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

[RealAlHazred]

Second, TSR released Warriors of Mars shortly after OD&D. The reason most people don't know about it is because it only had a single print run. Someone's estate was not happy, so TSR wisely did not print it again.

Unfortunately, for similar reasons, the Gygax-Arneson Lords of Middle-Earth setting book for OD&D can be really hard to find now...

EDIT: Wait, what universe am I in? Uh.... never mind! Carry on!

 

[borringman]

There's a concept in biology called "convergent evolution" which basically boils down to, life forms in similar environments tend to independently evolve similar traits.

When Blackmoor D&D was born, Venn diagram of wargamers and fantasy readers strongly resembled a circle. So even if you went back in time and killed baby Dave Arneson and baby Gary Gygax (after you made a quick detour to kill baby Hitler), TTRPGs would've been invented anyway, most likely by wargamers. Some of the grandfathered oddities like Armor Class might not have been invented, but over time, things like THAC0* and the weird saving throws got dropped, and rituals were added, so the evolved form might not differ much from 5E. Because, convergent evolution.

Case in point, legend has it Gygax did NOT want Tolkien references in D&D. But his fans insisted on it, so things like hobbits and ents and elves made it into AD&D, and the Tolkien estate promptly demanded they be renamed, so we got halflings and treants and elves (OK I guess they got away with that one). Because Tolkien was popular. So any "first" TTRPG likely would've had elves in it, because D&D was in fact the game that tried to not have them, and it happened anyway.

So this may come off as a cop-out answer, but it would've been invented, and have significant similarities to D&D. What we can't know is what quirks we'd still be stuck with fifty years later.

*Honestly, this is more of a historical oddity to me than the invention itself: why did THAC0 get dropped, but AC persevered?

 

[overgeeked]

Case in point, legend has it Gygax did NOT want Tolkien references in D&D. But his fans insisted on it, so things like hobbits and ents and elves made it into AD&D, and the Tolkien estate promptly demanded they be renamed, so we got halflings and treants and elves (OK I guess they got away with that one). Because Tolkien was popular. So any "first" TTRPG likely would've had elves in it, because D&D was in fact the game that tried to not have them, and it happened anyway.

Weird then that ents and hobbits appeared in the original books and that triggered the Tolkien estate lawsuit.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

There's a concept in biology called "convergent evolution" which basically boils down to, life forms in similar environments tend to independently evolve similar traits.

When Blackmoor D&D was born, Venn diagram of wargamers and fantasy readers strongly resembled a circle. So even if you went back in time and killed baby Dave Arneson and baby Gary Gygax (after you made a quick detour to kill baby Hitler), TTRPGs would've been invented anyway, most likely by wargamers. Some of the grandfathered oddities like Armor Class might not have been invented, but over time, things like THAC0* and the weird saving throws got dropped, and rituals were added, so the evolved form might not differ much from 5E. Because, convergent evolution.

Case in point, legend has it Gygax did NOT want Tolkien references in D&D. But his fans insisted on it, so things like hobbits and ents and elves made it into AD&D, and the Tolkien estate promptly demanded they be renamed, so we got halflings and treants and elves (OK I guess they got away with that one). Because Tolkien was popular. So any "first" TTRPG likely would've had elves in it, because D&D was in fact the game that tried to not have them, and it happened anyway.

So this may come off as a cop-out answer, but it would've been invented, and have significant similarities to D&D. What we can't know is what quirks we'd still be stuck with fifty years later.

*Honestly, this is more of a historical oddity to me than the invention itself: why did THAC0 get dropped, but AC persevered?

I can't fully sign on to this, for two reasons.

First, the community of wargamers and fantasy readers was not a complete circle. Many wargamers were not that into fantasy- they thought of it as a distraction from "real" history. See, e.g., David Wesley. If you read The Elusive Shift, one of the things that becomes apparent is how RPGs evolved due to the cross-pollination between the wargame and Sci-Fi (which included fantasy at that point) communities.

Second, the part about Gygax including the Tolkien stuff because of fan interest ... eh. The reason they were in there originally was because they were in Chainmail's fantasy supplement. The reason they were in Chainmail's fantasy supplement is because it was likely borrowed from the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

 

[borringman]

Are you saying Gygax had a history of running off with others' ideas?!

 

[Committed Hero]

Are you saying Gygax had a history of running off with others' ideas?!

For better or worse, the history of business is driven by those members of a creative enterprise who did the marketization that their comrades couldn't care less about (see Gates, Bill).

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

That is an interesting thought. In my dream alternate universe it would be a kung fu craze game

There was a similar thread a while back where I postulated an alt universe where RPGs grew out some genius in the Marvel Comics bullpen who had this idea for a weird "role playing game" based on the company's characters, got the rest of the creatives addicted to playing it, and finally convinced Stan Lee to publish the "Marvels & Malefactors" RPG. It originally came out in comic book format, eventually growing to dozens of "issues" worth of rules, character writeups and adventures before explosive demand led to them shifting to a more familiar hardcover format. The original OM&M books are worth a small fortune in 2024 despite having been printed if fairly large numbers because they tended to get wrecked during play - old pulp-paper comics were not real durable. Every few years there are nostalgia reprint runs, although they aren't worth much.

The comic industry of the 1970s working the way it did, some of the early playtesters from the bullpen knew folks over at DC. It was the (possibly false) suggestion that DC was about to do their own RPG that got Stan to pull the trigger, and the 80s saw a bunch of legal wrangling when DC and others did jump on the idea of doing RPGs - even radical ones that did fantasy and scifi rather than superheroes. Supers RPGs didn't dominate the market long - sf/f are just too strong as genres go for that to last - but they made a solid foundation for an industry that grows ever more popular and diverse.

One interesting wrinkle is that their original format led to the early "floppy rules systems" using decks of standard playing cards for randomization, something that led to far more cards (including custom decks) being used in later games than in our world. Even in 2024 dice (especially polyhedrals) are frequently seen as exotic and inconvenient, but there's a whole subcommunity of people who collect roleplaying randomizer cards as a hobby, carefully sleeving them and storing them in well-organized binders. The 90s CCG craze still happened largely as it did here, but it was more closely connected to the roleplaying industry from word one, with the universe's Magic equivalent being a crossover game drawing characters from several independent comic companies and later integrating both Marvel and DC when it became clear the game was a gold mine even for the licensors. Chaosium's "SuperWorlds: the Gathering" brought in enough money for them to buy toy manufacturer Hasbro when they were nearing collapse after a slew of bad business decisions, saving them from bankruptcy and ushering in decades of fantastic comic- and RPG-related toy lines under the new ownership.

It's a lovely dream, anyway.