You have been drawn into a bizarre alternate universe where everything is mostly the same, except RPGs don't really exist. Neither do the books that inspired Gygax and Arneson.  Everything in Appendix A no longer exists. No Lord of the Rings books, no Conan the Barbarian stories, and nothing that drew from the landscape that sprung up around D&D.

It's your job to cobble together a new proto-D&D to jump-start the RPG movement, but you have to base it on books that have actually been printed. Except for the lack of RPGs and RPG-derived stories, everything else is the same.

What stories do you use as inspiration? What kind of character classes do you end up with?

Without those books influence on modern fantasy?  The mind boggles.  Do D&D novels count as modern fantasy?  Warhammer novels?  Are old myths and legends in or out?  Are we talking about Charles De Lint or Tad Williams or George RR Martin?

Are we defining fantasy as generic medieval orcs and dwarves as found in countless videogames?

So, let's try to stay away from specific Tolkienisms anyhow.

Does the D&D have to be recognizably D&D?  A table top rpg?  Any form of game that involves fantasy elements.  Is the title Dungeons and Dragons?  We could make this a bondage reality show about rich business men buying submissives.  Oh wait, that was called The Apprentice.

Anyhow, I find your parameters really vague.

The origins of RPGs are so intermeshed with tabletop wargaming it's hard to imagine them arising outside of that context. I suppose they'd most likely be inspired by video games, rather than literature.

Quote from: abcd_z;924671No Lord of the Rings books, no Conan

Sso no modern fantasy literature as we know it, basically. So what are you asking we base this on? Because really this just sounds like the concept behind Mazes & Minotaurs

I honestly hadn't thought it through as much as you guys are.  I just wanted a universe where everything directly related to D&D doesn't exist, but everything else inexplicably still exists (improbable as that would be).

To answer my own question, I'd go one of two routes:

The first would be sort-of emulating D&D's pseudo-medieval setting. I'd draw from The Wizard of Earthsea, Name of the Wind, Mistborn, and Game of Thrones.

The second would be to create a game based on fantasy literature that takes place in modern times. For this I'd use American Gods, The Night Watch, Nightside, and China Miéville's works. More surreal fantasy than medieval fantasy. Also, possibly Dresden Files if I could make it fit.

Really, I think you'd be looking at a superhero game.  Right now that would be the hot thing with the zeitgeist.  And I'd expect the game would run with a cell phone app, not rule books and dice.

Actually, I could argue that this has already been done: Mouse Guard.  Nothing about the source material or the RPG is recognizably derived from D&D, and the simplified Burning Wheel design is very accessible.

Quote from: abcd_z;924671What stories do you use as inspiration? What kind of character classes do you end up with?

Consider that a profoundly important design decision -- the inclusion of the Cleric -- wasn't inspired by Appendix N material but was yanked straight out of Horror of Dracula. Right from the start DMs were pushing against the boundaries of the default setting assumptions, and soon enough were throwing pretty much whatever the hell they wanted into their games. Sometimes it even worked. Hell, I ran a mini-campaign in the Smurfs universe that was a blast. I know more than a few people did Earthsea campaigns.

D&D has always been malleable. Look at the OSR, just about every major genre is represented by an tweaked OD&D clone.

I guess what you're pondering is what a blend of GoT, Mistborn and China Miéville would look like. I don't know, brew it up and find out.

I would start by introducing the books that inspired Gygax and Arneson. I'd have the market cornered.

Quote from: Cave Bear;924701I would start by introducing the books that inspired Gygax and Arneson. I'd have the market cornered.

Lol.  Cheater.  

Quote from: abcd_z;924671You have been drawn into a bizarre alternate universe where everything is mostly the same, except RPGs don't really exist. Neither do the books that inspired Gygax and Arneson.  Everything in Appendix A no longer exists. No Lord of the Rings books, no Conan the Barbarian stories, and nothing that drew from the landscape that sprung up around D&D.


What stories do you use as inspiration? What kind of character classes do you end up with?

The funny thing is, today's D&D IS based on modern fantasy.

