So what exactly is the root cause of the D&D rules' staying power?

[prosfilaes]

There is no way to make that statement with any objective certainty. Seriously, depending on whose study you read, being first to market has between a 60-70% correlation of a product’s success, across all markets. Being #1 is a powerful advantage.

This is dealing in counterfactuals, so there's no way to make any statement with any objective certainty. And we're not talking about a product's success; if D&D went away today, it would still be a massively successful product. We're talking continuing market dominance, so it's less than that. I think if you'll look at that 60-70%, you'll find products that were relatively good, and moved quickly towards being good as competitors poked at them. I think that 30-40% is filled with stuff like Empire of the Petal Throne, where, if it had been first, people would said "cool idea, but a little strange" and one of the competitors would have come out with C&S or Rolemaster and stolen the majority market share.

If I stuck a copy of the Threadbare RPG or Puppetland or My Life with Master in my bag and took it back in time to the year before D&D came out, and tried to sell it, I don't buy that back in 2018, the dominant RPG would be this quirky little thing; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it was still D&D and we were still having this exact same conversation, forgetting the real first to market. I wouldn't be surprised if another RPG came out before D&D in real life, and failed to make a flash in the pan.

Look at submarkets of RPGs; the first science fiction RPG is Metamorphosis Alpha, which never had an expansion or a new edition (or even reprinting?) for 20 years, and now it's around mainly because of nostalgia and the OSR movement. Starfaring was released a month later by Flying Buffalo; never heard of it until today. Space Patrol, Space Quest have largely fallen down the memory hole; Traveller was the first enduring science fiction RPG, but hardly the first science fiction RPG. Superhero RPGs are in the same boat: #1 is Superhero 2044, and people get geek points for having heard of it. #2 is Villains and Vigilantes, which stopped printing anything new between 1987 and 2010 (and the story is far too long to fit in the margins of this page). #3 is Supergame, and it's not until we get to #4 that we have an enduring superhero RPG in Champions.

 

[prosfilaes]

This all may be....but in most instances, the line connection people would make would be to D&D. Some of these elements may have existed prior to D&D, in wargaming or what have you....but the assembling of these into a game, and then that game serving as a source of inspiration for many games that followed is more my point.

It was as much in response to [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] as to you, but I think it is being overblown. Do computer games have numeric attributes for things in the game? Yes. Does it come from D&D? No. Hamurabi (1968) and Space Travel (1969) had things in game (in Space Travel a player avatar) with numeric attributes.

Even in more direct cases... GURPS has templates. Are these classes derived from D&D? Certainly the influence of D&D can't be missed, but at the same time, if there were a GURPS without D&D, at some point the idea would have come forward to bundle a bunch of stuff together to make it simpler to make characters. Likely earlier and possibly less flexible (and thus more class-like), because there wouldn't be the big specter of D&D and class-based systems hanging over their head.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Which brings up another interesting strength of Hero (and Mutants and Masterminds). There are typically multiple ways to model something - each with a somewhat different feel. A speedster's ability to attack multiple foes could be done with an Area modifier to a power in either game, with Auto-fire in Hero/Multi-attack in M&M.

One real eye opener was an issue of Different Worlds in which various authors statted up X-Men in different rulesets. Cyclops was done in Champions with an Endurance Battery (second edition, I think) because, essentially, he is one - storing solar energy and converting it into his optic blasts. They took a relatively obscure (at the time) aspect of his powers and were able to build it really well with the Champions ruleset.

Yes, indeed!*

That strength, though, can be a weakness for some. With so many options, you can easily fall into an analysis paralysis when building your character.

My advice to players & GMs in that situation is to ask another player for their perspective. What do THEY think about how your options mesh with the character concept? Usually, that narrows things down to a manageable few, with easily compared pros & cons.




* I actually have a lot of the magazines in which Champions/HERO stats were provided for the X-Men, Magneto, the Teen Titans, and the Justic Machine, to name a few.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

This is dealing in counterfactuals, so there's no way to make any statement with any objective certainty. And we're not talking about a product's success; if D&D went away today, it would still be a massively successful product. We're talking continuing market dominance, so it's less than that. I think if you'll look at that 60-70%, you'll find products that were relatively good, and moved quickly towards being good as competitors poked at them. I think that 30-40% is filled with stuff like Empire of the Petal Throne, where, if it had been first, people would said "cool idea, but a little strange" and one of the competitors would have come out with C&S or Rolemaster and stolen the majority market share.

