New Survey on Getting into RPGs by Necropraxis

[Voros]

Link here.

Blog post by Necro here.

Video by Questing Beast here.



I doubt these surveys get enough respondents to be remotely accurate but they're interesting at least. Looks like they're trying to figure out if people brought to the hobby end up playing other games and what they like in a game.

I said I got into D&D via B/X (in fact it was BECMI, interesting that they don't make that distinction or at least go with WotC’s survey more broad 'Basic'). Still enjoy that system and think it is a solid intro to RPGs. I think 5e is also a good intro and although more complex has the advantage of ascending AC. Not sure I'd say D&D is the best intro to RPGs, that is far too dependent on the person, their age and interests I think.

 

[AsenRG]

"Is DnD a good gateway game for RPGs?"
"No, but we're stuck with it".

 

[robertsconley]

"Is DnD a good gateway game for RPGs?"
"No, but we're stuck with it".

(roll eyes)
I have to wonder just how many decades will have to pass for D&D before one says "You know there may something about it that just works"

 

[Ghost Whistler]

IsDnD a good gateway?

Insofar as I can tell, I'd say no.

Because I don't think it or it's products are intended to be a gateway rather than the final experience. You might branch out from DnD but that's in spite of it.

 

[Arcane_Avatar]

I'd say DnD is a gateway game. I base my statement purely on the fact that the name and a general understanding of roleplaying is pretty widespread as a result of the number of folks who respond to a statement of "It's like DnD" with a nod or a statement of "OK, I understand." Once you have some interest you can continue with things like "DnD is really a fantasy game, if you're interested in other genres then there are other games available".

 

[Ladybird]

(roll eyes)
I have to wonder just how many decades will have to pass for D&D before one says "You know there may something about it that just works"

Exactly. You can appeal to generic pop culture fantasy, adding new things in every so often as pop culture develops, and a lot of players will be able to get the basic idea, sit down, and have a good time. The exact details may vary between setting, but it's not that important. Whereas there isn't really an equivalent for pop culture sci-fi, techno-thriller, cyberpunk... they all require more player investment to understand what's going on.

The only game that's really ever challenged D&D fantasy is Vampire, and that also did a very good job of hitting pop culture tropes ("The world is just like ours, but with vampires and shit") amongst the things it did right (Starting PC's as newbies into vampire culture, like the players would be, was a good move). You could play it and have a good time without doing homework, but if you wanted to do the homework, there was plenty there for you too.

D&D also having a strong organised play program and lots of tie-ins across the rest of geek media certainly also helps for getting people to know it exists, and that's half the battle.

 

[PolarBlues]

I think procedural, dungeon crawling is a good intro to the hobby for new GMs who might overwise feel overwhelmed. D&D rulebooks typically have (had?) a section showing you how to draw a few rooms, roll a few tables to stock them and, just like that, you were ready to go. An experienced GM can probably make something a little more interesting out of this, but it is something tangible. By contrast, at least until recently, all you got in other games was "stories often come in three acts, have fun."

For new players I am less sure. I know my first experience with D&D as a player was very confusing. The fantasy tropes, and D&D take on these tropes, seemed very weird and arbitrary to me. Computer games I think have done a lot to make D&D style fantasy mainstream, but it still doesn't feature in other media as much as spies, horror, sci-fi and of course now superheroes.

 

[robertsconley]

I think procedural, dungeon crawling is a good intro to the hobby for new GMs who might overwise feel overwhelmed.

I think this is an important aspect of D&D enduring appeal. There are very few campaigns settings that can be described easily and thoroughly as the one where you start out by drawing a maze with rooms on a piece of graph paper and then populate the rooms with monsters, treasures, traps, tricks, and unique ideas. And to expand you can add additional maze levels with different themes and difficulty.

Other types of setting work better when the referee has a bit of experience in organizing the various choices irregardless of genre.

In vain attempt to forestall the usual buts. The appeal maze of with room setting should be taken as an general average. More than a few people due to preexisting knowledge of a genre, or because it just works better with how they think about this stuff do better with other types of setting.

I count myself as being in the other crowd because of my early love of history and geography along with me reading the Return of the King appendices and enjoying them. When I started to play and learn D&D, one thing that hooked me that tabletop roleplaying offered an avenue to use this stuff beyond just writing stories or playing make believe.

But in all fairness, the concept of dungeons did help the first few times I ran D&D by allowing me to focus on learning the rules and how to adjudicate.

 

[robertsconley]

but it still doesn't feature in other media as much as spies, horror, sci-fi and of course now superheroes.

The first three, spies, horror, and sci-fi, don't have an easy to describe and learn situations to use as a basis of a campaign. Super-heroes has the heroes stopping or dealing with X. Which most of the times means a fight or using their powers to solve a puzzle,. While that is accessible, dungeons as a maze with rooms seems to have better scope and variety as well as remaining easily learned.

However I think a mission oriented approach like one can do with spies and some types of science fiction (Star Trek) can be approachable as well. Just need to clearly explain how to build a mission and have enough support for variety.

