Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Ryujin]

I will NOT REST until the supreme cultural influence of H. R. Pufnstuf is finally acknowledged by everyone, everywhere! The time is right! Rise up, my brethren and sistren!

Ah, yes. Those immortal words: Can't do a little 'cause he can't do enough. What a humanitarian.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I will NOT REST until the supreme cultural influence of H. R. Pufnstuf is finally acknowledged by everyone, everywhere! The time is right! Rise up, my brethren and sistren!

 

[Mad_Jack]

--

Live look at me after my first call on the new project.

This... project... doesn't involve time travel or a quantum universe, does it? (Just asking for a friend.)

 

[Scribe]

This... project... doesn't involve time travel or a quantum universe, does it? (Just asking for a friend.)

I wish it did.

 

[trappedslider]

It sounds like the whole rpg discussion could/should be it's own 100+ page thread in the rpg general.

 

[Umbran]

Yeah but you wouldn't have other RPGs if you didn't have D&D. It started the whole TTRPG concept

I don't agree, if only because they were not the first to have had people in a game playing roles.

As I have already noted, people were playing games in which they took on fictional roles for decades before D&D. One of the Marx Brothers references such in his autobiography, even! Arneson and Gygax were the first to sit us down at a table and play in a wargame framework, but they were not the first to have people playing pretend as someone else.

So, yes, we would likely have other RPGs without D&D. They just might look different than what we currently call "table-top role playing games". Maybe they'd come out of the parlor-game/murder-mystery game root. Or maybe someone would come at it from the classic boardgame root - Monopoly, but running around Middle-Earth. Or maybe SCAdians would have come up with an option for their form of play that didn't require hitting each other with sticks. Or maybe someone in Japan would develop a game in which people took roles from anime...

There's lots of options. To say that we "wouldn't have RPGs" without D&D is kind of like saying we wouldn't have airplanes without the Wright Brothers. Gygax and Arneson were great and all, but not such singular geniuses that nobody out of the billions of others on the planet would come up with an idea.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't agree, if only because they were not the first to have had people in a game playing roles.

Yeah but before that you had things like bookshelf mystery games with elements of RP and historical re-enactment, and maybe stuff that was a bit larpy. The blueprint laid down by D&D is what became the hobby. I have not doubt we can keep going back and quibbling precisely over starting point zero (to stick with my music analogy, the way some might point to Black Sabbath's debut as ground zero for metal but others might point to Blue Cheer or others to Led Zepplin I). But I think the impact of D&D is pretty clear on the hobby.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So, yes, we would likely have other RPGs without D&D. They just might look different than what we currently call "table-top role playing games". Maybe they'd come out of the parlor-game/murder-mystery game root. Or maybe someone would come at it from the classic boardgame root - Monopoly, but running around Middle-Earth. Or maybe SCAdians would have come up with an option for their form of play that didn't require hitting each other with sticks. Or maybe someone in Japan would develop a game in which people took roles from anime...

I really dont' think you would. Or at least you wouldn't have the hobby we recognize today. If you look at those old muder mystery games for example, which I recall because my aunt was in to them, they were more like board games. And they were extremely niche. As a hobby D&D created a much more extended community. I think most of the games we recognize as RPGs today, they wouldn't have been made had D&D not been invented and taken off. There certainly might be something akin to it, another hobby. But I don't see that it is guaranteed. Certainly you wouldn't have had CoC, Vampire or Apocalypse World.

 

[Ryujin]

...but they were not the first to have people playing pretend as someone else.

I think that we'd have to give that one to improv theatre, which has been around for centuries. Hell, I bet Shakespeare did improv.

 

[Bedrockgames]

As I have already noted, people were playing games in which they took on fictional roles for decades before D&D. One of the Marx Brothers references such in his autobiography, even! Arneson and Gygax were the first to sit us down at a table and play in a wargame framework, but they were not the first to have people playing pretend as someone else.

People have been playing games where they assume roles for centuries. But that doesn't mean you would have call of Cthulhu without D&D.