Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Cameron
Yes, some early rules sets provided charts & tables for everything, but most didn't. Yes, some players and referees were busily counting rivets or mapping torch-lit dungeons to millimeter accuracy, but most weren't.
During that period, however, the RPG "dial" pointed more towards playing then prepping, descriptions than spreadsheets, and role playing over dice rolling.
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I don't think your thesis stands up to scrutiny. If the first generation of games didn't have rules for everything, it was because they hadn't been developed yet, not because they weren't wanted.
Remember that original D&D was prominently subtitled, "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargame Campaigns Playable with Pencil and Paper and Miniature Figures." It was a framework for skirmish-level miniatures battles, with fantasy elements (magic, non-human species, monsters) and figures that persisted and developed from one battle to the next. All of the identification and personification that we now consider central to role-playing was secondary to the concept, though they rapidly moved to the fore.
The history of the hobby also weighs against your assertions. Games overall became
more complex and rules heavy through the 1980's, not less. This implies that this was what those "old school" gamers thought they wanted. It was only later, during the 1990's, that streamlined, simplified, rules-lite games were produced and sold. This was primarily in reaction to the previous rules-for-everything trend. As for preparation, I don't recall any game that advertised itself as a "pick-up" game, playable without preparation, before about 1998.
Classic Traveller was as rules-light as it was because there were just some things it hadn't considered. Knowledge skills -- sciences, languages -- were noticeably absent, in part (I think) because the authors hadn't yet looked at the consequences of player vs. character knowledge. The steady growth in the skill set (and associated rules) with each subsequent core book points to a sense that the treatment was not sufficient for some specialized sub-genres.
The early adventures don't bear out your assertions, either.
Annic Nova, the earliest published adventure, was a bog-standard dungeon crawl, complete with detailed contents for every room and several fiddly riddles to solve.
Shadows,
Research Station Gamma,
Twilight's Peak -- they can all be described as dungeon crawls in space, although by the last the "dungeon" map had expanded to include the surrounding wilderness.
For what it's worth, I participated in a role-playing session run by a GDW staff member at Origins in 1980. My recollection is hazy at this remove, but I remember being frustrated that the referee didn't allow more scope for innovation. I felt I had offered a clever way to solve one of the problems posed, but the referee was looking for a particular, predetermined answer. The scenario used was eventually published as an adventure, though I'd have to do some research to figure out which one.* The experience left a vaguely bad taste in my mouth for several years, and influenced my own refereeing.
*Pretty sure it was one of Chamax Plague/Horde.