Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
I would note that role playing games have another historical model though I'm not sure how much actual role it played in the development of the hobby: its use in diplomatic modeling. My father was in the diplomatic core in the 60s and describes simulations that wouldn't look out of place in a modern diceless larp, and frankly, you can make an argument programs like the Model UN are role playing games... |
I think the historical development started with [David Wesely’s rediscovery of] the German
Kriegspiel staff-training exercises, in which each player was assigned not a character but a position in the command or staff, and in which the referees were explicitly there not just to execute or even interpret the war-game rules, but to rule on the results of anything the players tried that there were no rules for. Wesely ran “Braunstein” kriegspiels set in the Thirty Years War, and took a step towards RPGs by including player characters who had a motive to influence the actions of the contending forces but no place in the command or staff of either. Dave Arneson took over running Wesely’s Braunsteins when Wesely was deployed to Vietnam and developed the fantasy Braunstein — “Blackmoor” — using Chainmail as the wargame component. The heroic individual figures in Chainmail worked well as player characters in the Braunstein manner, and from there D&D developed as whswhs said in his essay.
So there doesn’t seem to be a direct descent of RPGs from State Office role-playing exercises. But it does seem plausible that both might be descended from military
Kriegspiel.