Dallas (role-playing game)

In serious debt in 1980, SPI made an attempt to expand its customer base beyond its "hobbyist" core of wargamers by entering into a much-publicized arrangement with Lorimar Productions to produce the Dallas role-playing game.

[4] Dallas was designed by James F. Dunnigan, with art by Redmond A. Simonsen, and was published by SPI in October 1980 at the height of the "Who Shot J.R." craze.

[2] Despite the popularity of the television show, the game proved to be an infamous failure, and art director Redmond Simonsen later remarked that the 80,000 copies printed "was about 79,999 more than anyone wanted.

Hard core RPGers will probably want to add the game to their collection; characters' attributes and the conflict resolution system are novel enough, even if you have no interest in the television series.

Nothing stops you from being kind and honest; but, if you want to win..."[8] In the 2016 book Television: The Medium and Its Manners, Peter Conrad called the game "a ludic Dallas do-it-yourself kit.

"[9] In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath noted that sales of the game had been "a massive failure, one of the biggest in the history of RPGs."