Change The World?

This past week saw the passing of one of those rare individuals who really did change the world, or at least the Human part of it, so that all of history has a “before” and an “after” his influence, much as it has time before and after Ford, Edison, Carnegie, Marconi and Gates. I refer here to the co-creator of the famous (or infamous) Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, E. Gary Gygax. Mr. Gygax did not invent the role-playing game, any more than Henry Ford invented the automobile or Marconi invented the radio – or Bill Gates invented DOS. But like the other businessmen on this list, it was his product – the first complete role-playing system to be mass-marketed – that created a new type of purchase, a new kind of customer, and ultimately a new way of life. The full scope of his impact on the popular culture in which we live is difficult to overstate…

If you’re not familiar with this product category I’m not sure you’d be reading web logs, either, but for the sake of completeness, a role-playing game is a construct of rules and concepts that participants use to take on made-up roles (or “characters”) which they then act out collaboratively in the course of various adventures (known collectively as a “campaign” or simply as a “game”). The idea isn’t exactly new; children had been playing Cowboys and Indians (Itinerant Livestock Herders and Native Americans), Cops and Robbers (Law Enforcement Personnel and Habitual Criminal Offenders), Spacemen (Starfleet™ vs. Klingons ™, Rebel Alliance ™ vs. The Evil Empire ™, Colonial Warriors ™ vs. Cylons ™ and so on) and Pirates (Pirates) since it became possible to do so without fear of being burned at the stake, but role-playing games (RPGs) and fantasy role-playing games (FRPGs) establish rules, capabilities, game balance, and all of the other elements needed to sustain such an collaboration and establish actual parameters for success for failure.

The Dungeons and Dragons system wasn’t even the earliest FRPG to reach the market, but it was the first to achieve enough sales to support follow-on products, tie-in and spin-off merchandise, and name recognition as a product line. It must be conceded that the repeated flare-ups of attempts to ban the game and its tie-in products as “satanic” by various fundamentalist Christian groups probably helped to cement the game firmly into the counter-culture of the 1970’s, but the rise of competitive products (consider RuneQuest and the somewhat later Rolemaster systems if you haven’t already) really owe more to the considerably financial success of the Dungeons and Dragons franchise. Ultimately, there were books, movies, cartoons, coloring books, and almost unlimited consumer products using the D&D theme, and other companies wanted a share of the pie.

With the perspective of history, we can easily dismiss much of the D&D phenomenon as simply a new class of consumer product being brought to market at the ideal time. New developments in television and movies were creating an unprecedented demand for fantasy (and science fiction – note that science fiction role-playing games like Traveler and Gamma World began to appear as early as 1977), and the FRPG offered those people who were so inclined the change to “go inside” the stories and act out their own fantasy. The distinction is, however, unfair to the FRPG authors and ultimately meaningless; every great development in consumer goods owes at least parts of its achievement to having appeared in the right time and place to find its proper market – and many product failures can be blamed on nothing more than poor timing. Gary Gygax and his publishers may have seized their moment when it came, but this in no way lessens their importance to 20th Century history – and beyond.

I will leave it to others to comment on the effect of FRPG products on our popular culture, and on the lives of the participants (generally known as “gamers”) involved, although if the reader has not read Wil Wheaton’s excellent blog on this subject, it can be found here. For now, let us just say that without FRPG and the man who will forever be associated with the most successful one, life would have been a lot less enjoyable for a whole lot of us. Here’s to you, Mr. Gygax. Wherever you are…