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

[Thomas Shey]

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.




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.

Eh. While I agree that the initial jump is the sticking point, I think most of this assumption is that if D&D didn't happen or failed someone would have. That was what I was doing here.

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...

This assumes fantasy would automatically would have automatically been more necessary than SF at the time. That can't be but speculative and predicated on the view of D&D in the rear-view mirror.

I personally don't think its compelling; the biggest problem with Traveller is it wasn't as far reaching within SF as D&D was within fantasy, and lacked some elements of the reward loop (the lack of in-play contribution to advancement for example). To really do the job you'd likely have needed something with more of the scope of the later Space Opera, but with a game system less convoluted (which is where Traveler has virtues). But if you had something like that, I think SF could well have been as good a launching point as fantasy in the populace that ended up launching D&D (mostly wargamers and SF/fantasy fans).

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

One sort of did; the original Star Wars RPG. It wasn't able to dismount D&D, but neither has anything else so you can question how much of that was the general advantages D&D had in the market place, rather than one being fantasy and one being SF.

So the question is, if D&D doesn't happen or is gone, can an SF game rather than a fantasy one assume its niche? I don't think the available data is such to say "no", because a lot of it is colored by how much D&D's influence had colored other related media like computer games.

Pulled out in isolation, at the time D&D happened, SF was at least as popular and visible as fantasy was, but all the SF games that appeared for a while were either more narrow in scope or had other problems, and were dealing with D&D already taking up a fair bit of mindspace. So its pretty hard to say how a relatively simply and wide-reaching SF game would have done.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To make it clear, I think, as has been noted, this thread has discussed two different scenarios, and there are important differences between them here: What happens if there's no D&D, what happens if there's a D&D and it fails after initial success.

In the case of the latter the most likely replacement is fantasy, because fantasy has already been set in people's expectations for what an RPG does; assuming it isn't someone else's D&D knockoff, the most likely cases I can think of are DragonQuest or (as previously mentioned, despite my critique of it) TFT. Runequest, for all its virtues was less generalized and because of Glorantha, accessible.

In the case of the first, I simply think dismissing an SF game is premature, and is based on a view backwards inevitably colored by the fact D&D did exist, and influenced expectations strongly.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Like if it not, in the fantasy vs scifi argument pre-release of D&D, fantasy had the behemoth of the Tolkien books, while scifi had some popular books, but nothing on that scale. Tolkien was big in pop culture back then too, with "Frodo Lives" graffiti showing up all over the place. So even without D&D, fantasy wins. Plus, it is much more an escape from reality than scifi ever will be.

 

[Jaeger]

This assumes fantasy would automatically would have automatically been more necessary than SF at the time. That can't be but speculative and predicated on the view of D&D in the rear-view mirror.

Yes hindsight is 20/20.

But in this case we do have it.

Like Random task said:

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.

Agreed.

So, I don't want this to come across like I'm slagging on Traveller per se. It is a solidly designed RPG, with a loyal following, that has stood the test of time.

That being said: Traveller has never risen out of its niche. It has been absolutely murdered in sales by whomever the current license holder of the Star Wars IP is.

Always. Every time.

It also has never matched the current runner up fantasy RPG to D&D. Ever.

I think SF could well have been as good a launching point as fantasy in the populace that ended up launching D&D (mostly wargamers and SF/fantasy fans).

I simply think dismissing an SF game is premature, and is based on a view backwards inevitably colored by the fact D&D did exist, and influenced expectations strongly.

Still disagree. Fantasy would have still won out.

But what about this!...

at the time D&D happened, SF was at least as popular and visible as fantasy was,

You mean the cool Sci fi stuff from the late 1970's that people still remember today? Buck Rodgers, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars...

Traveller did not, and to this day still doesn't sell itself as any of that. Which has always been a limiter on its popularity.

And other things were still going on in popular culture when RPG's would have appeared in the late 70's.

Namely the big 'revival' in fantasy going on in the 1970's that shaped how a whole generation viewed the genre. Everything from reprints of classics from Lieber and Howard, to the Lord of the Rings animated film. Not to mention the increased popularity of Fantasy Wargaming that was also happening in the 1970's even before D&D's release.

By the late 1970's Tolkien was as popular as he had ever been, and many pulp sword and sorcery authors of the past were exposed to a whole new generation. This fantasy revival was instrumental in shaping many of the tropes we now associate with D&D today. It wasn't until we get into the 80's that D&D starts to influence the genre that spawned it.

And I am not even touching on the ways Fantasy directly taps into, and draws from our collective mythology and folklore in ways that Sci Fi does not.

All the cultural elements that made Fantasy RPG's dominant would still be there even if Traveller somehow came first.

A Traveller RPG would still have been the Everquest to someone else's World of Warcraft...

 

[Thomas Shey]

Like if it not, in the fantasy vs scifi argument pre-release of D&D, fantasy had the behemoth of the Tolkien books, while scifi had some popular books, but nothing on that scale. Tolkien was big in pop culture back then too, with "Frodo Lives" graffiti showing up all over the place. So even without D&D, fantasy wins. Plus, it is much more an escape from reality than scifi ever will be.

On the other hand, SF had a well known TV show and a couple other lesser ones. Its not like "Water Brother" wasn't a pretty big cultural element in some parts too. And your last sentence is entirely your perspective on it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You mean the cool Sci fi stuff from the late 1970's that people still remember today? Buck Rodgers, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars...

I note you've conveniently forgotten Star Trek.

Traveller did not, and to this day still doesn't sell itself as any of that. Which has always been a limiter on its popularity.

Which, as I acknowledge, was a scope problem for it.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

On the other hand, SF had a well known TV show and a couple other lesser ones. Its not like "Water Brother" wasn't a pretty big cultural element in some parts too. And your last sentence is entirely your perspective on it.

No clue what this "Water Brother" is. And a tv show that died after 3 seasons and did not really become popular until it was used to give birth to syndication years later. Which also never spawned an RPG that could challenge D&D.

 

[jdrakeh]

If we step back in time to the late 70s absent D&D, I think Traveller would've had a good chance. Star Trek and Star Wars were both wildly popular at the time, as were other space-faring science fiction novels and television series. Something like Traveller seems like a natural fit.

 

[Jaeger]

I note you've conveniently forgotten Star Trek.

Not conveniently - just flat out forgot!

But it changes nothing about what I posted.

The Star Trek IP has never really come to anything in RPG land. And not for lack of trying.

However popular as a show - its premise has never translated into the kind of sales and popularity as an RPG the way that the various Star Wars RPG's have.

A Traveller RPG would still have been the Sci-Fi Everquest to someone else's Medieval Fantasy World of Warcraft RPG.