Designers & Dragons: The Column

In the 1970s, roleplaying was different. It was still growing and evolving, still finding its feet. And thus, much of the gaming culture that appeared in that era was quite different from what we know today. Things would change pretty abruptly around 1980, as the industry ascended to a higher level of professionalism. But back in the '70s, the industry wasn't really big enough or long-lived enough to be professional. Besides that, there weren't a lot of rules about how things should be done.

Thus, things were often done differently.

1. Roleplaying Still Lay Very Near Its Wargaming Origins

The original 3-volume set of Dungeons & Dragons (1974) was labeled, "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures". A modern roleplayer might actually classify that original rule set as a wargame rather than an RPG. It assumed players would be moving their figures step-by-step and turn-through-turn through dungeons and battlefields, and even fell back on the Chainmail rules (1971, 1972, 1975) to resolve combat.

This wargaming focus was clearly reflected in the more amateur early dungeons that appeared in places like The Dungeoneer (1976-1980). These dungeons were often simple lists of room, each noting the monster that the room contained and nothing more.

Publishers clearly didn't see much distinction between wargames and RPGs either. Some of the other earliest RPGs that followed D&D hewed even closer toward the combative side of things — not placing much emphasis at all on the new possibilities offered by "roleplaying". Among those pseudo-RPGs are GDW's En Garde! (1975), TSR's original Boot Hill (1975), and Metagaming's Melee (1977) and Wizard (1977).

Although roleplaying would better define itself as its own creature during the '80s, artifacts of the wargaming of the '70s remained until at least the publication of Second Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1989). Prior to that, movement in AD&D was still described in inches, with a typical character moving 6", 9", or 12", depending on encumbrance. Players of the '80s who discovered that an inch was 10 feet indoors or 10 yards outdoors were probably entirely befuddled. (I was!) It only made sense if you presumed that D&D would be played with miniatures moving across a table, just like those wargames of old. The Second Edition of AD&D kept the standard movement rates of 6, 9, and 12, but got rid of those confusing inch marks.

2. The Games were Competitive

Given their origin in the wargaming field, it should be no surprise that RPGs were originally quite competitive. One only has to look at the games that were run as convention tournaments to see the heavily competitive nature of early gaming. These adventures were about players maybe succeeding or maybe failing and doing so with the deck stacked heavily against them.

Two early tournaments — later published by TSR — clearly show this competitive nature. S1: Tomb of Horrors (1978) is of course the classic — full of no-chance death traps like a sphere of oblivion that you could walk right into. A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords (1981) — which strips characters of all their equipment and then lets them fight their way to freedom — offers another example of a game solely about the PCs trying to survive in a difficult environment.

The competition in early RPGs wasn't just confined to tournament; it was a factor in many local games as well. You just need to listen to the war stories of a gamemaster from the era like Dave Hargrave, who talks of killing hundreds of characters. Alternatively, one can looks at the hundreds of tricks and traps suggested by players in the many RPG magazines of the time. Most of these traps weren't very fair, but most did give players a hard time — and thus something they could excel against (or fail ignobly). Grimtooth's Traps (1981) was in some ways the culmination of this early, competitive mindset, but by the time it was published (and especially by the time its sequels appeared), it was more a humorous meta-RPG book than something that might be used in games. The same would not have been true just a few years earlier.

In the modern day, RPGs have moved over to a model of facilitated play, but that was surely not the case in the '70s.

3. The Rules were Guidelines

The original Dungeons & Dragons game openly stated that its rules were guidelines and that gamemasters should feel free to change them as they saw fit. TSR almost immediately put its money where its mouth was by publishing three books of variant rules. Supplement I: Greyhawk (1975) included an alternate combat system and made many changes to characters — forcing magic-users to learn limited spells and giving fighters exceptional strength. Supplement II: Blackmoor (1975) introduced hit locations. Finally, Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry (1976) threw psionics into the pot.

Out in the wild, among actual play groups, variants were even more common. It's hard to find a story of an OD&D game today without also finding a description of the variant rules it used. Some of these variants became their own game systems in time, such as The Arduin Grimoire (1977), The Complete Warlock (1978) and The Palladium Role-Playing Game (1983). The tales of variant D&D systems that never got published, such as Midekemia Press' "Tome of Midkemia" and Gamelords' complete "Fantasy System" are at least as common.

