Another thing is that, from memory (of the 80s rather than the 70s), having simple rules wasn't universally considered a good thing. I've only read Hackmaster, never played it, but it seemed to me like it was meant to be "someone from the 80s' idea of what would make D&D better" - more detailed combat results, extra stats etc.

Quote from: Age of FableAnother thing is that, from memory (of the 80s rather than the 70s), having simple rules wasn't universally considered a good thing. I've only read Hackmaster, never played it, but it seemed to me like it was meant to be "someone from the 80s' idea of what would make D&D better" - more detailed combat results, extra stats etc.

Detailed rules are fine if you want to create a niche hobby which is dying 30 years later - well at least the industry of it.
For mass appeal the rules have to stay simple. D&D might be the king of the RPG market, but that is like being the king over a single backyard.

I think it's possible that some other game might have beaten out D&D for the top spot in the rpg market.  However, I don't think a "unified mechanic" is what would have allowed a game to do so.  Think back to the first rpgs you bought.  Did you buy them because of the mechanics?  I didn't.  I bought them because they looked freaking cool (TMNT) or I already had played a friends copy and knew they were freaking cool (D&D).  In both cases, it took us quite awhile to actually play by the rules in the book.  Through our misreading, skipping over stuff, adding in rules from different editions, and just making stuff up, even if the game had a perfectly unified mechanic to start with we would have screwed it all up.  

In my opinion the search for a game with mechanics that perfectly suit your desires, is something that an rpg player comes to later in his gaming "career".  For the hypothetical proposed, that wouldn't really apply.  The longest anyone had been playing rpgs for in '79 was a few years, and to take over the market you'd primarily be targeting new players.  Something with a big licence- Star Wars, LOTR might have given D&D a run for it's money.  If I'm not mistaken, TMNT was the 2nd most sold game for awhile when it came out in the 80's.  

Which is more likely to get a 14 year old kid to buy some new game:

A) A game where you only have to use 1 type of dice that has "elegant" mechanics.

B) A game where you can be a jedi!

hmmmm...now that I think about it- one game that would have had a shot...

ENCOUNTER CRITICAL!

Quote from: Elliot WilenI can't help but note that the vast majority of people who flocked to RPGs in the late 70's were very different from us anal-retentive wargamers. They didn't care about rules, they cared about inspiration. AD&D had that; it was fundamentally simple in its core operation; much of the complication was in the form of special rules for specific spells, items, and monsters that would only be introduced on an as-needed basis. The incoherent bits didn't matter because the game was playable as a set of optional expansion rules for D&D, to be used or ignored as desired by the GM.

Pretty much sums it up. D&D was a pop culture phenomenon. It had lots of things going for it that you couldn't really capture in another game. Mainly, it was the pseudo-generic fantasy stylings, the progression of your character from zero to hero, and the dungeon/labyrinth setting itself.

Don't underestimate the importance of the latter. D&D's growth from '77 onwards came mainly from 12 to 17 year olds. Those kids weren't looking to tell epic stories involving intrigue, twisting plotlines, and cosmic struggles; most 15-year-old DMs aren't even capable of running that sort of game.  But the dungeon labyrinth is the perfect setting for the broad market D&D attracted; a magical, scary, channeled locale where the players explore, fight, and loot.

D&D's popularity wasn't about escalating hit points, descending armour class, or quirky saving throw tables. It was about dungeons. And the notion that as your character got more powerful, you could go into deeper dungeons and eventually fight a dragon.

and be Bilbo.

Quote from: wulfgarIn my opinion the search for a game with mechanics that perfectly suit your desires, is something that an rpg player comes to later in his gaming "career".  

Yep. Most of my group are lifelong casual D&D players who have no interest in finding the optimal system to suit their game. In fact, when I even bring up the matter of using a different system or seriously house-ruling our game, they just look at me as though I'm maybe getting a little too serious about these games. It's not that they have mastered and love the rules to D&D - they just figure that good enough is good enough. This is supposed to just be a casual passtime, right?

And these are the same guys I played with when we were 13 years old - at the peak of D&Ds popularity. Back in those days, there was no interest in turning the game into the kind of mechanical exercise we hated in school. We weren't geeks (not in the loving numbers and analysis sense). So coherent or incoherent rules, didn't matter to us. We just played our bastardized, streamlined version of the game. As did the dozens of other kids in our school who played D&D.

I think if Traveller had come out a little bit later and been more obviously Star Warsy nobody would even remember D&D nowadays.

