The World Without D&D

[Kzach]

Having entered the hobby through Ral Partha's Robotech (or was it Palladium?), I'd still be a roleplayer.

Not to disparage the Great Gods of Gygax and Arneson but I believe roleplaying is a far more ancient art and one that they did not invent so much as make popular.

The art of story is something intrinsic to our natures. The rhythm of story structure is primal and hearkens back to the earliest days of humankind's evolution into a complex social animal. Story is fundamentally about communication and social interaction within its context.

We crave this interaction like it was our very breath. We need to communicate, we need to socialise, it is hard-wired in our brains and part of our genetic make-up to do so because the social animal has naturally been selected above it's less sophisticated offspring.

RPG's are just another form of story. We would all still be roleplayers because it isn't the milieu that attracts us to this social activity, it's the social animal within us all that craves this level of deep interaction and communication.

 

[Jack7]

Not to disparage the Great Gods of Gygax and Arneson but I believe roleplaying is a far more ancient art and one that they did not invent so much as make popular.

I'd agree with that to a degree. I think modern role-playing is just a particular form of small group enacted storytelling and imaginary adventuring. I think some other form or expression of the same basic idea would have eventually become inevitable. Though the form could have become radically different than what we now know.

For instance as a little boy my buddies and I used to get together and build imaginary cockpits and fly imaginary World War II bomber and fighter pilot missions from the second story balcony of my grandmother's house. Perhaps something like that would have developed into an organized game. Complete with clubs to build props and so forth. Wargaming and historical gaming might have transformed in different ways as well.

As for me I'd be Vadding more often. Of course I see vadding as a form of real life adventuring/exploration, so the difference would be less imagination and fantasy world, more real world.

 

[Hairfoot]

Hindsight always has the benefit of 20-20 vision. Looking at gaming today it’s easy to assume that the invention of roleplaying games was inevitable, but history says otherwise.

The components of RPGs – story-telling, characterisation, drama, and games of strategy and randomised numbers - have existed as long as homo sapiens has had leisure time, yet roleplaying games as we know them didn’t come into being until 1974. If it’s so obvious, why did it take us millennia of entertaining ourselves to develop a concept we take for granted in 2009?

Moreover, D&D is the child of Napoleonic wargaming – a hobby so unpopular its very survival is a miracle. Games Workshop has cleverly brought wargames into the geek mainstream by developing some compelling game settings, but prior to that they were rather less popular than smallpox.

Through a quirk of experimentation, a small group of Lake Geneva wargamers tried tying a niche genre of fiction into their games and marketed the result at just the right time to gain traction in popular culture. That unlikely event grew into a large hobby community and a mode of thinking that has influenced entertainment media ever since.

The legacy of D&D’s creation is evident in computer games, anime, cinema and so many other forms of entertainment, but to assume that RPGs would have existed without Gygax and Arneson defies history.

 

[darjr]

Without D&D...

Wow.. I dunno. I'm assuming that maybe means without RPGs. Cause I do think they would have happened in some form. Maybe a lot later.

But without RPGs, I thought I'd say I'd play lots of computer games, but I don't think I would. It strikes me that I can't nail down how my life would be different without RPGs and that is very interesting.

Wait, you get more exercise playing RPGs than playing video games? Please share your secret!

I do, a little.

See the third comment down.

Mikes Mind: Contest: Win DM's Tracker for the iPhone

 

[kitsune9]

Wait, you get more exercise playing RPGs than playing video games? Please share your secret!

More like I spend less time in front of the TV just sitting around playing video games and snacking. When I game, I don't snack. Plus, I have to carry all those heeeeeavy books to the games.

Now, you know my secrets. Go forth and impart the great wisdom into future generations...

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think rpg's would have been invented by now if they were not in invented in 1974 by Gygax and Arenesson but it they were not invented before 1990 then crpgs would have been invented first either as an extension of first person shooter games or as an extension of some other game. For instane when I used to play Elite back in the day I often wished there was some first person action on the space stations as well.

 

[avin]

There'd be no crpgs such as World of Warcraft. They are D&D's greatest legacy.

From the high of my lv 80 Troll Warrior I say: who cares if Wow does not exist?

Without D&D Ultima Underworld II and Fallout 1 wont exist!!!

(Somebody would eventually create a RPG. On an alternate world maybe Vampire was the first!)

 

[Agamon]

More like I spend less time in front of the TV just sitting around playing video games and snacking. When I game, I don't snack. Plus, I have to carry all those heeeeeavy books to the games.

Now, you know my secrets. Go forth and impart the great wisdom into future generations...

Fair enough. I'm the opposite. Having friends over is reason to break out snacks, whereas when watching TV, I'm content if I'm not hungry. That, and a portion of my video game playing includes games like Wii Sports, Wii Fit and playing Rock Band drums (the latter can be a good workout on Expert).

In fact, I was overweight for much of my life and I'm not sure how much RPGs contributed to that, but I know they didn't help.

 

[Agamon]

(Somebody would eventually create a RPG. On an alternate world maybe Vampire was the first!)

What if F.A.T.A.L. was the first RPG? Man, Marvel could make a comic book out of that one....

 

[GMforPowergamers]

How would our current popular culture be different if D&D had not been invented? Would our current popular culture be affected at all?

What would your favorite hobby be if there were no RPGs?

Bullgrit

I jusst tried to imagin the last 15 years of my life without rpgs, and D&D...

just so you know you made a grown man cry...