RPG Systems Family Tree?

[Thomas Shey]

And these games are…? Because I can’t think of any that instantiate that belief system into an actual game mechanic.

Said game mechanic being either Gumshoe’s greatest strength, or its most obvious and uninteresting house rule in game mechanic form, depending upon how I feel that day.

There's a hybrid approach in Chill 3e that I'd be surprised was not influenced by Gumshoe in some fashion. It could just be parallel development, but that seems unlikely.

 

[CandyLaser]

I've been told there's actually enough variance within games identified as "Gumshoe" that its more that the term is used fairly broadly (as I recall, I only own two (Mutant City Blues and Night's Black Agents) so its hard for me to tell.

There's at least two families of games in the Gumshoe space, IMO - you have maximalist implementations, like Trail of Cthulhu, Night's Black Agents, and Mutant City Blues, with very large skill lists and special-case rules/subsystems. Night's Black Agents is probably the best exemplar here, with its fairly robust rules for combat mechanics, chases, etc. Some of the supplements add rules to let you bring in some technothriller gun and gear porn, which is appropriate for the genre. On the other end of the spectrum are games like Timewatch and Swords of the Serpentine, which use (comparatively) minimal skill lists and fewer subsystems.

There are some non-Gumshoe games that implement its way of handling investigation, as well - I think the Storypath games talk about how "core clues" will always be found. Not sure if this is a case of inspiration or convergent evolution, though.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There are some non-Gumshoe games that implement its way of handling investigation, as well - I think the Storypath games talk about how "core clues" will always be found. Not sure if this is a case of inspiration or convergent evolution, though.

Its the same problem I had with Chill 3e; its extremely unlikely the designers had not been exposed to Gumshoe, but whether that's where the concept came from or its just a common floating idea in modern views of clue searching is essentially impossible to tell--they may not know themselves.

 

[aramis erak]

Has anyone ever done a family tree for RPGs over time similar to the ones done for computer programming languages awhile back? It’d be an interesting visual.

Any such chart rapidly runs into the "illegible or giant" issue... by 1978 there were over a dozen in print, including D&D, EPT, Traveller, KABAL, T&T, Met Alpha, Starfaring, The Game of Dungeon, RuneQuest, Starships and Spacemen.
(That's the list I recall off the top of my head... I know I missed several)
By 1985, there are hundreds.
By 2024, there were over 11000...

 

[Wolfpack48]

Any such chart rapidly runs into the "illegible or giant" issue... by 1978 there were over a dozen in print, including D&D, EPT, Traveller, KABAL, T&T, Met Alpha, Starfaring, The Game of Dungeon, RuneQuest, Starships and Spacemen.
(That's the list I recall off the top of my head... I know I missed several)
By 1985, there are hundreds.
By 2024, there were over 11000...

Yeah I imagine you'd only be able see pieces of it at a time and need to zoom/scroll a lot... It'd be cool if you start with something simpler and could expand/collapse sections.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, there's that too.

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah I imagine you'd only be able see pieces of it at a time and need to zoom/scroll a lot... It'd be cool if you start with something simpler and could expand/collapse sections.

The other issue is, post 1980, which systems are parent to a given system?
The rise of percentile systems is often blamed upon BRP, which itself is a derivative of RuneQuest (RQ came first); RQ itself was simply expanding the D&D Thief Skills to cover a wider range of things... and Perrin and Tourney (yeah, RQ1e was NOT written by Stafford - Steve and Ray wrote it for Greg to use, and all three got it published via The Chaosium, which was more than just them)....
Palladium/Siembieda takes the same start point: OE D&D+ supps... and makes everything but combat skills in the style of D&D Thief Skills... and simplifies combat.
The Arcanum is Bard Games doing the exact same thing as Palladium, but with slightly different choices on combat.
Both look like D&D and BRP had a baby... but it's a case of false appearances.

Then, the incestuous relationships within the various studios...
Traveller has influences from D&D OE directly, but also from En Garde! (rights sold off decades ago, but still shows the origins of Traveller... and Twilight 2000 1e). Every GDW RPG has influences from prior GDW RPGs save En Garde! (as it was the first) and Dangerous Journeys... as it was an outside design. That's 3 major editions of Traveller (CT, MT, TNE) and 4 minor (CT-77, CT-81, CT-82 aka TTB, CT-83 aka ST), 3 editions of T2k (1.0, 2.0, 2.2), 2 of DC (1.0, 1.2), 2 of 2300 (T2300 and 2300AD), 1 of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, 1 of Space: 1889. And each as influences from outside, as well.

Then, add in the variety of games where ideas were sent in by players based upon a variety of other games...
It rapidly becomes difficult to actually track the influences... especially for revised editions.

 

[mamba]

Any such chart rapidly runs into the "illegible or giant" issue... by 1978 there were over a dozen in print, including D&D, EPT, Traveller, KABAL, T&T, Met Alpha, Starfaring, The Game of Dungeon, RuneQuest, Starships and Spacemen.
(That's the list I recall off the top of my head... I know I missed several)
By 1985, there are hundreds.
By 2024, there were over 11000...

where do you have those numbers from? The 1978 one is simple, the 1985 sounds like a good guess, but the 2024 makes it look like there is more to it than a guess

 

[mamba]

The Arcanum is Bard Games doing the exact same thing as Palladium, but with slightly different choices on combat.
Both look like D&D and BRP had a baby... but it's a case of false appearances.

if it is a tree, then there are no two parents, only ever one.

It rapidly becomes difficult to actually track the influences... especially for revised editions.

revised editions are children of their precursor edition, see above

Does that correctly show all influences? Obviously not, but it is a tree.

 

[aramis erak]

where do you have those numbers from? The 1978 one is simple, the 1985 sounds like a good guess, but the 2024 makes it look like there is more to it than a guess

The RPGG database.

Browse RPGs | RPGGeek

rpggeek.com

currently 161 pages at 100 per page except 161 (at 12)
Some of those are later editions...
CoC has 4 entries (1e, 2-6e, 7e, Cthulhu d20) plus linked oddities.
D&D has 8, and a bunch of compatible item entries
L5R has 7 entries (editions 1-5, plus LBS and L5RLA)
Pendragon has 1 entry to cover all 6 editions

Some editions are separated due to major system changes (D&D), others at publisher request. Others were combined due to request of publisher. >11k is a VERY conservative number.

there's a lot of info burried there.