History of role-playing games
The history of role-playing games began when disparate traditions of historical reenactment, improvisational theatre, and parlour games combined with the rulesets of fantasy wargames in the 1970s to give rise to tabletop role-playing games. Multiple TTRPGs were produced between the 1970s and early 1990s. In the 1990s, TTRPGs faced a decline in popularity. Indie role-playing game design communities arose on the internet in the early 2000s and introduced new ideas. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, TTRPGs experienced renewed popularity due to videoconferencing, the rise of actual play, and online marketplaces.
Historical re-enactment, improv theatre, and murder mystery games
has been practiced by adults for millennia. The ancient Han Chinese organized events in which participants pretended to be from an earlier age with entertainment appearing to be the primary purpose of these activities. In 16th century Europe, traveling teams of players performed a form of improvisational theatre known as the Commedia dell'arte, with stock situations, stock characters and improvised dialogue. In the 19th and early 20th century, many board games and parlour games such as the game Jury Box included elements of role-playing. At the same time in Shanghai, role-playing characters from literature works was an integral part of the Chinese courtesan behavior. Mock trials, model legislatures, and the "Theatre Games" created by Viola Spolin arose, in which players took on the roles of characters and improvised, but without the formalised rules which would characterise modern role-playing games.There is some evidence that assassin-style games may have been played in New York city by adults as early as 1920. A murder mystery game in which a murder was performed by saying, "You're dead," was mentioned in Harpo Marx's autobiography, Harpo Speaks!, in a section covering the 1920s. In the 1960s, historical reenactment groups gave rise to "creative history" games, which probably originate with the founding of the Society for Creative Anachronism in Berkeley, California on May 1, 1966. A similar group, the Markland Medieval Mercenary Militia, began holding events on the University of Maryland, College Park in 1969. These groups were largely dedicated to accurately recreating medieval history and culture, however, with only mild fantasy elements, and were probably mostly influenced by historical re-enactment.
Wargames
have origins in ancient strategy games, particularly chess. It originated as chaturanga, created in the 6th-century Indian subcontinent as a simulation of ancient Indian warfare, particularly the Kurukshetra War, with pieces representing roles such as rajas, mantri, infantry, cavalry, chariots and war elephants. Chaturanga is considered the most ancient ancestor of Dungeons & Dragons. According to RPG designer John Wick, Chess can be turned into a role-playing game if chess pieces such as the king, queen, rooks, knights or pawns are given names, and decisions are made based on their motivations. According to Wick, Dungeons & Dragons was a "sophisticated, intricate and complicated combat simulation board game that people were turning into a roleplaying game" just "like giving your rook a motive" in Chess.In Europe, from the late 18th century to the 19th century, chess variants evolved into modern wargames. Drawing inspiration from chess, Helwig, Master of Pages to the Duke of Brunswick, created a battle emulation game in 1780. According to Max Boot's book War Made New, sometime between 1803 and 1809, the Prussian General Staff developed war games, with staff officers moving metal pieces around on a game table, using dice rolls to indicate random chance and with a referee scoring the results. Increasingly realistic variations became part of military training in the 19th century in many nations, and were called "Kriegsspiele" or "wargames". Wargames or military exercises are still an important part of military training today.
Wargaming moved from professional training to the hobby market with the publication of Little Wars, children's toy soldier game, by H.G. Wells in 1913. A niche hobby of wargaming emerged for adults that recreated model games around actual battles from the Napoleonic Wars onward. Although a single marker or miniature figure typically represented a squad of soldiers, some "skirmish level" or "man to man" games did exist where one figure represented one entity only. The board wargame Diplomacy, invented by Allan B. Calhamer in 1954 and released in 1959, made social interaction and interpersonal skills part of its gameplay. A live-action variant of Diplomacy named Slobbovia was used for character development rather than conflict.
Late 1960s to early 70s: fantasy, wargaming, and the dawn of TTRPGs
In the late 1960s, fantasy elements were increasingly used in wargames. Linguist M. A. R. Barker began to use wargame-like sessions to develop his creation Tékumel. In 1970, the New England Wargamers Association demonstrated a fantasy wargame called Middle Earth at a convention of the Military Figure Collectors Association. Fantasy writer Greg Stafford created the board wargame White Bear and Red Moon to explore conflicts in his fantasy world Glorantha, though it did not see publication until 1974. A wargame session was held at the University of Minnesota in 1969, with Dave Wesely as the moderator, in which the players represented single characters in a Napoleonic scenario centering on a small town named Braunstein. This did not lead to any further experimentation in the same vein immediately, but the ground had been laid. It actually bore greater resemblance to later LARP games than what would conventionally be thought of as a role-playing game. Wesely would, later in the year, run a second "Braunstein," placing the players in the roles of government officials and revolutionaries in a fictional banana republic.Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren of Lake Geneva's wargaming society developed a set of rules for a late medieval milieu under the influence from Siege of Bodenburg. This unusual wargame saw publication in 1971 under the name Chainmail. Although Chainmail was a historical game, later editions included an appendix for adding fantasy elements such as wizards and dragons. The two games, one of Wesely's along with the Chainmail ruleset, would be used partially by Dave Arneson who was a participant to Wesely's sessions, to focus his ideas regarding a fantasy realm known as Blackmoor, and by 1971, Arneson would be running what could be conventionally recognized as a role-playing game based on his Blackmoor world.
Blackmoor contained core elements that would become widespread in fantasy gaming: hit points, experience points, character levels, armor class, and dungeon crawls. Like the wargames it grew from, Blackmoor used miniature figures and terrain grids to illustrate the action. The key difference with the Blackmoor games, which allowed it to become a game distinct from the wargame-based Braunsteins, was the ability of the players to set their own character goals, in addition to the scenario goals set by Arneson. Arneson and Gygax then met and collaborated on the first Dungeons & Dragons game.
1974 to early 80s: the first TTRPGs, religious controversy, and video game RPGs
The first tabletop RPGs
The first commercially available role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, was published in 1974 by Gygax's TSR which marketed the game as a niche product. Gygax expected to sell about 50,000 copies. After establishing itself in boutique stores it developed a cult following among college students and SF fandom. The game's growing success spawned cottage industries and a variety of peripheral products. In a few years other fantasy games appeared, some of which having a similar look and feel of the original game. One of the earliest competitors was Tunnels and Trolls.Other early fantasy games included Empire of the Petal Throne, Chivalry & Sorcery, Arduin and RuneQuest. Meanwhile, Science Fiction role-playing was introduced in Metamorphosis Alpha, Traveller and Gamma World while the Superhero genre was first represented by Superhero: 2044. Empire of the Petal Throne and City State of the Invincible Overlord pioneered the concept of ready-made campaign settings. Live-action groups such as Dagorhir were started, and organized gaming conventions and publications such as Dragon Magazine catered to the growing hobby.
From 1977 to 1979, TSR launched Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This ambitious project expanded the rules to a small library of hardcover books. These covered such minutiae as the chance of finding a singing sword in a pile of loot or the odds of coaxing gossip from a tavern keeper. Optional modules in the form of small booklets offered prepared adventure settings. The first edition Dungeon Master's Guide published in 1979 included a recommended reading list of twenty-five authors. Literary and mythological references helped draw new fans to the game. During this time, the genre drew nationwide attention and fan base expanded to teens and lower.