First Generation Roleplay

[Melan]

Both of these - in addition to a spirit of experimentation, wide-eyed wonder and the commitment to creativity... Often creative insanity, as in the case of Arduin and some Judges Guild releases.

 

[Altalazar]

Nostalgia. And it was my introduction to gaming, which I have greatly enjoyed in the years since. Now, I find it hard to imagine going back and playing so rules light (and with such unstructured, and sometimes illogical, rules). But I still had a great deal of fun. Ultimately, the good times and fun I had when I played 1E are what I enjoyed, not any particular aspect of the system.

 

[RFisher]

Most early roleplaying games were uneasy hybrids of miniature war games and improvisational acting.

I don't know. The more I read about it, the more it seems not-so-uneasy. People were roleplaying when playing wargames before Braunstiens or Blackmoor.

I don't quite have the resume of a grognard, but that definately fits with my wargaming experience.

Light rules or Tactical combat

(I'm going to try to avoid the word "tactical", since I don't think I agree with the way it is being used here.)

Early roleplaying games often did not have complex combat systems. Despite both being published wargame designers, both EGG & MWM included only minimalist combat systems in their earliest RPGs. (Yeah, EGG wrote to use Chainmail, but he never did.) (& once you strip out everything that you don't use in man-to-man, Chainmail ain't so rules heavy either.)

In fact, TFT was a direct reaction to the fact that many people found D&D combat too minimalistic.

Before D&D, though, it is really hard to find a skirmish level wargame, & even then, it is rarely much more complex than D&D. Even today, most wargames operate on a much higher level of abstraction, even if they are complex.

Which is natural, since RPGs tend to require a 1:1 system. (Higher level systems combat systems may be useful in RPGs, but you'll be hard pressed to find one without skirmish level combat rules.) The point is that early RPGs--in general--really didn't inherit complex combat rules from wargames.

Hmm...that's probably not a very good expression of my thoughts on this topic, but it's the best I can do at the moment...

 

[Zzyzx]

I was ten years old, and the red box let me pretend to be an elf doing wonderful things.

We hardly used any rules at all, aside from abilty scores, THAC0 and such character-necessary things. It was the fact that we had a medium to use our imaginations that made D&D special.

When he get's older I'll ask my 5 year old. He is DMing me through a "D&D" campaign now that only has two rules: 1-10 on d20 is miss, 11-20 is hit, and all damage is 1d6. Everything else is up to the storyteller DM to create. And when the balloon monster pops on the minotaur's horn, it is like I was ten again.