History of role-playing games
In the late 2010s and early 2020s, TTRPGs experienced renewed popularity due to videoconferencing,[2][3] the rise of actual play,[4][5] and online marketplaces.
The ancient Han Chinese organized events in which participants pretended to be from an earlier age with entertainment appearing to be the primary purpose of these activities.
At the same time in Shanghai, role-playing characters from literature works was an integral part of the Chinese courtesan behavior.
[10] A similar group, the Markland Medieval Mercenary Militia, began holding events on the University of Maryland, College Park in 1969.
These groups were largely dedicated to accurately recreating medieval history and culture, however, with only mild fantasy elements, and were probably mostly influenced by historical re-enactment.
[12][13] Drawing inspiration from chess, Helwig, Master of Pages to the Duke of Brunswick, created a battle emulation game in 1780.
Increasingly realistic variations became part of military training in the 19th century in many nations, and were called "Kriegsspiele" or "wargames".
Wargaming moved from professional training to the hobby market with the publication of Little Wars, children's toy soldier game, by H.G.
[16] A niche hobby of wargaming emerged for adults that recreated model games around actual battles from the Napoleonic period onward.
The board wargame Diplomacy, invented by Allan B. Calhamer in 1954 and released in 1959, made social interaction and interpersonal skills part of its gameplay.
[19] A wargame session was held at the University of Minnesota in 1969, with Dave Wesely as the moderator, in which the players represented single characters in a Napoleonic scenario centering on a small town named Braunstein.
Wesely would, later in the year, run a second "Braunstein," placing the players in the roles of government officials and revolutionaries in a fictional banana republic.
[20][21] Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren of Lake Geneva's wargaming society developed a set of rules for a late medieval milieu under the influence from Siege of Bodenburg.
[22][23] Although Chainmail was a historical game, later editions included an appendix for adding fantasy elements such as wizards and dragons.
Empire of the Petal Throne and City State of the Invincible Overlord (1976) pioneered the concept of ready-made campaign settings.
[27] Live-action groups such as Dagorhir were started, and organized gaming conventions and publications such as Dragon Magazine (1976–) catered to the growing hobby.
These covered such minutiae as the chance of finding a singing sword in a pile of loot or the odds of coaxing gossip from a tavern keeper.
Dungeons & Dragons was a subject of controversy in the 1980s when well-publicized opponents claimed it caused negative spiritual and psychological effects.
(Academic research has discredited these claims,[28] and some educators support role-playing games as a healthy way to hone reading and arithmetic skills.
)[29] Many claimed that TSR's games contained demonic rituals and directly led to suicide attempts by its players.
The staff of Chaosium realized by the late 1970s that the RuneQuest system designed by Steve Perrin had enough potential to become the "house system" for the company, which could then use one set of game mechanics for multiple games; Greg Stafford and Lynn Willis proved this correct by slimming the RuneQuest rules down into the 16-page Basic Role-Playing (1980).
New games began to be produced outside America, such as Midgard (1981) and The Dark Eye (1984) in Germany, Drakar och Demoner (1982) in Sweden, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1986) in the United Kingdom, Adventurers of the North - Kalevala Heroes (1989) in Finland and Enterprise: Role Play Game in Star Trek (1983)[40] and Sword World RPG (1989) in Japan.
[citation needed] France was hit by the role-playing wave in the mid-1980s, as seen by the translations into French of Dungeons & Dragons in 1983 (first role-playing game to be translated), Call of Cthulhu in 1984, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in 1986 and RuneQuest in 1987, and by original products such as its first role-playing game Ultime épreuve (Jeux actuels, 1983), the Légendes series (Jeux Descartes, 1983), Mega (Jeux et Stratégie, 1984), Empire Galactique (Robert Laffont, 1984), or Rêve de Dragon (Nouvelles Éditions Fantastiques, 1985; English translation Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros by Malcontent Games, 2002).
Spanish speaking countries didn't start their own role-playing games production before the 1990s: Aquelarre[42] (Joc Internacional, 1990) and Mutantes en la sombra[43] (Ludotecnia, 1991) were published in Spain and Laberinto[44] saw publication for the first time in Mexico in 1998 (Gráfica Nueva de Occidente).
The sudden appearance and remarkable popularity of Magic took many gamers (and game publishing companies) by surprise, as they tried to keep pace with fads and changes in the public opinion.
TSR's attempts to become a publishing house further drained their reserves of cash and the financially troubled company was eventually purchased by Wizards of the Coast in 1997.
[48][49] In 2000, Wizards of the Coast's Dungeons & Dragons brand manager Ryan Dancey introduced a policy whereby other companies could publish D&D-compatible materials under the Open Game License (OGL).
With the advent of print on demand and PDF publishing, it became possible to produce games with tightly focused designs, eschewing the mainstream trends of the industry.
Actual play web series such as Critical Role and The Adventure Zone debuted in the mid-2010s, creating "their own genre of entertainment" and drawing new players to tabletop role-playing games.
[69][70][71][72] Crowdfunding in this period provided the funding to produce games such as Avatar Legends, Blades in the Dark, Bluebeard's Bride, Coyote & Crow, Dialect, Dream Askew, Dream Apart, Fall of Magic, Invisible Sun, Jiangshi, Mörk Borg, Star Crossed, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Visigoths vs.