 

[Nick J]

Anything with quick character generation and lots of support for a GM just learning the ropes can be a good introductory game to the hobby. I only owned the 5e PHB for a very brief amount of time so I don't feel qualified to critique it, but character creation didn't seem overly complicated (maybe just a little tedious?). So from that POV it seems perfectly fine.

 

[Baulderstone]

Anything with quick character generation and lots of support for a GM just learning the ropes can be a good introductory game to the hobby. I only owned the 5e PHB for a very brief amount of time so I don't feel qualified to critique it, but character creation didn't seem overly complicated (maybe just a little tedious?). So from that POV it seems perfectly fine.

5E isn't overly complicated, but I think the complexity makes it a little less useful as a gateway than the TSR editions. If I am introducing someone to RPGs, I certainly want them to make their own character for the first session. That's an essential part of understanding what an RPG is. At the same time, I want to get it done in a few minutes and get them playing.

 

[robertsconley]

There is complexity and there is complexity. One thing that can overwhelm novices are list of choices. More lists and the more choices within those list adds up to make a novice uncertain about their choices. Also rulebook have to balance teaching the game versus being an effective reference for the game.

What I done for convention games is condense 5e (for players) to create a bare bones aide to get players up to speed quickly. It relies on me being there to explain things and a rulebook to handle the occasional player who like to read it directly. For the most part it was effective in getting players up to speed quickly and allowed players to generate characters without taking up too much time (1/2 hour) of a 4 hour time slot.

D&D 5e Convention Classes

 

[Stan]

5E isn't overly complicated, but I think the complexity makes it a little less useful as a gateway than the TSR editions.

I think that applies mostly to b/x and becmi. Versions prior to that didn't the points across as well (though S&W versions have fixed that) and AD&D has quite a bit of arbitrary complexity that doesn't add much to the game, especially 1e. For example, each ability score has a different table and most levels of an ability score have mods that vary depending on what they are modifying.

For 5e, I don't think either the starter box or the essentials box have a totally distilled chargen process (like pick one of these classes, one of these races, and one of these backgrounds, and you're almost done), though I believe that they have a one page listing of the steps.

 

[EmperorNorton]

Personal opinion: When discussing D&D as a good introductory game for RPGs, people seem to ignore that while the rules of say 5e may not be as simple as some other beginner games, there is one thing for a beginner GM that D&D does better than almost any other property. And it has nothing to do with the rules exactly.

It has to do with supplemental material. Very few games have as many premade things to play with. You can debate their quality, but you can't debate the quantity. Premade adventures, monsters, treasure, etc etc etc.

For a starting GM, all that stuff to either run directly or pull from where they don't have to have the same system mastery they would have to have to make their own monsters/treasure/etc in another system is pure gold.

I'm not a huge fan of D&D in general, but I think that the reason it appeals so much to new players is not JUST marketing penetration (though it has that too), but because it gives more ready made components for GMs to work with than pretty much any game out there.

 

[Stan]

It has to do with supplemental material. Very few games have as many premade things to play with. You can debate their quality, but you can't debate the quantity. Premade adventures, monsters, treasure, etc etc etc.

I recall trying to prep a game of BESM 2e. I realized that I would have to create from scratch nearly every vehicle and monster. I had ~20 years of gaming experience, so I could do it. But it just felt like it would be exhausting so I gave up. At any given time, there are half a dozen things I want to run so it's just takes less effort to go with something with less prep. For someone totally new to gaming, prep might have seemed insurmountable.

Lots of rpgs have little or no support for play - they have a rule book and turn you loose, which is not easy on someone who has never played any rpg.

I will call out Savage Worlds, though. When I was playing around with it (when Explorer edition was newish), they had a decent selection of free stuff and one sheet adventures so it was clear that they understood the need to grease the wheels.

 

[EmperorNorton]

I will call out Savage Worlds, though. When I was playing around with it (when Explorer edition was newish), they had a decent selection of free stuff and one sheet adventures so it was clear that they understood the need to grease the wheels.

I actually think Savage Worlds does about the best out of non-D&D games. I am especially a fan of the campaign books with plot point campaigns.

 

[Trippy]

The main reason why D&D is the gateway to the RPG hobby as a whole is that it is a household name, has widespread distribution, and has a fan base that is easy enough to join. The subtleties of 'what makes a good introductory RPG’ is usually what is discussed by experienced role-players, not newbies. The tendency to move on to other games because of dissatisfactions with D&D, whatever they may be, is largely what drives the hobby to expand into other games.

That said, I was specifically asked to run D&D by some newbies who were unsure of how to play it without guidance, so there are clearly barriers. However, I hardly ever see any game being introduced without guidance anyway, regardless of system. The big ‘gateway’ for most players is to do the whole Pathfinder and D&D Guild things at clubs, with volunteer GMs running adventure campaigns each week till the newbies get the hang of it and are hooked themselves enough to want to go off and play it in their own groups.

