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Post by increment on Mar 4, 2019 12:14:53 GMT -6
At some point, if "everyone who was there instantly recognised this as something new despite having played all these other games" isn't good enough for you, well, not my problem. This thread has been trying to get beyond recognizing that there was something new and identifying what it was exactly that was new, I think. I don't think it's an easy thing to identify.
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Post by rsdean on Mar 4, 2019 12:49:28 GMT -6
I haven’t got time to lay out an argument properly right now, so I’m just spitballing. However, it seems to me that most of the elements of D&D (free kriegspiel, open-ended objectives, campaign play, individual figures, hit points...) existed separately before in some form; the state change seemed to occur when you took them and applied them to characters with a system of advancement. That was the thing, as best I recall, which kept players coming back to my game in 1976.
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Post by increment on Mar 4, 2019 13:17:58 GMT -6
I think I basically agree with rsdean that it's a sort of cocktail. It's something like that you need to get the right amounts of certain key ingredients in a game: - where "anything can be attempted," with all that entails about openness, the dialog with the referee, black box, etc., - where players control the moment-to-moment actions of individual characters, - where characters progress in experience across a campaign that will span multiple sessions, and - where the setting is genre adventure stories that open up the possibilities inherent in fantasy. Maybe that can unlock the experience. Then once people "get it," you can tweak all of those parameters: there are plenty of RPGs that lack a referee to let you attempt anything, or that lack experience points or levels or other progression, or that take place outside the fantasy genre, etc. that you can still play in pretty much the same way.
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Post by robertsconley on Mar 4, 2019 13:29:05 GMT -6
The difference to me is so obvious I can't even explain it. It feels like trying to explain why two points make a line. At some point, if "everyone who was there instantly recognised this as something new despite having played all these other games" isn't good enough for you, well, not my problem. In 1977/1978, I was in 6th grade and played a fair amount of AH and SPI wargames along with board games and chess with my grandfather. I also liked Lord of the Rings particularly the maps and the appendices in Return of the King. And doodled plenty of my own stuff making up little histories as I went. After about hearing this D&D thing, I got the Holmes Blue Book set for Christmas. All I knew at that point that it was fantasy like Lord of the Rings that it was associated with the AH and SPI wargames I played. When I read and played it with my wargaming buddy it was like a light blub going off in my head. "Oh man, I can take all those doodles and histories and actually use them for this." The only issue was being relatively inexperienced and unaware there were the 3 LBB. So like some of the wargames I had where there is an intro set and more complex follow on. I awaited the arrival of AD&D not really getting that I could extrapolate what I needed. I still remember the aha moment and still possess parts of the first stuff I made. One of which involved my mom's supply of oaktag (form of cardstock) poster boards and quarter inch graph paper, for the campaign maps. I never experienced a halfway point like the hobbyists in early 70s. One month I was happily reading section 3.14 of 1776 to figure out how to get cannons from Fort Ticonderoga to where I needed, the next month being handed a game that allowed my imagined worlds to be more a flight of fancy. The reason that it was obvious even to a 6th grader that D&D was a box of legos compared to a model kit. That unlike 1776, Panzerblitz, the expectations of the D&D were very different than the wargame I played. The most obvious were the fact there were no scenarios or setups. Instead places were described, like the Porttown dungeon, that were obviously part of a larger world even through it was just hints.
