D&D General If D&D were created today, what would it look like?

[JEB]

I would think it would look more like a mix of MTG colors and Warhammer Winds of Magic. Just expanded to include magic not see in their base systems. I find that magic splits naturally into 10-15 groups.

Keeping in mind that we wouldn't likely get Magic: The Gathering without D&D, and definitely wouldn't get Warhammer, are there any other likely inspirations for color-based magic? "Black" magic and "white" magic are old traditions, but I dunno about any other color - those all seem like fairly modern innovations, invented as the fantasy genre expanded in the 1970s onward (a development which owed much to D&D).

Game of Thrones TV show.

Fantasy books still exist unless said books are heavily bad&D based the still get printed. TV show still gets made.

As I pointed out upthread, while GRRM doesn't cite D&D as a source for the original A Song of Ice and Fire books, he was a known RPGer and clearly responding to tropes in fantasy literature of the time (much of which was helped along by D&D). Prior to ASOIAF, he was mainly known as an author of SF and horror fiction. It's hard to say whether he crosses over into fantasy fiction without D&D and the bump it gave the fantasy genre.

Monk made it in because of Kung Fu. Look at what's been made in the last decade or two.

Various Roman shows +Rome, Spartacus, Barbarians etc)

Various viking shows. (Vikings, Norsemen, Last Kingdom)

Video games
Assassin's Creed Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla

MCU (more vikings)
All not canceled after 1 or two seasons and/or triple AAA games.

I think the big obvious influence is vikings instead of Kung Fu.

It's interesting to consider a modern fantasy RPG that has a historical basis outside of medieval warfare - Rome and vikings could certainly be part of that. Certainly vikings have been a popular go-to for fantasy since well before D&D.

Throw in the GoT TV show Witcher may not happen but it's popular so gives an indication of what appeals.

I'm skeptical whether or not we'd get The Witcher novels as well - the author's generally denied a D&D or RPG influence, but there still seems to be a lot in them that owes a debt to fantasy tropes popularized by D&D.

 

[JEB]

Ironclad guarantee you'd also see a Star Trek RPG at some point, given that back in that era (pre ST:TNG) Trek still had a loyal following and there was in some cases a fairly deep divide between the ST and SW fanbases.

Oh yeah, once licensed RPGs happen, we definitely get Star Trek. I would bet on it arriving later than the Star Wars RPG in this alternate timeline, though.

That said, just realized that in a sense, Star Trek has "character classes" - command, security/engineering/ops, science/medical. Be kind of funny if Star Wars supplied the tropes for this theoretical first SF-based RPG, but Star Trek supplied the structure...

It might be more heavily influenced by the prequels.

Very true; it might even be created as a tie-in to the prequels! Assuming, of course, that Star Wars stays on schedule with less support from an expanded universe in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

I have to wonder about the monsters. Would they be based more in folklore, with more of an effort to get the folklore right? Or would they decide to make monster elements, like in Pokemon and other similar games, and then mash them together in weird ways. With certain monster elements being weak to or resistant against certain colors of magic...

(Y'know, technically speaking, back in editions before the idea of monster advancement and just upping the Hit Dice of the monster, the orc was the "evolved" form of the goblin, and the ogre was the "evolved" form of the orc...)

As I said before, I'm not sure we get Pokémon, due to the different path RPG-style video games take without D&D in the 1970s. (If we do see a version of Pokémon, it's probably focused much more on collecting than fighting; the designer's stated inspiration was bug-collecting.)

I'd expect folklore to be as much a factor for a later, alternate D&D as it was for Gygax and company in the 1970s - certainly significant, but not much more accurate. (Accuracy is largely a modern concern - look at folklore-based fiction from the 1980s, 1990s, and even 2000s, they're often just as loose. Disney's approach is more typical.)

I could see monster choices also hewing closer to paranormal/cryptozoology stuff, since that was popular on and off in the 1970s through 1990s. Bigfoot and such.

 

[Minigiant]

Keeping in mind that we wouldn't likely get Magic: The Gathering without D&D, and definitely wouldn't get Warhammer, are there any other likely inspirations for color-based magic? "Black" magic and "white" magic are old traditions, but I dunno about any other color - those all seem like fairly modern innovations, invented as the fantasy genre expanded in the 1970s onward (a development which owed much to D&D).

MTG uses totally different tropes. And Warhammer uses different assumptions.
D&D uses a totally different school system and name.

Thinking all or most fantasy would be gone without D&D is silly.
Like you said black and white magic are old traditions. So expanding on other colors would be natural. I could see Red Magic and Blue Magic becoming a thing before Abjuration and Conjuration. Without D&D, colors or elements would be the most likely created grouping based on modern thought.

 

[JEB]

Thinking all or most fantasy would be gone without D&D is silly.

Anything that relied on tropes not popularized by D&D would still be around, sure. But an awful lot of fantasy fiction from the late 1970s onward was relying on D&D's tropes, or responding to D&D's tropes, or at least capitalizing on the audience D&D helped draw to the genre. So if any particular piece of fantasy fiction post-1974 seems like it could owe its existence to D&D, it probably shouldn't be considered as a primary likely source for this alternate-universe version. You have to focus your attention on fantasy fiction that is unlike D&D.

This is also why SF, and particularly Star Wars/Star Trek, are a lot more likely sources for the first RPG in this alternate timeline. Which is going to bring a different set of baseline tropes to the gameplay and other concepts.

Like you said black and white magic are old traditions. So expanding on other colors would be natural. I could see Red Magic and Blue Magic becoming a thing before Abjuration and Conjuration. Without D&D, colors or elements would be the most likely created grouping based on modern thought.

