D&D General If D&D were created today, what would it look like?

[MGibster]

I remember a student in one of my history classes asked, "What if FDR lived through his fourth term?" He thought it was a rather pointless question and he replied with the rhetorical question, "What if George Washington were still alive? By 1945 he was a sick old man." I followed that up by asking if he meant Washington was a sick old man in 1945 which got a laugh out of him.

I don't know if such questions are entirely pointless as they can be a good thought exercise. But I'm not really sure what value the answer really has beyond examining the influence D&D has had.

 

[MGibster]

The impact on video games in general would be immeasurable. For as long as there has been D&D, there have been D&D video games. This isn't hyperbole. D&D was released in 1974. In 1975, there was already a video game based on it called dnd, one of the first games to have boss monsters. 2 years later was DND (now in BASIC). From there, you have Rogue/Hack/NetHack.

There were a lot of D&D inspired games being run on mainframes at universities during the 1970s and the PC market would certainly be a lot different without it. I think a lot of arcade games would be relatively unaffected by a lack of D&D though. Most of the early arcade games came out of Japan like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, and Space Invaders and most of the ones developed in the US didn't seem to have much influence from D&D.

 

[Campbell]

I think it's damn near impossible to say because so much of what board games, video games (and not just the RPGs), and the fantasy genre are today have been shaped by D&D's cultural imprint.

 

[Reynard]

I don't think that D&D's influence over popular culture can be overstated, not just because of what it directly influenced but also because of the number of people directly involved in popular culture that were influenced by D&D. Remember that while it is vogue now for celebrities to proclaim their geek-love for D&D, that is a new phenomenon and many 80s and 90s writers, producers and actors have since come out of the nerd closet.

That said, it isn't impossible to imagine a world without D&D. Maybe space opera would be more dominant than fantasy, or maybe fantasy would be more heavily rooted in traditional rather than gaming fantasy tropes. Humans will always seek mythic stories, though, so invariably some form of genre entertainment would be primary. If I had to guess, I would say that anime influences would be even stronger than they are now, with a greater focus on science fiction. Alt-Universe D&D Now would probably looks something like a tabletop Mass Effect game, except that the RPG bits would potentially be very different. Without the advent of D&D, I can't say what cooperative adventure gaming would look like. Maybe more like a European board game, with Meeples eventually evolving into individual characters rather than wargame units doing so? I would be pretty comfortable in saying that the crunchy, tactical, adversarial aspects of modern RPGs that have their roots in wargaming would be less pronounced, if existent at all.

Now thinking about it, that is probably where the difference would be greatest -- not in genre (fantasy was around long before D&D), but in root play assumptions. Maybe Alt Universe D&D Now invents the form without a GM at all?

 

[MGibster]

D&D has its roots in some good old fashioned war gaming. But if D&D were never invented, how would role playing games as we know it come to be? Why not acting workshops? I could see a game being developed with the purpose of helping actors learn to emote better. Think about it, you might roll for your reaction to meeting someone and have to act happy, angry, indifferent, or whatever. So maybe instead of war gaming roots we've got RPGs gaining popularity among the theater nerds.

 

[R_J_K75]

I cited Conan the Barbarian, Krull and Clash of the Titans because despite coming out in the early 80’s, I don’t think they were influenced by D&D.
They seem much more influenced by the success of Star Wars and the earlier pulp stories. I’d contend that Masters of the Universe, Beastmaster and the various ‘Barbarian’ movies were created as Conan clones and that they would have a bigger influence on the modern roleplaying game.

The Conan movies can be linked back to the Italian Sword & Sandals genre of the 50s/60s (Hercules Unchained, Samson etc) just as the later fantasy movies like Dragonheart and Willow can draw direct lineage to earlier movies like The Magic Sword, and the various Robin Hood and King Arthur movies (see Excalibur 1981).

