Richard Garfield vs. Gary Gygax

[John Q. Mayhem]

"great head" in klingon for the trekkies out there,

 

[Henry]

Yeah... I'll bite!

I invoke the almighty name of Bill Gates as proof of your statement. Did he actually code MSDOS? Depends on who you ask.

In Memory of Dr. Gary A. Kildall

All of the products above would not have been possible without the valiant and brilliant work of the founder of Digital Research, the late Dr. Gary A. Kildall. On July 11, 1994, Gary Kildall passed away following a blow to his head at the Franklin Street Bar & Grill in Monterey, California on July 8, 1994. At the time of his death, Gary was 52. He was born in 1942, a few years before the first electronic computer even existed, and his software made possible PC computing as we know it at the turn of the 20th century. He is survived by a son. Scott, and a daughter, Kristin, as well as his former wife, Dorothy Kildall, with whom Gary co-founded Digital Research, Inc. in 1974.

Gary created the first Operating System for the microprocessor, CP/M. The most advanced current version of CP/M in 1999 is IMS Ltd. REAL/32. CP/M also serves as the basis of all modern DOS versions including the outstanding Caldera DR DOS and other derivitaves including PC-DOS from IBM, and MS-DOS from Microsoft, whose position in the computer industry is based on its unauthorized 1981 "cloning"of Dr. Gary Kildall's Digital Research CP/M, which gave birth to the IBM PC standard upon which Microsoft MS-DOS, Windows CE, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 00 (now 2000, formerly NT) are based today.

Elsewhere, it is said that MS-DOS is directly based off of a clone of QDOS, the "Quick & Dirty Operating System." There is a clearly defined pedigree - Bill Gates just used what was available to him to spectacular effect. He WAS an actual coder, in his day, but most of DOS's groundwork had already been laid.

 

[Henry]

I've heard this a lot. And I've always wondered... Who? What game? Other than D&D, what classic RPG's were produced in the 70's? Which one was going to be published right on the heels of D&D independant of D&D's creation?

...

Traveller (1977): Like C&S, does this get published (by the great wargaming company GDW, no less) if D&D hadn't already happened and become quite popular?

It is of course a "what if" game still, but Marc Miller (the Traveler god) and friends of his from back in the day have said that the basis of Traveller's system was laid down before they had even heard of D&D. Now, one could say that D&D evolution is traced as early as Chainmail by Gygax and Perren as early as 1969, but it was still a wargame at the time, and Miller did not base his game off of even Chainmail, if I understand it correctly. So the strongest link of "parallel development" may be the Traveller game. And if it were the first instead of D&D, the market would look VERY different that it does today. For one thing, it might not have been anywhere nearly as popular - sci-fi games have NEVER sold as well as fantasy, for various reasons of marketing and psychology which I've never understood.

 

[The_Gneech]

Have you ever "played" Tunnels & Trolls? I thank God that RPG's didn't stray too much from the D&D mechanic and veer toward the T&T mechanic. For the uninitiated during combat you get a total dice pool with dice contiributed by every character in the party and roll that against one dice pool for the other side. Whichever side loses has hit points deducted from ALL members of the losing side. Yeah... if you think D&D has an abstact combat system then you ain't seen nothin yet.

Yeah, but T&T had a boatload of solo adventures, and when you loved gaming but had no gaming group, it was a godsend!

Plus it was illustrated by Liz Danforth, who rules, and written by Mike Stackpole, who also rules.

And as a kick-in-the-door dungeon crawling system, I actually think it worked better than early D&D.

My love of T&T have no limit!

-The Gneech

 

[Particle_Man]

I think Gary is more well-known because he stays involved, and he is a cool guy. 2 cases in point:

a) I asked on one of the "Ask Gary Gygax" thread a very obscure question ("Why were monks prohibited from using flaming oil in 1st ed AD&D?"). He gave me a satisfactory answer ("Game balance, not any historical reason"). This is in reference to a minor minor part of the game he developed over 20 years ago! Gary stays involved!

b) I once, as an April Fool's joke, started a rumour on ENworld that Gygax was dead (this was well before his stroke, by the way. I wouldn't think of starting such a rumour now). Some (er, a few? ) people got the joke, others (er, a lot? ) jumped on my head. Gary did NOT jump on my head. He was cool about it. In fact, that was how I got my first post from Gary. Gary is cool!

p.s. to the latter. I have occasionally heard this rumour start up again, elsewhere on the internet (cue me cringing "was that based off of my joke? Nah, that was years ago. But what if..."). Assuming no parallel development (as per this thread?) it seems that an internet rumour, like internet porn, never, ever, goes away.

