By Matthew Stephen Sunrich
Dungeons & Dragons
(D&D), the world’s first
roleplaying game (RPG), was introduced in 1974. The original version of the
game was, in essence, an expansion for Gary Gygax’s tabletop miniatures game Chainmail and, thus, did not have its
own unique combat system. You had to have a copy of the miniatures game in
order to play it. It was also, for some, difficult to understand. While these
and other issues led some players to the conclusion that the rules needed
clarifications and/or further development, there was no doubt that the
fledgling company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) had a hit on its hands.
Within a short time, similar games were coming out of the
woodwork. It seemed as though the gaming community had been waiting for the
fantasy RPG to be created and just didn’t know it. The first of these was Flying
Buffalo’s Tunnels & Trolls (T&T), which debuted about a year
after D&D. While its predecessor
was a fairly serious game, T&T
was designed in a more lighthearted vein. It was also less complex and was the
first game system to offer single-player options. One of the biggest challenges intrinsic to RPGs is getting a
group together (and, having done so, preventing that group from imploding). By
design, RPGs require at least two players, preferably more. Someone has to run
the game in which the players take part (a Game Master (GM) in general terms or
a Dungeon Master (DM) in D&D). But
what do you do when you crave a fantasy adventure but don’t have anyone to play
with?
To solve this
problem, T&T introduced solo
adventures. These took the form of short books in which players make choices at
certain points and turn to the corresponding section. For example, the text
might say something like, “You enter a dimly-lit room. There are doors to the
north and west. A small chest stands in one corner. To go north, turn to 25. To
go west, turn to 78. To open the chest, turn to 44.” If this sounds familiar,
it was later used by the creators of the Choose
Your Own Adventure book series, although the T&T books differed in that players use a character sheet and
roll dice to determine outcomes, just like in a traditional session. Basically,
the book was the GM.
Games Workshop
(the British company known these days for the miniatures game Warhammer) founders Steve Jackson and
Ian Livingstone introduced Fighting
Fantasy in 1982. Unlike the T&T
solo adventures, these books were self-contained; they did not require players
to use the rules of the “parent” game, as there wasn’t one. With titles such as
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Deathtrap Dungeon, Temple of Terror, and House
of Hell, this high-quality series proved very popular and remained in
publication until 1995, totaling 59 books.
Read more »Labels: D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, Fantasy. role-playing game, sword and sorcery