David Wesely: The Man Who Accidentally Invented RPGs

[overgeeked]

I'm pretty sure every child independently invented RPGs, going back to before recorded history.

My brother and I created a complicated wargame with action figures, complete with damage charts and ranges (measured with plastic rulers) before we'd ever encountered a wargame.

No one "invented" RPGs. These precursors are often interesting, but they are just people who publicized and systemized a concept that's extremely old and incredibly common.

Independently invented role-playing (i.e. cops and robbers or similar), perhaps. But I’m not sure about RPGs per se. The systems and mechanics part seems to be new with Wesely.

 

[overgeeked]

I thought it had been established that the Brontes invented RPGs (and PbM) back in 1826

Here’s an article about it. But it’s role-playing, as in playing pretend or group storytelling, rather than what we’d recognize as a modern RPG with systems and mechanics.

The authors of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre were roleplaying long before Dungeons & Dragons

In 1845, two years before Wuthering Heights was published, Emily Brontë shared a train trip to York with her sister Ann…

www.dicebreaker.com

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I was playing sophisticated games of "make believe" before I'd ever encountered an RPG, but until I encountered D&D it had never occurred to me to create an out of fiction conflict resolution system or to deal out different roles and abilities that were quantified outside of the fiction.

You're an exception IME. My friends and I used to use everything from rock-paper-scissors to throwing rocks at each other until somebody yelped, at which point they were adjudged to have lost the "rules argument" in question. We learned both from older kids, and I'm sure they did the same for many generations back into history.

Rock-paper-scissors was a fair bit less painful and raised fewer parental questions about bruises, FWIW.

 

[Celebrim]

You're an exception IME. My friends and I used to use everything from rock-paper-scissors to throwing rocks at each other until somebody yelped, at which point they were adjudged to have lost the "rules argument" in question. We learned both from older kids, and I'm sure they did the same for many generations back into history.

The throwing rocks or using slingshots thing or fighting with sticks I all recognize. That you had evented using roshambo to resolve make believe questions prior to the mid-1970s would really surprise me.

How old are you?

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

How old are you?

59 next month. Rural kid, hence the ready availability of small rocks. Gravel driveways everywhere, and you bet we used to play around the railroad embankments.

 

[overgeeked]

You're an exception IME. My friends and I used to use everything from rock-paper-scissors to throwing rocks at each other until somebody yelped, at which point they were adjudged to have lost the "rules argument" in question. We learned both from older kids, and I'm sure they did the same for many generations back into history.

Rock-paper-scissors was a fair bit less painful and raised fewer parental questions about bruises, FWIW.

A: “I shot you!”

B: “No, you didn’t!”

C: “Each of you roll 1d6. Whoever rolls higher is right.”

That’s really all the rules you need for an RPG.

 

[Celebrim]

59 next month. Rural kid, hence the ready availability of small rocks. Gravel driveways everywhere, and you bet we used to play around the railroad embankments.

Sure, mock combat between kids has occurred all throughout history. I fought kids with cane poles and my dad recalls shooting hickory nuts with slingshots at each other in mock battles as well.

But that isn't the same thing. When did you first start using roshambo as a story telling aid to resolve conflicts in a story telling game?

 

[Celebrim]

A: “I shot you!”

B: “No, you didn’t!”

C: “Each of you roll 1d6. Whoever rolls higher is right.”

That’s really all the rules you need for an RPG.

Agreed, but I'm aware of no examples of this occurring or recorded prior to the RPG revolution in the 1970s. Note that we do get this happening in proto-form in wargames going back into at least the 1920s, but those weren't part of free form roleplaying but "mock combat". You had the external to the fiction resolution mechanic, but not the free form imaginative play. And at the same time you had free form imaginative play, but not the external to the fiction mechanic.

What you did have in say 1950s or 1890s was:

A: "I shot you!"
B: "No, you didn't!"
A takes out sling takes out slingshot and fires an acorn at B to simulate the combat with real weapons: "See I did so shoot you!"

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Sure, mock combat between kids has occurred all throughout history. I fought kids with cane poles and my dad recalls shooting hickory nuts with slingshots at each other in mock battles as well.

To be clear, the "hucking rocks" thing was a resolution mechanic for times when someone disagreed about whether they'd been shot dead, or caught by the tiger, or wanted to see if their flak jacket or helmet stopped that sniper round. It wasn't part of game play. Mostly got used when someone was afraid to be called a wimp for using the less painful rock-paper-scissors thing instead.

Was it a good resolution mechanic? Heck no. Kids are dumb.

But that isn't the same thing. When did you first start using roshambo as a story telling aid to resolve conflicts in a story telling game?

Second grade was when some other approximate age peers finally moved close enough to actually play with regularly. And yes, there was some storytelling. One of the slightly older kids (two years ahead of me) had a father who'd fought in Korea and Nam and he came up with some pretty nasty and convoluted "patrol" adventures based on war stories. I remember being jealous because my dad had spent his time in the Air Force doing maintenance work in the Atlas silos around Plattsburgh and didn't have any "good" stories to tell. He even missed the Cuban missile crisis by a few weeks, which was about the only time those things might ever have been relevant.

I can recall playing out stories based on the Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman shows (we actually had a coed play group for a few years) later on where we actually used card draws for a mechanic, but some of those were post-1974 and I think one of the oldest kids had played D&D, so some outside influence there.

Dice are not practical when playing outdoors in the countryside.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

A: “I shot you!”

B: “No, you didn’t!”

C: “Each of you roll 1d6. Whoever rolls higher is right.”

That’s really all the rules you need for an RPG.

We had a system for Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars "war" in which we'd throw sticks at the various vehicles (we had apparently invented Mad Max and Car Wars years before either were released to the public). Everyone got a variety of similar sticks, chosen consecutively, and each person got one piece of firewood as their nuclear bomb. (Parents were not excited about firewood disappearing this way, but it was usually played during summer vacation anyway.)

I suspect this was all very common. The big innovation of the "progenitors" of RPGs was publicizing their formalized systems.