Consider LotR, Conan, Elric, Dying Earth, and quite a few others from this period. In all these, magic/spellcasting is dangerous, risky, unreliable, unpredictable, limited, and something only a limited few can even perform, and even then at great personal risk. A guy with a sword could seriously fight the wizards and sorcerers of these worlds, far more often than not.

Now consider Harry Potter, with magic scientifically predictable enough that a worldwide school system can be built around it, and a few other more recent magic-inclined books also make magic powerful and reliable, with few risks (Dresden is about the only recent series where the magic isn't perfectly predictable).

In the interim, we had Wheel of Time--risky and limited, but not nearly so great as we were led to believe in the first few hundred pages of the books, with plenty of ridiculously powerful wizards that no barbarian with a sword could ever hope to match.

Today's D&D, as someone basically said, is a superheroes game compared to the game inspired by the fantasy novels of 30+ years ago. Today's spellcasters, inspired by Harry Potter and the like, get whatever they want, the only question is when and how rapidly they get it.

Quote from: Doom;924703The funny thing is, today's D&D IS based on modern fantasy.

Consider LotR, Conan, Elric, Dying Earth, and quite a few others from this period. In all these, magic/spellcasting is dangerous, risky, unreliable, unpredictable, limited, and something only a limited few can even perform, and even then at great personal risk. A guy with a sword could seriously fight the wizards and sorcerers of these worlds, far more often than not.

Now consider Harry Potter, with magic scientifically predictable enough that a worldwide school system can be built around it, and a few other more recent magic-inclined books also make magic powerful and reliable, with few risks (Dresden is about the only recent series where the magic isn't perfectly predictable).

In the interim, we had Wheel of Time--risky and limited, but not nearly so great as we were led to believe in the first few hundred pages of the books, with plenty of ridiculously powerful wizards that no barbarian with a sword could ever hope to match.

Today's D&D, as someone basically said, is a superheroes game compared to the game inspired by the fantasy novels of 30+ years ago. Today's spellcasters, inspired by Harry Potter and the like, get whatever they want, the only question is when and how rapidly they get it.

But no Lord of the Rings means no fantasy boom of the 60s and 70s, meaning no fantasy schlock film boom of the early 80s, meaning no Troll, meaning no Harry Potter.


Other questions are raised here though, like, does this mean no Braunsteins? Or did Arneson's game simply never get picked up by Gygax and popularized as a new hobby? In which case, Braunsteins still may have developed in a different direction among Wargamers, largely devoid of pseudo-medieval fantasy elements, maybe instead (as Mazes & Minotaurs suggests) based on Greco-Roman myth or even Napoleonic science fiction.

Actually, a Napoleonic Fantasy game sounds incredibly awesome. Imagine an Appendix N composed of Baron Munchausen, The fantasy writings of The Sisters Bronte, The Sharpe series, The Charterhouse of Parma,  Voyages et Aventures de Jacques Massé , Gulliver's Travels,  Niels Klim's Underground Travels, The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon, and The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World

What you might end up with is an D&D looking more like Ravenloft. One based on movie monsters and legends, add in Japanese fantasy movies which seems to have inspired a few elements in D&D too. So removing the book influence would leave just the movie and legend influence unless you also remove all the mythology that D&D draws heavily on too.

So yeah. Something like Ravenloft.

Keep in mind that some modern fantasy literature started out as D&D fantasy inspirations or even campaigns. Others are directly inspired by the very books you removed so those wouldnt exist too. No Thongor, No Severn Valley, and so on.

Quote from: TristramEvans;924681Because really this just sounds like the concept behind Mazes & Minotaurs

Exactly.

Historical wargaming would incorporate myth elements of Greeks & Norse due to Hollywood and a proto RPG is born from Clash of the Titans / 300 movies instead of LotR and Conan.

Quote from: Spinachcat;924722Exactly.

Historical wargaming would incorporate myth elements of Greeks & Norse due to Hollywood and a proto RPG is born from Clash of the Titans / 300 movies instead of LotR and Conan.

I don't know. Beowulf and the Niebelungelind (SP?) were around long before modern fantasy.