Wanted to share this short article from Jon Peterson about the invention of randomly generated dungeons.
It’s easy to forget the importance of other people and groups in early RPGs, especially since D&D dominates the narrative (or for a younin’ like me who is looking at this as history).
I've been hoping we could get a sort of "solo envelope" thing going in a thread here but the human oracle is a pretty good equivalent.
ReplyDeleteCastle Gargantua (iirc) has a really fun version of this; most of it's procedurally generated but there are "special" rooms that are set pieces. Really fun stuff.
the Gygax's idea of secret envelopes probably comes from his wargaming background.
ReplyDeleteOpened this link several days ago and just now got around to reading it. Really interesting stuff, since you're not only looking at the origins of solo play, but seeing it hand in hand with the origins of role-playing!
ReplyDeleteI've seen a lot of flack, and a bit of vehemence, against solo play, criticising it as anti-social or falling short of group play or "unintended" (which is arguably incorrect in light of evidence such as this, but perhaps technically true for games designed for 2+ players). But, it's validating and good to see that the people who gave birth to this hobby embraced solitaire, carrying it forward from wargaming, shared their rules for it with the community (and their "competitors "), even encouraged it! Even better, you could take that copy of The Strategic Review, written by Gary Gygax in 1974, and solo play just about any game on the market today, OSR or otherwise.
As an aside: has anyone read Jon's (the blog author) book?