Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.duke.edu!newsgate.duke.edu!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newspeer.clara.net!news.clara.net!news-hub.cableinet.net!uunet!ash.uu.net!world!buzzard
From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: IF-like passage in a book I'm reading
Message-ID: <G7F8GI.F7M@world.std.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 17:55:30 GMT
References: <3a653337_2@dilbert.ic.sunysb.edu> <944m1b$dvi$1@wiscnews.wiscnet.net> <G7C246.3o1@world.std.com> <949bhh$kin$1@news.lth.se>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Lines: 78
Xref: news.duke.edu rec.arts.int-fiction:82345

In article <949bhh$kin$1@news.lth.se>, Magnus Olsson <mol@pobox.com> wrote:
>Were there even pencil-and-paper RPG's back in 1972? IIRC, D&D didn't
>appear until the late 70's.

Well, we have two different copies of this quote from Crowther saying
that D&D influenceed him:

        http://people.delphi.com/rickadams/adventure/a_history.html
        http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform/short.html

The latter actually attributes it to an interview in 1983.

Now, according to:
        http://home1.gte.net/papay/dnd/tsrBasic.html

the original D&D release wasn't until 1974.  1972 is widely quoted
as the date the original Adventure was authored, though. So either
there was some D&D going on before the official release, or else
the 1972 is a perpetuated misinterpretation (e.g. it's clear they
explored the real cave in 1972; perhaps that year was incorrectly
misread by someone as the authorship year). Well, or else Crowther
was misremembering, but that seems unlikely.

>I suspect it's more a matter of similar situations rather than direct
>influence.

Well, there was definitely serious activity to try to capture
the feel of D&D in computer games, but people found it hard;
the commercial successes were mostly relatively mindless
hack-'n-slash; the earliest I can recall is Temple of Apshai
by Epyx/Automated Simulations, 1979; Rogue was in 1980.  That
activity is a *lot* later than what we're talking about; however
that's due to the timing of when these machines came out and when
there was a commercial market; Apple II and Atari VCS
in 1977, Atari 8-bit 1979, Vic20 1980, C64 1982.
(Of course the commercial release of Zork wasn't until 1980;
Mystery House and Wizard&Princess were also released in 1980...
as was "Adventure" for the Atari VCS!)

I've always interpreted there as being two strains of
"D&D"-inspired computer games--the CRPG and the adventure game;
the CRPG building mostly on a pure simulation of the combat
mechanics of the RPGs, and the adventure games trying to
capture the free-wheeling "overcome arbitrary obstacles and
choose what you're going to do to get out of the situation"
feeling.

>>I'm not sure what the source of that tense
>>is prior to RPGs; did people construct stories out loud in
>>that mode of speech?
>
>Possibly, but I think you're looking at things from the wrong
>perspective, that of constructing stories, rather than that of playing
>a game.

Well, my point is, before there were RPGs, I don't think
there were any other games where the question would even make
sense. So storytelling is the only possibility for any possible
previous use. I'm curious if that whole narrative mode was a
entirely modern invention for this novel form of gameplaying, or
whether previous interactive storytelling (where someone would
make up the story as they were going along based on others'
feedback, e.g. stereotypically with children) might have
already made the form familiar.  Certainly it doesn't seem
familiar today to anything except adventure games... and
RPGs, and the ease with which people forget the latter makes
me wonder if we might not be forgetting some other scenario
that predates them all. On the other hand, I suppose some
people will say "it's just a natural mode of speech for this
kind of thing", but I think everybody in this newsgroup has
been trained at it for far too long; the whole idea of describing
it as happening to *you* seems to me to be the whole premise
of role-playing.

Mind you, this whole discussion is just another pronunciation
thread according to Doe's iffy theory, I'm sure.

SeanB