By the time Gary Gygax was drafting Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977-1979) TSR had decided that their rules should actually be rules — not guidelines after all. This alternate philosophy was stated in the new AD&D books. The rules were also more comprehensive, so that fewer off-the-cuff decisions were needed on the part of GMs. The reason for the change, according to TSR, was to better support tournament play — which was an increasing interest throughout the time period. However, it took a while for the players to accept the change. During the '80s there'd be a running war fought between Gygax and others in the pages of Dragon and elsewhere, as to whether it was OK to use variant rules, or if AD&D had to be played as it was published.

4 D&D was the De Facto Standard

Though players felt empowered to create their own variants of D&D, nonetheless D&D was the standard that nearly everyone was playing. It was so ubiquitous that players were able to move their characters from campaign to campaign to convention and back — all without even thinking about which game folks might be playing. Campaign worlds might even interact; one early article on the industry describes David Hargrave's Black Lotus Society (in the San Francisco Bay Area) planning an attack on Deanna Sue White's world of Mistigar (in Los Angeles). Despite the existence of early alternate FRPs like Empire of the Petal Throne (1975) and Tunnels & Trolls (1975), D&D remained the gold standard.

Even more FRPs — such as The Arduin Grimoire (1977) and RuneQuest (1978) — appeared in the later '70s. Slowly, some of these alternatives began to take up some of the roleplaying mindshare. There were old-timers, however, who regretted these changes. Lee Gold discussed the loss of the industry's early ubiquitous game system when she said: "San Francisco runs 'high entropy' worlds — lots of magic and power; Long Beach and Boston, 'low entropy'. RuneQuest is talking strike rank; D&D is talking dexterity rolls. They can't talk to each other. It's like the Tower of Babel … The trend is to closed-world campaigns." (New West magazine, August 25, 1980)

5. Science Fantasy was a Heavy Influence

Though we today use the acronym "FRPG" to describe D&D and what followed, in the earliest days it seems like "science fantasy" was as important as pure fantasy.

OD&D (1974) kicked off a focus on science fantasy by referencing Edward Burroughs' John Carter novels. A few years later — in the lejendary "Appendix N" of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (1979) — Gygax listed several science fantasy works on his inspirational reading list, including: Burroughs' Mars series, Burroughs' Venus series, Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers series, and Jack Vance's Dying Earth; together they offered up a wide cross-section of science fantasy writing.

This science fantasy emphasis also showed up in the early adventures of TSR. We know that Rob Kuntz's "Machine Level" for Greyhawk Castle was full of robots and other machinery. Kuntz also offered some inspiration for Gygax's S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (1980). The latter adventure — focusing on a crashed alien ship in Greyhawk — is today the best-known example of the science fantasy of the '70s ... but it was really the tip of the iceberg.

Other designers presented many more examples of the science fantasy of the early industry. Dave Arneon's Blackmoor had its own crashed starship lending technology to the world — though full information on it wouldn't be publicly published until years later in DA3: City of the Gods (1987). The idea of aliens coming to a fantasy world was also one that Dave Hargrave included in the second Arduin Grimoire, Welcome to the Skull Tower (1978).

Empire of the Petal Throne (1975) took a different tactic. It was placed in the far future after a technological civilization had fallen — thus allowing characters to discover ancient technological artifacts.

Many early RPGs also included the idea of dimensional gates, which could bring technology (and thus science fantasy) straight from Earth to your favorite fantasy world. When Bob Bledsaw got tired of his Middle-earth campaign, he let players enter the Wilderlands through a gate; later gates would bring Pepsi ads and helicopters into the Wilderlands. Gates were even more important to Dave Hargrave's world of Arduin.

Though science fantasy continued as a minor theme into at least the '80s — with that aforementioned resurrection of Blackmoor and the appearance of Spelljammer (1989) — it was nothing when compared to the '70s. In those early days, it seems like every primordial FRP realm had a fair amount of science fantasy at its core.