R_J_K75
Legend
I forgot that the NES was preceded by the Famicom, without looking it up Im assuming Zelda was released in Japan first. I really have no idea how prominent D&D was in Japan in the 70s and 80s so you may be correct.
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D&D General If D&D were created today, what would it look like?
- Thread starter Sacrosanct
- Start date
R_J_K75
Legend
I think its safe to say that Tolkien would be the template for the core races and a few others thrown in as you said.
PsyzhranV2
Hero
The novel series Record of Lodoss War started off as a D&D replay (game record). The Dragon Quest RPG series took heavy inspiration from Wizardry and Ultima.
These days, I believe D&D has largely been displaced by local RPGs such as Sword World.
Mecheon
Sacabambaspis
Oh, I know LotR is popular. Its just, Tolkein estate is, yeah. Would folks be willing to take that risk of being sued out of existence, or would they just put hobbit stereotypes on another short race (Gnomes or something totally original) instead?
Halflings as we know them today (Barely concealed hobbit stereotypes with the occaisonal new flash) wouldn't exist. The halfling-like would be a different thing
TwoSix
Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
The first RPGs in Japan were Sci-Fi games during the the 1980s with a Japanese game Donkey Commando in 1982, followed by Enterprise (Star Trek) Roleplaying 1983 and Traveller 1984 (the first translated game).
Donkey Commando developed from the Wargame Hobby which was known in Japan from the 1960s (in 1982 Avalon Hill wargames were translated to Japanese too)
D&D reached Japan in 1985 via the Mentzer Red Box. Famously a transcript of a game was serialised as the Record of Lodoss War and lead to development of the Sword World 2d6 RPG (Inspired by AD&D, Runequest and Final Fantasy)
So yep without D&D we may have had a stronger sci-fi/anime feel to the hobby. Less Nerd and more Weeb lol
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R_J_K75
Legend
Interesting. I remember as a kid every once in awhile GI Joe, Marvel or what have you would come with a record or cassette which usually got broken or lost sooner than later. Surprised to hear D&D didnt reach Japan until 1985, but sounds like Sword World is going strong still.
Mecheon
Sacabambaspis
The Record of Lodoss War people tried to licence it over in Japan but TSR wouldn't for some reason
so uh. That's why Sword World exists.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Without D&D to get the "generic fantasy" vibe existing, fantasy in AU2020 is going very different.
Fantasy literature won't be impacted that much initially. Whilst a lot of authors played RPGs a bit, I think it's fair to say they'd find something similar but different, even if not an RPG, that spurred their imaginations. Some will be doing very different stuff (Hickman/Weis for example). A lot of authors could still exist in similar forms though. Fantasy in the 2000s would be a little different as there's a lot of low-level D&D/RPG influence in modern fantasy, whether it's China Mieville (who has plenty of direct D&D references, even one character thinks of himself as "A Paladin in Hell", which is a deep-cut reference to a specific AD&D 1E picture). But I think without D&D, Mieville still has Gormenghast and Moorcock and so on, and would be in a similar place. Most literary fantasy will still be about humans, of course.
Video games in general will look very different. Without CRPGs, we won't see the gradual infiltration of "RPG elements" into virtually every game in existence. Instead, wargaming and simulation will be influences for much longer, and RPG-like stuff like "leveling up" or "talent trees" or "XP gain" or "skill points" just won't be there in the same way (it'll be a minor wargame element, mostly). I think we'd see generally more focus on realism. Eventually RPG-like systems will begin to develop, simply out of necessity to abstract certain issues, but they'll take a lot longer to catch on.
So anyway, our AU D&D is going to starting from a very different place.
Fantasy literature won't be impacted that much initially. Whilst a lot of authors played RPGs a bit, I think it's fair to say they'd find something similar but different, even if not an RPG, that spurred their imaginations. Some will be doing very different stuff (Hickman/Weis for example). A lot of authors could still exist in similar forms though. Fantasy in the 2000s would be a little different as there's a lot of low-level D&D/RPG influence in modern fantasy, whether it's China Mieville (who has plenty of direct D&D references, even one character thinks of himself as "A Paladin in Hell", which is a deep-cut reference to a specific AD&D 1E picture). But I think without D&D, Mieville still has Gormenghast and Moorcock and so on, and would be in a similar place. Most literary fantasy will still be about humans, of course.
Video games in general will look very different. Without CRPGs, we won't see the gradual infiltration of "RPG elements" into virtually every game in existence. Instead, wargaming and simulation will be influences for much longer, and RPG-like stuff like "leveling up" or "talent trees" or "XP gain" or "skill points" just won't be there in the same way (it'll be a minor wargame element, mostly). I think we'd see generally more focus on realism. Eventually RPG-like systems will begin to develop, simply out of necessity to abstract certain issues, but they'll take a lot longer to catch on.
So anyway, our AU D&D is going to starting from a very different place.
- Rather than influencing computer games, it's likely to be influenced by them. It may well use simplified versions of systems in them.
- The default way of generating random numbers will likely use a phone, rather than dice, but it will likely allow for dice so people don't have to use phones if they're trying to get away from all that.
- The design may will probably be a lot more coherent, in terms of systems working the same way (i.e. all roll over, all roll under etc.), and be much better-designed balance-wise than D&D was, because computer games will be balanced.
- Races may not be a thing. It may be that the game only has humans. If it has various fantasy creatures, they're unlikely to be the Tolkien ones, because without D&D, they won't be seen as "core" or whatever. So we'd probably see an original set of fantasy creatures. I would bet money that vampires would be among them (vampires will be popular regardless of RPGs - Interview with the Vampire came out in 1976). Robots of some description are quite likely another base race.
- Classes are quite likely to exist, because they evolve very naturally from role distributions in sports and games, and the specializations of characters in TV/movies/books. They won't be the same classes, of course. Fighter won't be called that - indeed I suspect we'd see multiple "fighting man" classes who lacked magical powers, rather than only one.
- Clerics definitely won't exist. They were a bizarre happenstance. And it's unlikely that an "invoke the divine" class will exist at all, given how incredibly rare that is in fantasy fiction. We might well see a Witch-Hunter/Vampire-Hunter-type class which has a sort of holy flare to it, but it'll be a very different kind of holiness.
- Magic is likely to be different. Vance will be long-forgotten. Harry Potter will be pretty recent and popular. As will Avatar and various other things. Spells will thus likely be flashier, and there will be no concept of "you can only use them X times". Instead they'll probably exhaust the caster like they do in most fiction. The actual spells in the game will be very different too - likely leaning lower-powered.
- Adventures will look very different. Dungeons won't have been a thing. So cities and outdoor areas are more likely to be the focus. Thus the exploration and social pillars will likely be better-developed.
