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

[Odhanan]

Wasn't the whole idea of dungeon crawling in a large part inspired by the trek of the Fellowship through the mines of Moria?

I shudder at the idea of no dungeons in D&D.

 

[Agback]

Wasn't the whole idea of dungeon crawling in a large part inspired by the trek of the Fellowship through the mines of Moria?

I heard it was Dave Arneson's fondness for spelunking that did it, though of course both might have been influential.

I suspect that the keyed map is a more obvious way to space encounters than the keyed flowchart, which is in turn more obvious than the plot-driven adventure. If we hadn't been exploring underground labyrinths we might have been doing essentially the same in castles and temple complexes.

I shudder at the idea of no dungeons in D&D.

De gustibus, non disputandem est. I loathe dungeons, and haven't played a dungeon-crawl since 1984. If an early genesis had produced a game that borrowed its structure and not just features from the inspirational literature I would have found that good.

You mileage might of course vary.

 

[WayneLigon]

We probably would have a lot more 'animal-men' as well, and I could see them becoming the major non-human races. More than likely our 'orc' would be the lizard man, serpent man, or some form of reptillian horror. That seems to be a very, very common theme in the early fantasy fiction.

Flash Gordon's various lion-men, hawk-men, fish-men and such would certainly be a factor. ERB's various Red Men, Yellow Men, White Men and the like would be a pattern for humanish variants.

Hey, another thought in all this. Our make-beleive game is getting started when there has been and is going to be a lot of unrest and uncertainty in the world. Traditionally, these are times when people turn to more escapist forms of entertainment. If D&D had gotten started around this time, it might have become the mainstream hit we would want Today, it would be a 'tried and true' sort of entertainment like Monopoly.]

This would have had to have been something sold in stores of the time, so.. probably a small boxed booklet set, with only six-sided dice or perhaps some other cheap randomization scheme.

 

[Thunderfoot]

As stated, without Moria, I dout there would be a D & D - it may have been something else, but I seriously doubt Dungeons would have been in the title. My take is that if the game would have progressed as a fantasy game, it would have been darker, more focused on the Howard and Lovecraft side of things, closer to what Ravenloft became actually, if it was based on fantasy.

However, since it did scam the Chainmail rules, it would probably have been a "fantastic historical rules supplement", so that players could re-live the days of King Arthur, Robin Hood and various other "historical mythos".

And hobbits, elves, orcs and dwarves, would never have come to light as PCs; monsters, maybe, but not PCs. It would have been humans and possibly some half-breed races as an optional rule, you know, for those who a really weird and quite imaginative.

 

[Tonguez]

Wasn't the whole idea of dungeon crawling in a large part inspired by the trek of the Fellowship through the mines of Moria?

I shudder at the idea of no dungeons in D&D.

The idea of secret cults hidden in underground caverns, or the theif stealing into the Wizards tower/haunted museum/enemy fortress/ruined temple is common in the pulps so subteranean location-based adventures would exists.

Tarzan also has a lot of adventures in open-air dungeons (lost valleys, underground kingdoms, inaccesible plateaus, enclosed thorny forests, Pellucidar etc) so that would provide a welcome change.

Of course Orc and Pie wont happen but cult-zealot (with scimiter) and Pie might be viable.

As for magic it would be less ubiquitous and more subtle. Ritual spells might be more common, divine intervention would be the standard and other magical abilities might come from artifacts given as gifts from the gods or fae OR as potions and other pseudo-science machines as influenced by the Pulps (Ninth Ray anyone?)

I wonder if in the thirties with the machinations of Kaiser Wilhelm, the Ottoman Empire, the Tsarist Russians and the Great Game still recent history whether these elements of espionage and international diplomacy might have an influence.

Would PCs be modeled on Lawrence of Arabia for instance?

 

[Dolom]

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.

You win!

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

As stated, without Moria, I dout there would be a D & D - it may have been something else, but I seriously doubt Dungeons would have been in the title.

I agree with that. There may have still been "dungeons" in the game, but it might not have been one of the primary focuses of the game.

 

[Hussar]

An interesting twist on the question might be how a popular release of DND in the 30's would have affected the genre. I mean, while it might be coincidental, the rise of DnD and the rise of the fantasy genre go hand in hand. Would we have seen fantasy literature go from a tiny subgenre of the fledgeling genre of SF to a full genre in its own right at that time?

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

An interesting twist on the question might be how a popular release of DND in the 30's would have affected the genre. I mean, while it might be coincidental, the rise of DnD and the rise of the fantasy genre go hand in hand. Would we have seen fantasy literature go from a tiny subgenre of the fledgeling genre of SF to a full genre in its own right at that time?

And would pTSR have launched a Dragonlance-like line of novels? That is, fiction designed to reinforce archetypes in the genres and sell the system.

Marslance, featuring the sinister Doc Wraist and his simple brother "Ham" Majere, based on Doc Savage and John Carter of Mars.

Tanis of the Half-Elves, patterned after Tarzan of the Apes.

The Forgotten Realms might end up more like The Lost World, and Spelljammer might be replaced with ideas from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Instead of full-length novels, these stories would likely be presented as serialized novellas in a pulp feature magazine of some sort. Perhaps it would be titled "Amazing Science-Fantasy" or something similar.

 

[Klaus]

Gygax himself mentioned in these boards that Tolkien's influence over the creation of D&D was limited (it seems to have creeped in with later authors more than with the Col himself).

Gygax mentions the chansons-de-geste as an influence over the Paladin, and I believe we'd still see a paladin akin to the original form of the class. The Ranger would be reminiscent of its 1e roots (Jack the Giant-Slayer). Magic would probably stem from Lovecraft, and would probably be done in a manner similar to CoC d20. The Rogue wouldn't be influenced by the Gray Mouser, but we might see a Trickster hero modelled after Loki, which would beg for a Thor-inspired Barbarian. Dwarves would probably be closer to their Nordic roots, as highly magical and skilled smiths living under the Earth.

And while LotR was nowhere to be found, the Ring of the Nibelungs was available.