.5E supplements Races of Stone and Races of the Dragon had goliath and dragonborn races which were fairly similar in concept to the 4E versions.

 

[Max1mus]

When was the first Magic Missile?

 

[two]

You win the thread. Much of the stuff in D&D, as well as other games, looks to history, myths and legends for inspiration. The Fey and all that they represent dates way back to European myths and legends about things like Sprites, Brownies and Fairies. Classes like the Paladin have their origins in things like King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table (not only were they knights in shining armor, literally, but they end up on a religious quest for the holy grail...can't get much more like a Pally than that).

In fact, one could look at things like Star Wars and see where it got it's inspiration form some of these same sources. You can pick apart almost anything and relate it to something else that came before. In fact, according to one man, there's only 36 possible plot points in any story...which really puts a damper on creativity if you expect every movie or book to be 100% original.

The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

More like loses the thread.

I suppose this sort of thing was inevitable.

If you look at a sequence of objects on Earth from 1000000 miles away, they all look the same. A really small dot.

Obviously the Paladin has been around long before the 4.0 D&D class. That's not interesting nor informative. Has the Paladin been around as a CLASS before 4.0 D&D, which was really the question? The "concept": yes. The class? Only in previous editions. Which edition was the first to have a Paladin? I dunno. There is answer, however.

A good example of what the initial poster was asking: the 4.0 shift coming from 3.0 5' step coming from... boardgames? Was 3.0 the first RPG to have such a small adjustment? That's a real question, and has an answer. I think so, at least such a definitive important small movement like that.

Claiming Caveman = Barbarian ergo something or other... is misreading or misunderstanding the question, perhaps gratuitously.

The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations business appeals to those people, many of them I suspect none-too-creative themselves, who like the idea of inherent artistic limitations and are frankly scared of originality when they come across it in real life (it's different, it's... well, different). It's insanely easy to pick a work of literature which fails to have any of these 36 dramatic situations (Faulkner's "Spotted Horses" is one of a million which come to mind). But if it makes people feel better, than yeah, everything that can be imagined already has been, there are only 36 or 65 plots or 99 depending on the flavor of the month, and life is just a grand recycling. It's wrong, but whatever helps you sleep at night.

 

[Oldtimer]

When was the first Magic Missile?

Greyhawk supplement, 1975

 

[Mengu]

If you look at a sequence of objects on Earth from 1000000 miles away, they all look the same. A really small dot.

Yeah, I wasn't sure how far the OP wanted to go back, hence I started my post saying, probably not where you're going with this...

If you want to look at gaming roots, chess has pawns, are those minions? Of course in chess, everything dies in one hit, so maybe everything is a minion.

In backgammon, rolling doubles is good. Did the Ardent Champion steal its mechanic from backgammon?

No I guess we don't want to go there either. If the question is, which other rpg, or computer rpg shows the first roots of a mechanic, yes, some stuff can be listed, but the originality of that first appearance still remains questionable as the source of inspiration. Similar ideas can originate independently from each other.

The concepts of class, role, race, etc. exist in so many games, genres and literature that just because a name appears somewhere doesn't mean it is the origins. I guess it bothers me a bit when someone says Minions come from (or made a first appearance in) Feng Shui, when the idea of the D&D 4e minion may have come from dozens of other unrelated sources.

 

[mkill]

Mass Charm Person on everyone! Let's be nice to each other.

To clarify a bit, I'm interested in all possible sources. The first time it came up in an RPG, the first time it came up in any game, and the inspiration for it.

Chess is a very good example, because it (or its direct ancestor) is the first game that was played with miniatures on a battlemat.
The other important innovation is the die as a randomizer, which has its sources in old divination techniques (interestingly, modern playing cards are derived from the tarot, which is also used for divination. and the i ching, and the chinese zodiac, chinese script, astronomy, drug use ... trying to predict the future is a strong source of human innovation, but I disgress)

Back to topic, I don't want to imply that taking good ideas from other games is a bad thing. On the contrary, it's positive to be open minded and be inspired by how other games work. The game always benefits from new ideas.

 

[DracoSuave]

- Eladrin: The high-elf / wood-elf split goes all the way back to the Lord of the Rings, 1954

Well, everything derives from something.

BUT:

Eladrin don't come from that. They've evolved into that role, but originally their purpose was a totally different one:

Before Planescape, there were Angels/Aasimon as the Lawful Good 'race' of extraplanar superbeings, Demons/T'anari as the Chaotic Evil 'race', Devils/Ba'atezu as the Lawful Evil. Later, the fiend folio etc added Daemons/Yogoloths as the Neutral Evil 'race', Modrons as the Lawful Neutral 'race', and Slaadi as the Chaotic Neutral 'race', and Concordanach/Rilmani as the True Neutral.

Then Planescape came out, and the monster designers realized 1) That only Aasimon, T'anari, Ba'atezu, and Yugoloth were released for second edition, and 2) that there were gaping holes in monster design for Neutral Good and Chaotic Good. Given the campaign had The Rule Of Three, that meant that Three by Three = Nine decreed something had to be put in place. Guardinals were made the Neutral Good race (and later turned into something quite awesome, as the Book of Exalted Deeds shows) and the 'race' for Chaotic Good?

Eladrin.

The plane they came from, Arborea (which is what Olympus got named into), was an emotional place, very fae. Much like the Feywild, actually. But they definitively were not faerie creatures, they were all fierce warrior types.

Then, third edition happened. Eladrin were introduced in that as well, but this time to reflect the fae nature of Arborea, they were all given the elven traits. Literally, that's what it was called in the Monster Manuals describing them. They'd evolved from 'Philosophical manifestations of the Chaotic Good alignment' to 'Otherworldly faerie-lovin' megaelves.'

So... when 4th edition came out, they wanted some otherworldly faerie-lovin' megaelves, so that the elf race wasn't doing double duty.

And from there, came the Eladrin-as-we-know-it, and what also explains the monster Eladrin including the Ghaele, Fierre, and Shirre, which were -subraces- of Eladrin in 2nd edition, as opposed to ranks of Eladrin.


Also, on Combat Roles:

WoW's Tank/Healer/DPS/Puller/Support/CC designation comes from -Everquest-, when grouping had developed player sensibilities for what was needed in order to take down mobs-- You needed a Puller to grab the right amount of mobs, support to get your team above the mob's level of power, crowd control to keep the pull manageable, and Tank, Healer, and DPS were all the same familiar roles. WoW condenced that, giving Crowd Control and Pulling across all classes to a much lesser degree, and buffing not really being necessary in order to defeat mobs efficiently.

Diablo had -nothing- to do with it.

D&D development just came to the same conclusion that WoW development -eventually- did--that half-assing two roles doesn't balance against doing a single role well. It only took almost 30 years of table-top gaming to figure it out.