The Father Of...

[eyebeams]

The basic concept of RPGs that was later harnessed for D&D was invented by HG Wells in 1911, and is described in Floor Games.

This used to be fairly well known.

 

[jonesy]

Here's a very extensive interview with Wesely:

Theory From the Closet » Blog Archive » Show060: Interview with David Wesely

I think it was darjr who originally posted it here.

 

[darjr]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...d-you-learn-try-anything-new.html#post4894155

[MENTION=52725]James J. Skach[/MENTION] played in one with the man himself. It would be cool to get some details about how it went. I wonder if he'll be at GenCon 2011 or GaryCon in March?

 

[harami2000]

I see Gygax as the "father" because it was his efforts, his pushing, that got the game into print for the world to enjoy.

"I feel that anyone playing mediaeval games and not using at least one ogre or Saint may well have missed a vital ingredient of historical accuracy. Mr. Gygax has merely gone much further in developing an entirely fantastical system" - Don Featherstone, July 1972.

Gary was always rather more visible.

If it was all up to Arneson we would probably never know he even existed, let alone have D&D and RPG's in general.

Dave wasn't going anywhere quickly, that much is certain. Either he or John Snider might've eventually taken the initiative and gone it alone... difficult to tell.
For sure we would have had RPGs (by 2010 definitions) now, even without D&D's publication, but the history and archetype would've had subtle differences: the vultures were already very clearly circling in on the "target" from various different directions by the early 1970s.
(The attempted focus on/creation of a single-threaded D&D timeline is understandable, I guess).

02c/ymmv,
d. ^^

 

[Orius]

To back it up even one more step:

Col. David Wesely. Father of single-character role-playing as opposed to players controlling one or more units as in a wargame, via his Braunstein game. He taught Arneson how to play; Arneson then went on to refine the concepts further into what we know as RPGs, and Gygax took it from there.

Wesely is at the same time - and from the same game - the father of LARP; as that's essentially what Braunstein is.

Yeah, you can't leave Wesley out, he's the guy who took the first step towards creating the RPG.

At which point does the game shift from being a War Game with Roleplaying Elements into becoming a Roleplaying Game?

D&D itself? Clearly in the mid-70s between the publication of the three white books and the first Basic set and the AD&D books. You've got D&D groups that are using the 3 books, maybe even copies of them, but probably not Chainmail, and likely certainaly not the other wargaming suppliments recommended for D&D. So, they're making up their own rules and creating their own structure to the game which has little to do with wargaming at all. At the end of the 70's, with Basic and AD&D in place, D&D starts becoming its own game.

If you're talking about RPGs in general, then take the above and add other early RPGs like Empire of the Petal Throne, and whatever else was being published from 1975 to 1977-1979.

Also depends on where you want to place Judge's Guild, Arduin, etc.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Pfft.

Originality is a myth.

We measure an idea's progenitor by the one who used it to kill the most people or make the most coin.

I posit that the "father" of D&D was the first shaman who pretended to be a bear, the first pharaoh that pretended to be a god, the first primordial person that uttered the first lie that was ever believed, not because it was actually true, but just because the world was more awesome if it was true.

In this view, Scientists are the very first "rules lawyers."

And the Higgs Boson is Allah's Rule 0.

 

[havard]

I posit that the "father" of D&D was the first shaman who pretended to be a bear, the first pharaoh that pretended to be a god, the first primordial person that uttered the first lie that was ever believed, not because it was actually true, but just because the world was more awesome if it was true.

Your assumption is that Roleplaying grew out of storytelling, whereas its true origins can just as much be traced back to war gaming, if not more so.

Havard

 

[carmachu]

I see Gygax as the "father" because it was his efforts, his pushing, that got the game into print for the world to enjoy. If it was all up to Arneson we would probably never know he even existed, let alone have D&D and RPG's in general.

So yes, Arneson may have been a creator of an RPG, but its pretty clear that Gygax is the one who made it all happen in terms of what we all think of as the RPG industry.

So what would have happened if Gygax didn't make TSR happen?

Without Arneson, Gygax wouth have nothing to push, nothing to print, no industry to create.

I think you minimize Anderson to its detriment. Without him, Gygax has nothing to do.

 

[harami2000]

Without Anderson, Gygax wouth have nothing to push, nothing to print, no industry to create.

I think you minimize Anderson to its detriment. Without him, Gygax has nothing to do.

I'm not sure who Anderson is (the famous brothers Thomas & Gerald, perhaps?) but in that particular case, yes EGG did indeed have so many other gaming interests ongoing from WW2 through Diplomacy and Space Gaming that he could quite easily have spent all his time on those.
Given his wide background and involvement there's a chance he might've hit on "RPGs" (mid-late 1970s definition) independently, most obviously in 1970 with his own multi-scale game, but that never came to full fruition; and the conceptual efforts of his wargaming equivalent of the SCA didn't get there in its own right.

The leap to "first person immediate" happened more than once no doubt but putting that into a formal, published game and storming the market was another matter.
Bringing H.G. Wells into the equation - per the previous page - is probably a bit of push regarding "RPGs" but there were people playing ongoing campaigns using 6x6 diced tables for individual character background, casualties (think Traveller as well, perhaps? *g*), promotions before/between games, etc., and being careful to try not to get their key characters killed off during games back in the 1940s. And that /was/ on the direct line from Wells rather than Wesely's hook back to Totten.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Your assumption is that Roleplaying grew out of storytelling, whereas its true origins can just as much be traced back to war gaming, if not more so.

Ah! But your assumption is that war gaming did not grow out of storytelling!

Games are a form of story! They have a set scene, a central conflict, and a resolution at the end!

I am playing, of course, but it does speak to the Sisyphean futility of trying to roll the Boulder of Creatorhood far enough up the Slope of History to get it to stick.

Originality is overrated, and copying is culture! Arneson, Gygax, Gilgamesh, Homer, Ankhenaten...kind of on the same continuum, IMO.