Dungeons and Dragons never invented

[sarapen]

Hi, so my question is regarding alternate social and cultural history, instead of the political and military stuff that dominates on this forum. Let's say that the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons was never invented. Gary Gygax was run over by a car, Dave Arneson's family moved to New York and he became a sci-fi writer, everyone else in the Lake Geneva group never met or never got into wargames, and everyone experimenting with wargames in the Midwestern US and beyond just never made the leap from controlling armies to individual characters.

It's not really important to my question how it is that so many missed opportunities combined to stop D&D or something close to it from getting invented. Let's just say that's how things turned out. Starting from that change, how is our media landscape altered?

I assume the global video game industry is massively altered but can't even begin to map out the implications. Japan's manga and anime industry would also be greatly altered. And lots of prominent people were inspired to take up their future jobs thanks to RPGs, though the ones I'm aware of are writers and other creatives.

Would there even be political consequences? Perhaps Japan's balance of trade with the US is slightly less without JRPGs being exported? Honestly, I'm not even sure how far-reaching this change could be. What say the rest of you?

 

[m0585]

My high school experience would have been much less dull.

 

[marathag]

nd everyone experimenting with wargames in the Midwestern US and beyond just never made the leap from controlling armies to individual characters.

That leaves Empire of the Petal Throne designed by M.A.R. Barker, the American Writer on par with Tolkien that almost nobody knows.
With Gygax running TSR to screw him over(Arneson wasn't the last) GDW or any of the other small games companies that were around would fill that role when Barker wanted to go past self publishing his game in 1974. Still midwest, Minnesota, rather than Wisconsin

GDW also had moved to individuals, for their _En Garde!_ RPG were you play Musketeers, influenced by the hit _Three Musketeers_Film.
They had created the Monster WWII wargame genre with _Drang Nach Osten_ that took almost as long to play as the War it covered, the Eastern Front, with huge maps and way too many counters. Same company, expanded their Spacewar game to _Traveller_ after _Star Wars_. before it was Lucas 'Episode 4' is was just _Star Wars_. They were Illinois based.

FGU did Bunnies and Burrows, after _Watership Down_ novel, after their initial Conan based wargame. They were based in New York State
SPI had moved down to the near individual level with _Sniper!_, the first WWII Man to Man combat game in 1973, they were NYC based.

So even if you drop a rock in Lake Michigan that takes out Wisconsin, East MN and most of Illinois, you will still get RPGs They were coming.

 

[Sam R.]

I mean we’re talking about a utopia where dark Christian political bunnies fight communism as the standard RPG.

I’m thinking Heart of Darkness.
I’m thinking Battle of Algiers.
With bunnies.

My chief rabbit ordered me to defend this run.

Don’t run you fools, it is only a dog.

Of course this is admitting the western democracies set fascism on the Soviet Union…

Instead of a Christian rpg scare you get a political one.

 

[sarapen]

So even if you drop a rock in Lake Michigan that takes out Wisconsin, East MN and most of Illinois, you will still get RPGs They were coming.

Interesting, it does sound like the zeitgeist demanded the invention of the RPG. However, I did mention "everyone experimenting with wargames in the Midwestern US and beyond ". Would this mean not inventing the RPG means not inventing the wargame, or keeping it as something played by professional military officers?

 

[Zheng He]

Interesting, it does sound like the zeitgeist demanded the invention of the RPG. However, I did mention "everyone experimenting with wargames in the Midwestern US and beyond ". Would this mean not inventing the RPG means not inventing the wargame, or keeping it as something played by professional military officers?

Or in this scenario are the Avalon Hill wargames more popular?

 

[marathag]

Would this mean not inventing the RPG means not inventing the wargame, or keeping it as something played by professional military officers?

For that, tou need to change HG Wells _Little Wars_ as well as the Dreadnought games that were popular before WWI, that's how Janes Naval Annuals started, sourcebook for his game

 

[marathag]

Or in this scenario are the Avalon Hill wargames more popular?

GDW planted the seed for the Monster Game in DNO, that both SPI and AH would embrace, that typically had more than 1200 chits/counters and two large mapboards.

That and the quest for more 'realism' led to games that no longer could be completed in an afternoon, like the '60s wargames.