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Post by robertsconley on Mar 4, 2019 14:12:45 GMT -6
At some point, if "everyone who was there instantly recognised this as something new despite having played all these other games" isn't good enough for you, well, not my problem. This thread has been trying to get beyond recognizing that there was something new and identifying what it was exactly that was new, I think. I don't think it's an easy thing to identify. There likes the arguments and debates. To me looking at Panzerblitz versus Holmes D&D the differences were obvious and apparent. Not in the fact in scale or subject matters (ww2 vs fantasy) but in how the whole thing was structured and the point of it. For me, my answered jellied when I asked myself what is the difference between following Metagaming's Melee/Wizard versus the Fantasy Trip FASA's Battletech versus Mechwarrior. I bring these up because both sides of the equation uses the same rules. Melee formed the combat system of TFT, and Wizard the magic system of TFT. In Mechwarrior anytime you fought in your mech, you pulled out Battletech. By the mid 80s I ran a Battletech campaign (not Mechwarrior) where I was a referee and the two sides were trying to control a planet. However it was obvious to us were wargaming not roleplaying. We had Mechwarrior but it never came up because the point of the campaign was let giant robot smash each other up. In contrast when we played Mechwarrior the point was to pretend to be this guy (sometimes lady) living in the far future of the Battletech setting. Sure we fought using giant robots, but we did a lot of other things as well. And the battles took more of a personal nature as the players as character needed money and resource to keep the unit going as opposed to the spreadsheet approach of the Battletech campaign. The same with Melee/Wizard versus TFT. We setup Melee or Wizard to beat the shirt out of each other and see who could make the most badass and savviest fighter or wizard. When we played TFT was to pretend to be some character having an adventure. From what I read, your book being one of the sources, Blackmoor started out like very a version of that Battletech (not Mechwarrior) campaign I ran. Except for several key details everybody had their own character in the campaign and you were that character Dave was far more freeform than I was. My job in the Battletech campaign was to answer rules question and handle logistics of the campaign. I wasn't expected to come up with random encounters or handle what the players pilot did while not in battle. According to everything said and written, Dave was far more expansive in what he allowed. To me it an obvious continuation of the Braustein game style. However during those first few months, I don't if I would have called Blackmoor tabletop roleplaying. I would view as a highly sophisticated wargame being played from a first person point of view. Why? Because of the whole baddies versus good guy scenario. I read First Fantasy Campaign, there was a overall setup with overall goals namely to keep Castle Blackmoor out of the hands of the bad guys by any means possible that a character could. So while not quite a tabletop roleplaying game it was far more sophisticated than your average wargame especially with the number of players involved. I think the moment that Blackmoor definitely became THE first tabletop roleplaying game is when the Blackmoor dungeon were introduced. Why? Because it was so interesting that player made it their goal to explore rather than to continued to try to defeat the other side. It even led to the first documentation of the referee being a bit of jerk to his players when he exiled them to Lake Gloomy. The complaint? They ignored the defense of Castle Blackmoor to explore the dungeon. Now to be clear probably Blackmoor became a tabletop roleplaying campaign prior to the Blackmoor dungeon. Because of Dave willingness and flexibility as a referee to let the players do whatever as their character. But the consequences of the Blackmoor dungeon is the first point where I am confident in calling Blackmoor a tabletop roleplaying campaign. So what changed? Focus, that what changed. The idea of the scenario or specific goals FOR THE CAMPAIGN, was decisively ditched. That and Dave's willingness to go along with players (despite his mild displeasure). This can be seen that upon arriving at Lake Gloomy they went exploring for more dungeons! So there are several important ingredients that led to this point. The understanding that everybody was playing a individual character. The conversational back and forth that were a hallmark of the Braustein games. The rules of a wargame were used to adjudicate when things were uncertain especially combat. Dave's willingness as a referee to let the players do anything that they could do as their character. Dave's willingness to ditch the scenarios in favor of far more nebulous goal of exploration and adventure. The rules as show above were just one element in the list of things that needed to come together to produce what Gronan and I experience upon encountering tabletop roleplaying. The example of Battletech/Mechwarrior Melee/TFT illustrate that rules alone can't account for the difference. Since the fore mentioned rules all focus on single individuals as the "unit" it can't be just that either. Therefore the difference has to be in the role of the human referee. Yet as my account of refereeing a Battletech campaign illustrate, and the accounts of how various campaigns like the Grand Napoleanic Campaign were run back then illustrate it not just the presence of the referee that matter. Rather it is what the referee did in that role that provided the crucial role. What make tabletop roleplaying different is a referee willing to use all the fore mentioned elements to focus on players playing individual character interacting with a setting and being able to do anything that character could do within the setting. With little to no preconception of what the character's goal are and how they are going to achieve them.