Quote from: AosI started at around the same time Elliot, maybe 78. I dunno, blue box, red dragon. PHB came out not long after... I think.
And I completely agree.
I'd heard of D&D long before I played it. I didn't know wtf an RPG was but I did know that there was something called D&D and I wanted very badly to play it.  As much as I dug Star Wars back then, I was really all about wanting to be Bilbo*, and within seconds of seeing my friend's D&D box I knew it could happen.





*I know, I know. How fucking sad is that? I was like 11. Now, think about the geekiest thing you've ever wanted. Yeah, whose the dork now?

It's not sad, Aos.  OK, maybe it's sad, but you were not alone. OK, maybe you were alone in a strictly physical proximity sense, but not spiritually. OK, maybe...oh nevermind.

Point is, I could have written this (except I didn't want to be Bilbo) about my introduction...

The point everyone is missing who is desperately trying to show off their D&D-hate by participating in this thread, is that any of those other games (Star Wars, LotR, etc) only came to exist because of the popularity of D&D.

There could have been no other "game that started it all" besides D&D, no matter how much some people might wish it so.

RPGPundit

Quote from: jrientsI think if Traveller had come out a little bit later and been more obviously Star Warsy nobody would even remember D&D nowadays.

See, now this always cracks me up. No offense, j, but you're essentially saying "If this game came out at a different time and wasn't the actual game that came out..."

Seems at best it belongs in your category of Ridiculous Hypothetical Theatre.

Quote from: Age of FableHere's a reverse idea...

If Dungeons and Dragons had come out with 'D&D Space', 'D&D Detectives' etc (instead of seperate, incompatible games), could it have had a monopoly of all genres?

Now see, here's a far more interesting question, one that isn't based on D&D-hate, and that would be worthy of its own thread.

RPGPundit

Quote from: stu2000Ralph Bakshi insists that Star Wars coming out just a couple weeks after Wizards, elbowing it out of theaters is the reason he's not bigger than Disney now.

Just sayin'.

Yeah, but what this bozo thread is trying to argue isn't even that!  Its not "could something that came out earlier have been as successful" (which is easily deniable, because as it did come out earlier, you can show that it was obviously unable to compete), but "could some product that came out LATER have been as successful"?

They're not asking "could Wizards have been more popular than Star Wars".
They're asking: "could Battlestar Galactica have been more popular than Star Wars if it had come out first?"; which is an utterly bullshit question because the ONLY reason BSG even existed was because it was an utterly derivative imitation of Star Wars.
Its a nonsense argument that serves only to highlite one's whiny hatred for D&D.

RPGPundit

In 1979, it's concievable for other "derivative" games to be competing with D&D.  It's not only concievable, it happened.  As was mentioned T&T was already around.  Personally, I've played D&D more than any other rpg and I really like it a lot, yet I found this an interesting question.  No D&D hate here.  Can't speak for anybody else.

speaking of pointless whining, has anyone read post 42?

Quote from: wulfgarIn 1979, it's concievable for other "derivative" games to be competing with D&D.  It's not only concievable, it happened.  As was mentioned T&T was already around.  Personally, I've played D&D more than any other rpg and I really like it a lot, yet I found this an interesting question.  No D&D hate here.  Can't speak for anybody else.

Competing, yes. But the very nature of their derivative style meant that none of them were going to outclass D&D.

I mean really, when you think about the games that were out there in 78 (before AD&D 1e), you had nothing at all that stood any reasonable chance of usurping the D&D throne. Most of them were made as blatant copies or even as directly supplemental material for D&D.
And the ones that weren't, like T&T or Traveller were, despite its fans wishes to the contrary, of much more limited appeal. On the one hand you had a game that was basically a joke, and on the other you had a game that was only for hardcore hard-sci-fi obsessives.

What most people have been doing in this thread is talking about games that came out YEARS LATER as if they would ever have been able to come out before AD&D 1e.  Only there is no way that there would have been a LoTR or Star Wars RPG before the runaway success of AD&D.

Sorry, but no matter how you cut it, no matter how much some of you wish it weren't so, the truth remains: Every other RPG in existence was a derivation of D&D and could not have existed without it.

I know some people desperately wish that Dogs in the Vinyard were more popular than D&D today, and want to imagine that if it had somehow come out in 77 or something like that it would have been obviously more successful, because they want to excuse its utter lack of popularity today on the shoulder of some pathetic and petty notion that somehow D&D's only virtue was being first. But the truth is that D&D WAS first, but it was also more than that, for a long time it was best, and even those other games that are great in their own right could not be what they are today were it not for the basic framework that Gygax invented.

RPGPundit