If you could go back in time and replace D&D with another RPG as the world's most popular tabletop game...

palladium. heroes unlimited and fantasy.

That lesbian trucker racing game a bunch of drunk anons made that one time

But why not make those elements earned through skill or perhaps some level of ingenuity since these are RPGs after all rather than brainlessly ground then?

There's no "skill grinding" in Classic Traveller. It can take years in game to gain a skill point. The best way to do it is to retire for a couple of years under the Sabbatical rule, to take some college courses, but the rules stipulate you can do that only once.
In play, advancement is measured in money, equipment, connections, knowledge, and political power.

FATAL

Honestly Numenera.
A lot the shit that people shun it for is hold over from 3.5, which is doesn't actually suffer from...

Apocalypse World.
I just want to see what the hell the landscape would look like from that.

Monte Cook
>dropped
He's nothing but a hack.

What are you talking about? There was no possible way that RPGs would become 'mainstream' before the invention of rpg vidya. Get your head out of your ass, if D&D ACTUALLY was inspired by Lord of the Rings it would be universally heralded by intellectuals however... Instead of being derided for manchildren and actual children, because of its juvenile conan routes. A game that actually understands lotr and its feelings and why its a great story and myth would be great. Not something that just says 'muh orcs and elvvessss'

Dungeons: the Dragoning

Imagine a world in which that was the standard template for an original, cohesive setting, rather than having stolen from everything.

Conan is deeper than LotR. Unfortunately, DnD fails to understand Conan even more than it fails to understand LotR.

>There was no possible way that RPGs would become 'mainstream' before the invention of rpg vidya.

You have no clue what you're talking about. D&D was a mass craze around 80-81, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the handful of primitive computer RPGs played by a very small number of nerds.

Where mainsteam Veeky Forums is /wodg/?
I would sooner end tabletop altogether than let that be representative of the norm.

Do you not know what D:tD is?

I wouldn't. This is the right timeline.

Traveller lacks a solid "gameplay loop"
roguesandreavers.blogspot.com/2014/03/campaign-frames.html
thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15126/roleplaying-games/game-structures

Feng Shui, I guess. Or possibly .

Strictly worse than, and a blatant crib of, City State of the Invincible Overlord.
It had good art direction and a good video game though.

>nd it had absolutely nothing to do with the handful of primitive computer RPGs played by a very small number of nerds.
What about all the successful ones (that were either based off D&D (Wizardry, etc.) or based off games based of D&D (FF, DQ, etc.))?

I was unaware that World of Darkness pioneered the Tau.

>Traveller lacks a solid "gameplay loop"

True, but that didn't hinder the popularity of WoD games in the 90s, or modern D&D which lacks the same.
I'm not sure I believe the gameplay loop had much to do with D&D's popularity, especially as a lot of groups just fudged all that lighting/time/movement/encumbrance stuff back then. D&D ran to the top on novelty and name recognition, and then fell off when most people got over the novelty and decided it was "that nerd game" -- the whole "levels and +2 swords" and stuff were frequently mocked for years afterward, I can tell you.
That stuff really appeals to nerds, but not to regular folks.

What about all the successful ones (that were either based off D&D (Wizardry, etc.) or based off games based of D&D (FF, DQ, etc.))?

In 1981/82? Do you know how tiny the market was for Wizardry 1/Ultima 1 and the like? The D&D craze was not about that, at all. Very few people even had computers.

Frankly, yes, I assumed the X: the Y was a reference to WoD's naming scheme, so Dungeons: The Dragoning would be a combination of D&D and that naming scheme; i.e a World of Darkness style system taking the place of D&D in mainstream.
I apologise for my ignorance, do enlighten me.

I was clearly making a reference to the negative attention DnD used to get from relatively mainstream sources back in the day, and that DnD's LotR influence is surface level (keyword being initially in what I posted.) Perhaps it would do you better to actually get your head out of your ass and get better at reading comprehension.

It's a homebrew system Veeky Forums made that mashes together D&D/Planescape, WoD, 40k, and a whole mess of other stuff into an incredibly gonzo setting and system to match.

Surprisingly, it's actually playable if you can find people nerdy enough to want to do it.

Legends of the Wulin?

I'm running a game of it myself. It's rather fun (Though, I've taken some liberties with the setting to add a bit more gonzo here and there.)

So... it's every popular TTRPG on this board and then some put into a blender and someone hit puree?
Sounds absolutely nuts in a good way, I'll check it out.

Exactly.

Now imagine if that was where the hobby had started.

>Conan
>The Barbarian

Conan represents the Death of Rome and the loss of civilization. Lord of the Rings represents fighting back against those primitive fucks and restoring the greater order of things.

Newsflash, Conan is for larping fags who drool over big muscles despite being fat and lazy, while Lord of the Rings is for nationalistic forebears of their cultures that fight against the hordes of the east and south.

You are literally an ape. Or should I say nigger.

>he hasn't read either
Lord of the Rings is about resisting technological progress. Conan is about trying to tame an uncivilized world.

Genesys

>Lord of the Rings
>Nationalistic
>What are dwarf/elf relations and how does Legolas and Gimli's friendship play into this?

