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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 9423896" data-attributes="member: 177">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&amp;D.&nbsp; One of the Marx Brothers references such in his autobiography, even!&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; So, yes, we would likely have other RPGs without D&amp;D.&nbsp; They just might look different than what we currently call &quot;table-top role playing games&quot;.&nbsp; Maybe they'd come out of the parlor-game/murder-mystery game root.&nbsp; Or maybe someone would come at it from the classic boardgame root - Monopoly, but running around Middle-Earth.&nbsp; Or maybe SCAdians would have come up with an option for their form of play that didn't require hitting each other with sticks.&nbsp; Or maybe someone in Japan would develop a game in which people took roles from anime...&nbsp; There's lots of options.&nbsp; To say that we &quot;wouldn't have RPGs&quot; without D&amp;D is kind of like saying we wouldn't have airplanes without the Wright Brothers.&nbsp; 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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 9423896, member: 177"] I don't agree, if only because they [I]were not the first[/I] 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 [I]for decades[/I] 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 [I]nobody[/I] out of the [I]billions of others on the planet[/I] would come up with an idea. [/QUOTE]

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