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Post by robertsconley on Mar 4, 2019 14:15:56 GMT -6
- where characters progress in experience across a campaign that will span multiple sessions, That is not true in Classic Traveller. However what is true is that players within the game world can progress. Most famously earn enough credits to pay off their startship. So I would suggest that progress whether it is in-game or through character experience is the general case. I.e. the effect of last session matter for the next session.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2019 15:45:55 GMT -6
At some point, if "everyone who was there instantly recognised this as something new despite having played all these other games" isn't good enough for you, well, not my problem. This thread has been trying to get beyond recognizing that there was something new and identifying what it was exactly that was new, I think. I don't think it's an easy thing to identify. Well, more than once, I've said "Lightning struck." Just like Star Wars. A cheap little 10 million dollar space opera turned the world upside down, and nobody really knows why. And for 42 years everybody in the world including George Lucas has been trying to do it again without success.
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Post by derv on Mar 4, 2019 17:50:32 GMT -6
Blackmoor was about anything you wanted. I'm going to agree with Michael here, but replace "Blackmoor" with "Arnesons Concept" because I think Blackmoor now caries too many associations with it. What I said previously is-"Arneson unchained the games objectives from any preconceived scenario expectations by means of the conceptual interface." I use the term scenario in it's broadest sense while still hearkening back to how wargames were presented and played. It is just as true to say that the games objectives were unbound to the setting, except for what a ref might impose on the players. So, a GM might have prepared a segment of his fantasy world with dungeons, villages, and inns to explore while the players may not want any of this. Instead they choose to pursue a portal to another dimension, the nether regions of the dead, or a visit to the distant moon. Or, maybe they desire to time travel to 1940's Germany. The reverse is also possible where a GM introduces these things into the player's world. This can happen in real time and is only limited by the imagination of both GM and player. The possibilities are essentially limitless and unpredictable. This idea ties in with what Rob refers to as "dimensionality". It is partly why the game can characterize itself as gonzo at times. The game is what you want it to be(come). I know of no other game that allowed this as a result of the dialogue between ref and player before Blackmoor. As an aside, I don't think character advancement is that novel. It was rather coarse in the early days of Blackmoor and basically hidden. Besides the fact that character progression only makes sense when the game is played as a campaign, which is clearly not required. So, I really don't consider this part of the break through.
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Post by ffilz on Mar 4, 2019 18:08:10 GMT -6
This thread has been so interesting...
I don't feel like Rob's book really helped me understand the bit of genius. Michael basically pointed it out. The difference between Braunstein and D&D is that the goals of the characters are no longer defined by the GM and presented in a scenario, but are defined by the character's player.
Now in my personal gaming history, I was never exposed to Braunstein, so my revelation, more like Robert's was the differences between D&D and Tractics or Panzer Leader were a few more, and I'm not sure how explicitly I recognized the player set goals, but still:
- player has an individual character (I had not played and one player one person wargames by the time I was introduced to D&D in 1977) - the biggest one for me that at the time I identified as the core of RPG - the game is free form, the players can do anything, whether it's in the rules or not, the GM adjudicates actions - the idea of the player defining the goals (though, having not been exposed to Free Kriegspiel or Brayunstein, to me this is just an obvious implication of the players can do anything) - I would have identified the character improvement (I didn't start seriously playing Traveller until 1979 or so), now I would just note that for a campaign, it's important that there's a persistent state that can be changed as the player achieves goals, while allowing the player to set new goals.
And just for fun random information, here is my best guess at my early gaming history:
ca 1971 as an 8 year old - I find Avalon Hill's Tactics II at a yard sale. I already had some kind of interest in military history. The person running the yard sale felt they needed my parents permission to sell me the game which was promptly granted (2 other times in my life did this kind of thing occur, once when purchasing Alistair MacLean's When Eight Bells Toll at the school used book sale, sometime around the same age, and second, in high school, when I purchased a War Department Engineer Field Manual on Camouflage at a collectibles flea market - I still have all three of these items, well maybe my copy of Tractics is partially replaced with one in better condition).
Sometime after this, I remember drawing up my own boards for Tactics II using 1" graph paper from an easel pad we had around the house.
Probably somewhere around here I'm introduce to the Hobbit and Heinlein's books by my older sister and by high school F&SF are staples of my fiction reading in addition to Alistair MacLean).
ca 1973 as a 10 year old, finding Little Wars in the library.
ca 1973 getting into Panzer Leader, Afrika Korps, and other Avalon Hill games. Joined an after school war game club.
