What game Could "Be" D&D, Culturally?

[Jaeger]

Seems the OP's vagueness has resulted in two questions being answered:

1: If D&D wasn't released in 1974 - would RPG's be invented anyway?

2: If WotC didn't bail out TSR and they went under - what RPG would have taken D&D's place.


So first, question number one...

1: If D&D wasn't released in 1974 - would RPG's be invented anyway?

I don't even think I could speculate, because I don't think we understand properly other than right-time, right-place why D&D became what it did.

Disagree. The early days of the hobby are very well documented.

Not that right place, right time, wasn't a huge factor.

While there have been people claiming that RPGs were already inevitable before Gygax and Arneson made a deal to create D&D as a product, I think basically all the RPGs that exist have their current shape because of D&D. Be it following in its footsteps or as reactions against its mechanics.

I used to think that argument was BS myself - after all why didn't they publish their version when D&D proved such a hit? Turns out some things are just more complicated and nuanced than that:

One example:

Western Gunfight (1970): the First RPG?

In 1970, a group of UK gamers located in Bristol published the first edition of their Western Gunfight rules, which recorded systems they ...

playingattheworld.blogspot.com

There was convergent / parallel discovery going on in the 70's. Some of the hopefuls couldn't get the scratch together that Gygax and co. did to publish. Some had their creators die too early to see things through. And some just said stuff it, and played the more popular and commercially available ruleset rather than going through the hassle of publishing their own.

RPG's are Wargame Derivatives.

And in 20-20 hindsight, we know the intuitive leaps needed to go from the variety of wargames in circulation in the 1970's, to RPG's as we now recognize them.

IMHO - for A "different" RPG to take hold it would have had to be a Fantasy RPG similar to B/X in complexity, and would have had to hit before 1980. So that it would have enough time to build up a player base before videogames start to become a thing...

And I do side with the argument of RPG's being inevitable sometime in the mid to late 1970's.

Also, yes; all current RPG's and storygames are a reaction to D&D in some form.

Now on to question number two...


2: If WotC didn't bail out TSR, and they went under - what RPG would have taken D&D's place.

And that's really tough because when you look at the history of D&D there are all kinds of places where TSR "stumbled" early on and throughout its stewardship of the game, so you'd think someone else could have taken over from them. And yet here we are - nearly 50 years later and it's still the king of the hill.

D&D as the market leader was the beneficiary of "bailouts" because it is better to start with an established IP than trying to build one up on your own.

Sometimes those of us that are into other games can forget how big the D&D 800lb gorilla is. Even in Vampire's WoD heyday, D&D only got outsold when it literally went out of print. As the market leader D&D has been bailed out by $$ at least 3 times from its own mismanagement.

Other RPG game lines went bankrupt in similar circumstances because they do not have the player base to make it worth someone's while to jump in with rescue money beforehand.

RPG's are a niche money making endeavor of a hobby, and D&D has always been an outlier.

WotC had to make internal own-goals of epic proportions to create the environment where an edition of D&D that was briefly but legitimately outsold by a competitor.

And even then the "competitor" was a clone of its previous edition...

Also, if TSR had died and no one picked up the D&D mantle, it is absolutely certain that the RPG industry would have continued on. It is not like people suddenly stopped making RPGs when TSR collapsed. To say that there would be no modern RPG landscape without 3E is a bold statement.

Yes. Power hates a vacuum.

The Pathfinder 1e saga has proven that the hobby will gravitate to an alternative if the mainstream game fails to serve.

Even in the TSR heyday there were D&D alternatives like palladium fantasy and countess Fantasy heartbreakers of "D&D done right"...

Even pre-3e there were fantasy games that used d20 roll-high, stat+skill, as their base mechanic.

It may have taken a few years but eventually the hobby would have formed around a new fantasy RPG standard.

It would be interesting to see the ascendency of a fantasy RPG that hewed close to many of the tropes of D&D, but was without the decades of TSR baggage, and lore assumptions would have turned out like.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Disagree. The early days of the hobby are very well documented.

Not that right place, right time, wasn't a huge factor.

I don't see how that matters; the fact we knew what was going on, doesn't mean we have any better understanding of its success. It just means we know the events that lead to it, but not why they lead to it.

 

[Random Task]

MHO - for A "different" RPG to take hold it would have had to be a Fantasy RPG similar to B/X in complexity, and would have had to hit before 1980. So that it would have enough time to build up a player base before videogames start to become a thing...