But I do agree here, the best-known categorization system for magic outside of D&D is black vs. white, so other colors are a logical extrapolation. I was just wondering if there's any particular novel series or such that was the first to popularize "color" magic that didn't also owe a debt to D&D concepts.

That said, it also occurs to me that Tolkien even had wizards of grey, brown, and blue. So that might be enough right there. Kind of interesting, then, that Gygax DIDN'T have colors for his wizards. (Though outside of Gandalf, I guess you have to be more familiar with Tolkien than most to know about the brown and blue wizards, and I doubt Gygax dug that deep.)

 

[Zardnaar]

Alternative time line. Star Wars renaissance still happens via Zahn novels.

He may not get the RPG materials as source material so done things from there might disappear.

But yeah Sci fi, Star Wars or video games more likely to spawn an RPG imho. When not sure but probably by the late 80s at the latest.

MtG maybe not in it's current form.

 

[JEB]

Alternative time line. Star Wars renaissance still happens via Zahn novels.

He may not get the RPG materials as source material so done things from there might disappear.

But yeah Sci fi, Star Wars or video games more likely to spawn an RPG imho. When not sure but probably by the late 80s at the latest.

MtG maybe not in it's current form.

True, Zahn might be enough to carry Star Wars, even without the RPG. The details might be different but the gist is probably there.

M:TG is pretty unlikely, though. Richard Garfield created the first ideas that led to M:TG as a response to things he didn't like about D&D, and has specifically cited D&D as a major influence. The game also drew a lot of its early support from D&D players (a community which had existed for almost 20 years by that point). And its big premiere was at Gen Con, which, if it exists at all by the 1990s in this timeline, likely remained small and local without TSR.

I could see Richard Garfield designing some other hit card game, of course, maybe something more inspired by Cosmic Encounter (the other big influence on M:TG he cited).

 

[Zardnaar]

True, Zahn might be enough to carry Star Wars, even without the RPG. The details might be different but the gist is probably there.

M:TG is pretty unlikely, though. Richard Garfield created the first ideas that led to M:TG as a response to things he didn't like about D&D, and has specifically cited D&D as a major influence. The game also drew a lot of its early support from D&D players (a community which had existed for almost 20 years by that point). And its big premiere was at Gen Con, which, if it exists at all by the 1990s in this timeline, likely remained small and local without TSR.

I could see Richard Garfield designing some other hit card game, of course, maybe something more inspired by Cosmic Encounter (the other big influence on M:TG he cited).

Yeah it's debateable if MtG would even exist without D&D for the reasons you stated.

Star Wars loses a few ships and names mentioned in the novels. Strike Cruisers, Star Galleons, VictoryvStarvDestroyerscand interdictor cruisers. Maybe Coruscant.

Excluding them doesn't dramatically change the Thrawn Trilogy.

Assuming RPGs aren't invented by 87 or SWD6 isn't invented.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Isn't that the point of Dungeon Crawl Classics?

 

[Aldarc]

As an aside, in one way, I think the biggest failure of Arcana Evolved was that it failed to make it clear that it was meant to coexist alongside the PHB, not to completely replace it. I remember people complaining there was no rogue-equivalent class in AE, only for Monty Cook to say that the rogue is already in the PHB so he didn't need to reinvent it. . .which many or most AE players never really thought they could just pick things from both books, that it was a one-or-the-other situation.

Jein. I always think that AU/AE was meant to mostly stand on its own, because it was a world and game built around the tropes of the setting. It could be played alongside the PHB classes, though the AE classes were closer in power parity with the later Pathfinder 1 versions. Even then, AE provided a tremendous amount of flexibility to casters, and it's basically the closest precursor we have to 5e casting, though without a similar degree of spell-weaving, templates, descriptors, etc.

There were definitely rogue-equivalent classes in AE, but Cook looked broadly at why people were playing particular classes and he designed the AU/AE classes around playstyles: e.g., the healer (the Greenbond), the magic master (Magister), the heavy weapon/armor tank (the Warmain), the gish (the Swordmage), etc. In the case of the rogue, it was effectively split into two classes: the skill/proficiency-monkey (the Akashic) and the swashbuckler/light fighter (the Unfettered).

For the record, I also prefer the flavor of AE's monk. It's less rooted in notions of "ki," but, instead, in the power of making and fulfilling oaths: more specifically, it was inspired directly by the Haruchai of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

 

[Zardnaar]

Some more thoughts. Probably not Vancian but spell points or Mana. For the spellcasting classes.

Alignment nyet. Some sort of morality bar with mechanical effects.

As for classes I think most won't be there in current form.

I think the following would make it.

1. Some sort of warrior may not be called fighter.
2. Maybe some sort of knight.
3. Some sort of Spellcaster or spell casters. Not sure if they would make a point of difference between divine/arcane.
4. Maybe some sort of Expert type class.

Game might have 6 classes or so, multiclassing probably doesn't exist as such but the base classes are a mixture of warrior/expert/spellcaster.

The following classes wouldn't exist.

Bard
Druid
Monk
Sorcerer (maybe as a name not in current form).
Warlock (maybe as a name).

An approximate version of Paladin and Cleric might make it in. Warrior who casts spells, priest that casts spells.

Ranger probably makes it in maybe not by that name. Probably the Warrior/Expert hybrid. May or may not cast spells.

Classes.

Warrior
Wizard/Mage/Sorcerer or whatever
Expert

Hybrid classes

Warrior/Expert (Ranger)
Warrior/Spellcaster (Paladin,Cleric)
Spellcaster/Expert

Would probably be fairly simple like OD&D probably very different mechanically.