Somewhere in here I start reading Wargamer's Digest in hobby stores, maybe purchasing an issue or two, and eventually subscribing - hmm, I think that was ALSO a Christmas 1977 present, my first issue with a mailing label is January 1978. I know I started looking before 1976 because I remember looking at it at a hobby store in West Concord before we moved to Lexington in 1976. Somewhere along the line I purchased a bunch of back issues, so the February 1974 issue that is the oldest I own may predate my exposure to the magazine.
Spring or Summer 1975 living in Concord MA in the thick of the bi-centenial celebration and as a Boy Scout, helping sell maps and stuff, and my father purchasing a book laying out the events of April 19 1775, and having played several games, and having already dabbled in making my own game boards, I took a pine board and drew a map on it, and made cardboard counters, and put together a basic set of rules for an April 19 1775 board game.
ca 1976 having moved to Lexington finding some of Donald Featherstone's books in the library, I expanded my WW II miniature collecting and play into actual wargame play. Having long been reading various military history books and things like Jane's catalogs, I started house ruling the game (the set of Featherstone WW II rules at least that I was using at the time did NOT take armor slope into account - so I house ruled that).
Probably summer of 1977 - I see OD&D and Tractics on the shelf behind the counter of the toy/hobby store I've started frequenting. I ask the clerk to get them down so I can look at them. My read of OD&D saw that despite being labeled "Rules For Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable With Paper And Pencil And Miniature Figures" seemed to not really be a miniatures game led me to purchase Tractics instead.
November 1977 (either Friday the 15th or the 22nd, probably the 15th) - I go to my best friends weekend long birthday sleepover. Friday evening he gets to open some presents, and his older brother (who had already been playing D&D) gave him the Holmes Basic set. I'm not immediately interested in playing, so I offer to be the "referee" while my friend runs the dungeon. So I'm sitting there reading the book. And I stay up all night reading the book. In the morning I declare I'd like to start running a game. Chafing at the lack of distinction between weapons (but NOT having deeply studied medieval combat) I propose that weapons do damage based on cost (at which point one player asks how much a Small Boat does...). Yep, I started house ruling D&D right from the get go...
From there, my RPG play just took off and war gaming took more of a back seat. Somewhere along the line I intuited that while RPGs were inspired by F&SF books, game play would never work out quite the way a novel is written. As such I think I was pretty resistant to railroading and “GM tells a story” gaming. I had some vague idea of what distinguished an RPG from war games but could never really describe it very well other than relying on the points I layed out above, most importantly the "you can do anything" flexibility. In 2005 or 2006 when I was exposed to Vincent Baker's "Lumpley Principle": "System (including but not limited to 'the rules') is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play." if find a better definition of RPG.
Frank
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Post by ffilz on Mar 4, 2019 18:20:01 GMT -6
As an aside, I don't think character advancement is that novel. It was rather coarse in the early days of Blackmoor and basically hidden. Besides the fact that character progression only makes sense when the game is played as a campaign, which is clearly not required. So, I really don't consider this part of the break through. I agree that character advancement isn't novel. War Games certainly allowed for the promotion of units (especially in campaign games). I do feel that a campaign is integral to an RPG. Sure people play single session games using RPG concepts, but I'm not 100% sure they actually reach the full experience of an RPG (though they certainly can embody the Lumpley Principle, so maybe that isn't a full description of an RPG for me). I think for me, what you get in a single session of play is 99% of an RPG, with the campaign aspect adding the final 1%, but that final 1% is really important and for me makes the single session game a different experience even with it being 99% the same (for comparison, depending on the cite, humans share between 96% and 99.9% of DNA with chimpanzes, so yea, that last few percent can make something that is perceived as totally different). Frank
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Post by increment on Mar 4, 2019 18:52:40 GMT -6
It is just as true to say that the games objectives were unbound to the setting, except for what a ref might impose on the players. So, a GM might have prepared a segment of his fantasy world with dungeons, villages, and inns to explore while the players may not want any of this. Instead they choose to pursue a portal to another dimension, the nether regions of the dead, or a visit to the distant moon. Or, maybe they desire to time travel to 1940's Germany. The reverse is also possible where a GM introduces these things into the player's world. This can happen in real time and is only limited by the imagination of both GM and player. The possibilities are essentially limitless and unpredictable. This idea ties in with what Rob refers to as "dimensionality". It is partly why the game can characterize itself as gonzo at times. The game is what you want it to be(come). I guess I don't see how that's different from saying that he combined the "anything can be attempted" ingredient with the fantasy adventure setting ingredient. Agreed that the fantasy setting is super important to the mix, and that its ability to just take you anywhere is one reason that RPGs emerged from this path instead of from, say, western genre games that were bubbling around at the same time. I think it's also important that it's your character, and that you keep playing that character across sessions (at least for a while). And while character progression wasn't novel, it was totally addictive, and when people experienced it in the mix with these other elements, that sealed the deal.