 

[TristramEvans]

Red Box D&D was a fantastic gateway product. 4th edition D&D was a reallyreally awful one. 5th edition is somewhere in between

 

[Ghost Whistler]

I'm not sure I'd want DnD to be a gateway game. I think it deserves better. I have rarely if at all played it. There's stuff in there that I don't like and it's probably too complex for me (plus expensive), but it's the lynchpin of the hobby. It shouldn't be a gateway, though I'd be sad if people who got into the hobby through it didn't try other games. I'm feeling uncharacteristically generous

 

[EmperorNorton]

I always feel like gateway is the wrong way to look at things anyway. Like, ok, maybe some people move on and do other stuff, but hey if someone starts with one RPG and never goes to another, that is cool too.

Like I love playing 8 million different games, but not everyone has to be that.

 

[Ladybird]

5E isn't overly complicated, but I think the complexity makes it a little less useful as a gateway than the TSR editions. If I am introducing someone to RPGs, I certainly want them to make their own character for the first session. That's an essential part of understanding what an RPG is. At the same time, I want to get it done in a few minutes and get them playing.

We introduced a couple of friends to roleplaying by having them join us in a campaign, and while one of them "got" character gen pretty well straight away, the other one had absolutely no idea despite us trying to help her out (A combination of "I don't know what I can be" and "there are too many things to pick from", in her case), so they ended up playing identical twin sisters.

BUT!!! If we'd had the time to think about it beforehand and ask her what sort of character she'd like to play, we could probably have found a pregen easily enough, or built one for her, because one of the virtues of D&D is that there's always someone whose work you can borrow.

I recall trying to prep a game of BESM 2e. I realized that I would have to create from scratch nearly every vehicle and monster. I had ~20 years of gaming experience, so I could do it. But it just felt like it would be exhausting so I gave up. At any given time, there are half a dozen things I want to run so it's just takes less effort to go with something with less prep. For someone totally new to gaming, prep might have seemed insurmountable.

Lots of rpgs have little or no support for play - they have a rule book and turn you loose, which is not easy on someone who has never played any rpg.

"Don't forget to invoke the game's theme. That's very important and if you don't then you're playing wrong. Oh, and here are combat stats for some antagonists the PC's might meet! Are they too powerful for them to cope with? Who knows. If the PC's die, tell the players they shouldn't have fought them and it's all their fault."

There are problems with things like CR and encounter guidelines, they certainly aren't perfect tools and they can give misleading expectations to players and GM's and teach them bad habits. But D&D at least tries, which is more than many games do.

 

[Trippy]

I do think that D&D, as a generic fantasy genre game, being the original RPG is a complete accident though. In the late 60s, Lord of the Rings was a bit like a new hippie bible, while wargaming hobby games was also growing in interest at the time - I think the two fads just collided into something entirely new at the time.

The two fundamental questions I always ask myself from time to time is, what if RPGs had been invented at an earlier time (and maybe they have, but nobody kept a record of them)? And, what would the RPG hobby look like today if another game from another genre had kicked it all off instead?

For example, if Traveller had been the first RPG, would we all just be playing science fiction exclusively? If RuneQuest had come first, would it be regarded with more seriousness from academics? If Champions had come first, would the idea have been essentially bought out by major comic companies and become a simple extension of their industry? If Nobilis had come first, would anybody actually be playing any game at all - leaving the entire ‘hobby' as an interesting but obscure artifact from the past?

 

[Magister]

For 5e, I don't think either the starter box or the essentials box have a totally distilled chargen process (like pick one of these classes, one of these races, and one of these backgrounds, and you're almost done), though I believe that they have a one page listing of the steps.

The Starter Set used pregenerated characters only.

 

[Mankcam]

I actually think Savage Worlds does about the best out of non-D&D games. I am especially a fan of the campaign books with plot point campaigns.

Regarding Savage Worlds corebooks I have the second edition, and the two versions of the third edition, (the Explorer Digest and the Deluxe Book). The current Adventurer Edition looks like a nice product, but I have moved on now. For some reason I just tired of Savage Worlds, I don't think the system groked for me, and my troupe didn't really like it.

But everyone is right when they say that Savage Worlds has put out heaps of resources. I have kept many quality Savage Worlds plot-point campaigns to inspire me to use with systems like Fate Core. I really love the books that have been done for Savage Worlds, they are good quality to look at, and walk a line in content in regards to just giving enough info dump so that you can easily hand wave the rest. Many of these books are truly underated.

Pinnacle is probably the most impressive non-WotC company when it comes to the sheer number of resources it offers.

 

[Mankcam]

I tend to agree that D&D is still a recognisable moniker, and it's great that people are into rpgs because of it.
It was the first on the market, and captured the imagination of millions. In many ways it does deserve the fame of bringing the rpg hobby into our lives.

I actually never started with D&D, I went from Fighting Fantasy gamebooks straight to RQ2.
However I have been involved with D&D numerous times in various editions since the 1980s. Mainly as a PC, but I'll GM it if that's what the group wants. At it's core it's quite simple to hand-wave stuff with D&D, just as long as there's not too many rules-lawyers at the table. In fact, it works best with alot of handwaving.

These days I like D20 fantasy rpgs to have the simplicity of B/X, the vibe of DCC, with some of the internal logics of the post-3E era (without the 3E skill-bloat). So probably either S&W (with AAC), or 13th Age as my go-to D20 fantasy rpgs for different flavours, then D&D 5E.