Conan, Krull, and Clash of the Titans certainly weren't based on or directly influenced concept wise by D&D. Sure its quite possible all the things you mentioned above may have been released as a direct result of the success of other things such as the success of Superman and Star Wars but I'm sure D&D being in the picture at the time didnt hurt either. The scene in "E.T." and in the book "Thinner" where they are playing D&D I think are good examples that it was definitely on influential peoples mind. But considering this is a "What If" thread and we're all speculating based on our own opinions there's no wrong or right answer here and we'll never know.

 

[Campbell]

I think it's very possible we might have ended up having roleplaying as an activity without having roleplaying games with dice and such. Stuff like the SCA, cosplay and text based roleplaying in fandom communities has largely evolved outside of our community. I think it might very well have been possible that they would have been even more popular, occupying much of the conceptual place that games like D&D do today.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I think it's very possible we might have ended up having roleplaying as an activity without having roleplaying games with dice and such. Stuff like the SCA, cosplay and text based roleplaying in fandom communities has largely evolved outside of our community. I think it might very well have been possible that they would have been even more popular, occupying much of the conceptual place that games like D&D do today.

I once described Dungeon World as "what would happen if DnD were invented by fantasy writers instead of wargamers."

And I think an rpg as a brand-new concept coming out now could very well have that kind of origin: as a writing exercise gamified, but focused on story rather than challenge.

 

[embee]

So maybe instead of war gaming roots we've got RPGs gaining popularity among the theater nerds.

One of my groups is made up of only theater nerds. Plenty of last-minute session rescheduling because of rehearsals.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I don't think it's fully possible to imagine.

I agree with the earlier posters who (IMO) correctly stated that the influence of D&D was so profound, on so many area, in the 70s and 80s for what came to be known as nerd culture, that it the alternative history is more of an exercise in imagination than actuality (what would have happened if the Persians had conquered the Greeks?).

There are two basic ways to look at the issue:

1. The inevitable/essentialist outlook. The existence or non-existence of D&D at a particular moment in time is of no consequence. Even if there was no Arneson, even if there was no Gygax, even if there was no concentration of wargamers ready to roleplay, a D&D-like product was inevitable in that timeframe. The tides of history would have ensured it. Therefore, sometime around then, a polymath would have created Galleons and Goblins, and we would all be enjoying some fifth version of G&G now.

2. The Great Gygax theory. There was no D&D. The magic never happened. It was the path not taken. Arneson moved on to other things. Gygax decided to keep wargaming as a side hobby and concentrate on "real life" to raise money for his family. RPGs (and D&D) as we know it didn't exist. There was the 70s-inspired mini-fantasy boom with Tolkien and some heavy metal, but it never really went anywhere.

That means that the nascent computer-gaming industry didn't produce classics like Zork, and we lost out on a lot of great text-based adventure games. Not to mention the whole genre of Wizardry, Ultima, Bard's Tale, etc. The ideas of "leveling" and resource management ... even ELF NEEDS FOOD, BADLY never came around. There were never MUDs, or Warcraft, or MMORPGs from Warcraft. But that's not all- a lot of TRPGS and adjacent games (such as Car Wars/Autoduel) influences other CRPGs as well. The whole computer game industry might be a lot more, well, simulationist (flight simulator, anyone?).

That's just for starters; a lot of creatives grew up playing these games and were influenced by them. Would we even have the aborted Firefly?

Heck, Tom Hanks might never have had a career without Mazes and Monsters.

I'm sure that this wouldn't be bad. But it would be very different.

More importantly, it would be that much harder to determine what a D&D coming out today would like. It wouldn't have "modern" mechanics, because we wouldn't have had decades of trying things out. However ... it also wouldn't have the strong 70s "weird/Tolkien" zeitgeist and wargamer roots.

If I had to speculate, I'd say that it would have a lot of ad hoc and bespoke mechanics, like the original game ... but it would draw inspiration from things that are more popular today. Maybe include more non-Western influences and anime/manga fantasy? Heck, maybe the first Monster Manual would have thinly-veiled references to Pokémon.