History of Role Playing Games

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 1:38 am

Although most people believe that Dungeons and Dragons is the first role-playing game, they are incorrect. In 1966 the Society for Creative Anachronisms, or SCA, was established. The group formed to protest against the vulgarity of the 20th century. They published a “how-to” guide in 1968 and had fully established their first three “kingdoms” by the end of 1969. This was the first real attempt to develop the act of playing specific roles for the entertainment of the individual.

Then, in 1974 Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, two avid War-games players, decided to attempt to use their war-gaming figures on an individual level, and have each player run a single character. They developed and sold the game Dungeons and Dragons. Since then, this game has gone through several evolutions, and is currently in its Fourth Edition (which is actually something like the sixth or seventh iteration, depending on how you count).

Early Dungeons and Dragons was a very imbalanced game; the fighter and the wizard were by no means equal at any point, as the fighter excelled in early levels and the wizard (if he lived long enough) was supreme at higher levels. Steve Jackson sought to correct this issue, and developed a new and massive system, GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System), in 1986.

Many critics of these systems see them as system based, while the emphasis should be on the story and the players roles. White Wolf Studios created Vampire: The Masquerade, to be a story-oriented system, significantly simplifying the rules and forcing the players to act and describe details in order to fulfill objectives.

Finally, Indie Gaming has grown to a new height. These are games developed and published by small companies, often given away or sold at very low mark up, such as Cheap Ass Games.