 

[woodelf]

Have you ever "played" Tunnels & Trolls? I thank God that RPG's didn't stray too much from the D&D mechanic and veer toward the T&T mechanic. For the uninitiated during combat you get a total dice pool with dice contiributed by every character in the party and roll that against one dice pool for the other side. Whichever side loses has hit points deducted from ALL members of the losing side. Yeah... if you think D&D has an abstact combat system then you ain't seen nothin yet.

Well, first of all, my complaints with D&D combat are not that it's too abstract but that it's too complex.

But that's neither here nor there--my point is not that it's bad that all RPGs are like D&D, but that it's bad that all RPGs are alike. Tunnels & Trolls is still much closer to D&D (of any iteration) than The Left Hand of Darkness is to The Wizard of Oz. While RPGs have done a passable job of exploring a variety of settings and genres, and a slightly-less-effective job of exploringa variety of play styles, they are mechanically still almost all interchangeable. Donjon, Dust Devils, Universalis (all of which use basically the same model), Everway, our own Four Colors al Fresco, Over the Edge, Psychosis, and just a few others really are different at a mechanical level, not just a new range for the numbers or a different breakdown of the same sorts of stats. [yes, i'm forgetting a whole bunch, and probably don't know about a few more, but they're still overshadowed by the vast hordes of most RPGs.]

A secondary point is wondering what RPGs would look like if they were similarly homogenous, but based on a different model--what if Everway or Over the Edge had been the first RPG?

 

[woodelf]

I've heard this a lot. And I've always wondered... Who? What game? Other than D&D, what classic RPG's were produced in the 70's? Which one was going to be published right on the heels of D&D independant of D&D's creation?

Let's see, we've got:

Empire of the Petal Throne (1975): came after D&D, was mechanically based on D&D, and was produced by G.G.'s company, TSR.

Chivalry & Sorcery (1977): came out a full 4 years after D&D was first published. Is there any chance that the impetus for its publication might have had a little something to do with D&D's popularity?

Runequest (1978): now a full 5 years after D&D's first publication, with BRP rules with a few similarities to D&D (attributes, some with the same name, ranging from 3-18, for example).

[snip]

With all due respect to the creators of the above games, they would not have have been published when they were published if D&D hadn't already happened.

That's beside the point. The question isn't if they would've been published when they were, or even if those particular games would've been published at all. The question is would an RPG of some sort have been published even if D&D had never existed? I think the answer is quite clearly "yes", and, furthermore, think it probably would've happened not much later than it did. I was unable to find a source right now to document it, but i also have vague recollection of reading about a fourth group (someone other than those involved with Stafford or Barker or Arneson/Wesely/etc.) commenting that they'd basically come up with the RPG right about the same time as D&D was invented, but before D&D had actually made it to their neck of the woods. Furthermore, if Arneson hadn't known Gygax, it's very possible that he would've published his RPG rules on his own, or with a different collaborator.

I think it's telling that Avalon Hill, the dominant gaming company of the time, refused to publish D&D (as did everyone else it was offered to), and was subsequently unable to ever develope their own RPG, eventually buying Runequest from Chaosium. And #2, SPI, wasn't able to come up with their own RPG, Dragonquest, until seven years after D&D came out. This doesn't indicate that G.G. and D.A. were a couple guys following the crest of a trend. This indicates to me, some pretty radical thought. I think it's apparent from reading the initial D&D rules, the subsequent Supplements, and the early issues of S&T and TD, that G.G., et al. were still coming to grips with their creation and realizing exactly what they had through 1976 or so.

Agreed. In fact, one of the quotes i have below basically says that even D&D wasn't "really" an RPG at first.

Also, don't forget that part of why no one came out with their own RPGs right away was that they were too busy playing and writing for D&D. They had no need of their own RPGs, in a certain sense.

And even if I'm wrong... There's a reason we celebrate Columbus day and not John Cabot day. There's a reason why we give the gold medal to the guy that finishes first. There's a reason we know who Henry Ford is, but not the second guy to build an assembly line, etc. I'm sure someone else would have eventually invented the light bulb; I'm just glad that Edison did it when he did it. Ditto Gygax and Arneson creating the RPG.