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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 4, 2019 19:24:26 GMT -6
This thread has been trying to get beyond recognizing that there was something new and identifying what it was exactly that was new, I think. I don't think it's an easy thing to identify. Well, more than once, I've said "Lightning struck." Just like Star Wars. A cheap little 10 million dollar space opera turned the world upside down, and nobody really knows why. And for 42 years everybody in the world including George Lucas has been trying to do it again without success. This is so spot on, including the Star Wars example. It's hard to explain to my son what it was about Star Wars that was so amazing that I saw it 22 times in the theater the summer it was released. Star Wars was a lot like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers. It had a wonderful soundtrack, but so did other movies like The Magnificent Seven. You can go through a long list of "Star Wars had" items and most of them could be found somewhere else in one manner or another. Somehow, the totality of the thing was bigger than its parts. OD&D was like that for me. It was before computer games, before others tried to rewrite and improve on the model, so that bias needs to somehow be subtracted from a person's perspective. It has elements of wargame/miniatures campaigns, elements of literary and cinematic fiction, elements of lots of little things from other places … yet somehow the whole was just so different from anything I had experienced and I was hooked right away. As I noted near the start of the thread, it's very hard to explain to folks who have had a lifetime where RPGs were already out there. For me there was nothing, then one day there was OD&D. Michael's "lightning struck" is about as close as I can come to explaining how fast things changed.
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Post by geoffrey on Mar 4, 2019 21:17:37 GMT -6
Just like Star Wars. A cheap little 10 million dollar space opera turned the world upside down, and nobody really knows why. And for 42 years everybody in the world including George Lucas has been trying to do it again without success. Quoted for truth.
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Post by derv on Mar 4, 2019 21:55:22 GMT -6
I think it's also important that it's your character, and that you keep playing that character across sessions (at least for a while). And while character progression wasn't novel, it was totally addictive, and when people experienced it in the mix with these other elements, that sealed the deal. There may be some departure in this threads conversation from "what was the design break through" to "what made it successful". These are not necessarily the same.
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Post by robertsconley on Mar 4, 2019 22:34:30 GMT -6
I think it's also important that it's your character, and that you keep playing that character across sessions (at least for a while). And while character progression wasn't novel, it was totally addictive, and when people experienced it in the mix with these other elements, that sealed the deal. There may be some departure in this threads conversation from "what was the design break through" to "what made it successful". These are not necessarily the same. Except one lead to the other. Dave figured out how to run a pen & paper virtual reality within the time one has for a hobby. As it turned out playing a pen & paper virtual reality is really compelling especially when you can get something done within the time you have for a hobby. And I contend the breakthrough was nothing more complex than Dave saying "yes" as long it made sense it was something that a character could attempt to do. Then following up with the consequences of that. If he said instead "No, we need to focus on the good guys and baddies fighting their war" and ignored players attempt to other things, then Blackmoor would have been yet another one of the many sophisticated wargame campaign that were being refereed at the time.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2019 22:51:06 GMT -6
^ This.