If I stuck a copy of the Threadbare RPG or Puppetland or My Life with Master in my bag and took it back in time to the year before D&D came out, and tried to sell it, I don't buy that back in 2018, the dominant RPG would be this quirky little thing; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it was still D&D and we were still having this exact same conversation, forgetting the real first to market. I wouldn't be surprised if another RPG came out before D&D in real life, and failed to make a flash in the pan.

Look at submarkets of RPGs; the first science fiction RPG is Metamorphosis Alpha, which never had an expansion or a new edition (or even reprinting?) for 20 years, and now it's around mainly because of nostalgia and the OSR movement. Starfaring was released a month later by Flying Buffalo; never heard of it until today. Space Patrol, Space Quest have largely fallen down the memory hole; Traveller was the first enduring science fiction RPG, but hardly the first science fiction RPG. Superhero RPGs are in the same boat: #1 is Superhero 2044, and people get geek points for having heard of it. #2 is Villains and Vigilantes, which stopped printing anything new between 1987 and 2010 (and the story is far too long to fit in the margins of this page). #3 is Supergame, and it's not until we get to #4 that we have an enduring superhero RPG in Champions.

All true. All kinds of factors correlate and can even defeat being #1. Betamax was first to market and higher quality, but VHS was more affordable. McDonalds wasn’t the first fast food chain, but it is the biggest because they figured out a number of sub-products and features that made them more attractive...and they continue to adapt to local culinary and societal norms.

However,

1) when talking about product success in that context of 60-70% correlation, the concept of enduring over time is part of the standard economic analysis. Flashes in the pans and also-rans who were first to market fall into the failing 30-40%. As you say, setting matters. But it is unlikely that, had niche RPGs been first, they’d have been able to generate enough buzz for the creators (and whatever investors might have been approached) to see them as viable consumer products, and been consigned to local history as just other “games my buddies and I played when we were younger”. Which leads to...

2) lurking behind my statement is the concept that if you did time travel as you said with the games you cherrypicked, there might not be a RPG market at all..

 

[prosfilaes]

All true. All kinds of factors correlate and can even defeat being #1. Betamax was first to market and higher quality, but VHS was more affordable.

Which is a rewriting of history; there was the Philips VCR format first. Even then, it's all in how you define the box, since from the start of film people had been using 16 mm and 8 mm film to record home movies and play back films at home. It's always the closer you look, the more complex it is. And the more complex it is, the more formats you have to consider as contenders, the less likely the winner is to be the first one.

1) when talking about product success in that context of 60-70% correlation, the concept of enduring over time is part of the standard economic analysis. Flashes in the pans and also-rans who were first to market fall into the failing 30-40%.

Again, it's all in how you play with the data. What's a flash in the pan? If the Vatican had bought TSR instead of WotC buying TSR and promptly buried everything (cue music stolen from the Da Vinci Code), would a 25 year run have counted?

As you say, setting matters. But it is unlikely that, had niche RPGs been first, they’d have been able to generate enough buzz for the creators (and whatever investors might have been approached) to see them as viable consumer products, and been consigned to local history as just other “games my buddies and I played when we were younger”. Which leads to...

2) lurking behind my statement is the concept that if you did time travel as you said with the games you cherrypicked, there might not be a RPG market at all..

Why? What would have stopped Gygax? And that's a very, very counterfactual argument, that goes straight to the heart of many alternate history discussions; is where we are largely inevitable, or would the slightest change change everything massively? 2) is an assumption that lacks any objective certainty, at least as much as anything I made.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It was as much in response to [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] as to you, but I think it is being overblown. Do computer games have numeric attributes for things in the game? Yes. Does it come from D&D? No. Hamurabi (1968) and Space Travel (1969) had things in game (in Space Travel a player avatar) with numeric attributes.

Even in more direct cases... GURPS has templates. Are these classes derived from D&D? Certainly the influence of D&D can't be missed, but at the same time, if there were a GURPS without D&D, at some point the idea would have come forward to bundle a bunch of stuff together to make it simpler to make characters. Likely earlier and possibly less flexible (and thus more class-like), because there wouldn't be the big specter of D&D and class-based systems hanging over their head.

Sure, they didn't invent numbers! Or numeric values representing some non-numeric factor.

But the labels (AC, Class, HP, etc.) and the way these things function in the game....these go back to D&D more so than anything else, I'd say.