What I don't like is when people use 'D&D' as a catch-all label for the entire rpg industry, disregarding all the other games out there. That walks the line between ignorance and rudeness to me. It's a little annoying with the general public does it, but it's just plain rubbish when rpg hobby enthusiastis do it.

I think D&D is still a gateway to other rpgs, however that gate is usually only half-open, with people just dribbling through. Most actually stay in the pen that TSR and WotC have created, not wanting to leave or even seeing a need to do so.

My very-cynical mate says it's like eating Soylent Green, but it actually reminds me more of Bilbo Baggins:

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

 

[robertsconley]

The main reason why D&D is the gateway to the RPG hobby as a whole is that it is a household name, has widespread distribution, and has a fan base that is easy enough to join.

That doesn't get one from 1974 to 1980 nor does it explain its endurance particularly during the period when it wasn't a household name after the 80s boom.

 

[robertsconley]

The two fundamental questions I always ask myself from time to time is, what if RPGs had been invented at an earlier time (and maybe they have, but nobody kept a record of them)? And, what would the RPG hobby look like today if another game from another genre had kicked it all off instead?

There is no plausible point of departure that gets tabletop roleplaying prior to the development of sophisticated wargame campaigns in the late 60s and early 70s.

See the next two post for the closest thing I could come up with.

 

[robertsconley]

Forward to Adventure Part 1
A retrospective of 30 years of Adventure Games.
Imagination #224, September 5th 1970

Hello fans, welcome to the 30th anniversary of the Adventure Game. It was at ChiCon I where Paul Miller and V. Wiseman introduced Travelling, Your adventures in the future. Surprisingly the first edition of Travelling wasn’t a game. Sure many of the today’s rules were present. World & creature creation, starship construction were present. The remaining rules were either non-existent or only presented in the sketchiest of outlines.

To understand why Travelling was written. We need to go back to the New York World Fair and the first Worldcon. Miller was one of those attending the first con. Like other fans he was intensely interested in the new style of science fiction being written in Astounding and other magazines. He wanted to learn how to write these stories himself. It was said that he spent much of the convention cornering Campbell and other editors with questions on how to write good science fiction.

Miller left the first WorldCon very frustrated as he felt that nobody could give him a clear answer to his questions. He returned to his hometown of Chicago where two month later he was talking to his friend Victor Wiseman. Wiseman was studying physics at the University of Chicago at the time. Inspired by his friend’s troubles, he sat down and wrote up a set of tables for his friend to use to create his stories. For the next four months Wiseman researched the available literature on planets, stars, rockets, and even a little biology. By the spring of 1940 he had over two dozen pages of tables, charts, and notes for Miller.

Miller loved what Wiseman had done and immediately used them to create his own worlds and settings pulling material from E.E. Smith and other writers of the time. When Miller found something that wasn’t clear or difficult to use, he made notes and worked with Wiseman to make the charts easier to use. One innovation that introduced at this time was the use of dice to randomize various results.

Miller wrote in Imagination #64,

I was making the first sector of the Spinward Republic and starting to get repetitive in how my worlds were turning out. To give my head a break I started rolling dice to randomly pick items off of the tables, modifying the more outlandish results. When I showed Wiseman what I was doing, he picked up on it right away. He knew quite a bit about statistics and probability from his work at the University. For the third revision he reorganized the tables so you could use 1 or more dice to roll for the results.

At the end of the spring term, Miller and Wiseman had what would be the first edition of Travelling finished. With the second World Con coming in September, the pair decided to spend $100 and print their charts and notes as a small book and sell it at the Con. They figured that there were other writers had the same problems as Miller did and Travelling would sell.
So that summer, Miller took all of Wiseman’s notes and charts and typed them up. To Wiseman’s star, world, creatures, and starship charts, he added chapters on characters, equipment, and mileau. At the end he included a small subsector of his Spinward Republic setting, the classic Victoria Subsector.

When September rolled around, Miller went to the WorldCon and set up a table with 100 copies of Travelling for sale for $2. Travelling was a hit! With all 100 copies sold out by the end of the second day. Years later Robert Heinlein wrote

“I walked by and saw Miller there with a crowd of people. I picked a copy of Travelling. Now I knew a lot of what Wiseman and Miller wrote and had the reference books; but it was nice to have it all in one place. Plus being able to use dice helped when you are stuck trying to figure out exactly what a place looked like.

Miller left the convention with orders for two dozen more books. In addition he used some of the cash to pay for ads in next month’s issue of Astounding and other magazines. When he got back he split the profits with Wiseman and the two ordered 100 more books. Throughout that first year Travelling was reprinted two more times. The third print run was 200 copies and the fourth was 500 copies.

The next major step in Travelling evolution were Chadwick’s famous “Bottle Caps” rules. Named for the use of bottle caps to represent starships and people. This first appeared in the March 1941 issue of Astounding, John Chadwick came up with a set of rules, using dice, to resolve combat using the starships and personal weapons listed in Travelling. Miller, immediately like the “bottle caps” rules. He contacted Chadwick and was able to get permission to incorporate them into the 2nd edition of Travelling.

