Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Parmandur]

Yeap, even pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, any RPG that isnt D&D.

I mean, on a certain level all RPGs are derived from D&D, so whoever not "correct", it does make a certain kind of sense.

 

[Velderan]

Yeap, even pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, any RPG that isnt D&D.

Same. I don’t tell people “I play D&D” when talking about my weekly Pathfinder game. I say Pathfinder, which almost always gets a “whats that“ response and gives me a chance to talk up the game.

 

[Umbran]

I mean, on a certain level all RPGs are derived from D&D...

Absolutes like "all" are maybe not your friend here.

Even if we set aside certain parlor games, Harpo Marx's report of playing a murder mystery game in the 1920s, and large swath of the activities of historical reenactors...

There's stuff like Theatrix, which came out of theater traditions, rather than wargaming.

 

[Scribe]

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"So yeah, thats it, thats the scope, thoughts?"

 

[Reynard]

Absolutes like "all" are maybe not your friend here.

Well, I think it is true in this case. Would RPGs have appeared without D&D? Almost certainly. But those that exist are almost certainly some descendent of D&D, even if the impetus was to reject all that is D&D.

Can you name an RPG that developed independently?

 

[payn]

Same. I don’t tell people “I play D&D” when talking about my weekly Pathfinder game. I say Pathfinder, which almost always gets a “whats that“ response and gives me a chance to talk up the game.

Yeap, thats me too. However, I do get a sort of expediency aspect from talking to someone who wont know one RPG from the next. Instead, I simply say "gaming" if Traveller or other brand means absolutely nothing to that person.

 

[Umbran]

Can you name an RPG that developed independently?

See above, I edited some notes into my previous post - murder mystery games were going on in the 1920s, for example.

And I think you need to be careful of the difference between "derived from," "inspired by," and "influenced by" in such a discussion.

It would be hard to say that anything created in the western world after 1980 or so could definitively be said to be absolutely and entirely independent of D&D, insofar as D&D became a household term. Even folks who had never seen the books, but had been told about sitting around a table and playing a game in which you took on the role of a character could be said to be "not independent" after that point.

That'd be like saying that there's a sci-fi movie out there after about 1980 that was completely and totally independent of Star Wars.

But I think that level of nitpicking is 1) kind of a gotcha, and 2) rather unfair to noting the creativity of those who aren't doing the D&D thing.

 

[payn]

Well, I think it is true in this case. Would RPGs have appeared without D&D? Almost certainly. But those that exist are almost certainly some descendent of D&D, even if the impetus was to reject all that is D&D.

Can you name an RPG that developed independently?

Traveller.

 

[Reynard]

Traveller.

I would be interested in seeing evidence for that.

 

[payn]

I would be interested in seeing evidence for that.

google the wiki.