Yes, we celebrate Columbus Day because we have conveniently forgotten about the prior discoverers. History is full of examples of the guy who made it popular or well-known getting the credit over the guy who created/discovered it. And of people simultaneously inventing the same thing, but only one getting credit (Bell, frex). The fact that Gygax is generally thought of as the [co-]author of the first RPG doesn't mean that (1) it's true and (2) no one else would've done it if he hadn't.

-----
I was probably unclear. Let's take the two i know the most about: Glorantha and Tekumel. Greg Stafford was well on the way towards coming up with the concept of an RPG. He had been developing his world of Glorantha in ways that probably would've evolved into an RPG even without the example of D&D. Similarly, M.A.R. Barker was engaging in proto-RPing with Tekumel before he heard of D&D. He, too, would probably have invented RPGs on his own, even if D&D had never existed. (Though, in his case, i suspect it would've become an academic curiosity, rather than a commercial game.) Of course, we'll never know, because D&D came along, and they knew about it and used it as their example. But those are just two groups that were as close to an RPG by the time they heard about D&D as Gygax, Arneson, et al, were to an RPG when Chainmail was published. So, take D&D out of the timeline and allow them to develop un-influenced, and i think we'd get to the RPG, too.

Some citations, from people who are more knowledgeable than i:
"Where We've Been, Where We're Going", Greg Porter, Inter*Action, issue 1, 1994:

Generation 0 Freeform, rule-less role-playing....The latter end of this generation includes such proto-rpg campaigns that were going on in the late 60s in Britain and the U.S. (for example, Tony Bath's Hyborean Campaign, as chronicled in the various issues of Slingshot from that time).

"Role-Playing Games", Andrew Rilstone, Inter*Action, issue 1, 1994:

There is evidence of a shadowy, pre-D&D history of role-playing games. Prof. M.A.R. Barker was using gameplay (albeit of a more traditional wargaming type) to develop his Tekumel world before he encountered D&D. Greg Stafford, having despaired of seeing his fantasy fiction published, conceived of a board wargame, White Bear and Red Moon as a means of exploring his personal world, Glorantha.
If one wishes to look further back then such diverse elemest as...some of the more deranged pieces of experimental literature in the 50s and 60s and some types of charades and parlour games have all been seen as precursors to role-playing games. The writers of role-playing products, are, for some reason, particularly keen to claim that their games are a direct descendant of the imaginative 'lets pretend' games that virtually all children play.
It is debatable whether Gygax and Arneson intended D&D to be a role-playing game in any modern sense. Gary Gygax is markedly hostile to modern developments in interactive narrative, although he has also, incredibly, claimed that he does not perceive much difference between D&D and current products. Certainly, early D&D did not encourage the development of character and plot that are now so central to role-playing games. My own feeling is that Gygax designed D&D to be a personalized, tactical-level miniatures wargame, using the now-familiar setting of teh 'dungeon' as its battlefield. As players began to take an interest in their characters as more than painted playing pieces, something resembling 'role-playing' as we would understand it came into being.

Heroic Worlds, Lawrence Schick, 1991:

By 1970, Dave Wesely and his compatriots had achieved the following innovations:

• If the players have varying goals, or are going to act together rather than against one another, a game needs a referee to manage their opponents, describe their environment, and make rules decisions.
• If each player has one character figure, that figure can represent the player.
• Characters can be used over and over again, and individual game sessions can be linked together into a continuing campaign that tells a story over time.
• If the setting isn't tied down to one specific place, then the characters can go anywhere and do anything, which implies that they can do a lot more than just fight other figures. With this final innovation, true role-playing was born.

The Origin of Dungeons & Dragons: Over the long term, Dave Arneson was the most dedicated of the Twin Cities referees. He had run a number of historical campaigns, including games set in the Wild West and Napoleonic Europe. By 1971 he was ready for something new, and his thoughts turned to heroic fantasy. He devised the mythical medieval barony of Blackmoor and informed his players that they had been hurled into the distant past where monsters roamed and magic worked.
...
These characters were not just static collections of statistics--they developed their combat and magic skills by battling and defeating their fantastic enemies. The more foes they defeated, the greater their abilities became--and thus Arneson introduced the concept of character improvement.