The 2nd edition was released the fall of 1941 at the third WorldCon in Denver with a modified version of Chadwick’s rules incorporated. 2nd edition included chapters on characters, combat, worlds, stars, creatures, equipment, and starships. Over a 1000 copies were made and all were sold within months.

The 2nd edition was the first that could be played as a game. Although the characters and the equipment lists were much cruder than subsequent editions. The second edition increased Travelling popularity throughout World War 2 .

After the 2nd Edition was released, Campbell at Astounding Magazine was inundated with submissions based on Travelling. Some were little more than lists randomly generated from the charts in Travelling. Campbell founded a new bi-monthly magazine called Imagination, Gateway to the Future and filled it with Travelling submissions. The first issue featured Miller’s Spinward Republic outlining a complete sector done in the Travelling format.

Next…
Travelling and World War 2.
Travelling 3rd Edition
How Pirates & Plunder almost sank Adventures Games in the 50s
Spy versus Spy and revival of Adventure Games in the 60s.
The triumph of the Hobbit, Adventure Games return to the past and fantasy.
The Future of Adventure Games.

 

[robertsconley]

Forward to Adventure Part 2
A retrospective of 30 years of Adventure Games.
Imagination #225, October 6th 1970

Travelling and World War 2.
Travelling 2nd edition became a minor hit during World War as entertainment for soldiers. Especially in 1943 when Saul Banner submitted the idea to Imagination of using a single referee to judge the scenario for a group of player working together. This article came with the classic scenario Output Alpha, which featured the famed Nostradamus Bugs.

Saul Banner went on to write several more classic scenarios, notably the Memory of Beta, about a sentient ship, and Gamma Twilight which took placed on the tidelocked world of Gamma in the Victoria Subsector. Gamma Twilight was written in conjunction with Miller's article on the Aryan Consulate. The Aryanites were the main villains of the scenario.

Towards the end of the war, several companies came out with their own adventure games, but most were poorly put together in rules and binding. Travelling kept its dominance.

After the 2nd Edition V. Wiseman stopped contributing to Travelling. He graduated from the University of Chicago, and went to work for the Manhattan Project.

During the war, Imagination introduced the Aryan Consulate the sworn enemy of the Spinward Republic. Also the Dogmen of Antares made their first appearance, along with the master intriguers the Ceti Octopiods.

Travelling 3rd Edition
After the end of the War, the WorldCons were resumed starting in the fall of 1946. Miller, with backing from Campbell, hired Saul Banner and formed AGW, Adventure Games Workshop. In 1947 the two released Travelling 3rd Edition. This edition completed Travelling's transformation from a writer's aide to a full fledged Adventure Game.



How Pirate & Plunder almost sank Adventures Games in the 50s

During the war, rivals of Astounding, and even comic book companies put out knocks off of Travelling. Most of them were poorly written, poorly designed, and poorly bound. Travelling wasn't that much better but Miller used what resources he had to make Travelling the best product he could.

Most of the World War 2 Era Adventure Games were space related. Amazing Planetary Adventures, TriPlanetary (later sued by E.E. Smith), Astonishing Space Adventures were some of them. The remaining half dozen expanded Adventure Games into new genres, superheroes mostly, but there was a western (Tombstone Tales), a Three Musketeers game (Legends of the Rapier), several Pirate games, a game based on the Greek Myths, and one Time Travel game from Educational Comics (Time Travel Tales or TTT)

When EC Comics founder, Max Gaines died in 1947, his son William took over. William Gaines decided to jettison the comics and focus on taking the Adventure Game market away from AGW. He hired many of the best sci-fi and genre writers from Astounding rivals and turned them loose.

The result was an explosion of titles, and magazines for the Adventure Games market. Time Travel Tales was cleaned up and the Time Patrol was created along with their arch enemy the evil Denebians. Galaxy Trek was created to go head to head with Travelling. Their most popular game was Pirates & Plunder, a game dealing with the pirate genre. With the Adventure Games expansion the company changed it name to Entertaining Games.

By 1950, Entertaining Games was still second place to AGW. In the fall of 1950, The 2nd edition of Pirates & Plunder was released. It added a chapter on the dead, pirate curses, and black magic. This caused an explosion of interest in Pirates & Plunder and for a brief time in 1951 it outsold Travelling.

During the early 1950's Entertaining Games introduced the standalone scenario. Previously scenarios were only published in one of the magazines devoted to Adventure Games. It also introduced the idea of expansions with the release of Tales from Davy Jones' Locker. Davy Jones' expanded the chapter on the dead, curses, and black magic. This was followed up in 1953 with Legends of the Ancient Mariner.

The year 1953 was the highpoint of Entertaining Games. In 1954 Seduction of Youth was published which criticizes Adventure Games and Entertaining Games in particular. Sales plummeted and with the bankruptcy of Entertaining Games' distributor in 1956, William Gaines ceased publishing everything except for a humor magazine known as Crazy.

During this Miller and Banner kept toiling away at AGW. Despite the competition from Entertaining Games, the general Adventure Game market boomed during the early 50s and AGW expanded to a dozen employees. Miller and Banner released a 4th edition of Travelling. The 4th edition was noted for the introduction by Physicist V. Wiseman, who also contributed charts and notes on on Nuclear technology. Miller also began publishing standalone scenarios and supplements. Mostly repackaging earlier contributions to Imagination, updated for 4th edition.

With Seduction of Youth and subsequent downturn, AGW was forced to let most of employees go by 1956. Miller writes.

The summer of 1957 was pretty bleak. We were down to myself, Banner, and our secretary/office manager Lauren Smith. That fall We had a small uptick in sales from some tie ins with the International Geophysical Year. Grand Survey was the best of that year's releases. We knew that there was work being done to launch something into space.

Miller continues

By October I was working on some stuff about the early days of the Spinward Republic and thinking about how to incorporate what was going on. When Saul runs in and tells me to turn on the radio. That when I heard beeping of Sputnik and the report that the Russians launched the first satellite. I was mad and afraid along with the rest of the country. As beloved as the Spinward Republic was, this was real and the Russians were first. But inside I also knew that beep was the sound that AGW was going to be saved.

Spy versus Spy and revival of Adventure Games in the 60s.

With the launch of Sputnik, interest in Travelling and Adventure Games exploded. Even with rivals putting out their own space related Adventure Games, AGW remained the largest publisher of Adventure Games.

The closest rival to AGW was Jackson Games of Tulsa Oklahoma. John Jackson gained noticed by writing for several of AGW's rivals. His work pushed the conventions of the space adventure games in new directions. Following the strange disappearance of Arc Johnson of Small Box Games. Jackson returned to his home in Tulsa Oklahoma and founded Jackson Games. He developed Spy versus Spy in 1963. Capitalizing on cold war tensions and the popularity of spy films and shows. Spy versus Spy and its line of scenarios and supplements became the #2 game of the 60's.

The triumph of the Hobbit, Adventure Games return to the past and fantasy.

In the fall of 1955, the third volume of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic Lord of the Rings was released. With the decline of Adventure Games due to Seduction of the Innocent both AGW and Entertaining Games did not notice the release. After the launch of Sputnik, the Adventure Games Industry focused on space.

In 1963, Gary Ganon and Robert Arendt founded Fantasy Adventures, Inc in Great Britain. They loved Travelling, Adventure Games, and Tolkien. With a desire to enter Tolkein's world. Arendt created a thinly disguised version of Middle Earth called the Wilderlands and Ganon created rules for the game. The two released Fellowship, Adventures of Fantasy, at the 1964 World Con.

The game was a hit. Lord of the Rings was beginning it's rise in popularity and people wanted to use Adventure Games to play in Tolkien's world. In 1965 Tolkien wrote to Ganon and Ardent praising their work and noting that they seemed to have lost his check in the mail. Fantasy Adventures started paying Tolkein a royalty and secured an official license to continue Fellowship. Arendt then created a line of "official" Middle Earth expansions along with continuing the Wilderlands. By 1967, Fellowship and Fantasy Adventures, Inc were the #2 company behind Travelling and AGW, Jackson Games and Spy Versus Spy remains a solid #3.

During the late 60's Travelling and Adventure Games gained mainstream notice with the success of Star Travels. Gene Roddenberry, the producer and creator of Star Travels, was introduced to Adventure Games when he was writing westerns for TV in the 50's. He learned about Travelling and was inspired to combine his work on westerns with the ideas found in Travelling. Today Star Travel is in its 5th season with Jeffery Hunter playing the role of the starship Enterprise's captain James Pike. The Klingon Leonoids are a homage to Travelling's Dogmen of Antares.

The Future of Adventure Games.

Today, in 1970, Adventure Games still is a strong vital market. The recent unpopularity of the Vietnam War appears to having having an effect on sales of Travelling and Spy vs Spy. However Fellowship keeps growing in popularity every year.

Fantasy Adventures newly established line of Mines and Caverns scenarios are especially popular. It is rumored that the Third Edition of Fellowship is going to make a Mine crawl the centerpiece scenario rather than the Citadel of Dun Arthanc.

There are also rumors that Jackson Games is expanding the rules used in Spy vs Spy to the Fantasy Genre. The new system is supposedly going to be called GUAG or Generic Universal Adventure Game and involve the use of the different polyhedral dice being used in the wargames industry.

 

[Trippy]

That doesn't get one from 1974 to 1980 nor does it explain its endurance particularly during the period when it wasn't a household name after the 80s boom.

What gets it from 1974 to 1980 is it was the first RPG in existence. It didn’t sell that much in the beginning, but it’s concept was revolutionary so it spread it’s ideas a bit like The Velvet Underground. It most definitely was a household name during the 1980s - and pretty big business - especially after the D&D cartoon and the Satanic panic. It declined in popularity after the 1980s somewhat, but the name remained common knowledge.

 

[robertsconley]

As elaborate the background I made for the two short stories, it is highly unlikely that a science fiction reference would have evolved into a form of tabletop top roleplaying. There just wasn't a critical number of game players prior the late 60s doing enough disparate things in order for the different elements of tabletop roleplaying to come together.

My own alternate history resulted from a unlikely series of events that lead to Travelling 3rd edition. In our history the late 60s and late 70s were ferment of creative efforts surrounding wargaming mostly important pretending to be or do things in other places and other times like a general of an army. It was discovered that playing individual characters was fun, and starting with Wesely's Braustein it was discovered that free form goals and fluid situation was also fun to play.

At the same time wargamer honed the idea of a neutral referee who had the god's eye view of the situation. And also honed the idea of campaign played over multiple sessions.

Dave Arneson was the one that combined them first in the Blackmoor campaign into what we now recognize as the first tabletop roleplaying campaign. By all account it wasn't a aha! moment either. Dave worked at it for a while trying different thing, as well as being amicable to what the player thought up. It probably wasn't until after the Blackmoor Dungeons were added to the campaign that we would clearly recognize Blackmoor as tabletop roleplaying. As it was clear by then players were ignoring the overall scenario in pursuit of their own goals.

It was the Blackmoor dungeon that Gygax and the Lake Geneva crewed played and thus why Greyhawk started out as a campaign focused on dungeon exploration.

IGaming campaign with individual characters would likely have been published but the resulting hobby would be very different than our own history and the games not recognizably what we considered tabletop roleplaying today. I suspect we would have seen wargames with individual characters like Freedom in the Galaxy or Lord of the Rings eventually evolving into wargame toolkits and featuring extended campaigns.

 

[Mankcam]

That doesn't get one from 1974 to 1980 nor does it explain its endurance particularly during the period when it wasn't a household name after the 80s boom.

Yeah in the 90s D&D was still very much present, but kind of felt like a fading force within the sea of other rpgs. I remember White Wolf World of Darkness products outnumbering TSR D&D and AD&D on the shelves of hobby shops. World of Darkness really outnumbered everything for a while there.

But the classic era of World of Darkness kind of imploded about 2000, and that's the same time D&D exploded again, swamping the shelves with all things D&D 3E and the D20 OGL.

Not sure if there is a real connection between those events, but from a Joe Average consumer perspective, it just seemed like White Wolf had handed all the game shop shelf space over to WotC.

 

[Mankcam]

As elaborate the background I made for the two short stories, it is highly unlikely that a science fiction reference would have evolved into a form of tabletop top roleplaying. There just wasn't a critical number of game players prior the late 60s doing enough disparate things in order for the different elements of tabletop roleplaying to come together.

My own alternate history resulted from a unlikely series of events that lead to Travelling 3rd edition. In our history the late 60s and late 70s were ferment of creative efforts surrounding wargaming mostly important pretending to be or do things in other places and other times like a general of an army. It was discovered that playing individual characters was fun, and starting with Wesely's Braustein it was discovered that free form goals and fluid situation was also fun to play.

At the same time wargamer honed the idea of a neutral referee who had the god's eye view of the situation. And also honed the idea of campaign played over multiple sessions.

Dave Arneson was the one that combined them first in the Blackmoor campaign into what we now recognize as the first tabletop roleplaying campaign. By all account it wasn't a aha! moment either. Dave worked at it for a while trying different thing, as well as being amicable to what the player thought up. It probably wasn't until after the Blackmoor Dungeons were added to the campaign that we would clearly recognize Blackmoor as tabletop roleplaying. As it was clear by then players were ignoring the overall scenario in pursuit of their own goals.

It was the Blackmoor dungeon that Gygax and the Lake Geneva crewed played and thus why Greyhawk started out as a campaign focused on dungeon exploration.

IGaming campaign with individual characters would likely have been published but the resulting hobby would be very different than our own history and the games not recognizably what we considered tabletop roleplaying today. I suspect we would have seen wargames with individual characters like Freedom in the Galaxy or Lord of the Rings eventually evolving into wargame toolkits and featuring extended campaigns.

As an aside, I'm fascinated by these history info-dumps, it's a great read, thanks for taking the time to post them!

 

[robertsconley]

What gets it from 1974 to 1980 is it was the first RPG in existence. It didn’t sell that much in the beginning, but it’s concept was revolutionary so it spread it’s ideas a bit like The Velvet Underground. It most definitely was a household name during the 1980s - and pretty big business - especially after the D&D cartoon and the Satanic panic. It declined in popularity after the 1980s somewhat, but the name remained common knowledge.

There are a lot of revolutionary industries where the first on the scene did not the market leader. Ever hear of the Altair, CP/M, today? But Apple, Intel, IBM, and Microsoft all second comers made enduring products that serve the foundation of what we use today. Another example is automobiles, the early companies, then Ford then GM.

D&D is a rare example of a first mover that got it right and released successful followups. It only faltered with 4th edition and it was supplanted by

Spoiler: Wait for it!

a D&D clone, Pathfinder

 

[Trippy]

Yeah in the 90s it was very much present, but I remember White Wolf World of Darkness products outnumbering TSR D&D and AD&D on the shelves of hobby shops.

But the classic era of World of Darkness kind of imploded about 2000, and that's the same time D&D exploded again, swamping the shelves with all things D&D 3E and the D20 OGL.

Not sure if there is a real connection between those events, but from a Joe Average consumer, it just seemed like White Wolf had handed all the game shop shelf space over to WotC.

