Tekumel came first, but had little impact for the hobby overall.
Next was Greyhawk, with it's generic Tolkien Western Europe fantasy, which was huge and still maintains a large following.

What if the first truly successful setting by TSR had been something else?

Maybe Ravenloft as presented in 2e? Our hobby would have much more of a horror feel than the generic fantasy it has now. And it might have gotten more general horror fans involved in gaming.

Maybe the Scarred Lands? This setting has much more of a mythic feeling to it. It's almost a post-apocalypse. It definitely has a lot more flavor than the generic stuff. I actually really like this idea.

Maybe Forgotten Realms? Yeah, it's generic, but it got tons of support. Before all the NPCs became god-like, it was a very cool setting. I think that's where it jumped the shark.

Imagine if something like Eberron had been the baseline. It actually kind of fits what was being published in novels better than Greyhawk. Many older fantasy books combined tech with fantasy.

I think another cool setting would have been like Mythic Russia. Russian folklore is pretty damn cool.

Or maybe people just would rather keep Greyhawk as the first big dog.

For Chrst's sake, most of the options you suggest are so absurd  as to be unable to seriously address.  Its like asking "what if the Ancient Gauls had iTunes, how would that have changed things?"  HOW THE FUCK WOULD THEY HAVE HAD iTUNES?

You're not going to get a setting like the Scarred Lands, Mythic Russia, or Ravenloft because all of those depended on the weight of prior history in gaming to come to pass.  You certainly aren't going to get a design-by-committee corporate prefab setting like Eberron, which not only needs to have decades of a gaming hobby already existing (for them to know which are all the "kitchen sink" elements they have to blandly dump into their artificial-cool setting), but you need to have a hobby that has reached a certain level of personal decadence where nothing more creative can be wrought by the industry leaders than that (in other words, a hobby where the people in real control of the game couldn't really even be described as gamers anymore).

But, to answer your question: It wouldn't have made a fucking difference if the Gauls had iTunes, because they wouldn't have had electricity; and it wouldn't have made a fucking difference if someone had tried to release something like "Mythic Russia" or "ravenloft" before Greyhawk because it would have been too weird to make a major impact, precisely like Tekumel, the real-world example YOU ACTUALLY WROTE ABOUT.  I mean for fuck's sake, you just answered your own fucking asinine question before even posing it.

There is no magical fairyland where the settings you don't like get replaced by hipster settings that no one else likes, and where you get to feel like you were right all along. Greyhawk became the massive success it was, and Tekumel did not, because Greyhawk was full of the elements and archetypes that appealed to our common civilizational markers as "proper" fantasy, whereas Tekumel was a batshit weird experiment for would-be intellectuals that almost went out of its way to avoid having any common landmarks with western civilization, and thus made no meaningful impact.

By the time Tekumel came out, in fact, it was too late. The "default setting" for D&D had already been invented; it was the rulebooks themselves and everything they said about the kind of worlds it was made to play in, and THAT is what everyone has been running towards or away from ever since.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;442895By the time Tekumel came out, in fact, it was too late. The "default setting" for D&D had already been invented; it was the rulebooks themselves and everything they said about the kind of worlds it was made to play in, and THAT is what everyone has been running towards or away from ever since.

It's basically where the cookie crumbles. It's not really a matter of shifting one setting for another, it's a matter of how the entire hobby unfolded, and how it emerged from miniature wargaming in the first place. So you'd basically have to rewrite RPG history completely, erase the D&D-Chainmail/wargames connection, which would result in a completely different game to begin with, or no game at all besides psychiatric applications. It's the problem with what-if scenarios: to make sense of them, you'd have to get back in time from effect to cause until utimately men would not be primates, but tiny octopoid tree trunks with vagina for foreheads. Sooner or later, the illusion just breaks down and you're left with a feeling of exhaustion due to the massive waste of time that represents.

There are counterfactuals too absurd to consider, like "What if RPGPundit had some fucking manners?", but I think a non-Greyhawk initial default can be contemplated.  I submit for your consideration a default setting that could have happened and would have made an impact: Medieval Europe, with France called France and England called England.  Plenty of fantasy has been written in which there are wizards and demons and monsters within the context of the real world, and I think slightly more might exist today if D&D had tried to go that route.

OK. Tiny shifts like this I could go for. It's like Spellcraft & Swordplay that assumes the D&D alternate combat system never existed, but applied to a setting. How about Napoleonics, and how the fantasy supplement in Chainmail could have been applied to them, rather than medieval-Agincourt type wargaming? That could have been interesting as well. Hell, that'd be an interesting concept for an OS game right now!

The first real incarnation of Greyhawk as a setting was the 1983 boxed set.

It went:-

Tekumel
Glorantha
Spinward Marches
Mystara/Blackmoor
Greyhawk

Of these, Greyhawk was by far the least interesting.

Quote from: Benoist;442898OK. Tiny shifts like this I could go for. It's like Spellcraft & Swordplay that assumes the D&D alternate combat system never existed, but applied to a setting. How about Napoleonics, and how the fantasy supplement in Chainmail could have been applied to them, rather than medieval-Agincourt type wargaming? That could have been interesting as well. Hell, that'd be an interesting concept for an OS game right now!

