REAL Old Grognards: Need Help!

[Sorrowdusk]

Okay, I have really been wondering about this.

My father has never played D&D or any of that, but around '68 when he was in school (20 years old) he says he can remember "Dungeons & Dragons" or "something like it" and in his words he could recall "white boys getting whole houses fulla people playing that game" (he also mentions at about that time LoTR was popular, though he never read it.) he says after I explained to him that D&D wasnt published until '74. Now I thought he might be jumbling memories, but he says he cant be because was out of school and wasnt living in Detroit by that time.


So that said,what might he have seen about this time? While EGG and Dave Arneson certainly didnt invent role-playing, people had been doing that (at least informally) as long as kids have been playing cops 'n robbers, but I understood D&D to be the first commercially available Roleplaying product.


He never got into it though (whatever it was) because in his words "it just blew my high, I never really got into WTF they were always talking about." Hm, you'd think Elves and stuff would mesh with that.

 

[Mark CMG]

20 years old in 68? Where was he going to college?

Ask him to read these -

http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/104/braunstein-the-roots-of-roleplaying-games/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wesely

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/318105-photo-very-first-braunstein-almost.html

 

[howandwhy99]

Tolkien popularity boomed in the mid-60s, but no one was playing role playing games at that point. Neither do i think Braunstein is the answer here.

My guess is he is either really mixing up his memories with a return visit to Detroit or he is thinking about wargames and most specifically Chainmail. Fantasy wargaming was new to the scene in '68 and Gygax and that bunch were ahead of the curve on that one too.

Really massive crowds for D&D or any RPG really didn't start until the mid-70s.

 

[Zelligars Apprentice]

He could also be thinking about a fantasy-themed board game. I know SPI and Avalon Hill published several. I don't know the timing. When was the first War of the Ring board game published?

 

[Plane Sailing]

He could also be thinking about a fantasy-themed board game. I know SPI and Avalon Hill published several. I don't know the timing. When was the first War of the Ring board game published?

They were published after 1974

 

[Plane Sailing]

So that said,what might he have seen about this time? While EGG and Dave Arneson certainly didnt invent role-playing, people had been doing that (at least informally) as long as kids have been playing cops 'n robbers, but I understood D&D to be the first commercially available Roleplaying product.

D&D was pretty much the first commercially available roleplaying product.

There were some fantasy wargames which were played during that timescale, but they were few and far between and normally involved 'house rules' at the particular wargames club. I was involved in that scene when D&D first appeared, and found naturally fertile ground amongst us.

I'm afraid that the most likely explanation is that your dad has got some memories muddled up, I'm afraid.

Cheers

 

[Mark CMG]

Tolkien popularity boomed in the mid-60s, but no one was playing role playing games at that point. Neither do i think Braunstein is the answer here.

Me, either, but it helps to give a more complete sense of the timing of the advent of RPGs, since he is already familiar with 1974 as a pertinent date. However, if the father was in college in MN or WI, he might have been in the vacinity of some pre-release D&D playing or Chainmail wargaming at someone's house prior to 74 which might coincide with his college days if he was there through the early Seventies.

 

[Silver Moon]

Plane Sailing probably hit it right, he's probably thinking of some miniatures wargaming.

 

[grodog]

In addition to the fantasy gaming clubs like the Castles & Crusades Society, IFW, and I'm sure many others in the late '60s, there were actually earlier forms of what I think of as "proto-role-playing" going on prior to the publication of D&D too:

• modern wargaming rules go back to HG Wells' _Little Wars_ and the German traditions of Kriegspiel dating back to the early 1800s (but your father probably wasn't around then, eh? )
• Fritz Leiber and Harry Fisher created Lankhmar and with it Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and the World of Nehwon as a game in 1937 (and it naturally later became a vehicle for gaming and fiction, with TSR's Lankhmar boardgame in 1976)
• Fletcher Pratt's naval warfare rules were first published in 1940, and were in widespread use by the Navy by the 1950s
• By the 1950s, Lin Carter was an active participant in early forms of wargaming and in Diplomacy fantasy variants based on Howard's creations, and likely Tolkien's too, and he later wrote Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age for FGU in 1975 (a set of fantasy miniatures rules for Conan's world); and note the fiction focus in these early wargames authors: all were SF/F authors!
• MAR Barker had already created his Tekumel world, so when D&D launched it was turned into a vehicle for EPT to be published (in 1975), but EPT predates D&D by at least a decade if not longer

Gary and Jeff Perren first wrote Chainmail in 1968, although Guidon didn't publish it for 2-3 years until 1971, so it's certainly possible if he was in the Twin Cities/Lake Geneva/Chicago corridor, that he could have seen early forms of fantasy wargaming with miniatures as early as 1965. And D&D was also being rushed into print in 1974, at least in part to be the first true RPG system published because so many other folks were latched onto the fantasy miniatures/proto-role-playing concepts.

See also Wargaming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and History of role-playing games - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for some more worthwhile context to see if any of that rings bells for your father. Knowing where/when he was in college might help to pinpoint better the possible accuracy of his recollections, too.

 

[Lanefan]

My father has never played D&D or any of that, but around '68 when he was in school (20 years old) he says he can remember "Dungeons & Dragons" or "something like it" and in his words he could recall "white boys getting whole houses fulla people playing that game" (he also mentions at about that time LoTR was popular, though he never read it.) he says after I explained to him that D&D wasnt published until '74. Now I thought he might be jumbling memories, but he says he cant be because was out of school and wasnt living in Detroit by that time.

I'd say he's mixed up...but then I read "Detroit" and have second thoughts; because what would later become D&D was slowly coalescing - maybe not as early as '68, but during the early '70s - out of the play of some groups both there and at Lake Geneva. I think.

What reminds me of this is a site (the name of which I now forget) I saw once via a link from a thread here that had a bunch of letters and game logs from a very early D&D-like campaign that I think was played in Detroit.

Lan-"but I too could be mixed up"-efan