With the recent death of Gary Gygax, co-creator of the pen and paper marvel Dungeons and Dragons, the benefit that his work has brought about in gaming have been coming to light. The gaming revolution that he and his cohort, Dave Arneson, started is a mixture of complexity and simplicity in terms of tools. The tools are also the reason that the games they started are so influential. With a pen and paper (the simple part of the tools) and a creative mind (the complex tool), anyone who took the time to learn the intricacies of the rules could become a campaign/game designer, crafting entire worlds or storylines with potentially deep characters.
However the games were a collaborative effort. Campaigns are only as interesting as the Dungeon Master (DM) and the campaign members were willing to make them. It was essentially a theater game where the DM would compose a certain situation. Each of the players/actors would throw in their own quirks and mindsets to their character creations. The entire campaign feeds off of everyone involved in it. It is a wonderful thing.
With the glitz and glamor of the video game age, many people forget that the same processes go into making any video game. It’s a matter of creative thought and willingness to create. While the actual players are taken out the creative processes, unless they make mods of a game, it is still a collaborative effort. Rather than game creation being split between the DM and the campaign members, the job to make the game is split between a staff comprised of writers, programmers, artists, the score composer and the musicians who play the composed scores. All this ultimately gives the less creative gamer a much more passive role in the game industry being that all they have to do is buy the game and then, if interested, download the user generated content.
We cannot forget the fact that Dungeons and Dragons started off the craving for an actual plot in video and even arcade games. Had Gygax and Arneson not taken the step to build a franchise built mainly off the creativity of anyone playing we would not have come as far as we have in terms of games and their plots. Gamasutra came out with a suitable tribute to D&D that covers its contributions to gaming more in-depth.
Read [Gamasutra]
Do I give credit for the first real fantasy gaming phenomenon to D&D;? Yes. But that doesn;t mean I have to like it. Played it once and I was asleep in five minutes. But I do respect it since it definitly got the ball rolling in terms of, for lack of a better term, RPGs
D&D;, I will admit is an acquired taste. It's something that you either really love, are indifferent to or completely despise. However that doesn't make it any less influential in terms of furthering the cause for RPGs. As you can tell by the writing I am one of the ones that loves D&D;.
I hope you keep writing more articles on tabletop gaming. It's important to keep it in the mix as an option for all gamers. Thanks!
No problem Mark. As a gamer in general I try to open up exposure to anything that would be worthwhile to play whether it is tabletop gaming, video games, CCGs like Magic: The Gathering, etc. Thank you for your read and support.
I'm annoyed that this article just seems to basically be an advertisement for another article. You need to give more substance if you want to be taken seriously.
Doc Ryder seems to have the right idea- why make an article to hype another one unless the original isn't worth reading in the first place?
heyheyheyheyhey. quit bashin' the big bro. he's new at this. 'sides, did any of you ever hear about that author before now, or did this article really waste your time? Are you not at least microscopically enlightened on this subject after reading? Besides, Mentioning another source is called a citation anyway. Did anyone ever write a research paper off one work of study? I don't think so. Quit hating.
Daniel, people are entitled to their opinions. They don't have to like my writing. The writing is a matter of starting up a dialogue on the topic. If their way of a dialogue is attacking the writer, that's their choice.
Doc Ryder and Alan Smithee, it wasn't to hype the other article. The style of article is a feature mixed with an op-ed. Features articles are generally like research papers, only with a much lower word count. So naturally there will always be information that is usually from other articles, which is why I refered to the more in-depth article.
Yes, people are entitled to their opinions, As far as mine goes, I agree with George Carlin. My opinion is that you have no right to your opinion. So ha.