The Game That Pioneered a New Kind of Game and a New Way to Play
I have shared a handful of videos on this blog about the origin and the story of the tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) Dungeons & Dragons, but here I am sharing yet another. Why? Well, because quite simply, this video does a great job of impressing upon the viewer just how innovative and groundbreaking Dungeons & Dragons really was when the first handcrafted copies of the original game were being laboriously cranked out inside of co-creator Gary Gygax’s basement. I played a very early version of the game, but not that original version of the game. While the early versions of the game required that the players make judgments or rulings and create “house rules” to address gaps in the rules relating to circumstances and situations not accounted for in the rules (something that is still, at least occasionally, necessary in playing any TTRPG), the earliest players were in entirely new territory aside from the fact that many wargamers had experience making such necessary judgments or rulings.
The players had to fill in the gaps and make decisions so that the game could continue. Sometimes this happened after a discussion among the players. Sometimes it was a group decision. Sometimes the player running the game as the Dungeon Master or DM made a ruling by fiat. Much like a group of kids on a playground coming up a solution to some question that had temporarily brought play to a halt, the players cooperated to reach a resolution and return to having fun playing. Even in a TTRPG run by the most authoritarian DM (or whatever title the game bestows upon the player fulfilling that role), the game is a cooperative experience with the players going along with whatever decision is reached… at least if play is to continue. TTRPGS are really unique and Dungeons & Dragons created an entirely new game and an entirely new way to play beyond the simple make-believe that is so common (or, at least, was so common) among children. TTRPGs are, in a way, a more adult evolution of those fanciful imaginative exercises of our childhood. Now we have rules to arbitrate what happened so that we can largely move beyond the arguments like “I shot you” and “No, you didn’t!”
As someone that has enjoyed some of the earliest TTRPGs including Dungeons & Dragons and video games where you take on the role of a single, individual character, I am a beneficiary of the earliest version of Dungeons & Dragons. So is anyone else that has played a TTRPG, an online roleplaying game, or a video game that puts one in the pixelated skin of a lone character on a journey, a mission, or a quest.
If find this interesting and you want to learn more about this groundbreaking, innovative game, click on the link below to watch the video from the Geek Origins YouTube channel (@geekorigins).
“The Game That Invented Every Game You Play”
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