what might have the formative history of RPGs be without D&D? or would it have even happened?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In a weird way, I think that if it hadn't been D&D (say, it was En Garde) it would have the same general trajectory

 

[aramis erak]

spinning into it's own thread.

Braunstein was a not entirely unprecedented bit.

• A number of narrative wargames existed, using pencil and paper.
  • Frei Kreigspiele is the direct parent of the mode of play used by Dave Weseley
  • Diplomacy is often played in Player as Head of State thought process.
  • Model UN dates back to 1921... and was fairly popular in US Education by 1970.
• A small number of Character Scale wargames existed.
  • Most minis skirmish games were 1:figure:man scale
  • Many had "when
• improv comedy was common, live shows.
  • It was also used as a parlor game.
  • the first improv TV show was before 1950.... What Happens Now? in 1949, 22 episodes, or so wikipedia lists.
• radio plays were still common. The HHGTTG and Star Wars radioplays were 1980 or so...
• Colossal Caves already existed
  • The mode of play is 1st person text, and has been since its creation in the 1960's
  • it was the first, but not the last, pre-D&D first person text game.
  • The real boost in it came in the mid 70's with D&D feeding in, but I'm not sure that that wouldn't have happened otherwise; the key elements were present in a late 60's wargames: unit experience, hit points...
• The SCA has been around since the 1960's.
• the rise of "Me first" thinking in the US populace and tolerance of non-conformity (probably the single most important social change within the US) from the early 1960's on...

All the precursors were there.

Add me first, improv comedy, and radioplays, and you get storygaming.
Add Colossal Caves and character scale wargaming to model UN, and eventually you get asks for things uncovered; sooner or later someone says, "Sure, Why not?"
Likewise, GMs in Frei Kriegspiele saying, "go ahead and roll for it." And a difficulty is set. This is pretty much what happened in Braunstein III.

I know my own early 80's complaint about Zork and Planetfall was the narrow range of actions allowed. Ultima wasn't much better on choices, but had longer storylines and much better combat; it was explicitly inspired by D&D (source: Richard "Lord British" Garriot, multiple interviews on TV and youtube.)

What amazes me isn't that it happened, but that it regularized so quickly amongst gaming... and then divided off making false dichotomies twixt TTRPGs←→Minis Wargames, TTRPGs←→CRPGs, TTRPGs←→P&P Wargames (such as the campaign game mode of Starfire comes to mind, but older games did similar, I just don't have names to hand).

 

[Count_Zero]

It's worth pointing out that D&D is an altered and commercial version of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor.

True, but Arneson's Blackmoor was, basically, a bunch of variably organized house rules to Chainmail on scraps of paper, index cards, and sticky notes that are maybe organized in a binder, and Arneson, from what I've gathered, didn't necessarily feel like organizing it into a commercial product (and considering his later track record for deadlines, and how well he did without an editor or collaborator, even if he did that didn't mean it'd come out in a playable form).

So, what we could have gotten instead would have been various Braunstein games getting written up through after action reports in fanzines and semi-pro zines, inspiring people to try to start their own similar Braunsteins with varying degrees of success.

Possibly the first game to jump into being a "Commercial Braunstein" at this point might be the Star Blazers miniatures game, with the framework of the first season leading itself to that structure, or a Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica game.

Where, in this more Sci-fi inspired alternative history, things go to something closer to a proper tabletop RPG as we think of them now would be something designed to kind of haphazardly do both Star Trek and Star Wars styles of play.

Ironically, in this setup, Gangbusters still comes out, but as a game designed solely for Braunstein-style play.

 

[aramis erak]

In a weird way, I think that if it hadn't been D&D (say, it was En Garde) it would have the same general trajectory- the community would have adapted it to its use, and then there would be later calcification in the approach as commercialization set it.

It wouldn't have been En Garde!
Marc Miller and Frank Chadwick both have said that it was inspired directly by 1974 D&D. Repeatedly.

Edit to add: Everything prior they'd done that I know of was not character scale, so it's not like it triggered an underlying preextant idea to express early.

 

[Theory of Games]

It's worth pointing out that D&D is an altered and commercial version of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor.

I'm sure we were on the cusp of someone hitting on the idea and making it commercial. If it wasn't Gygax, it would have been someone else. Perhaps someone in Dave's circle. Dave Megarry took the dungeon aspects of Blackmoor and created a boardgame, Dungeon! from his experience playing in Blackmoor.

Otherwise, it likely would have developed as a peculiar offshoot of improv theater. The modern form of which can be traced back to Viola Spolin in the 1940s. Her foundational work on the topic, Improvisation for the Theater, was published in 1963. After all, RPGs are long-form improv theater games with dice and far too many rules.

Blackmoor is/was Arneson's house-rules for Chainmail. Let's not put the cart before the horse. Gygax inspired Blackmoor

 

[Umbran]

The solution to getting people to praise and talk about other RPGs, isn't to dwell on D&D getting glory, it is to give spotlight to other RPGS that aren't D&D

So, funny thing being, that's exactly my point!

When one is trying to put some spotlight on non-D&D games, but someone pipes up that D&D was an influence on them, the effect is (we even have a term for it) spotlight hogging!

Thus, it is not always good to raise the point of D&D's influence. QED.

 

[Theory of Games]

Or maybe we can give something that actually has influenced others credit. Where credit is due.

 

[Umbran]

If we want to consider what might have been the formative history, we don't need to just identify the rules root. We also have to identify the route to popularity.

D&D had a ready-made early market in the community around the wargames that were at its conceptual root, and the network of communication among them.

So, what other space had a route to popularity - some obvious path to work as marketing?

 

[Bedrockgames]

So, funny thing being, that's exactly my point!

When one is trying to put some spotlight on non-D&D games, but someone pipes up that D&D was an influence on them, the effect is (we even have a term for it) spotlight hogging!

Thus, it is not always good to raise the point of D&D's influence. QED.

I would have to go back and look at the conversation, but my memory is someone was suggesting the influence wasn't there or important, and so I was just saying, the influence on other RPGs is pretty clear. That said, I make non-D&D RPGs myself, I pretty much just play non-D&D RPGs. The point I was trying to make here really is if people want those types of games to thrive, then they need to start threads about them, comment on threads about them, etc. Review non-D&D RPGs. Minimizing D&D's impact on them, is in my view counter productive (I am not saying we need to always mention the influence of D&D, I am just saying I think it is disingenuous to not recognize that influence)

 

[Umbran]

Or maybe we can give something that actually has influenced others credit. Where credit is due.

You think, somehow, D&D doesn't get credit?

In the middle of the 50th Anniversary, with articles from Forbes and NPR, with the game somewhere around an all-time high, selling thousands of books at a sold-out GenCon, with further expected sales that exceed available printing capacity, having just bolstered a company with billion-dollar videogame sales, where we have another thread discussion on how D&D is synonymous with RPG in some quarters...

Edit to add: Oh, and several books on the history of RPGs, focused on D&D...

Somehow, D&D isn't getting credit?

What more credit does D&D need?