What if... D&D had been designed BEFORE The Lord of the Rings!

[Nomad4life]

Actually, Dante Alighieri invented D&D.

Remember that whole Divine Comedy thing? Yeah, that was just one of his play sessions he got around to scribbling down.

I hear that after he gave up DMing, the game kind of floundered for a number of years until Geoffrey Chaucer took over. That guy was great at coming up with NPCs, but his plots were kind of railroaded and he could never seem to end his campaigns before his players lost interest.

 

[Nyeshet]

I think many of the foes would be more goblinoid and faeish than is true in the current game. I imagine that fae and goblin tales of the middle ages would be mixed with the mythology of egypt, greece / rome, norse, and celt would be major sources of inspiration - along with the pulp tales of the current era. I can see supliments adding Arabic / Persian, Indian, and Oriental feels to the game, based strongly upon their history and mythos.

All in all, it would be a very different feel for the game. More gritty, more 'realistic' in terms of holding fast to the old legends and myths. Hmm, I think the older gothic period (Dracula, Frankenstein, etc) may also have a bit of influence over the creation of the game. They were not so old as to be cliche as of yet, after all. And consider that Computers were non-existent, TVs, etc rather uncommon - boarding on rare, and phones, automobiles, etc were well known but not yet anywhere near universal. These might also have affected the game.

I wonder. WWI was less than a generation old, and already signs were building up suggesting that WWII - or rather some type of conflict - might perhaps come before too long. I don't think many really expected a second world war, but then I think that was due more to Denial - self delution to ignore an unpleasant potential reality - than actual inability to see the signs of its potential coming. How might these have affected the game, I wonder?

Another consideration is communication and transportation. Today's game is heavily influenced, I think, by the rapid communication and transportation of modern times. 3rd party publishers known within a day how many of their customers feel about the game, and they often have up the minute understandings of what their customers are interested in seeing - if for no other reason than lurking this and similar boards. TSR lacked that resource, and to say it was even more lacking 50 years before TSR would have been an understatement. The initial game, therefore, would have changed far more slowly than typical of today - or even TSR's day. I wonder how that would have effected the game? Perhaps the game would develop its own pulp magazine (proto-Dragon?) to encourage discussion, mailins to the editor, etc as a means of gauging interest in this or that topic?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I agree, it would probably be a much more human-centered game. Elves and dwarves and the like would exist, but probably much closer to the folkloric roots (like, I think, the Lejendary Adventures races).

What would really affect the game, if it had been developed in 1936, would be the lack of Jack Vance's Dying Earth series. The magic system, might be have been developed as a spell-point system (if we still consider D&D to have come out of war-gaming, with magic still as a finite resource, like ammunition).

 

[WayneLigon]

Perhaps the game would develop its own pulp magazine (proto-Dragon?) to encourage discussion, mailins to the editor, etc as a means of gauging interest in this or that topic?

Very likely. This would be at a time when people still wrote multi-page latters to each other. Newsletters were, I think, much more common despite the cruder reproduction capabilities available to the normal person. Certainly there would have been magazines, probably more than one, for the game. Every hobby has magazines.

That would be a fascinating change. You'd be dealing with a populace that was much more literate in many ways since they wouldn't have TV as a distraction.

 

[prosfilaes]

halflings owe everything to the professor ("kender" and later changes notwithstanding -- they were later variations on Tolkien's theme).

That's not true; small humans enjoy a long history in legend and folklore. They would have turned up in some form or other, and probably pretty quickly.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

It is interesting that everyone is coming up with the same conclusions that I had.

Elves and dwarves become more alien.
Monsters derive primarily from myth and then from the pulps.
Howard and Leiber would be among the primary fantasy influences after classical myths and stories.
Among pop culture, "weird" and "science-fiction" might overwhelm the influence of fantasy. The Burroughs Mars series could be classified as planetary romance.
No Jack Vance = no Vancian magic.​

I imagine that this Proto-Gygax would draw fantastical inspiration for his wargaming from classical myth. Instead of Gandalfian wizards, divine intervention would have been more prevalent. Arthurian influence would still be high.

At the same time, he would be running games totally outside of the fantasy genre as we commonly think about. Skirmishes and wars on Mars and other planets in a more Robin Hood style than Arthurian.

Would one of these games trump the other in interest, or would they merge?

I view this 1936 Dungeons & Dragons as being a past-equivalent to the following modern games (ignoring system mecanics for this list):

Pendragon
Call of Cthulhu
Conan
Iron Lords of Jupiter
Space 1889​

Which becomes the dominant idea behind D&D, planetary romance, weird fiction, sword & sorcery or Arthurian mythology?

It is also important to note that 1936 Gygax would have an impressive handlebar mustache and possibly a monocle.

 

[Agback]

What if Dungeons & Dragons had been designed before Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were published?

No hobbits. Elves and dwarves would be far less human. No ents. Goblins rather than orcs. Possibly there would have been more fighting against evil men rather than against humanoid monsters (following Eddison, Howard, Burroughs). And maybe increased influence of Burroughs and Eddison would mean more planetary romance and less high fantasy, which might have meant branching out into space opera and then picking up Doc Smith.

Before The Lord of the Rings probably also means before Three Hearts and Three Lions, which would mean trolls would be as hard as stone rather than regenerating. More profoundly, that probably means before Law and Chaos. Paladins would be very different, based on the paladins of Charlemagne in Ariosto and on the Knights of the Round Table without the influence of Holger Carlson.

Before Lord of the Rings, before Three Hearts and Three Lions, probably before World War II. I think the idea of an open war between Good and Evil (or Law and Chaos, which were Good and Evil in the Anderson) would have been less influential. Adventures might be more personal and romantic and less military in character.

 

[Agback]

What would really affect the game, if it had been developed in 1936, would be the lack of Jack Vance's Dying Earth series. The magic system, might be have been developed as a spell-point system (if we still consider D&D to have come out of war-gaming, with magic still as a finite resource, like ammunition).

Excellent observation! And its "fire & forget" character is not the only peculiarity of Vancian magic. In earlier sources magic was a lot slower and more subtle. Though perhaps issues of game balance and of keeping all classes involved in mêlée (preferrably with charcteristic tasks) might have driven the game design to a faster and flashier magic than was in its sources.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Which becomes the dominant idea behind D&D, planetary romance, weird fiction, sword & sorcery or Arthurian mythology?

Probably weird fiction and sword & sorcery in equal measures. They seem to be the strongest influences on the real Gygax.

 

[Agback]

That would be a fascinating change. You'd be dealing with a populace that was much more literate in many ways since they wouldn't have TV as a distraction.

It was also for the same reason a time in which games in general were more widely played. Not only were such things as Monopoly and Scrabble big, but card-games were more widely played, and parlour games such as Dumcrambo and Charades were very often played at adults' parties. The market would have been ripe for RPGs in the '30s, quite likely more favourable than in the '70s.

So pD&D would quite likely have been big. And it was the pulp era: there were a lot more magazines than now and they had much higher circulation. At leasst one magazine dedicted to RPGs would have been a cert.