In 1971, Gary Gygax's game Chainmail (which he adapted from a rules system created by his friend Jeff Perren) was first published. This was a miniatures wargame, along the same lines as Warhammer 40,000 and Bolt Action. It had rules for mass combat, jousting, and single combat, and also contained a supplement that allowed you to include fantasy elements (magic, wizards, etc) in your war game.
Dave Arneson later took those rules and merged them with his own ideas for controlling a single warrior instead of an entire platoon. He showed this adaptation to Gygax, and the two of them created Dungeons and Dragons from it. Thus, the first roleplaying game was born.
The idea took off, and Gygax released another RPG two years later, Boot Hill. Variations on the original D&D soon sprang up, such as The Complete Warlock, by Robert Cowan, Dave Clark, Kenneth M. Dahl, and Nick Smith, and Tunnels and Trolls by Ken St. Andre. Bunnies and Burrows was an early attempt to push the boundaries of what was possible in an RPG, and as early as 1977, gamers had already started to adapt existing franchises with the introduction of the game Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo.
Showing posts with label neverwhere. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neverwhere. Show all posts
21 February 2015
08 June 2009
Film and Book
Hello, and welcome to another week of gaming essays. Sorry it's a day late; I was having all sorts of trouble thinking of a topic for this week. But I finally came up with one: gaming in the world of existing stories.
This has been done many times in the past; I'm sure some of us remember MERP (Middle Earth Role Playing) from I.C.E. Of course, there's since been the new system released around the time of the Lord of the Rings films. There's also the Star Wars and Star Trek games, and the Buffy game, and there's been an adaptation of Hellboy for GURPS, and so forth... and that's not even counting the countless unofficial fan adaptations floating around the internet (like the adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere). But we all see movies and TV shows or read books or comics and think to ourselves, "I want to play in that world!"
This has been done many times in the past; I'm sure some of us remember MERP (Middle Earth Role Playing) from I.C.E. Of course, there's since been the new system released around the time of the Lord of the Rings films. There's also the Star Wars and Star Trek games, and the Buffy game, and there's been an adaptation of Hellboy for GURPS, and so forth... and that's not even counting the countless unofficial fan adaptations floating around the internet (like the adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere). But we all see movies and TV shows or read books or comics and think to ourselves, "I want to play in that world!"
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