The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible, 2nd Edition, Sean Patrick Fannon, 1999:

In 1967, Wesely created a battle scenario centered arou]d a town called Braunstein....However, Wesely had some very interesting ideas that he was trying out taht particular night, ideas based on his studies and research. Rather than assign the usual forces..., he conceived a sort of "pre-game" scenario in which each of teh players would assume the role of various people involved in the situation.
...
Technically, it was still a miniatures wargame,...They were not supposed to be able to actually do anything unless their figure had been properly moved to a given location.
However, two things worked against this principle....
Second, Wesely had not counted on the imagination and enthusiasm of his players. They were almost immediately enchanted with the idea of assuming a single role with special and secret goals. Within minutes of the game's start (in fact, even before it got officially underway, i am given to understand), players were off in various corners of teh house conspiring and discussing with one another.
When Wesely got wind of what was happening, he tried to reign it in. People would come and ask him things out of turn; when he asked how it was the University student was in communication with th advance french scout (since his miniature was still in town), the player shrugged and said "let's pretend that i swam the rever and got out there, OK?" Wesely, trying to ensure everyone was having a good time, endeavored to acquiesce as much as possible.
...
Thus ended what was probably the world's first actual roleplaying game.

The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible, 2nd Edition, Sean Patrick Fannon, 1999:

In 1970, Arneson developed a game idea based on him and his friends disappearing in the mountains and reappearing in a fantasy realm called Blackmoor. Though the idea fascinated his friends, there wer some stumbling blocks that hindered them.
For one thing, there weren't many good rules for medieval combat....Arneson Pretty much made everything up as he went, and it seemed that his rulings lacked a great deal in consistency. This eventually drove his players nuts, who insisted on playing by more concrete and sinsible rules. Not really being a hard-core rules designer, arneson decided to look into other possibilities....
This is where Gygax re-enters the picture. As stated, he had been working with Perren on the Chainmail rules, and he had shared those rules with Arneson. Arneson then adopted various mechanics and matrices from the Chainmail system to improve his game.
...
"So where did this dungeon business come from?"
Interesting question, and one with an interesting answer. On what was apparently a lark, Arneson decided to set one game around the idea of the heroes being asked by the Elf King to rescue his daughter. She was being held beneath the abandoned Blackmoor castle in what would legitimately be called a dungeon....
Yet another "Dave" in thegroup, this one named Dave Meggary, was utterly enchanted with the concept....
Why mas Meggary so enchanted? Because the structure of the adventure had introduced a whole new dimension to their miniatures battles....
Right after this, the three "Daves" (Arneson, Meggary, and Wesely) sat down to look at what they had done. Meggary's revelation had opened their collective eyes--and they knew then that they had something beyond a mere extrapolation from the age-old wargame.
They had a whole new type of game on their hands...

The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible, 2nd Edition, Sean Patrick Fannon, 1999:

It is vital to note at this point that Gary Gygax was doing a lot in his own neighborhood to reinforce where the "Daves" were going,...
Over the next couple of years, Gary wrote, playtested, and re-wrote a complete set of rules (transcribing Arneson's various notes and verbal ideas).

So, there are two issues here to consider. First, who deserves the credit for "inventing" RPGs: the person who came up with the conceptual elements, or the person who came up with the mechanical elements? IMHO, the conceptual elements are the far more important--it's debatable whether the Chainmail fantasy rules would've ever gone beyond wargaming into what we consider RPing if not for the conceptual framework already being there. So, while Gygax is the first person to publish and codify an RPG, the parts that I consider defining of RPGs (one-to-one character identification, open-endedness, etc.) were already there. It sounds to me like what Arneson was doing before he got a hold of Chainmail was a bona fide RPG, just a poorly-run one (as opposed to being a well-run "something else"). In that light, i think it's reasonable to say that RPGs as we think of them had already been invented, by Arneson, or even Wesely before him, by the time D&D came along. Now, it is true that, without Gygax's entrepreneurial spirit, and Kaye's money, the RPG industry might not have been born, or only born much later. But that's not the same as saying RPGs wouln't have happened.

The second issue is whether the developments and discoveries that Wesely, Arneson, Meggary, Gygax, et al, made were innovative leaps or merely obvious progressions. I tend to see them as the latter--there is plenty of evidence of people at a similar conceptual place to Wesely at a similar or later time, so i expect that one or more of them would've stumbled upon the idea of the RPG without the example of D&D, given time. Heck, several of Wesely's innovations were simply taking ideas from a couple of existing books on wargames and simualtions, and applying them to his wargames/simulations. Most of these ideas were already out there, just waiting for someone to put them all together.

