What Genre Do You Wish Inaugurated TTRPGs?

[Thomas Shey]

I would prefer superheroes too--but I'm not sure the design space existed yet to do it right (I'm extremely unconvinced that random generation is a virtue for superheroes; some sort of actual design, even if it was chunkier than later point build design seems necessary to have it really work right).

Second choice would be SF, but I don't think Traveler would have cut it, even if it came in earlier. It had a little too narrow a design function for too many SF fans and definitely for the general populace of what would become gamers. You probably wanted something that was going to support early TV/movie SF better (maybe a proto version of something like WEG D6).

 

[Thomas Shey]

There's a critical flavor to TTRPGs that is naturally included in the fantasy settings, but not included in many others. And that is melee combat.

The problem with so many other genres, like western, sci-fi, World War X, superhero, etc, is that they all quickly devolve into nothing but ranged combat.

I think its quite an odd take to suggest superheroes don't have a lot of melee combat, given one of the commonest archetypes is mostly melee combat, and another one is almost purely so.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well.

Anyway, I personally wouldn't have preferred it, but there was a moment there where a gunslinger Old West game might have been the first RPG. Playing at the World has more info, but long story short: some players in England were running a hero focused persistent "cowboys" wargame that caught Gygax's attention in the zines. At the time it appears to have been pretty well along the track of turning into a proper RPG, but Gygax lifted some ideas from it. I don't think it had character progression tho.

By the 70's, its hard for me to picture that grabbing the zeitgeist the way D&D did. Maybe a decade earlier.

 

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[Wofano Wotanto]

I would prefer superheroes too--but I'm not sure the design space existed yet to do it right (I'm extremely unconvinced that random generation is a virtue for superheroes; some sort of actual design, even if it was chunkier than later point build design seems necessary to have it really work right).

Remember that for purposes of this thread, there's no pre-existing D&D to establish any kind of design norms that influence the hypothetical RPG taking its historical place, regardless of its genre. In addition, there's no reason to assume that a bunch of historical wargamers are going to drag their own experiences into the design process.

What a first-ever supers RPG designed by (say) the Marvel bullpen might look like is pure speculation, but it almost certainly wouldn't look like OD&D - or V&V, Golden Heroes or Champions. I wouldn't be shocked if it was a lot lighter on crunch and heavier on narrative elements, or resembled a collaborative creative writing exercise with a light layer of mechanics on top. If the rules are being published in actual floppy format they can also change and grow a lot and very rapidly even compared to OD&D. And it's still possible there could be a point buy system and a fair bit of math - maybe the person who first gets the idea is a Richard Garfield expy from accounting who wanders into the bullpen one day and asks if anyone wants to play this new game he came up with.

I also question whether Arneson and Gygax actually "got it right" themselves. I don't think they did, they just did well enough that getting in first let TSR dominate the market for long enough for class/level designs to become seen as something to be emulated. And they weren't even doing it with access to the kind of money, established audience and distribution network a game made by 1970s Marvel would have had.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So, in an alternate universe, if you were to play God, what genre would you have preferred RPGs to emerge from other than sword and sorcery fantasy? Note that this is a different question than what if RPGs had grown out of something other than tabletop war games.

I think fantasy is actually a fine genre for RPGs to have emerged from, but I think the problems stem from the specific influences and ideas that Arneson and Gygax had.

I feel like if TTRPGs had come from fantasy that didn't have the zero-to-hero factor, and particularly, if RPG magic hadn't originated from the fairly ghastly science-fantasy Vancian mould, we'd have had a much more adaptable and diverse baseline approach to RPGs. Like if the power levels of the heroes had been less farmboy to god, but more in line with pulp heroes who tended to start pretty competent, and if magic had been inspired say, by LeGuin's Earthsea, I think we'd have been a lot better off. And this wouldn't have just impacted TTRPGs, but videogames and arguably even media well beyond that.

A different genre I guess does give potential to avoid these problems (high-angle linear power gain, . Science Fiction is so diverse as to beg the question "what science-fiction"? And honestly in the 1970s that's kind of an issue.

Superheroes I think would be the most likely to lead to diverse rules and a focus on roleplaying, and that certainly ties in with accounts I've heard of early '80s Champions games and so on, which seemed to be very RP-focused in a way accounts of similar-era D&D games definitely are not (perhaps some of you were even playing in those games). I suspect this would probably have been the best case if I'm honest, even though I like the idea of SF being the starting point.

There's a case to be made, though, I think that because D&D was actually so peculiar and specific, that a lot of RPG designers kind of reacted against it rather than trying to copy it, and that's part of why we got so diverse a landscape in the later '80s and '90s, which was probably a good thing.

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

I like fantasy the best so I say fantasy.

 

[payn]

I think fantasy is actually a fine genre for RPGs to have emerged from, but I think the problems stem from the specific influences and ideas that Arneson and Gygax had.

I feel like if TTRPGs had come from fantasy that didn't have the zero-to-hero factor, and particularly, if RPG magic hadn't originated from the fairly ghastly science-fantasy Vancian mould, we'd have had a much more adaptable and diverse baseline approach to RPGs. Like if the power levels of the heroes had been less farmboy to god, but more in line with pulp heroes who tended to start pretty competent, and if magic had been inspired say, by LeGuin's Earthsea, I think we'd have been a lot better off. And this wouldn't have just impacted TTRPGs, but videogames and arguably even media well beyond that.

I gotta say, im glad it didnt though. I really liked the down to earth beginnings as average Joe's, doing extraordinary things. A lot of folks view "heroics" as a power level, but others (such as myself) see it more as a person's deeds that make them heroic.

A different genre I guess does give potential to avoid these problems (high-angle linear power gain, . Science Fiction is so diverse as to beg the question "what science-fiction"? And honestly in the 1970s that's kind of an issue.

Superheroes I think would be the most likely to lead to diverse rules and a focus on roleplaying, and that certainly ties in with accounts I've heard of early '80s Champions games and so on, which seemed to be very RP-focused in a way accounts of similar-era D&D games definitely are not (perhaps some of you were even playing in those games). I suspect this would probably have been the best case if I'm honest, even though I like the idea of SF being the starting point.

There's a case to be made, though, I think that because D&D was actually so peculiar and specific, that a lot of RPG designers kind of reacted against it rather than trying to copy it, and that's part of why we got so diverse a landscape in the later '80s and '90s, which was probably a good thing.

Right out the gun Traveller dropped the dirt farmer to Zeus approach so it wasnt like D&D locked it down immediately. It's just that D&D locked onto the fantasy trend of the moment and rode it for all its worth. D&D has been the biggest deal in RPGs ever since.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

So many good options. New Wave sci-fi. Science fantasy. Space opera. Pulp heroes. Superheroes. I prefer all those genres to fantasy.

The first half of the list is my thing. Dangerous Visions, John Brunner, etc.
Pulp heroes, if only the pulps weren't products of their time, but they were, so that's ok.
Superheroes I used to love, now not so much.

 

[CleverNickName]

Honestly, I wouldn't change a thing: high fantasy has always been my favorite genre of fiction. If you twisted my arm and forced me to choose something other than Tolkien's The Hobbit, I would choose Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles.