I have to say Jon that the part where you talk about what roleplaying games is one of the best definitions of the game form I read. I think defining RPGs as games where anything can be attempted with the promise that anything can be achieved is inspired wording.

I blogged about it here http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2012/ ... mpted.html

It's looking like the Diplomacy game was pretty significant to the early D&D crowd. I had noticed it in passing (e.g. the Greyhawk dungeon description appears in a Dippy fanzine), but now it looks to have been a big deal.

faro wrote:Trouble being that even "open book", "framework" mentality OD&D as published fails that definition, I'd've thought; and the situation doesn't get any better with later editions. That the game is "fantasy" and can be readily used as a "puzzle"/problem-solving game might help to give that impression in play, however, even if most of the play remained stuck down in the dungeons.
Now apply the same test while sitting too close to a black hole or supernova in Traveller...

I do stress throughout the book that OD&D is horribly underspecified, almost incoherent, and that it assumes a great deal of background that readers wouldn't necessarily possess. I beg the question of whether or not the authors actually intended for there to be a role-playing dimension in D&D quite openly (see Section 4.7, it's only a couple of pages). What I argue basically is that we need to understand the authorial intention here in light of external, but closely related, evidence - in light of the Blackmoor Gazette and Rumormonger (of which I just posted a sample on my blog), in light of Gygax's early narratives illustrating the play of the game, in light of the precedents of their playstyle in postal Diplomacy and the Napoleonic Simulation Campaign, and so on. No one could read a piece like "The Giant's Bag" and walk away thinking that Gygax didn't have role-playing in mind pretty early in the existence of D&D.

But more importantly, I argue that at the end of the day, authorial intention doesn't matter. It was the players, the fans, who created role-playing as a phenomenon, and they embraced it while playing D&D. They had already experienced it, though perhaps in weaker forms, in other games, but D&D offered an unusually fertile ground for becoming a character. It wasn't until like a year and half after D&D was published that anyone thought to call it a role-playing game: I'm sure they did so more based on how the game was played than what the rulebooks said.

And to Robert, I'm glad you liked the "anything can be attempted" bit. A lot of previous studies have suggested that RPGs were different from wargames because of the man-to-man figure scale, or because of experience, or any number of things you can find in lots of hobby wargames. When wargames embrace the principle that "anything can be attempted," however, you pretty quickly find people questioning whether or not they're really playing a wargame at all. Thanks for blogging about, though I was momentarily terrified that the typos in the quote were actually in the book.  

increment wrote:But more importantly, I argue that at the end of the day, authorial intention doesn't matter. It was the players, the fans, who created role-playing as a phenomenon, and they embraced it while playing D&D. They had already experienced it, though perhaps in weaker forms, in other games, but D&D offered an unusually fertile ground for becoming a character. It wasn't until like a year and half after D&D was published that anyone thought to call it a role-playing game: I'm sure they did so more based on how the game was played than what the rulebooks said.

It is my belief that once a game focuses on individual characters where anything can be attempted and their actions adjudicated by a referee the rest will follow. It is a natural consequence of adding these elements.

(02c, as ever ^^)

increment wrote:I do stress throughout the book that OD&D is horribly underspecified, almost incoherent, and that it assumes a great deal of background that readers wouldn't necessarily possess. I beg the question of whether or not the authors actually intended for there to be a role-playing dimension in D&D quite openly (see Section 4.7, it's only a couple of pages).

*nods*
Recall also that even Gary's "experience points for roleplaying" unincorporated into any of the OD&D texts as published revolved around using ones character for puzzle/problem solving rather than actually "roleplaying" them.

increment wrote:What I argue basically is that we need to understand the authorial intention here in light of external, but closely related, evidence - in light of the Blackmoor Gazette and Rumormonger (of which I just posted a sample on my blog), in light of Gygax's early narratives illustrating the play of the game, in light of the precedents of their playstyle in postal Diplomacy and the Napoleonic Simulation Campaign, and so on.

Agreed. But the dangers of not even having a clear definition of what is/isn't a RPG in the first place makes it way too easy to be selective about what the hard-won primary evidence is actually used to support.

increment wrote:No one could read a piece like "The Giant's Bag" and walk away thinking that Gygax didn't have role-playing in mind pretty early in the existence of D&D.

Yep; but role-playing was clearly also on the mind of others for their games published prior to OD&D. Indeed, for the obvious example it was apparently the primary motivating factor.

increment wrote:But more importantly, I argue that at the end of the day, authorial intention doesn't matter. It was the players, the fans, who created role-playing as a phenomenon, and they embraced it while playing D&D.

*g* And agreed again, of course, but that's usually severely overlooked when the "D&D was the first RPG" "truism" is regurgitated for the n'th time. Had Judges' Guild not entered the fray when they did it would've been interesting to see how TSR might've attempted to reestablish some form of "control".

increment wrote:They had already experienced it, though perhaps in weaker forms, in other games, but D&D offered an unusually fertile ground for becoming a character. It wasn't until like a year and half after D&D was published that anyone thought to call it a role-playing game: I'm sure they did so more based on how the game was played than what the rulebooks said.

TSR/GW took longer to ride the "RPG" bandwagon, of course, saddling several other horses up for the ride in the process.

Given the vacuum waiting to be filled, the framework was seized upon for fantastic adventures and went viral. Other approaches were either of lesser "potential scope", or less accessible - the debate on "stronger"/"weaker" forms is one that has usually been set aside due to lack of historical perspective, coherent definitions and preconceived ideas. It would certainly be a positive outcome if you've helped open that can of worms again, regardless of any conclusions.
(Hey, did that read like "buy the book" again? Hopefully so... )

Cheers,
David.

I spend some time (too much, probably) tracing the roots of the term "role-playing" and more specifically "role-playing game" in Chapters Four and Five of my book. There may be early uses connected to wargaming that would surprise you. I have a 1964 usage of the construction "role-playing game" to refer to a political wargame, something along the lines of a model U.N., but with referees, a system, and so on. In fact numerous social scientists and military folks referred to games of this school as "role-playing" in the late 1950s.

Certainly Gygax knew of these political wargames - he often told the story of playing in an early game called the AdHocCom, a WWII-era version of this. Games like the Inter-Nation Simulation (the authors of which used the term "role-playing" a lot) were actually played at early GenCons. By 1974, the term crept back into the language of Diplomacy fans. It's no surprise that the term "role-playing" eventually came around to D&D and stuck to it. All of this speaks only to the question of linguistic morphology, though, not to the broader definitional question of what RPGs are. We need to separate those questions out, because one is a question of fact and the other is something that will be disputed for as long as RPGs remain relevant.

So what was the first game ever marketed specifically as a roleplaying game (preferably on the cover)?

T&T? MA?

Thanx for the fast response.

I've always found it more than a little bizarre that TSR reprinted OD&D in the White Box -- yet neglected to mention roleplaying even then (either on its cover or inside).

increment wrote:There have already been a few mentions on the forums that I have a book coming out about the history of wargames and role-playing games. I hope it won't be considered off-topic here for me to provide a notice that the book is now officially out. It's called Playing at the World, with the lengthy subtitle "A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures, from Chess to Role-Playing Games." If you're interested, you can find it on Amazon.

I'm racing to buy it right now and I plan a review (in Italian) for DM Magazine. If you are interested, I'll send you the link to the magazine (is a for free, amateur publication).