 

[drakhe]

My 2 €cents...

a) GG has a much longer track record and has been involved much more prominently in public side of things (working concentions, guest DM'ing etc.)

b) In RPG's, the writers, artists and designers are a lot more "visible" while in CCG's, because of it's high profile competitions (just look at the prize money involved in pro-tour and world championships), it's the best lpayers that take the spotlight, they are creating the decks people play with. If I had to compare CCG's to RPG's, I would say that CCG publishers ONLY publish rules and source books (= rules & cards) while the players create the modules (=decks). Now don't get me wrong, a lot of people are creating their own adventures and do a fine job, but these home brewn campaigns and worlds don't get spread arround as much as a winning CCG deck.

 

[WizarDru]

Idle thoughts:

1. Gary defined what role-playing was to the first great influx of players of the game. His name was attached to the most famous milestones of the game's early genesis, and was widely held as the 'father' of the game. It was a perspective fostered by EGG's appearances all over the place. First quoted was usually only quoted. When D&D was huge and Nickelodeon was relatively new, Nick had a talk show called Livewire that addressed a lot of topics it probably wouldn't touch today...and one of them was D&D. Three guesses who the main guest advocate on the show was (first two don't count). For a great many years, EGG WAS D&D. Not the only person by any means, but the big burritto, the 'go to' guy, Mr. Big. I learned from Moldvay, but I knew Gygax.

2. Richard Garfield makes games. It's what he does, and he doesn't much care for the spotlight. Magic: The Gathering was the second product he pitched to WotC, after they decided to take a wait-and-see attitude for RoboRally. After Magic, he was right on to developing The Great Dalmuti and lots of quickie card games. He's not the showman that EGG is, nor does he care to be.

3. D&D might have happened with someone else at the helm, but I don't think so, and certainly not as it is today. One might argue that EGG's talents as the guiding hand for the product line even more important to the brand than his mechanical contributions. Few others had the dedication or desire to pull D&D through to it's point. That EGG made some, in hindsight, poor business decisions and partnerships is irrelevant to contribution he and many others made to the game. I'm sure others would have developed the basic idea of the RPG over time...but I think a lot of factors converged to create the massive success that D&D would spawn...and EGG was a significant one of those.

4. D&D has evolved for many years without EGG, and not to it's detriment. I appreciate his contribution, but his desires and goals from the game are not mine, and his style is not mine. I can respect the man and give him his propers without agreeing with him. And, to be clear, in many cases I truly don't.

5. Avalon Hill DID have an RPG, called Powers & Perils. It was a confusing mess, as I recall, but it had some great ideas that would be better implemented later on.

6. People often forgot that the actual inventor of a thing is often in dispute, moreso the further back in time you go. Good ideas aren't always unique to one person and can develop in parallel, as the existence of several other RPGs atests. Few people agree over the actual inventor of certain technologies, Bell and the phone being a legendary example of contentiousness. Ever read about the Smithsonian's vendetta against the Wright Brothers and their subsequent decades-long battle to restore the truth?

7. The one thing I really like about ENWorld? It's that it's one of the best moderated, most discussion-friendly places on the web. Pettiness does not become us, and consideration and tolerance of new members should be the rule of the day. Everyone is a newbie at some point, and not all of us joined the hobby in 1979. (mods, feel free to take a bow...you deserve it.)

8. Much more alternative game systems exist and have existed, and generally found only cult status or little acceptance. I'm not really sure what direction RPGs could take that would be recognizable as one, though I'd be glad to see. Games like Everway, Castle Falkenstein and Amber certainly were mechanically different, but even they were fundamentally very similar to D&D at the root level. The same could be said for many LARPs.

 

[Dr. Harry]

Quite true. We are still just freakish apes, when you get down to it, and "Hoot-bark, pant, grunt?" is still far more easy for us than is sitting down to an index, learning its quirks, optimizing searches, etc.

This is, apparently, how we learn best. While I'm away from my office (I went from Texas to Florida to watch Venus transit the Sun, er, visit some friends of ours) the amount of research that shows that peer learning is overwhelmingly the most effective ways to create lasting retention of information is, well, overwhelming. This is frustrating when I get a question in lecture or lab that is best answered by "Could you please read the very next sentence in the book out loud?"