Tolkien lived in the last days of a dying empire, Howard lived in a series of booming frontier towns. Lord of the Rings is about pure mournful decay, every bit of civilization lost can never be regained. Conan is about the cycle of civilization and immortality of the human spirit, all that falls will rise again.

Nothing, old D&D is a great system family. What I would do is try and impress on Gygax that he needs to write more shit down about how to use the thing properly, not just assume everybody has access to one of the original Lake Geneva group. And also try to prevent the death of Don Kaye.

I think the oldest and most basic tenant of nationalism- and you might disagree, it might mean something different to you, but in my opinion- is the idea that the enemies and the outsiders are generally more evil and are generally worth less than your people. Lord of the Rings is a very beautiful story about a world where this is literally and incontrovertibly true.

To put it another way, racists and xenophobes in the real world are people who believe in orcs.

That doesn't make Lord of the Rings bad. It certainly doesn't hurt or change any of the positive messages that are really at the heart of the thing

fpbp

getting games into the idea of having randomly determined classes would be good for the hobby, fight me

No
But I'll fight you if you still think that Namek Saga was better than Saiyan Saga.

>those primitive fucks
You mean the ones that are technological leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else?

F.A.T.A.L. if only for the sake of utter curiosity

Are we talking with or without filler?

>with or without filler
Well, presumably, if we're counting the Namek Saga at all, we're including filler by definition.

The thing is, for Elves at least, Orcs aren't an outsider - they're your own people, twisted by darkness to fight against you.
Though one could say that this would qualify them as an outsider, so separated from their origins to qualify as something else entirely.

I dunno, yours is a fair interpretation, I see where you're coming from.

>randomly determined classes
Pure cancer.

In WFRP can you RP as "leave that life behind" also, since the careers are what you did before adventuring?

>they're your own people, twisted by darkness to fight against you.
So, liberals?

>personally:
Legend of the Five Rings
>universally:
World of Darkness
>most fun:
Unknown Armies

No, cuckservatives.

>Unknown Armies
>fun

... Damn that's a good insult.

But seriously, you've got the Ginyu Force, Freeza, a minimal amount of Goku for most of that, and Super Saiyan, along with Vegeta starting on his road to not total dickishness.
Saiyan Saga you've got what, Raditz, Vegeta, Nappa and Piccolo's sacrifice as a good story beat? And the beam struggle, I'll give you that one as a memorable moment.
I don't know what this Raditz is, but it sounds disappointing. And as for Nappa? The closest he gets to memorability is what abridgers did to him, so that leaves you with nothing but Vegeta - and he only gets better as time goes on, so Namek's got that over on this one.

Cut them both down to Kai, Namek's just the better experience overall, I'm sorry. Not that Saiyan ain't good, but it's villain still hasn't gotten a canon movie named after him.

You're right, and we have published essays where Professor Tolkien is perfectly explicit, something like, "What this really means is that elves and orcs are just different aspects of ourselves, but that is not the mythic means of storytelling".

I wouldn't personally describe Tolkien's work as nationalistic, I don't think that's what it was about, I think he just loved him some mythology.

But I think we need to step back now and then and be like, "Hey, a lot of these stories have good people of one race living in one country and evil people of a different race living in another country. Why do we keep retelling that story? Oh. Right. That's why."

Colonials please, you're both the primo example in this situation by virtue of being Colonials.
You were led astray by corrupt forces and twisted by evil overlords into abandoning the light of the Empire and fighting against us alongside that most evil of nations: the French.

Yep, its just your life so far and what you started out as. To get into a new career you need to meet the stat requirements for it but also the gear requirements, and your current career will have several possible future ones, which means you can develop in very different directions but more organically than "I'm gonna be a wizard now"
You gotta learn to exercise your imagination sometime user

Human tribalism is a powerful force. We can overcome it because we're aware of it, but it makes for a compelling narrative. Any time you've got another group of people who aren't you, you can combine that with Fear of the Unknown and you've got yourself a group of evil invaders - whether that's the tribe next door, the country over the border, or the aliens from Mars, that story resonates because humans are tribalistic by nature - not to mention literally all of our history is "and then people from somewhere else came and conquered us", so it's not like we have a shortage of experiences to draw from.
Besides, it's much easier to write threats from without than threats from within. We're probably all guilty of it, how many times in tabletop have you gone "You know what, I just want an easy to hate villain and some unambiguous good guys"? Probably at least once - I know I have, and I love me some moral ambiguity normally.

Unironically PbtA stuff.

No the real evil are those who read Tolkien or Howard, and skip the poetry. Seriously what kind of nancy boy skips poetry. Or it may be the Germans. I mean they've been trying to destroy civilization for the last 2,000 years.

The battle for earth, starting with cyber men and ending with Vegita being spared and allowed to escape, is the best fight in DBZ. It wasn't all-action, but it was well paced, filler scenes were used to build tension and it always felt like something was happening.

p.s. Evil Vegeta is best Vegeta. (But even I will admit that rogue-agent-foiling-Freeza's-plans was the best evil Vegeta. They should have kept writing the character that way instead of having him turn good).

