D&D General What if D&D 5E Was Released in 1974?

[Plaguescarred]

Following the News Piece 1981 thread, it got me thinking, taken the huge success that D&D had when it was released, in the shape or form it was published back then, what do you think its success would have been if 5E had been instead, with all the differences both mechanically and esthetically, that exist between it and the early editions of the game?

 

[Minigiant]

Less. A lot less.

A lot of 5e's success is due to the priming and cultivation of the fantasy genre in tv, movies, cartoons, anime, video games, and book into the mainstream.

Especially video games and cartoons/anime. 5e is too complex for a first edition. 5e's success is primed on millennials and zoomers being gamers who watched fantasy cartoons and anime.

 

[Cadence]

1974 feels way too early -- there it was still trying to get the war gamers on board, and wouldn't have had the money to do anything like the AD&D core books for production values yet.

I wonder if they broke it up by level like the Basic, B/X, or BECMI sets, snuck it past EGG, and put it out in 1981 instead of Moldvay or 1983 instead of Mentzer, if it might have eaten AD&D's lunch.

 

[Mind of tempest]

not the same success as some of that is external

 

[DEFCON 1]

Less. As @Minigiant stated, the current game is built upon the shoulders of everything that came before it and would be much too much for an entire new game to gain any traction. Maybe if we were talking ONLY the Basic Rules it might be a better argument... but even just seeing dragonborn, tieflings, gnomes and drow as racial options in 1974 would make people question just what this thing was. The basic D&D of '74 was very much a product of the Tolkien times, which is why it had a more solid foundation and doorway into gameplay for fantasy enthusiasts of the mid 70s.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Less. As @Minigiant stated, the current game is built upon the shoulders of everything that came before it and would be much too much for an entire new game to gain any traction. Maybe if we were talking ONLY the Basic Rules it might be a better argument... but even just seeing dragonborn, tieflings, gnomes and drow as racial options in 1974 would make people question just what this thing was. The basic D&D of '74 was very much a product of the Tolkien times, which is why it had a more solid foundation and doorway into gameplay for fantasy enthusiasts of the mid 70s.

what about hard mechanics with different fluff that fits more than what we would could expect from the 70's?

 

[Jer]

5e as is in 1974? It would have been a LOT less successful because holy cow those books would have cost like a hundred dollars a pop in 1974 money. 300 some pages each all with full color? I feel like even textbooks didn't have those kind of production values yet and those are typically the most expensive books you find since institutions buy them.

Speaking more seriously - I think there are a lot of directions that D&D could have taken right out of the gate. I don't think anything like 5e could have been one of them because 5e is the result of a lot of iterative design over a roughly 40 year timespan. The process of building 5e is the result of many iterations of people playing the game, people feeling the game is lacking something, people adding or removing something to the game, rinse and repeat.

For example - you don't get the 5e skill system out of the gate because nobody would have thought a skill system was needed until you'd played the game long enough to "feel like something was lacking". It came fairly quickly - I think the thief was added in Greyhawk which was the first supplement to the original booklets. And even then it took other games to blaze the trail to lead D&D to adopt a skill system for all PCs instead of just specialzed skills for certain classes. The first decade or so of D&D was about it defining the parameters of what roleplaying actually was - and with other games in "conversation" with it to push those boundaries.

And even if it could have emerged fully formed like Athena springing from the skull of Zeus, I don't think something like 5e would have been of interest to the folks who were interested in D&D back when it first emerged from the wargaming scene - it looks nothing like wargaming anymore. Part of the appeal of D&D originally was to wargaming nerds who liked fantasy. The wargame has been mostly stripped out of D&D over the years, or if not stripped hidden away behind layers that make it harder to see as a wargame.

 

[Cadence]

what about hard mechanics with different fluff that fits more than what we would could expect from the 70's?

Going less drastic than 5e, I wonder if they had just taken Moldvay basic and:

• Had everyone start with an extra 4 hit points.
• Push best 3 out of 4d6 in any order.
• Let everyone heal more each night (say half their level in hit dice?)
• Added death saves
• Push the d20 rolls for trying things more than just having them mentioned briefly at the end of the book and have Thieves abilities not suck so much.
• No demi-human level limits.
• Maybe one more spell for the casters at 1st level?
• Sold it as the "High Fantasy & Heroic" D&D version

how it would have done. On the down side it wouldn't have been cross-compatible with OD&D and AD&D in terms of playing characters from all three at the same table, like it was for some groups. On the other, I wonder if the AD&D players would have grabbed some of those rules (while simultaneously describing the basic one as the version with training wheels).

 

[wicked cool]

a lot less

1) early 80's they had to remove all demons etc due to political pressure. Not sure how much due to Maze and monsters
2) the landscape was just different. no internet/no cable/no cordless phones
3) agreed on the budgets. look at the maps in the books etc back then. you need WOTC/magic the gathering to create the money to jump start what was a dead entity
4) the culture back then. Its so different now then it was then-the acceptance of 5e. i see so many people now with D20 shirts etc on and for me its like owning a jeep (people who own jeeps almost have this secret club message to each other when they see each other). I will give/get compliments on a sweatshirt from total strangers

 

[DND_Reborn]

Much less, as others have said.

5E's success is due to two primary factors:

1. the acceptance of games (video leading the way) as mainstream and not "just for nerds, geeks, and losers" anymore.
2. the Internet.

Another point is that its more "politically correct" views wouldn't have been as accepted 50 years ago.