Most influential RPG

[mamba]

Because its publication directly led to a significant portion of the RPG market in the years and decades after. If that's not influence, then nothing is.

I addressed this a few posts up, it does nothing innovative outside a creative use of the SRD. To me this is about innovation in TTRPG mechanics, otherwise add 3e for having the SRD in the first place

 

[Bagpuss]

I think Dread was influential, not in the fact you saw everyone playing with Jenga towers, but you did see more non-traditional resolution mechanics after it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Hum. It seems to me Into the Odd has a deserved place.

Into the Odd seems cool, but what would you say it's influenced specifically? To me superficially it seems more representative of trends that started before it than influential, but that might just be me.

So I'm curious why you chose L&F specifically. Do you feel there was some threshold passed in the wider gaming community tied to that particular game or at that particular time?

Not Snarf but I would strongly back L&F as well, because we're talking not "who did it first", but what was influential.

And I think it's hard to suggest that stuff like Microlite20 was particularly influential generally, whereas L&F, I strongly suspect that hundreds and hundreds of itch.io RPGs exist primarily because their creators saw L&F and realized they too could create a very rules-lite RPG.

Also I think what was important is that L&F is specific not generic.

I cannot overstate how important this is to inspiration/influence. A lot of people, they look at something like Microlite20, and just see dead rules and don't imagine doing anything with them. Especially a lot of less mechanically-inclined but otherwise very creative and enthusiastic people.

But you look at Lasers & Feelings, and you see this very specific RPG with these very specific vibes (primarily Star Trek but with shades of nuWho and Firefly and Farscape), and you might think "Well, I don't want to do that, but I would like to create my own specific RPG about this genre or setting or vibe (or combination thereof) that I personally care about". And the rules are so simple that you can immediately start thinking about how you'd make up your own rules for your own specific setting/genre. Which just doesn't happen the same way with "generic" rules.

It also helps that it uses a d6, which is ubiquitous, not the nerdy and less available d20.

Either way, if you just look on itch.io, or especially if you looked in the years closer to when L&F came out, you'd see a LOT of one or two sheet RPGs very clearly inspired L&F, but for different vibes/genres.

 

[Cadence]

otherwise add 3e for having the SRD in the first place

I was just wondering if 3e belongs on here for that reason.