Friday Musing: What If It Wasn't War Games

[Jay Murphy1]

...should I mention for the third time that TTRPGs were already invented separately with no connection to D&D nor wargames?

Yes, I missed that. Where and when were ttrpgs invented?

 

[mythago]

Branching story books had been around for a while, but computer adventure games grew out of tabletop RPGs and their popularity with computer science students.

I thought Colossal Cave and its offshoot Adventure developed before TTRPGs were a thing?

 

[kronovan]

So what if EGG had stuck to any one of the number of times that he disavowed war gaming and never created D&D with Arneson? What if sci-fi fans or SCA folks had created the first RPGs? What would TTRPG look lie? Would fantasy still be king? Would there BE an RPG industry?

I can only go by what I recall as trends and potential influencers during my childhood during the 1960s -70s, but IMO RPGs probably wouldn't have evolved out of live action game play like SCA, or even the SciFi genre. I started reading novels in my childhood about 5 years before Original D&D was released. We had the best seller lists in print at home and I can hardly recall Fantasy or SciFi novels showing up on them. While my brother and I did get more than our fill of both genres, other than a few novels like Stewart's Arthurian-based Crystal Caves, or Vonegut's avant garde books, SciFi and Fantasy were very niche.

What was all the rage back then were Conspiracy/Spy novels. It seemed Baby Boomers, who were by then a big chunk of paperback buyers, couldn't get enough of those. I remember that genre always have good numbers among the best sellers, from cheesy books like Flemning's The Man with the Golden Gun to more serious stuff like Forsythe's The Odessa File. Even some of the SciFi that managed to list like Critchton's Andromeda Strain, were as much conspiracy as SF. Once in a while Horror novels like Rosemary's Baby or the Exorcist made the lists, but they were definitely uncommon. If you missed a months list, you almost always knew which made them, because without competition from home VCRs film studios made movies out of them as quickly as they could. There were also a lot of military themed (mostly WW II & Cold War) novels on the list then too, but going my older sister's college buddies, those weren't so popular among the young adult set.

The other thing I recall as vividly as my 1st SciFi novel, was the arrival of affordable wargames in the early 70's. It seemed a new Avalon Hill or SSI game showed up at our local hobby every month. Those were much more cooler than the boring gaming dreck you'd get for Xmas. All those tiny chits, colorful gaming maps and an attempt to recreate real history, were a bit of a mind blower. When my Sis's boyfriend took my brother and I to see miniatures on a big tabletop at a local college wargaming club, I was blown away. I'm not surprised that wargaming played a part in EEG & crew's influences, because while definitely niche, they were an eye opener to lots of potential.

So...without EEG-D&D, were another TTRPG to have emerged around the same time, I could envision it evolving out of the conspiracy/spy novel genre. Like D&D, I do think such an RPG would have also been created by a baby boomer, as they represented a ground swell of not just the population, but also new ideas and trends. Such a TTRPG might have at 1st featured modern or conventional settings, but I imagine it would have branched off into the more fantastical, sort of the way Vonegut and other popular avant garde writers did. It's also popular that it could have blended with Military themes creating a new subgenre or direction. That said, with the eye popping, blockbusting hit that Star Wars became in the late 70s, I can't imagine that genre would've lasted long before it was co-opted by SciFi and steered in new directions.

Sorry for the long rambling, but sometimes it's fun to reminisce.

 

[Reynard]

And then, if that was the case, games that don't have detailed combat systems would emerge from the TTRPG community, and, well, they did. "We don't do your stupid combat, we do REAL ROLEPLAYING" was the shtick of World of Darkness fans, and those got to the party pretty early on. Well, Vampire has a ridiculously detailed combat system, but everybody hates it and nobody wants to fight exactly to avoid ever using it.

I mean if you consider 15 years later "early on."

 

[Reynard]

I thought Colossal Cave and its offshoot Adventure developed before TTRPGs were a thing?

Colossal cave was in 1976.

 

[Reynard]

I can only go by what I recall as trends and potential influencers during my childhood during the 1960s -70s, but IMO RPGs probably wouldn't have evolved out of live action game play like SCA, or even the SciFi genre. I started reading novels in my childhood about 5 years before Original D&D was released. We had the best seller lists in print at home and I can hardly recall Fantasy or SciFi novels showing up on them. While my brother and I did get more than our fill of both genres, other than a few novels like Stewart's Arthurian-based Crystal Caves, or Vonegut's avant garde books, SciFi and Fantasy were very niche.

What was all the rage back then were Conspiracy/Spy novels. It seemed Baby Boomers, who were by then a big chunk of paperback buyers, couldn't get enough of those. I remember that genre always have good numbers among the best sellers, from cheesy books like Flemning's The Man with the Golden Gun to more serious stuff like Forsythe's The Odessa File. Even some of the SciFi that managed to list like Critchton's Andromeda Strain, were as much conspiracy as SF. Once in a while Horror novels like Rosemary's Baby or the Exorcist made the lists, but they were definitely uncommon. If you missed a months list, you almost always knew which made them, because without competition from home VCRs film studios made movies out of them as quickly as they could. There were also a lot of military themed (mostly WW II & Cold War) novels on the list then too, but going my older sister's college buddies, those weren't so popular among the young adult set.

The other thing I recall as vividly as my 1st SciFi novel, was the arrival of affordable wargames in the early 70's. It seemed a new Avalon Hill or SSI game showed up at our local hobby every month. Those were much more cooler than the boring gaming dreck you'd get for Xmas. All those tiny chits, colorful gaming maps and an attempt to recreate real history, were a bit of a mind blower. When my Sis's boyfriend took my brother and I to see miniatures on a big tabletop at a local college wargaming club, I was blown away. I'm not surprised that wargaming played a part in EEG & crew's influences, because while definitely niche, they were an eye opener to lots of potential.

