What if you brought 4E back to 1970?

[JiffyPopTart]

The world "Eladrin" would certainly have more traction. People would try to figure out how skill challenges work. Someone would notice the lack of Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil alignments and houserule them in. The inability of the garage press RPG industry to compete with your production values would cause the "fantasy wargaming" hobby to become stillborn and your D&D product would define the market for years, with only mimeo-d pamphlets providing an "indie press."

Also, it would take about thirty seconds for some geek to figure out you were from the future, since your full-color book would look unlike anything in physical existence at the time.

Thank you for being one of the few to actually answer the question that was asked. Interesting take.

DS

 

[JiffyPopTart]

But part-dragon makes no sense to me, fluff-wise, and annoys me as being way too gee whiz for a serious game. Totally destroys my suspension of disbelief to imagine people and dragons can have kids together, or that two-legged mini-dragons are running around.

So it makes more sense to you that non-intelligent lizards and intelligent primates have a hybrid...but not intelligent lizards and intelligent primates?

That in turn makes no sense to me.

DS

 

[Runestar]

I am not sure if it would prove to be any more popular than 1e. I remember that what drew me to pick up Adnd wasn't so much the promise of a well-tuned and perfectly balanced mechanic system, but more the allure of being able to play together as a group. In fact, my fondest memories of the game occurred when we didn't really know anything about the rules, and were pretty much making things up and winging it on the fly.

So I think that people simply just see it as yet another RPG.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Remember, Star Wars was just some cult flick when it was released and didn't attain legitimacy until MANY years latter.

Okay, I know it's been covered already, but I just had to say... WHAT? Clearly you couldn't have actually been there and, honestly, given the obviously incorrect nature of it I'm at a loss to understand what you mean or how you came to this understanding. While it may not have been lauded as sliced bread by stuck up English professors in Ivory Towers it was an INSTANT, box-office phenomenon with mass appeal and NOT "just some cult flick".

My personal experience was that well before it opened I was already pumped to see it just by the TV ads and I was not alone. My parents took me for my 16th birthday June 7th, '77 - lines around the block and all. We couldn't even get into the showing we'd arrived for which was just unheard of. We got tickets then stood waiting in line for two hours while they kept asking, "Are you SURE you want to see it this much?"

Of course the week before it opened my desires had already been plainly voiced and my mother only fueled my enthusiasm by showing me a quite lengthy article in, of all sources, Time Magazine about the movie which was titled: Cinema: STAR WARS The Year's Best Movie. Here's a couple sample paragraphs:

The film opens in 50 theaters across the country, but advance screenings and word-of-mouth have already given it an outsized reputation among film buffs and science fiction addicts—two groups united usually only by their enthusiasm. The first week in April, indeed, 6,000 color transparencies from the film were stolen from the production offices; they are now selling for more than $5 each to sci-fi freaks. Some of the spaceship models used for special effects were later stolen from a workshop, and they too are being advertised on the open market. "Star Wars is the costume epic of the future," says Ben Bova, editor of Analog, one of the leading science fiction magazines. "It's a galactic Gone With the Wind. It's perfect summer escapist fare."

At a special preview in San Francisco early this month, kids screamed in delight at the film's fantastic effects. At the end, while the lengthy credits rolled, the entire audience applauded for two or three minutes. "It was a supermarket audience, ordinary people," says Lucas, who was there and who still wonders at the reaction. "After something like that, you sit there and say, 'Gee, that's what it's all about.' "

That's BEFORE the movie even opened. The lines to get in did not let up for weeks, months. My friends and I nonetheless returned repeatedly - and waited in line - for what was then very cheap matinee entertainment.

While I actually agree with many points in your post this one statement seriously undermines its credibility.

 

[AllisterH]

Looking at the fluff for the races, I think they would be accepted...

Eladrin for example I imagine would go over well, especially with the fluff of the elves/eladrin separation.

Similarly, I think with the existence of Elric, a race of degnerate humans would fly.

The real tricky one is of course Dragonborn....but I think it would be more accepted than halflings. Dragonmen have been popular since the beginning of D&D it seems so I think people would like them.

 

[WayneLigon]

Remember, Star Wars was just some cult flick when it was released and didn't attain legitimacy until MANY years latter.

I remember the opening days of Star Wars very well. It was an instant hit, and the nightly news was carrying stories about people seeing it 10, 20, 30 times. People in the theater I attended did something I'd never seen before and seen only one time since: they gave it a standing ovation at the end. (And they did the same thing at that fantastic first 'jump to hyperspace' shot).

 

[WayneLigon]

If 4E was the first RPG, then... I think things would not be all that different. The physical production values of 4E would have been almost impossible to achieve at a reasonable price then, but that has nothing to do with the point. Everything else? People would have accepted it more or less about the same as they did D&D back in the day. There might be a little less rules-lawyering and some better GMing because unlike the brown books the 4E DMG holds a lot of valuable advice to your first-time GM.

It would do much the same as original D&D did: set the standard for an RPG. Then there would be companies that would start up to make games that rip off D&D, and ones that start up to make a game that's very different from D&D. History would repeat itself slightly differently. 2007 4E would probably be something more akin to 3E, with more ability to switch up between classes and less distinction between them. And people would whine about that as well.

 

[WayneLigon]

One reason that D&D caught on was due to the underground movement of the college set, highly educated and very intent on detail.... WTF is all this "she" crap in the text explaining the understood neuter gender values of a person?

Your early adopters, being the highly educated college crowd and more than likely immersed in science-fiction and fantasy literature of the time ... would find that perfectly natural and normal, in tune with the predictions and writings of visionaries of the time.

 

[jmucchiello]

Okay, I know it's been covered already, but I just had to say... WHAT? Clearly you couldn't have actually been there and, honestly, given the obviously incorrect nature of it I'm at a loss to understand what you mean or how you came to this understanding. While it may not have been lauded as sliced bread by stuck up English professors in Ivory Towers it was an INSTANT, box-office phenomenon with mass appeal and NOT "just some cult flick".

No, you are forgetting that back then movies didn't open everywhere all at once. They opened on maybe 100 screens and the film traveled from theater to theater so that a word-of-mouth hit, like Star Wars, could build mindshare slowly. I was 9 and I never heard of the film until nearly fall when it had already come and gone in my local theaters. I had to convince my parents to drive 30 miles away in order to see it.

So, no it was not an INSTANT box-office phenomenon. It was a slow burn to a conflagration. It took a few months to reach phenonenon status. Yes, back then a movie might still be in theaters 6-9 months after its initial release. That was considered a box-office smash.

 

[darjr]

I dunno.

The sites with info state that it broke house records in the first 32 theaters it was released in. That it's first weekend in 'wider' release it earned nearly 7 million. How many theaters were there in the US at the time?

People who worked on the film are on record stating that there were uncharacteristically long lines of people waiting to see the film on opening day.

I even remember family telling me about skipping work to see the film the week of it's release.