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

[Yaarel]

What's interesting is that even prussian war gamers struggled with how detailed their ruleset should be. As rules got increasingly simulationist, there was a 'rulings not rules' movement that sought to simplify the mechanical complexity by trusting the judgement of the referee.

Ancient Roleplaying, or Free Kriegsspiel Revolution (FKR): What The Heck Is That? | Free Kriegsspiel Revolution

url=https://youtu.be/vA4ywGK4ePM?t=6]A bit of mood music for you[/url]} KRIEGSSPIEL! For those of us who do not speak German, kriegsspiel simply means "wargame." It was primarily conveived of by Prussian military officers in the 1800s as a tool for simulating battlefield skirmishes and adapting

boardgamegeek.com

Yeah, the Arneson-Gygax combat mechanics are quite complex.

The D&D tradition has streamlined and simplified much of it, and I am grateful!

 

[Mallus]

Dragonlance gave D&D players their very own Lord of the Rings-style fantasy epic to star in. This was appreciated by the wave of players who came primarily from fantasy fiction reading backgrounds, rather than wargaming.

It doesn’t make Weiss & Hickman founders, but they’re surely important figures in the history of D&D history, especially as its wargaming roots have faded.

 

[Marc_C]

No.

I would say Frank Mentzer is the third designer since he supplied several additional rules to the B/X system which resulted in the Rules Cyclopedia. The domain and the war machines rules to name a few.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I've read through this thread and a couple of things stand out:

1 - There is a LOT of knee-twitch DragonLance hate here. Actually, some of the modules are excellent and their map designs were breakthroughs at the time. They made a ton of dough for a good reason;

2- None of you have mentioned what specific mechanic Hickman invented and used to introduce, maintain, and advance the story in his adventure design. Hickman's main contribution to adventure design was THE EVENT. Prior to Hickman's contributions, we had encounters -- we didn't have "Events" which took place at a pre-determined time or otherwise independent of players entering a room which were designed to maintain the plot and advance the story. Gygax didn't do that. Arneson didn't do that. Neither did Jaquays, Cook or anybody else mentioned here other than Hickman. Events were NEW. They stayed with us and have remained a fixture in all modern adventure design since. THAT is the contribution of Hickman - and it is why he has had more of an effect in modern adventure design than any other designer. That contribution was far more important than any other design element -- or person -- mentioned in this thread with respect to adventure design. THAT was Hickman; and

3. WOW. I appreciate that this is a forum discussion dominated by D&D DMs where homebrew tends to be more the rule than the exception, but the suggestion that inter-locking adventures and meta-plots is somehow passe is an eye opener into the biases of some posting here.

Quare: What do you think most GMs of Pathfinder Adv Path or Starfinder Adv Path would have to say about the importance of the Event as a means of introducing, maintaining, and advancing the story in modern Adventure Path designs? Might that possibly -- just maybe -- have something to do with the contributions of Mr. Hickman that is under discussion here?

 

[dave2008]

I've read through this thread and a couple of things stand out:

1 - There is a LOT of knee-twitch DragonLance hate here. Actually, some of the modules are excellent and their map designs were breakthroughs at the time. They made a ton of dough for a good reason;

2- None of you have mentioned what specific mechanic Hickman invented and used to introduce, maintain, and advance the story in his adventure design. Hickman's main contribution to adventure design was THE EVENT. Prior to Hickman's contributions, we had encounters -- we didn't have "Events" which took place at a pre-determined time or otherwise independent of players entering a room which were designed to maintain the plot and advance the story. Gygax didn't do that. Arneson didn't do that. Neither did Jaquays, Cook or anybody else mentioned here other than Hickman. Events were NEW. They stayed with us and have remained a fixture in all modern adventure design since. THAT is the contribution of Hickman - and it is why he has had more of an effect in modern adventure design than any other designer. That contribution was far more important than any other design element -- or person -- mentioned in this thread with respect to adventure design. THAT was Hickman; and

3. WOW. I appreciate that this is a forum discussion dominated by D&D DMs where homebrew tends to be more the rule than the exception, but the suggestion that inter-locking adventures and meta-plots is somehow passe is an eye opener into the biases of some posting here.