White Wolf was in the ascendency in the 1990s for sure as the alternative became the mainstream, as in other art forms of the time. However, the sales figures still had White Wolf cornering about 25% of the overall market, whereas D&D still accounted for about 50% of it.

I think White Wolf was starting to slow down about 1997 myself. It’s why they started doing all the ‘Revised’ editions - although we now know that the Revised editions weren’t as successful as what had come before.

 

[Voros]

I think Diplomacy seems like a likely candidate to produce a mutant offspring that we could call ttrpgs. Peterson writes about political role-playing games at universities that sound not too far off from what we would consider rpgs. Considering Diplomacy's direct influence on Gygax shouldn't it be considered more significant in the development of the hobby than it is?

I think the addition of genre was essential to the success of early ttrpgs, it seems that it was sf/fantasy fandom and kids who were the quickest to embrace rpgs, moreso than the traditional wargame crowd actually.

In pulp and paperback for a long time fantasy writing was a mere appendage to the much more popular sf genre, that is why so much early 20th century fantasy has a veneer of sf that some call science fantasy. That started to change with the terrific popularity of Tolkien in the late 60s. Perhaps a sf game would have caught on moreso with fandom but I think it was the fantasy element that gave D&D its initial popular boost. Its association with fantasy may have hurt it by the late 80s as the genre never took off in film as it could have post-Conan but it definitely continued to be mainstream throughout the 80s and 90s, mostly due to the popular videogames either directly or indirectly based on it.

 

[Trippy]

There are a lot of revolutionary industries where the first on the scene did not the market leader. Ever hear of the Altair, CP/M, today? But Apple, Intel, IBM, and Microsoft all second comers made enduring products that serve the foundation of what we use today. Another example is automobiles, the early companies, then Ford then GM.

D&D is a rare example of a first mover that got it right and released successful followups. It only faltered with 4th edition and it was supplanted by

Spoiler: Wait for it!

a D&D clone, Pathfinder

I don’t know - I still hold that D&D was fairly accidental in it’s success. It was a terrible system for a start, which is what gave other companies an incentive to develop new systems. The thing I think which is significant in 'D&D' is that it’s name is frequently used almost synonymously with the hobby name, ‘RPG’. The thing I think D&D did get right over time though, is that the Classes all became quite archetypal in the hobby - and immediately recognizable for gamers. One also has to remember that Tolkien’s work of ‘high fantasy’ (that is, creating a detailed fantasy world with a history, language, etc) was pretty revolutionary too in literature, and RPGs were an effective way of marketing that process to a wider audience (you too can be Tolkien!).

It faltered before Pathfinder too, I think. The release of games like Traveller and RuneQuest caused waves within certain gaming communities, as did White Wolf of course.

 

[Mankcam]

White Wolf was in the ascendency in the 1990s for sure as the alternative became the mainstream, as in other art forms of the time. However, the sales figures still had White Wolf cornering about 25% of the overall market, whereas D&D still accounted for about 50% of it.

I think White Wolf was starting to slow down about 1997 myself. It’s why they started doing all the ‘Revised’ editions - although we now know that the Revised editions weren’t as successful as what had come before.

I'm surprised that TSR D&D still held 50% of the rpg sales figures in the 1990s. I would have expected about 25%, with White Wolf WoD sweeping up about 40-50%.

It just shows how things may be a bit different in different regions.

Yes the rise of the 80s alternative music morphing into 90s mainstream was probably a cultural thing that spanned across the all of the Arts of the time. I remember being amazed with goth chicks and grunge rock crowd showing up in game stores to get the World of Darkness books.

I think in rpg history White Wolf's impact cannot be under rated, and commercial ventures like Critical Role owe them a debt of gratitude for prepping the public a decade or two in advance.

I think in many places White Wolf were still prominent for the entire 90s, well that is what I saw.
But you know how game shops are, they often overstock popular titles that then can sit on the shelves for years, especially if it's a more regionally located shop rather than one in the hum and buzz of the action.

 

[Trippy]

The most innovative thing White Wolf ever did, and it kinda got this idea from Prince Valiant, was dots on the character sheet rather than numbers. Anecdotally, I knew of several players - some who said they 'weren’t into maths', some female, and at least a couple who were dyslexic who said that the dots on the sheets for traits immediately made the games more accessible to them.

 

[Mankcam]

The most innovative thing White Wolf ever did, and it kinda got this idea from Prince Valiant, was dots on the character sheet rather than numbers. Anecdotally, I knew of several players - some who said they 'weren’t into maths', some female, and at least a couple who were dyslexic who said that the dots on the sheets for traits immediately made the games more accessible to them.

Yes, system-wise WoD wasn't a leap forward. It was also very Ars Magica at times, amongst other systems.

But the urban fantasy genre, with subcontext mature content, was the game changer I think. College kids and Grads were walking around with the Vampire The Masquerade hardcover book, reading Anne Rice, and listening to The Crow soundtrack.

(Well, I just inadvertantly described myself back in 1995/1996, heh heh)

To an extent, WoD rode a 90s genre zeitgeist. I guess given that it was 'so 90s', then it was bound to be a shadow* of its former self in the decades to follow




(* See what I did there! )