RPGs without Dungeons and Dragons (D&D)

CaptainCalvert

Evil Crusader said:
One thing I had failed to mention in my earlier posts is OTL the hobby sprang from full adults, able to print books and found businesses, which meant they had both the higher maths literacy and the incentive to use harder determination numbers as 'spice' to make their systems feel better/more realistic.
If we want to found a whole LARP movement out of something else, it probably has to start off as an offshoot of psychological research or as a provocative arts experiment that 'becomes viral', so to speak, and makes a whole new genre of entertainment as an offshoot. I still have doubts about the feasibility though, as without a shared understanding softer boundaries would be more exploited and bring discord (lowercase 'd') to the fore.
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LARP's origins date back to well before D&D was invented. Kids have been having swordfights with sticks and pretending to be pirates for a long time, so there's a long-standing desire to act out your favourite saga, story, film etc
For adults, reenactment societies provide the opportunity to wear armour, see what fighting with realistic weapons and formations etc was like. The Sealed Knot was founded in 1971, and my first D&D group included Sealed Kot members along with figure and board wargamers. A few years later, the local fencing club put on a semi-historical display for local summer fetes. It wouln't have taken much to spark'lets take these outfits (or let's make our own), go out to here and have a forest dungeon adventure for real'. Thinking up a couple of basic magic effects wouldn't be too hard and there's your LARP. from naturally occuring ingredients. This didn't happen OTL but similar situations with fortunate overlaps of interest can't have been that rare.
 

M79

Rolf said:
In the 80s I was in the Army so my roomy brings this up we combine D&D with another game based off an Infantry squad in Vietnam, The DM controlled the Drow and Frost giants, everyone else had a character sporting real life weaponary there choice combat load, what they carried. It went well right up to the point they missed a Drow wizard who fireballed everyone in a small confined area. It turned into an early night down town drinking beer and chasing women.
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The idea of D&D meeting Vietnam is interesting in and of itself. A Frost Giant in Vietnam could be the title for a definitive history or biographical text on the war in southeast Asia under those circumstances.
 
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neopeius

neopeius

CaptainCalvert said:
LARP's origins date back to well before D&D was invented. Kids have been having swordfights with sticks and pretending to be pirates for a long time, so there's a long-standing desire to act out your favourite saga, story, film etc
For adults, reenactment societies provide the opportunity to wear armour, see what fighting with realistic weapons and formations etc was like. The Sealed Knot was founded in 1971, and my first D&D group included Sealed Kot members along with figure and board wargamers. A few years later, the local fencing club put on a semi-historical display for local summer fetes. It wouln't have taken much to spark'lets take these outfits (or let's make our own), go out to here and have a forest dungeon adventure for real'. Thinking up a couple of basic magic effects wouldn't be too hard and there's your LARP. from naturally occuring ingredients. This didn't happen OTL but similar situations with fortunate overlaps of interest can't have been that rare.
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Exactly. The SCA had rules for combat and, to a degree, roleplaying.

So it's a matter of SCA...The Home Game(tm)!

Given the large number of published authors in the founding cadre of the SCA, I could see them getting together to publish such a game. Question: why didn't they? And how much of the original D&D crowd also played SCA/Ren Faire?
 
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