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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ralif Redhammer" data-source="post: 8866129" data-attributes="member: 30438">I do suspect that some of Gary's stated stance on Tolkien's influence changed from before and after Tolkien Enterprises sued TSR. And while he said "I don't understand why anyone would play anything other than a human fighting man," his most famous character was a magic-user (Mordenkainen).It's also hard to say how much D&D being first would've still counted against other competitors. Was being able to play non-humans an integral part of the special sauce? Quite likely, yes, but but would their absence have been enough to turn the tide against all the other ingredients? That I am not so sure on. Plenty of other early RPGs only provided options for playing humans. I suspect that D&D sans non-humans would've still be a success, and that momentum would've made for an insurmountable lead. It wasn't until the early 90s when another RPG dethroned D&D's #1 RPG slot, and it wasn't a fantasy RPG that did it (Vampire: The Masquerade).One thing that my group had going back then, that appears to be fairly common amongst other gaming groups of the time, is that players had multiple characters that they would cycle through for each adventure, depending on both mood and who was still recovering from the last adventure. In the one campaign I ran back then that actually got high enough to where people started encountering level limits, my recollection is that people just started playing those characters less and less.I'm not defending level limits, however. The current solution of giving humans stuff rather than taking away from non-humans is certainly preferable to me.</blockquote>

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