What if you brought 4E back to 1970?

[Garthanos]

I think 4e would have nearly the same heritage as the original I think it would be enjoyed more by wargamers than the folks who like drama but it would entangle the drama crowd more than the original did and maybe the wargamers less... but not a lot less Wargamers like more precise rules and a sense of balance between the pieces (... unless they cost more to put on your team...) having a class that ends up being loads more powerful doesnt really float unless it has a higher cost to put on the play mat. We stop so the mu can get his sleep spell back and be able to do something in the next encounter is perfect sequence in a wargame context and it meant that even if the level 1 mu at low level may have been meant to do a very big thing every encounter... the high paced action element that people wanted and caused the resentment over stop to sleep after a few minutes of game play... was there already but we didnt have videogames to blame ...I seem to recall it might have been blamed on movies... And it was one of the feature/flaws which helped to shuffle in the alternate games. (poor sense of equity between the archetypes) There was also fluff issues with the magic system a lot of "what do you mean I forget how to cast a spell?".. Rituals where the ingredients were expensive or difficult to find ... that might have flown easier(it has a lot of legendary support and fits in the wargame department... how much money do you have to outfit your pieces with.) Vance wasnt that popular of fiction that I recall. Wizards restraining themselves because the magic was dangerous and physically/spiritually exhausting and or attracted the attention of bad things had more literary heritage too. Some of the things that just came in to 4e were being asked for by people all the way back in D&D when runequest and other fantasy rpgs came out ... but not all ... D&D didnt do gritty as well as some of these other games (hit points created too much predictability when you wanted doubt)
The games that would sprout off of 4e would be better at doing scary less heroic more dice ridden gaming... some would shoot for higher realism the same as they did then. Some would shoot for better cross genre support. ... Roleplaying of many stripes would grow out of it.

 

[Garthanos]

So, if Tolkein mentions young goblin children, then they could just be corrupted elf children, right?

Heh... I said technically... not that I didnt accept it as evidence.
He said rather explicitly in the silmarillian that they multiplied like elf and human did ... so its not a biggy.

 

[Desdichado]

What Christopher Tolkien thinks doesn't really matter. His father, to my knowledge, didn't include any clear reference to orcs being anything but elves corrupted by Sauron.

I'd like to be wrong. I very much like the notion of orcs as feral, ubiquitous enemies, but that conception appears to be a D&D thing, not Tolkien.

You very much are wrong. I think you misread my post. It was Christopher Tolkien who decided to put the orcs as corrupted elves in The Silmarillion, from among many origin ideas that his father tossed around.

 

[Desdichado]

Do they have some kind of corrupted elf-woman acting as a brood mare? Or can multiple generations now breed true? Do they give live birth? Are they spawned by some other kind of weird process akin to parthenogenesis? And why is it significant that orcs are "multiplying again" when Sauron returns to Mordor to set up shop? Are orc fertility rates affected by Sauron waxing in power?

The fact of the matter is we can only make assumptions since, in the books, we've never seen a female orc and have never delved that far into orcish society.

Actually, no. There is a letter from Tolkien that specifically refers to the fact that orc-women exist, and play the same role in reproduction that women everywhere play.

Because orcs are really only shown as soldiers, though, we just happen to never see any.

 

[jmucchiello]

As Celebrim noted there are a lot of things in OD&D that were new which today most everyone who's played a computer game has done. Was there such a concept as leveling up before OD&D? (I know some wargames would have the concept of veteran squads vs. recruit squads but I don't know about the concept of earning xp until a reaching a threshold and then gaining power.)

But today, I'll bet there are more people in the world who have never played a tabletop RPG who have leveled up in a video game than all the TRPGers who've leveled up.

Which brings me back to the time travel device, who was the first player to level up? What player sitting across from Gary said, "Hey, Gary, I have 2044** experience points. That means something right?" "Yes, you've leveled up. Roll a d6." I wonder if anyone's asked this before on dragonsfoot.

** Yes, I'm assuming a fighter leveled up first. Clerics needed fewer XP but I'm just guessing there were more greedy fighters and since money is xp....

 

[Desdichado]

And good heavens, are you rude!

Folks, no matter how correct you feel you are, no matter how much factual evidence you have, those do not equate to a license to treat people poorly.

Well, I'll be darned. That does come across as ruder than I really meant it to sound.

Sorry, folks.

 

[Mistwell]

Edit - others have already made the points I wanted to make in response to Thunderfoot.

 

[Celebrim]

Which brings me back to the time travel device, who was the first player to level up? What player sitting across from Gary said, "Hey, Gary, I have 2044** experience points. That means something right?" "Yes, you've leveled up. Roll a d6." I wonder if anyone's asked this before on dragonsfoot.

It wouldn't have been Gary as DM, and indeed, he would have been called the DM because it would have occurred before D&D existed. It would have been one of Dave Arneson's blackmoor players. So, that gives us a short list to start from, which I think would be:

Scott Belfry
Dave Belfry
Bob Meyer
Mike Meyer
Fred Funk
Tim Seamans
Steve Randenberg
Fred Svenson
Greg Svenson

So one or more of those players.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Do they have some kind of corrupted elf-woman acting as a brood mare? Or can multiple generations now breed true? Do they give live birth? Are they spawned by some other kind of weird process akin to parthenogenesis? And why is it significant that orcs are "multiplying again" when Sauron returns to Mordor to set up shop? Are orc fertility rates affected by Sauron waxing in power?

The fact of the matter is we can only make assumptions since, in the books, we've never seen a female orc and have never delved that far into orcish society.

Well, that's as rational as believing giant eagles spring fully formed from the Misty Mountains, I suppose.



RC

 

[billd91]

What would have happened if you had a finely turned rpg engine dropped into everyone's lap in the early 70s?

Back on original topic. I think it would have failed, miserably. It's like asking what would have happened if you put a finely tuned modern engine in a Ford Model A. Or if modern military weapons were on the battlefields of WWII. Or if Spartacus had a Piper Cub. The surroundings aren't geared for it and can't support it.

I think today's RPGs, compared to most in the 1970s, are overdesigned and overly niched to gain the kind of support that early RPGs were able to get.

But had a 4e-style D&D taken ahold of any market share, my guess is that the anti-D&D design that we have seen in the RPG industry - specifically designing things to NOT be like D&D's particular mode of fantasy gaming abstraction - would have pushed even stronger toward the rules-light end of the RPG spectrum.