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Post by derv on Mar 6, 2019 0:46:09 GMT -6
And I contend the breakthrough was nothing more complex than Dave saying "yes" as long it made sense it was something that a character could attempt to do. Then following up with the consequences of that. If he said instead "No, we need to focus on the good guys and baddies fighting their war" and ignored players attempt to other things, then Blackmoor would have been yet another one of the many sophisticated wargame campaign that were being refereed at the time. I understand why this answer may appear meaningful. You should consider that it's partly because we already know how RPG's work. What it doesn't answer is how Arneson knew to say "yes". That saying "yes" was a possibility with reasonable outcomes. Think about your explanation a little more critically. Saying "yes" had not been done before. So, either you feel Arneson just haphazardly stumbled onto something or you believe he understood the principles and what they would achieve. Believing the former will tend to perpetuate the long held opinions of his contributions. Believing the latter means you have not really identified the break through.
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Post by rsdean on Mar 6, 2019 4:22:26 GMT -6
]I understand why this answer may appear meaningful. You should consider that it's partly because we already know how RPG's work. What it doesn't answer is how Arneson knew to say "yes". That saying "yes" was a possibility with reasonable outcomes. Think about your explanation a little more critically. Saying "yes" had not been done before. So, either you feel Arneson just haphazardly stumbled onto something or you believe he understood the principles and what they would achieve. Believing the former will tend to perpetuate the long held opinions of his contributions. Believing the latter means you have not really identified the break through. So, please accept the I am trying to ask this in a conversational way... Is this about the question of whether Dave should get more credit if he understand in advance what was going to happen than if he lucked into it? If I understand the stories correctly (and I've read DATG in the past week, plus reviewed the Blackmoor section of PATW), the participants were some way into the transformation before they looked around and realized that they were doing something different. So far as I can tell (and it's 0500 and I'm only absorbing my first coffee for the day) Dave did not announce at the beginning that he had a plan for something completely different. On the other hand, saying "yes" once and finding that the consequences were interesting in the context of the campaign could have led to reinforcement as each new small "yes" took the group further down the path that we now identify as RPGing. I'm not saying that's not genius, but it's more of a Thomas Edison "99% perspiration, 1% inspiration" genius. The group was boiling a gaming stew already, which set the necessary conditions for the lightning strike to be effective. Other groups were also stewing some of the same gaming elements (all of the PATW research about the environment leading up to D&D), and the rapid spread across similarly prepared groups suggests that IT wasn't difficult to do, once IT had been pointed out. The fact that IT was easy to do doesn't imply that it was obvious beforehand. Otherwise some other group would have assembled all the pieces. I'm guessing nobody had a contemporary personal journal or the like? PATWs documentary sources are zine extracts, which don't seem to have carried a lot of introspection.
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Post by robertsconley on Mar 6, 2019 9:53:26 GMT -6
I understand why this answer may appear meaningful. You should consider that it's partly because we already know how RPG's work. What it doesn't answer is how Arneson knew to say "yes". That saying "yes" was a possibility with reasonable outcomes. Think about your explanation a little more critically. Saying "yes" had not been done before. So, either you feel Arneson just haphazardly stumbled onto something or you believe he understood the principles and what they would achieve. Believing the former will tend to perpetuate the long held opinions of his contributions. Believing the latter means you have not really identified the break through. Or he was focused on running a really d**n good Braustein style campaign using a fantasy setting merging what he learned from running the Napoleanic campaign, with the tweak that the only players were those playing individual characters, succeeded, and then found that it was even more fun saying "yes" to anything that the player can attempt as their character not only for them, but for him as well as he followed up on the consequences. In short in order for saying "yes" to be relevant and fun, the work that Dave put into Blackmoor had to be there. Consider this, even if Dave never wound up saying "yes" to anything that player could do as their character, Blackmoor still would have been a step forward in terms of wargame development. But with Dave saying "yes" it became a classic spawned an entire new realm of gaming. And without Dave saying "yes" there would have been no Gygax typing out D&D for publication. So anybody trying to minimize either of their contributions is an idiot in my opinion. To road to us leads directly through those two men. Without either the tabletop roleplaying hobby would have been very different (no Gygax D&D) or non-existent (no Dave and Blackmoor)
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Post by increment on Mar 6, 2019 10:06:15 GMT -6