Quare: What do you think most GMs of Pathfinder Adv Path or Starfinder Adv Path would have to say about the importance of the Event as a means of introducing, maintaining, and advancing the story in modern Adventure Path designs? Might that possibly -- just maybe -- have something to do with the contributions of Mr. Hickman that is under discussion here?

In 30+ yrs of playing D&D I have never had success with running a published adventure so perhaps I am not grasping the importance of, or what it even is, an "Event." Can you expand on that?

Also, I do wonder how important such an invention is if I can play D&D for 30 yrs and completely avoid it.

 

[Magister Ludorum]

Wasn't Assassin's Knot also based on events? Wasn't it published a year before DL1? Wasn't it written by Len Lakofka and not by Tracy Hickman?

 

[pemerton]

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

Are you talking about commercial development of the idea, especially via TSR? Then perhaps yes.

Are you just talking about the idea itself? Then I think no. In the late 70s Lewis Pulsipher, writing in White Dwarf, was already distinguishing between D&D played as a wargame and D&D played as a "novel".

(EDIT: I've finished reading the thread, and see @Malmuria and @Mannahnin have made similar points.)

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.

I don't agree re 4e D&D. 4e is the closest D&D has come to integrating "indie" design techniques into D&D - closed scene resolution for non-combat (skill challenges) as well as combat; player-authored quests; a focus on conflict as the driver of play ("skip to the fun"; scene-based resolution with the encounter-power and heaing paradigm); separating PC advancement from meeting requirements/tasks set by the GM (XP awarded based merely on playing, especially post-DMG 2; treasure awarded via a per-level parcel system).

And those indie techniques are a direct reaction to Hickman-style design, although more in its White Wolf form than in its second-half-of-the-1980s D&D form.

 

[GreyLord]

I come more from the Gygax arena of gameplay early on, BUT I'd say that what is being attributed to the Hickmans was not actually something (in my opinion) that originated with them.

Gygax was a type of playstyle you could say, or the dungeon crawler (but even with that, there were bounteous things that occurred outside the dungeon, as anyone who reads the AD&D PHB could discern with the titles, land ownership or rule, nobility management, etc), but you ALSO had Arneson. To my mind his playstyle was in many ways the continuous adventure that you see in Dragonlance.

He may not have had as big an impact publically as Gygax, but from what I have heard (never participated in them myself or was offered to participate) his was in line with how many see adventures today, going overland and going from one adventure to the next in a series of ongoing events.

This playstyle was one that was played regularly even before the Hickmans. Sure, most of it were probably each groups home self styled campaign, but it existed. Hickman probably played in this playstyle already and just wrote adventures to cater to it, rather than inventing it or creating it...

PERSONAL OPINION...of course.

 

[Desdichado]

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.

From a publisher/developer side, maybe. However, I think Hickman just reflected what was going on in the player base rather than creating something new in the player base. In the earliest days of D&D, everyone who played came in through the vector of wargames, because it grew out of and was an appendage to the hobby of wargaming at one point. By the time the 80s rolled around, it had found a great deal of mainstream success, and not with wargamers. Too many people were in the hobby who'd never heard of a wargame or had anything to do with the wargaming hobby circuit. They came into the game as they heard about it because they were fans of fantasy fiction, so they always naturally wanted the product of their game sessions to somehow resemble more the books that they were reading, rather than pixel-bitching of random rooms, or whatever.

It took a little bit of time for the original guard of writers and developers to make room for someone who came into the hobby through this vector before products started resembling it a bit more, but Hickman didn't create it, nor did he change, in my opinion, the dynamic of what kinds of products were being demanded by the customer base. He just reflected it, and his type of products were successful because they were what a big chunk of the player base was trying to do and reaching for on their own already anyway.

 

[Thunderfoot]

I do believe Hickman contributed to D&D...
He officially introduced Mary Sue to the genre.


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