It's entirely possible that if D&D had not been invented, other games designed by other folks would have come up with these elements. But I don't know if it would be exactly the same. The influence, as you imply, looms large.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Which is a rewriting of history; there was the Philips VCR format first. Even then, it's all in how you define the box, since from the start of film people had been using 16 mm and 8 mm film to record home movies and play back films at home. It's always the closer you look, the more complex it is. And the more complex it is, the more formats you have to consider as contenders, the less likely the winner is to be the first one.



Again, it's all in how you play with the data. What's a flash in the pan? If the Vatican had bought TSR instead of WotC buying TSR and promptly buried everything (cue music stolen from the Da Vinci Code), would a 25 year run have counted?



Why? What would have stopped Gygax? And that's a very, very counterfactual argument, that goes straight to the heart of many alternate history discussions; is where we are largely inevitable, or would the slightest change change everything massively? 2) is an assumption that lacks any objective certainty, at least as much as anything I made.

Re: videotapes

I was just talking the consumer models:

The first VCR to use VHS was the Victor HR-3300, and was introduced by the president of JVC in Japan on September 9, 1976. JVC started selling the HR-3300 in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan on October 31, 1976.

Betamax is a consumer-level analog-recording and cassette format of magnetic tape for video. It was developed by Sony and was released in Japan on May 10, 1975.

Both from Wikipedia, as was yours.

Re: Gygax

What would have stopped him is the existence of your prior failed product that might have made finding sufficient funding for publishing D&D much more difficult.

 

[prosfilaes]

Re: videotapes

I was just talking the consumer models:

The N1500 (released 1972) was a tape-based machine that used a format called VCR, as linked above, not to be confused with VHS or Betamax. That clearly predates Betamax from 1975.

 

[prosfilaes]

But the labels (AC, Class, HP, etc.) and the way these things function in the game....these go back to D&D more so than anything else, I'd say.

OED1, volume 3, from the 19th century, gives one meaning of class as "A number of individuals (persons or things) possessing common attributes, and grouped together under a general or 'class' name; a kind, sort or division. (Now the leading sense)" with a quote dating from the 17th century. Gygax neither invented the label "class" nor gave it a meaning much different than the one it had.

It's entirely possible that if D&D had not been invented, other games designed by other folks would have come up with these elements. But I don't know if it would be exactly the same. The influence, as you imply, looms large.

I'm sure other games designed by other folks did come up with many of these elements. I can't believe there's no war game pre-D&D where units have individual hit counts. There are war games pre-D&D where units are of different classes. The way it came out would have been much different, but D&D is not the one true origin for many of these things, especially outside the RPG world.

No, I know there are plenty of games that eschew a lot of these “standardized” elements. Classless systems and so on. But even such attempts seem so focused on being different that the influemce of D&D is still there. And then there are plenty of systems that have those elements but use other labels...Careers or Archetypes in place of Class, and the like.

Careers and archetypes are entirely reasonable tools for any game that has human characters. If you're looking in the light of D&D, it's easy to see those as copies of D&D; then again, if I handed a D&D 5 PHB to someone from the universe where Clark Ashton Smith outsells Tolkien and Disney is coming out with the 8th Willow movie this year, they'd immediately claim the halflings are a rip of the Willow series.

 

[hawkeyefan]

OED1, volume 3, from the 19th century, gives one meaning of class as "A number of individuals (persons or things) possessing common attributes, and grouped together under a general or 'class' name; a kind, sort or division. (Now the leading sense)" with a quote dating from the 17th century. Gygax neither invented the label "class" nor gave it a meaning much different than the one it had.



I'm sure other games designed by other folks did come up with many of these elements. I can't believe there's no war game pre-D&D where units have individual hit counts. There are war games pre-D&D where units are of different classes. The way it came out would have been much different, but D&D is not the one true origin for many of these things, especially outside the RPG world.



Careers and archetypes are entirely reasonable tools for any game that has human characters. If you're looking in the light of D&D, it's easy to see those as copies of D&D; then again, if I handed a D&D 5 PHB to someone from the universe where Clark Ashton Smith outsells Tolkien and Disney is coming out with the 8th Willow movie this year, they'd immediately claim the halflings are a rip of the Willow series.

Now we’re talking alternate universes.

At the end of the day, I’m not saying that Gygax and Arneson invented all these things. But I think it was the forerunner of the industry, and these design aspecta have seeped out into other areas because of D&D. Perhaps it would have happened anyway...but that’s irrelevant.

D&D’s influence is pervasive, and I think that adds to its staying power.