>why would you want to have any say over your character's background or abilities, just roll for it
Fuck you, any random character generation method without an alternate non-random method being provided needs to go directly to the bin. WFRP at least gives you a slight mitigating factor, whether that's limiting the careers on the table with Character Classes in 1e or allowing you a second roll to choose from in 2e, but having a fully non-random option available is still better. 1e's Character Classes are better than 2e's second roll, because it allows you to say "I want to play some sort of warrior" and actually get that.

>They should have kept writing the character that way instead of having him turn good)

I understand why they did it, because he'd clearly hit peak popularity and they wanted a way to keep him around, but the Namek saga stuff was his best for sure.

Though screwing everyone over because he was sure he could take Perfect Cell was pretty classic too

MYFAROG

Am British (so in regards to the EU and the 1900's generally), currently playing through Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and love Rome. Germany trying to fuck my shit up is a common theme.

I disagree, but respect your opinion, and see where you're coming from.

I'd argue Vegeta is one of, if not THE, best popular example of a bad guy turning good though. I like evil rogue agent Vegeta as much as the next guy, but having him turn good without hitting him with the redemption bat (in fact explicitly not doing that) or taking away his personality is how you do a bad guy turned good well, and he's unironically a shining example of this and I'm glad it was done.
I mean c'mon, don't tell me you weren't feeling it for Vegeta and wanted the Buu Saga to end with his sacrifice to give the guy a deserved win.

Cyberpunk 2020

HERO

ACKS

All the good from the early editions of D&D with expanded realm rules. Tyvm

Rolemaster.

Oh, if only!

Runequest or Warhammer fantasy Role play

How would time travel help you in any way?

Do you mean you stop RPG's from ever happening?

Patrician taste.

Dungeons and Dragons is great. Great name, great creativity, great memes.

Before you maymay meme shitpost; actually go play the old editions that made the game popular and see how good the game actually was before 3.PF and beyond cancer.

There is literally nothing wrong with D&D.

>Trappings: Small but vicious dog
heh

>And also try to prevent the death of Don Kaye.
Yeah, that one. Or give Gygax a loan so he can buy the fucking shares instead of having to sell them to a man named Melvin.

>why not make those elements earned through skill or perhaps some level of ingenuity
Because most players are mediocre and thus don't like advancement based on skill or cleverness. They won't stay with such a game and keep playing it, it won't become popular. Time, though, everyone has time. If anything, the mediocre and downright sad have MORE time to sink into playing a game than those who are clever and skilful, since those things are also (in fact, much more) valuable in real life.

4e since it's "not D&D"

>a wild speg appears
...For real though, are you saying you're familiar with both WFRP 1e and 2e and you still haven't figured out that 1e's Character Classes is literally the same as picking a class in D&D, but then you roll for a random origin/background?

This would be unironically excellent for the hobby.

We could finally all be board-gamers with tight control of balance and mechanics and no useless shit like rule 0 or roleplaying.

This sort of faggotry is exactly why it should have started with 4E. Rule zero is in the 4E rulebook, and roleplaying is far better when it's not choked to death with hundreds of little rules and spell compendiums that solve problems for you.

Linear gurps

>Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures
>Published by Tactical Studies Rules

Roleplaying is unironically a misnomer.

No, it has its own issues resulting from poor/bizarre design choices. The only holdover from 3.5 it has is caster supremacy, which is still in there, just not as pronounced.

I'm 99% certain that Conan represents Robert E. Howard wanting to get a paycheck.

Strangely enought no one said Racial Holy War

Obviously he did want to make some money, but it's not just that. If you read some of his non-Conan stuff you'll notice that most of it isn't as good; with Conan he was doing a lot less rote writing by numbers. It seems to have been his favorite character and setting, that he had a real love for which his other stuff didn't get.

Hawkmoon

Literally wrong. 4e revolves around rule 0 and out-of-combat portions are played almost as freeform as something like FATE.

Realistically speaking, Runequest
It is not my favourite RPG, The One Ring RPG is not even in top tier but:
>It is old system and could be easily concieved in the time RPGs were first created
>It doesn't share the most blatant D&D's design flaws that eventually become holy cows
>Despite relative crunchiness and simulationism it was created with more storytelling attitide than gamey D&D, and would eventually pave a way to less gamey, more narrative RPG scene overall
>Widely understood fantasy lends itself best as default genre to RP in, but RQs fantasy subgenre is way more dope, more adaptable, and more in touch with the classics of fantasy literature than D&D's
>Glorantha is pretty dope, if weird, but I think that being the top RPG, RQ would eventually become generic system like it happened with D&D

>Conan is deeper than LotR
Howardfags are the fucking worst with they futile attempts to elevate mostly mediocre pulp fiction to the rank of art. I mean, I even like the feel of Hyboria Though, it is by now more creation of secondary authors, nad artists (illustrators, game creators and moviemakers) than Howard himself) but it isn't by no means, deep or intellectual, an the "philosophies" its fans are usually trying to assigns to them are shallow and silly even if they were really authors intention and not wishful overinterpretation.