I think The Fantasy Trip had most of these characteristics. Wargamey, combat focused, pre-1980s.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think The Fantasy Trip had most of these characteristics. Wargamey, combat focused, pre-1980s.

Given quite how wargamey it was (while early D&D used some kind of markers and surfaces more often than some people claim, TFT absolutely demanded a hex board), I'm not sure it'd have spread into SF and fantasy fandom the way D&D did, though. One of the things that helped D&D grow early was how much it fished into both pools.

That's why I often say (though I think there's problems with it) the next most credible option would have been Traveler. It did suffer from being more focused, even within its genre, than D&D though.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Given quite how wargamey it was (while early D&D used some kind of markers and surfaces more often than some people claim, TFT absolutely demanded a hex board), I'm not sure it'd have spread into SF and fantasy fandom the way D&D did, though. One of the things that helped D&D grow early was how much it fished into both pools.

That's why I often say (though I think there's problems with it) the next most credible option would have been Traveler. It did suffer from being more focused, even within its genre, than D&D though.

I played TFT with out a hexboard.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

TFT came out in 1977 and by 1983 it was dead because of the company being shut down and the remaining owner asking an intentionally inflated price for Steve Jackson to buy back the rights. So all that would have had to change for TFT to go anywhere. Plus, when I started gaming in 1981, most gamers I knew in my area would only play D&D, when it came to fantasy RPGs. So that is not a new phenomenon that started with 5E. People knew D&D, knew they could go to those big tournaments that TSR had in the 80's, making it easy to find other players in their areas. While other fantasy games were always much harder to find enough people to make a full group.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I played TFT with out a hexboard.

There's exceptions to everything, but you've got to admit the game clearly expected you to use one.

 

[Random Task]

TFT came out in 1977 and by 1983 it was dead because of the company being shut down and the remaining owner asking an intentionally inflated price for Steve Jackson to buy back the rights. So all that would have had to change for TFT to go anywhere. Plus, when I started gaming in 1981, most gamers I knew in my area would only play D&D, when it came to fantasy RPGs. So that is not a new phenomenon that started with 5E. People knew D&D, knew they could go to those big tournaments that TSR had in the 80's, making it easy to find other players in their areas. While other fantasy games were always much harder to find enough people to make a full group.

Right, but if TSR had dissolved into the cheese curds of Wisconsin in 1977 and Steve Jackson had the rights to TFT, what could have happened?

 

[Jaeger]

I think The Fantasy Trip had most of these characteristics. Wargamey, combat focused, pre-1980s.

I would rather say something like TFT would be a logical substitute.

After all we need to remember that D&D was a known quantity when TFT was created. And the game received little follow up.

the next most credible option would have been Traveler. It did suffer from being more focused, even within its genre, than D&D though.

I disagree. For two different reasons.

First:

Traveller was made after D&D came out. It was not developed independently of it. Its mode of play was very much influenced by how D&D did things:

White Dwarf Interviews Marc Miller

Issue #23 of White Dwarf features a lengthy – and insightful – interview with the creator of Traveller , Marc Miller. I'm always intereste...

grognardia.blogspot.com

Without D&D's release there is no reason to believe Miller have made the intuitive leap to the RPG GM/PC paradigm D&D swept in.

Not that he couldn't have. But a lot of people doing similar things failed to make that intuitive leap. The odds are more against than for.


Second: (I am presuming that somehow the odds were beat and Traveller did become the first RPG...)

The Default Traveller setting and mode of play is just not as good as D&D's take on Fantasy adventure when it comes to capturing the imagination.

Someone (or several someone's) would have recognized the concept, and made a Fantasy RPG that would have gone on to become dominant.

Even if it was first; Traveller would have been the Everquest to someone else's World of Warcraft...

 

[Random Task]

The Default Traveller setting and mode of play is just not as good as D&D's take on Fantasy adventure when it comes to capturing the imagination.

Someone (or several someone's) would have recognized the concept, and made a Fantasy RPG that would have gone on to become dominant.

Even if it was first; Traveller would have been the Everquest to someone else's World of Warcraft...

Yes, if a space faring RPG was going to become really huge, I think it would have happened already over the last 40 years. For whatever reason, I think that sort of game is somewhat niche in the RPG space.