This post was written for the @archdruid gaming contest, Gaming Decades: the 70's. Go check it out!

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It is taken for granted in this day and age that games should have a storyline. However, prior to the 1970s, it was not immediately obvious that most game should have a story. While games that relied on players‘ imagination were around, most of those games told stories that were minimalist: mere products of the mechanics of the game. An example of this would be the classic wargame.

It was from these simple wargames that the game known as Dungeons & Dragons got its start. Chainmail, played by Gary Gygax and other people who would form Tactical Studies Rules, served as the forebearer of this new generation of storytelling games. At the time it was developed, this was not viewed as a revolutionary step. Rather, Gygax, Arneson, and company generally viewed their movement as simply a remodeling of the classic miniatures game. They would only appreciate the full distinction upon the work's completion. The result of this is that Dungeons & Dragons did not so much change the nature of storytelling in games as it discovered it. What I mean by this is that Dungeons & Dragons was not an attempt to reinvent the wheel. It was only once they had sought to publish it and found difficulty in finding a publisher that it became clear that Dungeons & Dragons with something quite unlike previous games.

Storytelling versus Mimesis

The distinction between mimetic storytelling as a consequence of events, which occurred in miniatures games, a deliberate storytelling through the modes of fantasy is one that is key to the transitional significance of Dungeons & Dragons. While games were often used to simulate events, and even speculate on what could have been, they were not used to tell new and original stories. Even if the focuses of these games were speculative and not directly derived from reality, they were still merely focused on mechanically telling a "story".

Their content would not be considered literary in nature. It would have been more like a theoretical exploration: What if George Washington had not crossed the Delaware River?

You could use a war game to simulate that.

Dungeons & Dragons was perhaps not the first miniatures game to explore the concept of mythical creatures, but it differed from them by moving towards storytelling. The emphasis moved away from simulating a battle and toward creating stories. It became a tool set for creating legends instead of a way to ask hypothetical questions about events with practical but not necessarily storytelling significance.

Characterization

Take, for instance, the notion that characters in Dungeons & Dragons are created as unique individuals.

Wargaming does not necessarily preclude the idea of having a character that is based on a particular person, but what Dungeons & Dragons changed is that the characters become persistent and central identities in the storytelling world. This is not necessarily a revolutionary change, but rather an evolutionary one. After all, war games prior to this had explored many hypothetical scenarios, and the notion that distinctive individuals could be represented is not novel.

What changed with Dungeons & Dragons was the focus of the game.

Many war games can be played across sessions and may have had persistent consequences and character development, though not to the same extent as Dungeons & Dragons would introduce.

Dungeons & Dragons was a shift in the notion of how game should be played.

The stories told through characters grew to replace previous scenarios which were focused on historical events or campaigns in a military sense.

A Broader Focus

The introduction of increasingly complex rules for non-combat activities is another departure point which appears to be unique to Dungeons & Dragons. Again there is no indication that this sort of thing could not have been considered miniature games prior to dungeons & Dragons, but this is not to my knowledge something that was prevalent or even expected. As Dungeons & Dragons developed, the significance of this increasingly layered system would become evident.

While it might not be fair to its predecessors to call Dungeons & Dragons the first storytelling game, it is also worth noting that it may have at one point then the most complicated game in terms of its design layers.

While many games were concerning themselves with vast simulations, many of which went into incredible levels of detail and were inaccessible to people who did not have time and effort to invest in learning them, these simulations did not attempt to tell stories. Instead, they were focused on increasingly mimetic levels of detail within a singular focus.

In Dungeons & Dragons, distinct developments led to characters who had abilities unique to themselves, but not merely focused on combat, that would mark its evolution in the clearest sense.

The significance of this is hard to get across in a day and age where games are increasingly complicated.

Video games like Diablo would go on to take direct inspiration to many of the systems introduced by Dungeons & Dragons. Some of the focus on such games often narrows back down to combat, but the core of a narrative framework and multifaceted game mechanics persists. Thenoteworthy example of Rogue, a text based adventure game, reflects early manifestation of the development of video game into storytelling tools in a way that follows Dungeons & Dragons' own significance.

Influence

Dungeons & Dragons was also responsible for the creation of other games. It would immediately result in spin offs to its own product line. For example, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which took the formula and made it more complicated to satisfy a growing “hardcore” market.

It also spawned other spin offs, like Tunnels & Trolls, which was more immediately focused on storytelling, taking the formula and revamping it into the first roleplaying game that was deliberately designed as such for its entire lifespan.

Dungeon & Dragons quickly sold millions of copies. If it was not conceived as a revolutionary shift in gaming when it was first created, the public's hunger for a game that would permit fantastical escapism marked the advent of Dungeons & Dragons as a key turning point in gaming history.

The Response to Dungeons & Dragons

To describe the effects of Dungeons and Dragons it is necessary to consider what role it played in the society was introduced into.

Dungeons & Dragons would become a household name. At the time that it was released, it was viewed with some suspicion by fringe elements, but it was not treated differently from any other game.

As a result it very quickly became something played by families, students in schools, and anyone who would have played any other board game.

The significance of this is that it marked a revolution in play. While many people who were in Dungeons & Dragons' audience would have played other games, they would have been playing traditional board games. Some of these games may have had a narrative overlay (e.g. Monopoly, which is about running a business in a theoretical sense), but they were not storytelling devices.

The transition from scripted experiences in games dressed up in set dressing to a game which was itself a tool for telling stories with no limitations on the storytelling that was permitted was a pivotal moment in the development of what would come to be known as modern roleplaying games.

Eventually, a moral panic would rise around Dungeons & Dragons. Its swords and sorcery setting, inspired by pulp fiction written by the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs, often contained dark and disturbing imagery. Many parents, religious organizations, and even government organizations were concerned by the increasing influence that these games had on the public, and by some of the concepts they explored.

While Dungeons & Dragons itself was mostly the topic of a moral panic and not legal issues, as it was viewed as having Satanist influences, other games ran afoul of the law. While most investigations into the games industry resulted in nothing–no harm was found to have occurred and no laws were found have been broken–the combined forces had a chilling effect of the popularity of storytelling games.

Precursors

Dungeons & Dragons was not unique in bringing storytelling based games to the public, Choose Your Own Adventure style gamebooks had been out for a while prior to Dungeons & Dragons, but these books were often not centered on play in a traditional game sense. The player could make decisions, but it was Dungeons & Dragons that wedded regular storytelling and the concept of random outcomes. This was a critical bridge between two previously separated concepts. Until this point, there had been no easy way for gamers to experience storytelling at the same time as play. Dungeons & Dragons reflected a more holistic approach to play.

As a result, Dungeons & Dragons found a larger audience in the wargames that preceded it. It appealed not only to analytical types who enjoyed the challenge of simulation in wargames, but also to those interested in drama. Despite several attempts to mitigate the influence of Dungeons & Dragons following the moral panics of the 80s, its unique blend of play and storytelling made it a natural hit, and it maintained a power greater than any game prior to it.

Wrapping Up

The greatest strength of Dungeons & Dragons was its ability to bring people together around the globe. While Dungeons & Dragons itself has enjoyed great popularity around the globe, it also inspired other early role playing games, like Traveller, with different genres of play, and it was not long before more sophisticated storytelling methods were applied to game mechanics in a variety of different ways.

Increasingly valuable mainstream intellectual properties would begin to have roleplaying games created for them. The result was that roleplaying became a game genre as a result of Dungeons & Dragons, and its influence has been felt in almost every other game created since then.