D&D General Tracy Hickman: The third founder of (modern) D&D?

[Yora]

I only got into D&D in 2000, only weeks before the release of 3rd edition, and the vast amount of D&D material in my early days was 2nd edition stuff. I really only got an actual glimps into earlier D&D six years or so ago.
And looking at the full corpus of D&D material in hindsight, I think the biggest shift D&D ever did in tone and style was during the late 80s with the development of AD&D 2nd edition. It's a time where most of the original people had left the company and you got a new leadership with very different visions for the future.

And one man in particular really stands out to me in the credits of a number of 1st edition and BECMI adventures that clearly show the start of a new trend. Tracy Hickmann.
Pharaoh in 1982, Ravenloft and Rahasia in 1983, and of course Dragonlance in 1984.

Arneson came up with the idea for dungeon crawling heroes and Gygax developed it into a commercial product. But it seems to me that Hickmann might actually have singlehandedly introduced and codified the idea of adventures as stories that the PCs participate in, rather as dungeons to be cleared that have some background story attached to them, which the players might discover pieces off if they look for it carefully.
If that is a good thing or not is an entirely different discussion. But I feel that Hickmann's contribution to D&D was as transformative as Arneson's idea to turn the Chainmail wargame into a dungeon crawler.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

I would heartily disagree - contributor, yes, "third founder", no.

Zeb Cook had more influence over D&D during that time than Hickman did and was credited as the author on second edition on top of that.

 

[Morrus]

I think Dragonlance was the first adventure path as we know them today. There were linked adventures before that, but the concept really formed with the DL series.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Given the way gender roles where reported back in the 80s I suspect Laura Hickman did rather more than she was credited for - she is basically the inventor of Ravenloft for a start.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think Dragonlance was the first adventure path as we know them today. There were linked adventures before that, but the concept really formed with the DL series.

Really? I would give that to Against the Giants/Decent into the Depths/Vault of the Drow/Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

The Slavelords sequence looks pretty much like a modern adventure path when bundled together too.

 

[Yora]

I would heartily disagree - contributor, yes, "third founder", no.

Zeb Cook had more influence over D&D during that time than Hickman did and was credited as the author on second edition on top of that.

While Cook certainly was a very important figure, I don't know of any ways in which he significantly changed the form of the game to what it is today.
Open to new insights, though.

 

[Morrus]

Really? I would give that to Against the Giants/Decent into the Depths/Vault of the Drow/Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

The Slavelords sequence looks pretty much like a modern adventure path when bundled together too.

I think those are proto-adventure paths.

 

[Yora]

Really? I would give that to Against the Giants/Decent into the Depths/Vault of the Drow/Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

The Slavelords sequence looks pretty much like a modern adventure path when bundled together too.

The GDQ series certainly is linked, but it does not really have a story that the players are taking part in. The content of the modules is just the dungeon floorplans and the opposition standing in the way to their goal. (Which inexplicably switches without reason during the final module when the players are suddenly supposed to kill Lolth, who had nothing to do with the enemies the players try to defeat in the first six parts.)

 

[GuyBoy]

I’d say Hickman was a very significant contributor to the development of the game (even though I personally don’t care much for DL) but I wouldn’t go as far as saying he is a founder.
I don’t think you can step beyond Gygax and Arneson as founders.
I’d rank Greenwood, Cook, Mohan, Jacqays, Bledsaw, Baker and some others to be just as significant as Hickman. And huge thanks to all of them.

 

[Yora]

My view is that D&D at the end of the 80s is a very different beast to D&D at the start of the 80s. Even though the rules didn't change much, I feel the approach to what roleplaying is has turned into a distinctively different thing. Even 4th edition didn't stray meaningfully from the new paradigm.
And I think that this change, that is very much visible with Ravenloft and the success of Dragonlance as a series, is a big a leap as going from a fantasy skirmish wargame to dungeon crawling.
Quite possibly a better term for this, but I think the works of Cook, Greenwood, and Jaquays were much more refinements of existing structures than real innovations.

Though I also want to say that I am not at all a fan of Hickmann's work. I think almost everything that's wrong (in my eyes) with D&D today can be traced back to the terrible idea that was Dragonlance. I think the widespread adoption of scripted adventures was a disaster for RPGs.