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

[Snarf Zagyg]

But sci-fi might have filled in that gap. Zork may have taken place on an alien world or in a damaged spaceship instead. Grues are aliens that live in the darkness of space.

Not exactly what I was getting at. Zork, and the even earlier game Colossal Cave (shout out to BBN!!!) are based on the fact that people played D&D.

They are attempts to port over that experience to computers (fun fact- a lot of the people that did those early text games, from CC to Zork to Infocom played at the same D&D campaign).

The Great Gygax theory is that ... there aren't RPGs to base those games off of. So it wouldn't be a difference in genre. It just wouldn't exist.

I'm not saying that theory is correct, but it's there.

 

[R_J_K75]

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.

These were my thoughts based on "Multiple Discovery".

Multiple discovery - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[R_J_K75]

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.

And to think in some parallel universe Tom Selleck is Indiana Jones and Christopher Walken is Han Solo.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Im always amazed when I think an actor such as Tom Hanks "Bossom Buddy" Peter Scolari rode off into obscurity after Newhart only to go to IMDB and see he's been working all along but yet I havent seen him in anything in 30 years.

Admittedly for a while there I thought it was him who was playing Neelix in ST: Voyager. Oops.

 

[embee]

But sci-fi might have filled in that gap. Zork may have taken place on an alien world or in a damaged spaceship instead. Grues are aliens that live in the darkness of space.

Halt & Catch Fire is on Netflix now. It's a decent enough show and worth a watch.

In one episode, programmer Cameron challenges the staff about a game they are all playing, asking who got how far. This is a reference to "Colossal Cave Adventure" one of the earliest dungeon games, where at one point, dozens of people at MIT's computer lab were all playing it, seeing who could get farthest. It was developed and reiterated in what would now be called an open-source fashion, with programmers building on new features and expanding the capabilities of the game.

The intersectionality between D&D and PC games cannot be overstated. I'd love to see a Venn diagram of subscribers to Dragon Magazine and BYTE Magazine.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

And to think in some parallel universe Tom Selleck is Indiana Jones and Christopher Walken is Han Solo. OBI WAN!

1. Indy, to the Nazis: "Respect the 'stache."

2. Obi Wan, to Luke Skywalker:
Hello, little man. Boy, I sure heard a bunch about you. See, I was a good friend of your dad’s. We were in that Clone War together over five years. Hopefully, you’ll never have to experience war like that tis yourself, but when two men are in a situation like me and your Dad were, for as long as we were, you take on certain responsibilities of the other. If it had been me who had not made it, Anakin Skywalker would be talking right now to my son. But the way it turned out is I’m talking to you, Luke. I got something for you.

This lightsaber I got here was first built as a replacement by your father when he was a general of the Grand Army of the Republic. It was built from a little kyber crystal in the core of the hilt. Made to replace the first lightsaber your daddy ever had. Had a blue emission and everything. Your daddy used it for all of his battles. For droids. For Dooku. That's right, for Dooku.

And your dad knew that when he was captured at the end of those Clone Wars, when the enemy was coming to take us both, they would take his precious lightsaber. The way your dad looked at it, that lightsaber was your birthright. He’d be damned if any stormtroopers were gonna put their metal hands on his boy’s birthright. So with his dying breath, he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something. His butt. Five long years, he hid this lightsaber up his butt. Then he died of dysentery, he gave me the lightsaber. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of alloyed composite metal up my butt for two years. Then, after seven years, I escaped and made my way back to Tatooine.

And now, young Skywalker, I give the lightsaber to you.

 

[R_J_K75]

And now, young Skywalker, I give the lightsaber to you.

Eh...you can keep it, thanks anyway.

 

[Faolyn]

In one episode, programmer Cameron challenges the staff about a game they are all playing, asking who got how far. This is a reference to "Colossal Cave Adventure" one of the earliest dungeon games, where at one point, dozens of people at MIT's computer lab were all playing it, seeing who could get farthest. It was developed and reiterated in what would now be called an open-source fashion, with programmers building on new features and expanding the capabilities of the game.

The intersectionality between D&D and PC games cannot be overstated. I'd love to see a Venn diagram of subscribers to Dragon Magazine and BYTE Magazine.

Not exactly what I was getting at. Zork, and the even earlier game Colossal Cave (shout out to BBN!!!) are based on the fact that people played D&D.

The Great Gygax theory is that ... there aren't RPGs to base those games off of. So it wouldn't be a difference in genre. It just wouldn't exist.

I'm not saying that theory is correct, but it's there.

Yeah, OK, so Zork itself might not have been a thing. You could both be very right, of course, and no Gygax, no genre games at all.

But I can't help but imagine that something would have taken its place. SF might have become a lot more popular if there wasn't D&D fantasy. Star Trek and Star Wars were and are pretty darn popular, and so were westerns and the kung fu/martial arts genre.

But back to the original idea: there are lots of fairy tales, so a just-created D&D might draw heavily from them. Then there would be debates about whether D&D should be using real fairy tales or Disneyfied fairy tales.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Let’s say D&D wasn’t invented yet, and let’s assume RPGs didn’t get created yet either for the sake of argument. If the game were to be created today, what would it look like and how would it be different from the white box?

If it were created today, it would have little or nothing to do with swords & sorcery, since D&D itself bears a large amount of responsibility for why this entire genre, rather than dying out, persisted throughout the 1980s and managed to vault into something approaching timelessness, or as nearly as one can approach it when the cultural role of myth and folklore has been entirely supplanted by consumer products. I suspect even the fantasy genre, without the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms paperbacks, would have not fared as well.

Since Games Workshop has almost completely taken over the hobby wargaming scene, I guess that means a current D&D would be about semi-religious soldiers in a grimdark world trying to survive and defeat hordes of heretics and monsters. So, rather than the content being under legal scrutiny from the Tolkien estate, their biggest concern would be that their Not-Space-Marines and Not-Orks don't get them hit with a lawsuit for stealing WH40K IP.

 

[Dausuul]

Let’s say D&D wasn’t invented yet, and let’s assume RPGs didn’t get created yet either for the sake of argument.

I'm trying to envision a world where the TRPG genre doesn't exist but everything else is basically the same. It ain't easy, but... say TRPGs were never invented, but their descendants (CRPGs, MMOs, CCGs, etc.) somehow arose from other origins and developed along similar lines to the real world; and also that the fantasy genre got a boost from another source to replace the one D&D gave it.

The first question is, in 2021, why would a TRPG arise at all? Remember that 5E is the result of decades of refinement and community-building. We are positing a world where online RPGs have had those decades, and TRPGs have not. In such a world, a proto-D&D would be like a trilobite dropped into modern seas; despite having been hugely successful in its own era, it could never compete today.

Just as D&D evolved from '70s wargames, a TRPG would have to evolve from some existing game genre, and the most likely candidate is the MMO. Say MMO players get tired of scripted storylines and want something with more scope for creativity. Modding communities arise around "moderated adventures" where a proto-GM tells an interactive story. A spinoff game comes out that puts the moderated adventure front and center. Then, with the rise of podcasting and streaming, we see equivalents to "Critical Role" where professional performers gather in person to play the spinoff. This both catapults the game to popularity, and promotes the idea of playing it face-to-face instead of purely online.

In this world, the computer remains an essential part of the game, crunching the numbers and handling the rules, with the GM stepping in as necessary to override it. This means the rules will be insanely complex by TRPG standards, since no human has to interpret or apply them. From the player perspective, though, they probably look... well, a lot like 4E.