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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8165366" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, I think it probably did 'predominate', and I'd even venture to say it was pretty much expected play in D&D, but there were games like Traveler (which was the 2nd most prevalent RPG at that time AFAIK) where it was at least LESS so. There were also other games C. the early 80's which didn't seem to contemplate an authoritarian GM who was the source of all fiction, though often these concepts were not well-articulated in games of that era. Still, I recall that Gangster! (very narrow focus of play, obviously) was rather like that. In fact its resolution systems were primitive, but in a lot of ways it was a story game, or could be played that way. In fact Boot Hill has some of the same sort of vibe, being so niche that every genre-relevant activity any player would engage in is practically on the table, and what else is there to do after the first 3 shootouts EXCEPT 'character agenda'? Toon I think is the prize of this era, as basically the whole game is just "do whacky stuff" and your character is just expected to be some sort of crazy invention that breaks the whole game as much as possible. Things like "I relentlessly pursue my love interest (or carrots for that matter)" is clearly the prime modus of the whole game. Adventures, as such being meaningless (PCs cannot die, and the milieu is a sort of timeless 'neverland' where nothing that happens really 'sticks'). Still, the awareness of different paradigms for an RPG was pretty nascent at the time, since the whole concept of an RPG itself was just barely standing up out of its primal origins in Kriege Spiel at the time.</blockquote>

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