Most influential RPG

[RolRàpid]

Ironsworn and Mystic GM emulator for chat they did to the solo rpg movement

Sure, but I want to leave "Story games" and "Solo games" out of the list, as I thing are a different beast from traditional RPG.

 

[aramis erak]

Lessons learned from a product aren't always about the words. It was a layout nightmare.

It was largely the same mechanics as all other RTG games... there are differences, but the layout was hard to use. Once understood, it supposedly played just fine, and that was far easier to do if one knew the other RTG games - Mekton or CP/CP2020... CF was no help, tho' as it was their oddball.

 

[aramis erak]

Sure, but I want to leave "Story games" and "Solo games" out of the list, as I thing are a different beast from traditional RPG.

Most early solo games were just modules for standard TTRPGs. The rest were built into such modules. Standalone solo rules are a mid 90's thing, not intended for solo but for GM-less Trad Play.

 

[aramis erak]

Out of interest

Which game had the first 'active defence'?

To my knowledge
Traveller 1977 - Evasion gave a penalty to opponenent's hit rolls, allowing moving and slow reloading but no attacks.
RuneQuest - 1978 first rolled active defense

Which game had the first ' unsafe' spell casting?

Not sure - first I encounted was in RQ 3rd, but I think it's also in RQ2. It's just like all other skills - it can fumble.

( I like one of these, but not the other).

I happen to like both to a point.

 

[John R Davis]

I'm gonna discount evasion as an active defence if it's just a modifier. That I can cope with!

 

[GMMichael]

All things considered, to resume it all, my new list is like this:

1. D&D: the first. the one that started it all. Class system with level progression.
2. Gurps: Generic point buy system, classless.
3. Traveller: Career paths, nre atribute aprox. so many innovations.
4. Runequest: Skill system, D100, cults tied to magic.
5. CoC: Sanity rules. Investigation adventure approach, and, of course, mythos!
6. Ghostbusters: First ever dice pool game, metacurrency.
7. Vampire: New way of roleplay.
8. Ars Magica: Versatile magic, troupe stype.
9. Pendragon: Precursor for structure of the play loops, personality traits
10. Sorcerer: first in the indie games era and a new approach in the way of RPG design thinking tied to the players goals.
11. Fate: It came after Fudge (the original system) but it implemented the aspects systems that many games took after it.
12. Apocalypse World: Power by the Apocalypse. 'nough said!
13. D&D 3rd ed.: Introduced the SDR concept that allowed the OSR.
14. Castle and crusades: First hit in the OSR movement.
15. D&D 5th ed: Not the first, but Roll with Advantage/Disadvantage spreading. RPG popularity boost.
16. Mork Borg. OSR next level.

D&D 5th edition is just a rip off of 3rd edition, so that's a bit redundant. D&D 4th edition is single-handedly responsible for the R&D of Modos RPG, so I'd say it belongs in your list.

 

[RolRàpid]

D&D 5th edition is just a rip off of 3rd edition, so that's a bit redundant. D&D 4th edition is single-handedly responsible for the R&D of Modos RPG, so I'd say it belongs in your list.

Sure, but I'm looking for influence not innovation. Advantage/Disadvantage is not invented with 5ed but it surely contributed the most to expand this rule.

 

[GMMichael]

Sure, but I'm looking for influence not innovation. Advantage/Disadvantage is not invented with 5ed but it surely contributed the most to expand this rule.

Hmm. If that's how we're using "influence," then I'd put 5e on the list for inspiring the O.R.C. and Creative Commons pushes.

 

[RolRàpid]

To wrap the thread up I did the list in my YP Channel (Rol Ràpid). Check it out (It's in Catalan, BTW).

https://youtu.be/jZPQa3tD0C4

And an addenda:

https://youtube.com/shorts/MrqhT4P7XZQ?feature=share

 

[zedhatool]

Yeah, it's kinda weird. Talk about the power of branding, I guess? I don't get it.

Because, as this thread attests, it's not really a qualitative thing. Don't get me wrong, I really like D&D. I still play it all the time! But it's not incredibly superior to the competition; I bet everyone in this thread has TTRPGs that they prefer (Dread!!!).

So it does make me very curious as to what makes D&D's influence so perennial, given that its most compelling ideas are decades old.

My guess is that its influence results from the fact that D&D is the biggest game in town and—at least in North America—most people's introduction to the hobby. Lots of TTRPG designers got their start playing D&D, and many of them designed third party content for it as well. It would be surprising if they didn't take something from that experience.

In terms of why D&D is so dominant in the hobby, my guess is that it's because TTRPGs display network externalities, meaning a game is more valuable to consumers the more players it has. D&D has the largest network, which gives it an advantage in keeping the largest network: new consumers entering the hobby want to play an RPG with many players, not something niche. There's almost surely also a "contact" effect where people join their friends' gaming groups and, because D&D has the largest network, the modal TTRPG group plays D&D. Probably, there are lots of different "equilibria" of the market where some other RPG is on top, and it only happens to be D&D because of a first-mover advantage. (For all you game theory nerds, I'm envisioning an n-player repeated stag hunt. In principle, that would mean some sufficiently large shock could lead a bunch of the D&D players to switch to another system, such that a new system ended up on top.)