So...without EEG-D&D, were another TTRPG to have emerged around the same time, I could envision it evolving out of the conspiracy/spy novel genre. Like D&D, I do think such an RPG would have also been created by a baby boomer, as they represented a ground swell of not just the population, but also new ideas and trends. Such a TTRPG might have at 1st featured modern or conventional settings, but I imagine it would have branched off into the more fantastical, sort of the way Vonegut and other popular avant garde writers did. It's also popular that it could have blended with Military themes creating a new subgenre or direction. That said, with the eye popping, blockbusting hit that Star Wars became in the late 70s, I can't imagine that genre would've lasted long before it was co-opted by SciFi and steered in new directions.

Sorry for the long rambling, but sometimes it's fun to reminisce.

I don't think spy novels had the same kind of fandom that sci-fi and fantasy did. it isn't about things being on the bestseller lists, it is about people coming together and engaging in their fandom together and creating new forms of play in doing so. We know that sci-fi fans were roleplaying, but it appears as though the game part was missing.

 

[kronovan]

I don't think spy novels had the same kind of fandom that sci-fi and fantasy did. it isn't about things being on the bestseller lists, it is about people coming together and engaging in their fandom together and creating new forms of play in doing so. We know that sci-fi fans were roleplaying, but it appears as though the game part was missing.

Well the spy genre did to some extent in my area, but it may have been the exception. In the early 70's one of our local universities had a sort of Spy cosplay (remember newspaper clips with lots of Modesty Blaises and Flints) that ran over a weekend. They also ran a convoluted and elaborate I-Spy game that tended to get out of hand whenever Engineering students got involved. That said, the 1st year of our local SciFi CON was 71 So there was enough of an established community to organize and support that. I didn't attend until that CON until 10 years after it's inception, so I don't know what type of play may have occurred in the 70s. It certainly has its share of miniatures and TTRPG gaming tables now.

Your point is well taken. It does seem as likely that were it not for Gygax and crew that TTRPG may have instead evolved out of the SciFi genre and community. As I alluded to above, even if it somehow evolved from a different genre than Fantasy or SciFi, with the run away success of SciFi movies and the increasing celebrity of its authors in the late 70's and early 80's, I can't imagine it wouldn't have come to be dominated by that genre.

 

[Umbran]

Because actual physical hitting is what the participants are looking for. They were not interested in other ways to simulate the activity.

O rly?

So no, it could not have easily come up with ways to simulate their activities because in general, that is not what the scene is interested in.

Yeah, I was active in "the scene" for over a decade.

Let me tell you about the Duke Sir Visivald. "Sir" means that he'd attained SCA Knighthood. The "Duke" meant that he won the royal tournament at least twice (once in 1979, and once in 1983). The Duke's wife, the Lady Mara, was our local Mistress of Dance, which my wife studied, so by association, I got to know Visivald a bit.

Visivald was formidable on the battlefield, even when I knew him, decades after his prime. Even after having fought and beaten cancer, he could beat men decades younger than himself. I fought alongside him on the fields at Pennsic a couple of times (he and I both favored polearms as weapons).

You know the one thing the Duke Sir Visivald couldn't do on the fields of Pennsic, or in any tournament? Kill a dragon. Nor could he be Gandalf. SCA combat only allows fighting other humans, most of whom were less skilled than he was. So, he also ran and played RPGs. He liked GURPS. He found FATE fascinating, and ran a really interesting Dresden Files game I got to play in - ahead of his time, playing online with people across the continent a decade before the pandemic...

It seems outright insulting for you to suggest that somehow, wargamers could want to do things wargames don't do, but nobody else could want things other than what they were given, and indeed only ever want one thing!

 

[Jay Murphy1]

O rly?



Yeah, I was active in "the scene" for over a decade.


It seems outright insulting for you to suggest that somehow, wargamers could want to do things wargames don't do, but nobody else could want things other than what they were given, and indeed only ever want one thing!

That is not what I said. I assumed what you used to form a snarky retort is something patently obvious so no need to quaIify. The point of my statement was the wargame scene became the most likely place for ttrpg's to be developed/created/discovered/invented because they had more of the ingredients which would go into what became a ttrpg. Set of rules, sit at a table, taking on a role to experience a what if fantastical experience (warfare where there is no chance of you being hurt), and an environment which constantly evaluated quality of play in relation to what the game promised. But I think sitting around a table to play a shared thought experiment on how to structure play is the number one ingredient the wargaming scene had over the other two postulated. Ideas come from anywhere, but they become material when engaged by people who have an interest in an ideas strongest suit. Wargaming activity had more aligning interests in the form of a ttrpg than literary fandom activity or historical reenactment activity or theater activity had. I guess a cold read comes pretty close. Not that a person of any walk of life or interest can't come up with a ttrpg, just that after they did it isn't a stretch to think they would go hang out with wargamers to see what they thought of the game form.

 

[Reynard]

. The point of my statement was the wargame scene became the most likely place for ttrpg's to be developed/created/discovered/invented because they had more of the ingredients which would go into what became a ttrpg.

Again, this is a logical fallacy. You are begging the question. You are assuming that since TTRPGs ended up with wargame like rules, the only way they would have developed is through wargames when the opposite is true.

I do think it is an interesting question as to why fantasy prevailed, as opposed to something else. TSR published Warriors of Mars at the same time as D&D and Planetary Romance could have been the basis. Was it merely because medieval fantasy and sword and sorcery were in the (nerdy) zeitgeist at the time because of Lord of the Rings and Conan reprints? Or is there something more inherently "RPGable" about fantasy?