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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Harzel" data-source="post: 7268860" data-attributes="member: 6857506">With respect, this seems a bit revisionist (though I concede that is subject to both judgement and personal experience with preMMO RPGs).  Certainly one can identify antecedents of many concepts in preMMO RPGs - issues such as monster target choice, precursor concepts such as the quantification of combat damage and the quantification of combat time, and fuzzy/partial/latent-but-unidentified concepts such as the vague descriptions of combat roles in the 1e class descriptions.  But for me (and maybe this comes down to a matter of definitions or terminology) the acid test for whether a concept exists is whether there is a name for it.  And the crystallization of a concept involved in putting a name to it is a significant step that I think you are underplaying.  I would argue that DPS, aggro, and MMO-style combat roles are very much MMO concepts, and that their incorporation into TTRPGs represents an influence that is notably distinct from their antecedents in preMMO RPGs.The case of aggro seems to me to be particularly clear in this regard: not only did MMOs identify it as a 'thing', they also added mechanics to make controlling it a sophisticated part of player tactics.I didn't play anything between 1e and 5e, but from my sketchy knowledge it does seem that 5e has pulled back from a lot of the MMO influence in 4e.  (In fact when I first saw 5e, I naively thought, "Gee, look at that.  Not all that much has changed.")  Whether what remains should be termed incidental is probably somewhat subjective, but to return to your example, I don't think we'd have Goading Attack or Compelled Duel without MMO taunts.</blockquote>

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