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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jacob Lewis" data-source="post: 8535060" data-attributes="member: 6667921">Well this is an interesting thought experiment, but I can't think of any reasonable assertions to make me think it would be more (or even as) successful as it is now. The biggest reason for this is exposure and accessibility, and nothing to do with the rules or aesthetics. In 1974, the internet was not available to everyone; it was mostly limited as intranet at some colleges and some private or government institutions. So there was no streaming, no youtube, no podcasts, etc. Even television was limited to 3 major broadcast companies and some public broadcasts. Starting out, it would rely mostly by word of mouth.Regardless if it were the best rpg ever invented, it would still be the first of it's kind. Thus, everything that followed or imitated would have evolved and improved on 5e as the genesis of origination. Assuming word of mouth led to the expected rise and success of the game for being what it is, it would still flourish. By today's standards, the rules for 1e and basic D&D are considered archaic, but still enjoyable for many. To me, that suggests the idea of what a fantasy roleplaying game represents at the time was at least as interesting as the rules themselves, if not more.But D&D would still need to face the controversies of the time. Religious conservative groups made their protests, and as expected, it just made everyone else want to do the exact thing they were protesting about. Funny how some things never change, am I right? <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="😉" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" title="Winking face    :wink:" data-shortname=":wink:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />I think the important thing to understand is that 5e wouldn't be what it is if D&D hadn't gone through everything that it did. 5e evolved from mistakes learned and trials faced. And even if it had the internet and all the other tools to help get the exposure it has now, it would still rely on its fanbase to promote it further than it could on it's own. That requires one more thing that didn't really exist at the time: an open license.There's a lot more to this, I'm sure. I am looking forward to reading more thoughts in this thread!</blockquote>

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