What game Could "Be" D&D, Culturally?

[Reynard]

I've never seen one that worked, seems like it could be quite fruitful though.

I really want a tabletop version of Divinity Original Sin, but I imagine it would be maddening to try to actually play with all the verticality and destructible environments and elemental interactions.

 

[Yora]

Not knowing the game, RPG systems are already three dimensional, with potentially unlimited interactions. It's all so much easier than in videogames.

 

[Reynard]

Not knowing the game, RPG systems are already three dimensional, with potentially unlimited interactions. It's all so much easier than in videogames.

Not mechanically. A computer can keep track of an essentially unlimited number of variables while the human brain can keep track of what, 5? Think of all the sturm and drang over 3.x/4E/PF modifiers, and now add it hit points for every object in the environment plus tables of element interactions.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Tangential but: has there ever been a "significant" TTRPG adaptation of a video game? I can't think of one. Modiphius has Dishonored and Fallout and it seems like they sold well but I don't see them being discussed anywhere with any regularity. Granted, a lot of discussion has moved to venues I don't frequent like dedicated Discord servers. I guess the WoW d20 RPG lasted a few years.

WotC tried that with 4E, making it more MMO-like and CRPG-like and we see where that ended up.

 

[innerdude]

My thoughts go back to, what were the general conditions that gave rise to D&D?

And yes, there's a huge shift if you assume that RPGs don't arrive until 1977 or later.

As it stands, D&D has a pretty clear formative basis:

• Centered in the historical context of the early 1970s (important because Star Wars didn't come out until 3 years after D&D was first published).
• Based on wargaming, with a small but fanatical preexistent base of fans.
• Despite EGG's protests to the contrary, it clearly took great inspiration from / borrowed from a hugely popular, existing work of fiction (Lord of the Rings) as a base on which to flesh out its inner zeitgeist and assumed milieu.

Now considering those things, I would say that if EGG and Dave Arneson had never been born, there are two sources of fiction that were popular enough at the time to fill in the gap.

First, it might be recency bias, but I think Dune could have easily been brought in to wargaming space. It's a natural fit to model its House Atreides and House Harkannon tanks and gun ships. At which point, I think an RPG would have been created and quickly evolved into something closely resembling a hybrid of Dune and what Warhammer ended up being 10 years after D&D was introduced in 1974.

Second, the most popular movies at the time were the sweeping crime dramas like the Godfather, Chinatown, and The French Connection, as well as heist movies like The Sting, and the enduring popularity of Hitchcock thrillers.

So I think the second obvious answer would be if a seed got planted in the wargaming community to build games based on 1920s/1930s mobster street wars, and then have RPGs be formed as a base from that.

With that in mind, it pretty quickly goes down the road of an RPG that's investigation-based, maybe a proto Call of Cthulhu without the Cthulhu mythos at first, until Call of Cthulhu proper actually shows up.

But yeah, if you assume RPGs as we know them don't come into existence until after 1977, the only right answer is Star Wars.

 

[Reynard]

But yeah, if you assume RPGs as we know them don't come into existence until after 1977, the only right answer is Star Wars.

That's broadly a good analysis of what might have happened but that's not really what I am talking about. I am talking about the current cultural zeitgeist.

 

[innerdude]

That's broadly a good analysis of what might have happened but that's not really what I am talking about. I am talking about the current cultural zeitgeist.

In other words, what would be the generonym for RPGs right now if D&D had never existed?

Like, if a kid were to say, "I'm going to a friend's house to play Universal RPG Generonym"?

In that case the the most likely answers are Star Wars, Warcraft, or Final Fantasy.

*Edit: though I wonder just how much you can really separate the association of RPGs from wargames. The use of wargame-like math calculations to model combat interactions is fairly fundamental to RPGs as we know them.

 

[Aldarc]

Potentially a game like Savage Worlds or the Basic Roleplay System.

 

[Reynard]

In other words, what would be the generonym for RPGs right now if D&D had never existed?

Not even that, just if it hadn't had a post 2000 Renaissance.

*Edit: though I wonder just how much you can really separate the association of RPGs from wargames. The use of wargame-like math calculations to model combat interactions is fairly fundamental to RPGs as we know them.

I read an interesting theory once that suggested RPGs would have appeared anyway but would have come through sci-fi and Trek conventions whose fans were already freeform roleplaying with some parlor game influences. That would be an interesting alternate universe.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

The Society for Creative Anachronism was founded in 1966, so fantasy LARPing, and thus fantasy ttrpgs would have still happened without the publishing of D&D. Other fantasy rpgs were in print within a year or two of D&D and there is no way those were not already in the planning and/or writing stages when D&D was first released. The 70's were pre-internet and sharing/copying/etc of ideas was a lot slower.

Traveller was published in 1977, so it was in the planning/writing stages before Star Wars was released, though I can't find the actual publication month, so I don't know if it hit shelves before or after Star Wars first released in theaters. And because the timing was so close for those two, I don't think there is any way to tell if the movie influenced game sales at all.

That's broadly a good analysis of what might have happened but that's not really what I am talking about. I am talking about the current cultural zeitgeist.

Yes, but the current batch of celebrities and writers and directors, etc grew up playing D&D, so we have to look at what was hot or not in the 80's and 90's to know why D&D became so mainstream after the release of 5E. If D&D had died with TSR, what game from that same time period could have taken it's place or would any game have? With no new D&D in the 21st century, the gaming market would be likely be microscopic now, compared to what it is. No 3E means no OGL and all the awesome games and settings that were spawned from that don't exist as we know them.