I'm guessing nobody had a contemporary personal journal or the like? PATWs documentary sources are zine extracts, which don't seem to have carried a lot of introspection. Well, sure, since PatW came out I've seen more letters and other unpublished material from the time, but the stuff I at least have seen is consistent with the view expressed in PatW: that Arneson was initially a bit ambivalent towards the lack of traditional wargaming in D&D, and that even after the game was published, he believed that the best way to use its rules was with a neutral referee arbitrating between competing sides, rather than a DM representing the opposition and rolling dice against tables to manage the adventure of a collaborating group. As far as I can make out, it was the players he introduced to the game - both Twin Cities regulars and a certain few people in Lake Geneva - who really fell in love with the latter concept, and Arneson was willing enough to say "yes" to keep running games for them, with occasional course corrections like the Loch Gloomen relocation. But it was a relief to him when other people like Svenson opened dungeons and took some of that pressure off of him. After D&D came out, some people certainly played it more as a wargame (I wrote about an example here). They weren't wrong, it isn't some kind of dig against Arneson or anyone else to say their interests were inclined that way. The rules are certainly flexible enough to be used that way, or any number of other ways. By like 1978, when D&D had become a Thing, everyone's attitudes towards it had changed, including both Gygax's and Arneson's. That change depended a lot on the game's reception, on the transformative experiences of the early adopters. If we want to compare the invention of RPGs to a lightning strike, maybe those were the people who got struck.
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Post by robertsconley on Mar 6, 2019 10:46:36 GMT -6
he believed that the best way to use its rules was with a neutral referee arbitrating between competing sides, rather than a DM representing the opposition and rolling dice against tables to manage the adventure of a collaborating group. Something I noticed about First Fantasy Campaign back in the day when I read (and didn't have any other source) that made be "mmm that interesting" was the fact both side were comprised of players. Then years thanks to stuff like your PaTW I understand the context better. I don't think this aspect of Blackmoor or the wargaming scenarios that were part of it get explored enough. Nor I think exploring takes anything away from it being the first tabletop roleplaying campaign. There were plenty of times I ran mass combat in my Majestic Wilderlands campaign. Mostly using AD&D's Battlesystem 1e for the rules (because they seamlessly translate any d20 system including OD&D).
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Post by robertsconley on Mar 6, 2019 10:53:03 GMT -6
Well, sure, since PatW came out I've seen more letters and other unpublished material from the time, but the stuff I at least have seen is consistent with the view expressed in PatW: Let me ask you this, in FFC Dave mention there were two previous scenarios and he apologized for only have the notes to present Scenario III. My questions are 1) Roughly how many were involved in the those three scenarios? 2) How would you characterize the players approach in these scenario. Was mostly about getting ahead in the conflict that was part of each scenario? 3) And before the Blackmoor Dungeon, were there any player or players known have ignored the scenario to do their own "wacky" thing in Blackmoor. 4) Before the Blackmoor Dungeon were there NPCs, monsters, or groups that Dave ran? Basically how much of the conflict was PvP versus PvE (P=Player, E=Environment which includes NPC/Monsters). Side Note: Just got a physical copy of your book. I had it on the kindle since you released it but now own a physical copy as well. Again thanks for writing it.
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Post by increment on Mar 7, 2019 14:13:35 GMT -6
1) Roughly how many were involved in the those three scenarios? Well, it's bit complicated by the fact that there were some core people and then a ton of peripheral people, and also by how exactly we draw the boundaries around what should count as the Blackmoor campaign, which are not really very crisp. I think you'd be looking at on the order of 15 people involved in this pre-1973 phase, but many of them were remote or more occasional participants. It might be safer to say that there was a cluster of activities around Napoleonic Simulation, John Snider's space game, Blackmoor, and so on, that people sort of flitted between, dedicating various amounts of energy to them. 2) How would you characterize the players approach in these scenario. Was mostly about getting ahead in the conflict that was part of each scenario? Although as the passage you cited mentions, the original scenarios were "lost", what Dave meant by a scenario was kind of an overarching conflict that he built that would have some kind of measurable beginning and end. I gather different players had different levels of interest and engagement with those broader goals, but I wouldn't presume to speak for them. 3) And before the Blackmoor Dungeon, were there any player or players known have ignored the scenario to do their own "wacky" thing in Blackmoor. I'm not entirely sure how to answer that one - people did wacky things in games in general all the time around there. Games in the Braunstein tradition seemed to have this quality: Brownstone was probably "wacky" in the sense you mean. The sort of things captured in the Blackmoor Gazette & Rumormonger #1 probably give a sense of what it was like before the dungeon became a thing. Is it wacky enough? 4) Before the Blackmoor Dungeon were there NPCs, monsters, or groups that Dave ran? Basically how much of the conflict was PvP versus PvE (P=Player, E=Environment which includes NPC/Monsters). I think Dave conceived of factions independently of the players, but he tried to attach factions to people who were responsible for them, sometimes without much success. If no one else would run the opposition for a game, he'd do it himself.
