A Brief History of Role-Playing Games
A Brief History of Role-Playing Games
A Brief History of Role-Playing Games
April 14, 2022
By Sarah Le-Fevre
Summary
The basic characteristics, rules and mechanisms of D&D went on to inform many of the games and systems mentioned below.
In 1986, Steve Jackson Games published GURPS, which was a system developed to allow players to play in whatever setting they chose, while utilising the same basic rules and mechanisms.
Despite being a parody of the overly complex games systems which we prevalent at the time, this is a perfectly playable game in its own right, and became quite popular.
CORPS started life in 1990 as the Conspiracy Oriented Role Playing System - with a Techno thriller game incorporating both magic and science, but was later rewritten to be a generic system and renamed the Complete Omniversal Role Playing System.
Games created using the SAGA system use 'fate cards' to tell stories and run the game.
Licensing of RPGs. While the Dominion Rules games system did not depart in any significant way in terms of its mechanics and play, it is notable for being one of the first games to be issued under an open source license, known as the Dominion Rules License, similar to the way that Open Source software works, this encouraged the development of new game material, settings, abilities and so on by an interested player community.
Honourable mentions of other Game Systems should go to EABA - often praised for its ease of use and portability, RPC54 - a system which uses playing cards to decide the outcomes of events in the game.
Reference
Le-Fevre, S. (2022, April 14). A brief history of role playing games. Retrieved April 21, 2022, from https://ludogogy.co.uk/a-brief-history-of-role-playing-games/