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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9111452" data-attributes="member: 18">I don't think it's completely impossible. I actually asked this question myself, I think before the pandemic. D&D's influence isn't instant and everywhere, it's not until the late 1980s that it's really becoming hard to untangle.Every fantasy novel up to the early 1980s, is basically free of D&D influence. Even into the modern day, the vast majority of literary fantasy, written fantasy, is not significantly D&D influenced. There is a minority which is, but we could put that to the side (Malazan for example is out entirely, as it was based on an AD&D then GURPs campaign).I do think there would be significantly less written fantasy though, because an awful lot fantasy writers were RPG players before they got into fantasy writing, and it was part of their reason for doing so - most even of those don't actually reflect D&D tropes/ideas in their work, I note.Videogames it's tougher, because fantasy videogames grow almost entirely from a D&D root. Without D&D there's no Final Fantasy, no Dragon Quest, no Ultima, no EverQuest, no Warcraft (or Warhammer as we know it) and speeding up to the modern day that for example means no Elden Ring, because it's ancestry goes back to Demon's Souls which is directly evolved from 1/2E AD&D influences and King's Field.Anime/manga is also heavily influenced.But looking at early trends, if there was no D&D there, I think videogames and anime/manga would have embraced fantasy, just of a more "Sword and Sorcery" vibe than a D&D vibe. So more musclebound barbarians, fewer armoured knights. Probably more weird races like cat and lizard people, fewer Tolkienian races like elves and dwarves. Probably more mythological influence too.Moorcock would also probably be more directly known as an influence and I think steamage/steampunk stuff would have actually come into fantasy even more and even earlier as a result, as a ton of his work is steampunk/dieselpunk. There'd probably an Elric anime, for example.</blockquote>

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