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<blockquote data-quote="eyebeams" data-source="post: 5386771" data-attributes="member: 9225">The idea of individual characters as player-controlled actors in a fictional world is firmly in the set of ideas Wells lays out in Floor Games. It's all a bit obscure because none of the actors involved in framing the history of RPGs have any social or economic motive to call back the work of someone they all knew about, but who suffered the singular defect of being an uncopyrightable socialist who made them all less novel looking by comparison.Gary Gygax is interesting as far as this goes because he used to talk about Floor Games and Little Wars as part of his lineage but later in life took pains to talk about how he was doing what Wells talked about when he was 4. I think in the later years he had settled on a minimum complexity threshold for what he was willing to credit as real development -- a level that put him on one side, and his predecessors on the other.Anyway, by my count we're now on maybe the 5th consensus on the history of RPGs, D&amp;D and what D&amp;D was supposed to &quot;really&quot; be. I think the truth is that the seeds of early RPGs were spread across several groups and the form was not so much invented as collected, packaged and sold.Right now I would think that in terms of a significant cultural movement, RPGs were invented around 2005. That would be the time in which the first original-world &quot;RPs&quot; grew from fandom RPs, which in turn came from fanfic with no direct ties to D&amp;D and its successors at all. And baby, let me tell ya that where we're headed, in 60-70 years they will be the &quot;first roleplayers&quot; and we will be seen as being vaguely related to computer gaming or as some general spontaneous cultural expression, viewed with as little attention as we pay to things outside of our current narratives of self-identity.TL;DR: The reason you think RPG origins are cut and dried are the reasons future gamers will think we're irrelevant,</blockquote>

[QUOTE="eyebeams, post: 5386771, member: 9225"] The idea of individual characters as player-controlled actors in a fictional world is firmly in the set of ideas Wells lays out in Floor Games. It's all a bit obscure because none of the actors involved in framing the history of RPGs have any social or economic motive to call back the work of someone they all knew about, but who suffered the singular defect of being an uncopyrightable socialist who made them all less novel looking by comparison. Gary Gygax is interesting as far as this goes because he used to talk about Floor Games and Little Wars as part of his lineage but later in life took pains to talk about how he was doing what Wells talked about when he was 4. I think in the later years he had settled on a minimum complexity threshold for what he was willing to credit as real development -- a level that put him on one side, and his predecessors on the other. Anyway, by my count we're now on maybe the 5th consensus on the history of RPGs, D&D and what D&D was supposed to "really" be. I think the truth is that the seeds of early RPGs were spread across several groups and the form was not so much invented as collected, packaged and sold. Right now I would think that in terms of a significant cultural movement, RPGs were invented around 2005. That would be the time in which the first original-world "RPs" grew from fandom RPs, which in turn came from fanfic with no direct ties to D&D and its successors at all. And baby, let me tell ya that where we're headed, in 60-70 years they will be the "first roleplayers" and we will be seen as being vaguely related to computer gaming or as some general spontaneous cultural expression, viewed with as little attention as we pay to things outside of our current narratives of self-identity. TL;DR: The reason you think RPG origins are cut and dried are the reasons future gamers will think we're irrelevant, [/QUOTE]

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