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Post by robertsconley on Mar 8, 2019 12:03:58 GMT -6
Well, it's bit complicated by the fact that there were some core people and then a ton of peripheral people, and also by how exactly we draw the boundaries around what should count as the Blackmoor campaign, which are not really very crisp. I think you'd be looking at on the order of 15 people involved in this pre-1973 phase, but many of them were remote or more occasional participants. It might be safer to say that there was a cluster of activities around Napoleonic Simulation, John Snider's space game, Blackmoor, and so on, that people sort of flitted between, dedicating various amounts of energy to them. The overall circumstances sounds a bit like the college gaming club that I was president of circa 1988. We had various defined activities like Battletech going each with a handful dedicated to that and a larger group that flitted around showing up when interest and/or schedule allows them. I asked because my experience suggests that there a minimal number of folks that need to be involved to make a multi-faction "campaign" (I using this very loosely) work. Fifteen or so, that includes the less involved, sound about right. Although as the passage you cited mentions, the original scenarios were "lost", what Dave meant by a scenario was kind of an overarching conflict that he built that would have some kind of measurable beginning and end. I gather different players had different levels of interest and engagement with those broader goals, but I wouldn't presume to speak for them. But do you know anybody who was an involved players but pretty much did their own thing in regards to the overall scenario? What I am getting at is whether players existed that focused on other goals rather than helping either the goodies or baddies prior to the Blackmoor Dungeon. I'm not entirely sure how to answer that one - people did wacky things in games in general all the time around there. Sorry about the confusion. I rephrased the question in the previous paragraph to make it clearer where I trying to get at. I think Dave conceived of factions independently of the players, but he tried to attach factions to people who were responsible for them, sometimes without much success. If no one else would run the opposition for a game, he'd do it himself. Well, sure, since PatW came out I've seen more letters and other unpublished material from the time, but the stuff I at least have seen is consistent with the view expressed in PatW: that Arneson was initially a bit ambivalent towards the lack of traditional wargaming in DnD, and that even after the game was published, he believed that the best way to use its rules was with a neutral referee arbitrating between competing sides, rather than a DM representing the opposition and rolling dice against tables to manage the adventure of a collaborating group. As far as I can make out, it was the players he introduced to the game - both Twin Cities regulars and a certain few people in Lake Geneva - who really fell in love with the latter concept, and Arneson was willing enough to say "yes" to keep running games for them, with occasional course corrections like the Loch Gloomen relocation. But it was a relief to him when other people like Svenson opened dungeons and took some of that pressure off of him. Sounds like the multiple factions of players aspect of his campaign is what he enjoyed the most compared to running dungeons (or adventures) like the Blackmoor Dungeons where he had to play all of the opposition. This leads to a sidebar question, did you run across anything that showed that were there NPCs that Dave always played like the owner of the Comeback Inn? Or did he opt to try to find a players for every character (or more accurately position/role) in the campaign. I am interested not as part of the current debate but information pertinent if one wanted to run a multiple player faction campaign like Blackmoor.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2019 21:58:50 GMT -6
In other words, like I'm doing right now in my 'Dragon and the Flame' campaign. Yesterday's sea fight had the Second Sunday Group pitted against the Fourth Sunday Group; mayhem ensued, with lots of blood in the water in a very satisfying - and VERY Arnesonian - game. Some of us still play this way.
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