Along with the distaste for things Military, the new Atari systems, along with D&D rpgs, led to the decline of those games. Avalon Hill didn't keep up with their non military 'bookcase' games as much as they could have, but did start the modern era of board games, with _Civilization_ and _Dune_

Also,Gygax at TSR didn't help, they destroyed SPI by giving them a loan, then called it in, and legally took all their assets, while denying they had any responsibility for the debts, like magazine subscriptions. I had much schadenfreude in the mid 80s when he was forced out from TSR, and more when they got ate by WotC

 

[Mark E.]

Would there even be political consequences? Perhaps Japan's balance of trade with the US is slightly less without JRPGs being exported? Honestly, I'm not even sure how far-reaching this change could be. What say the rest of you?

Some other fad would have taken its place. As for Japan and trade, the peak of D&D was the early eighties, the same time when video games were expanding with Japan at the helm. It did, though, create a renewed interest in Tolkien's works.

 

[Ditzy Vixen (RossN)]

I tend to agree that RPGs as we know them were an idea whose time had come, though we might not have seen a recognised 'leading brand' as we did with D&D which in turn would probably have led to less of a pop culture impact outside the hobby.

It also means Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson never write the Fighting Fantasy books which means my childhood and teens just got a lot duller.

 

[marathag]

It also means Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson never write the Fighting Fantasy books which means my childhood and teens just got a lot duller.

They both had Games Workshop doing Game Days before they got to be the licensed importers for TSR in the UK. Without TSR, they will still be there, and pick whatever rpg is the spark over D&D, and write books in that genre

 

[M79]

Maybe an RPG evolves out of Conan's Hyborian Adventures, Lord of the Rings, or it goes deeper underground using Lovecraftian horrors as its main basis but is less socially acceptable?

 

[SwampTiger]

Once you have magazines dedicated to wargames, starting @ 1963, individual based games are only a step away. The Midwest Military Simulation Association, The General and Strategy and Tactics had interweaved membership.

 

[Dave Howery]

my college years and the 10 or so years after would have been a lot duller...

 

[nbcman]

My D&D group dabbled in RuneQuest (a little) and Call of Cthulhu (a lot). Maybe those games would have taken off without D&D especially since Chaosium partnered with Avalon Hill so stores that sold AH wargames may carry the Chaosium RPGs.

EDIT: but the world would be poorer for losing Gutboy Barrelhouse the dwarf fighter (AD&D of course).

 

[M79]

Maybe a Cosplay variant or larpg arises earlier? Maybe something of a hybrid or team-based sport where stats/weapons/etc are upgraded as individual experience and skills improve? Combine that with laser tag and motion-capture...

 

[Roches]

Did JRPGs develop independently of D&D? They're very different. The Wiki article doesn’t mention many Western influences; it says the first JRPG was “Underground Exploration”, released by Koei in 1982. Koei’s “Nobunaga’s Ambition” and “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” suggest they took their inspiration from East Asian sources. If there's no D&D, JRPGs might have made more of an impact on Western RPGs, and possibly on fantasy in English. That could mean a variation from the almost invariable inclusion of humans, elves, dwarves and either gnomes or "halflings" versus orcs. The classes, fighter/mage/priest/thief, might also be different. JRPGs tend to have races outside the Tolkien Four and the classes tend to have more emphasis on fighters, but with the addition of what are sometimes some very niche classes. I even wonder if the tank/healer/dps mechanic would have taken over RPGs (including D&D).

 

[marathag]

Did JRPGs develop independently of D&D? They're very different. The Wiki article doesn’t mention many Western influences; it says the first JRPG was “Underground Exploration”, released by Koei in 1982. Koei’s “Nobunaga’s Ambition” and “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” suggest they took their inspiration from East Asian sources. If there's no D&D, JRPGs might have made more of an impact on Western RPGs, and possibly on fantasy in English.

Depends what Sir-Tech does in place of their 1981 _Wizardry_ series of Games for the Apple II, that was ported over to a number of Japanese computers, that's where the Fantasy came from

 

[Analytical Engine]

There wouldn't be a gazillion D&D rip-offs, for one.

Something else would probably become the major fantasy tabletop RPG game. As mentioned above, there wasn't exactly a shortage of them.

 

[Emperor Norton I]