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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Enrahim2" data-source="post: 8991938" data-attributes="member: 7039850">It is hardly a D&D evolution, rather the stagnant core principle. Knowing then history is useful for understanding the role. D&D didnt arise from wargames in general, it arose from a very particular branch of wargaming based on the free kriegspiel philosophy. The first Kriegspeil (a german "military grade" war simulation games) was based upon heavily statistical based rules that tried to cover as many possible scenarios as realistically as possible. It still required a judge to handle fog of war effects. "Free krigspeil" was a counter reaction to this in the late 1800s under the idea that an experienced judge would give more realistic judgements than the rules - and hence lead to more accurate simulation (important for real life military training and predictions).So the judge had to be the one with all the information, responsible to convey it as approperiate to the relevant players due to the fog of war role. With the free philosophy they also had to be the authority of outcomes. However there were usually other players playing all sides of the conflict. Moreover the work of generating scenarios could easily be done by someone not part of the game at all.I can not find when the important change of folding the role of playing the oposition into the judges responsibilities, but it seem like it might have happened somewhere between the first braunstein game (1969) and the first blackmoor game (1971). In similar timeframe the critical change of going from standalone games to connected scenarios campaigns seemed to happen. This added the requirement for someone to figure out what would be a suitable follow up scenario depending on the outcome of the previous scenario. That was again not something easily ofloaded to external scenario makers, and made sense to belong to the judge as it could be considered a judgement of outcome (per the free kriegspeil mentality)Now with this as base you got the original D&D, with its extreme concentration of power and responsibility placed on one participant. And while by all acounts Arneson and Gygax could shulder this, it soon became aparent that D&D had apeal beyond the circles having access to judges that qualified for the free kriegspiel assumptions for being better than rules. The further evolution of D&D hence has been characterised by trying to backpedal toward original kriegspeil by adding optional(?) rules on top. That way a qualified judge can disregard those rules and reap the full benefit if the original free kriegspeil philosophy based design, while it is still accessible to those needing more aid. A radical departure from the formula from what I can see typically lead to games that just cannot be played the way the original D&D games was played.</blockquote>

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