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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4967788" data-attributes="member: 58197">Plus, y'know, the copyright date says 2008. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Anyway, let's get to the heart of the matter, and assume the books are "translated" into 1970 production values - something on the order of the old red book/blue book sets - and have nothing that identifies them as being from the future.What I think would happen: People would pick up the books, play them, have fun with them. I do think it would catch on initially. However, the lack of support (no supplements, no adventures) would be an initial hindrance. Much will depend on the legal details of how you set up your "distributor." Who owns the copyright? Is it legal for people to make their own copies and publish them?Let's assume you set it up as public domain. At that point, everyone will want to know who the hell you are, but you've already vanished in your time machine, so your identity will remain a great unsolved mystery.A bunch of people will grab the game and start printing it once the initial supply runs out. The initial competition will be on the strength of the supplements and adventures they print to go with the core rules. Eventually one company will emerge as the market leader and that company will take ownership of the core game, publishing new editions; probably with some drastic rewrites in order to have something copyrightable.As to how the mechanics themselves would evolve... the game would move in a simulationist direction; healing surges would get the axe for certain, encounter and daily powers would be reworked in a way that makes more intuitive sense, et cetera. 1970s-era wargamers were nothing if not simulationist.In the end I don't think it would look terribly different. The theory of RPG design would still have to be discovered and developed; though 4E might provide some key insights earlier than they would otherwise have come.</blockquote>

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