It boils back Arneson's Blackmoor. Gygax setup his own "Blackmoor" in the form of Greyhawk. The D&D rules were developed from people playing those campaigns, primarily Gygax's.

Then top it all off you have Bledsaw's City-State which was released at the same time as Tekemal.

The points of divergence I see being plausible is that

1) Gygax decides his Greyhawk is too much of a mess and opts for an in-house setting to be designed and released for AD&D much like occurred with Mystara for D&D.

2) Same as #1 but decides to buy J. Eric Holmes setting he used briefly as part of the Blue Book dungeon.


3) Arneson picks another setting for his braustein-like game. Perhaps continuing the original Napoleonic setting but focuses more on the intrigue spy vs spy drawing inspiration from the James Bond and other spy films of the era (but applied to the Napoleonic period).

4) Something butterflies away Bob Bledsaw's involvement with RPG Publishing and as a consequence the first TSR Modules are published later than OTL (Our Time Line).  Probably as part of the D&D Line.

5) Arneson & Gygax relationship is better and it is decided to go with a single D&D line forward. Both men argee that their settings are a mess publishing wise and endorse a new in-house setting combining the best elements of their games.

6) Don Kaye doesn't die or dies much later. I am not sure what the impact would on the creative side tho but likely something would have been different. Of course the later legal fights may be been forstalled.

Quote from: RPGPundit;442895Greyhawk became the massive success it was, and Tekumel did not, because Greyhawk was full of the elements and archetypes that appealed to our common civilizational markers as "proper" fantasy, whereas Tekumel was a batshit weird experiment for would-be intellectuals that almost went out of its way to avoid having any common landmarks with western civilization, and thus made no meaningful impact.

Tékumel, like the Forgotten Realms, is purportedly a setting which predates D&D and RPGs. Thus, like Middle-Earth, it is an exercise in world-building for world-building's sake. Aesthetically, it is the brain-child of M. A. R. Barker's enthusiasm for pulp sword-and-sorcery, languages and South Asian culture.

Being a bona-fide scholar, the professor is not satisfied with the classic pulp artifice of evoking exoticism merely by way of imagery and dropped hints (see his classic essay, "Creating Your Own Religions For Fun And Profit"), and sets out to erect a consistent and comprehensive world, heavily influenced by his own studies on (and experiences in) South Asia and elsewhere. So I'd cross out that "almost" -- I'd go out on a limb and say that utter dissociation from Western values was an open and outright "design goal" for Barker.

This is in stark contrast to Greyhawk (1983) or Forgotten Realms (1987) in their ultimately published forms; real, honest-to-God campaign settings, crafted for the sole purpose of housing a D&D game, with no pretentions of being a full-blown world; very consistency beyond that which is strictly required for it to work as a game setting. Low buy-in, easy manteinance.

Quote from: RPGPundit;442895By the time Tekumel came out, in fact, it was too late. The "default setting" for D&D had already been invented; it was the rulebooks themselves and everything they said about the kind of worlds it was made to play in, and THAT is what everyone has been running towards or away from ever since.

This pretty much nails it. D&D has a strongly implied setting. Tékumel, the first published setting, offers a unique twist on it (in that it offers an in-built logical explanation for a band of ne'er-do-wells exploring underground ruins in search of wealth and glory), but at the price of a high buy-in (a cultural backdrop that deviates radically from Western norm, and -- its cardinal sin -- which does not always jive with the audience's best-known fantasy references of Tolkien, Howard, Leiber).

Metamorphosis Alpha becomes the first big hit, closely followed by Gamma World. Consequently fantasy games never quite take off and when Shadowrun is finally published, it doesn't contain elves.

Now that's a timeline I can get behind!

Quote from: RPGPundit;442895For Chrst's sake, most of the options you suggest are so absurd  as to be unable to seriously address.  Its like asking "what if the Ancient Gauls had iTunes, how would that have changed things?"  HOW THE FUCK WOULD THEY HAVE HAD iTUNES?

Well according the Quantum mathematics theories, if there are infinite number of parallel worlds, eventually one would have the Gauls with Itunes.

Also in other news, Pun is still ranting.

Quote from: P&P;442899The first real incarnation of Greyhawk as a setting was the 1983 boxed set.

There was an earlier Greyhawk folio released in 1980.

http://pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=showbook&bookid=3351

Quote from: Nightfall;442930Well according the Quantum mathematics theories, if there are infinite number of parallel worlds, eventually one would have the Gauls with Itunes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many_worlds_interpretation

(It's still a controversial interpretation of quantum theory).

Yes but I believe the guy that appeared on the Colbert Report.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/372476/january-27-2011/brian-greene

Quote from: P&P;442899Of these, Greyhawk was by far the least interesting.

Amen!
Though, I think even if MAR Barker had invented RPG gaming... centered on Tekumel... the mainstream would have still taken the idea and shifted it back to bog-standard Tolkienesque Eurofantasy.

Quote from: Simlasa;442980Amen!
Though, I think even if MAR Barker had invented RPG gaming... centered on Tekumel... the mainstream would have still taken the idea and shifted it back to bog-standard Tolkienesque Eurofantasy.

I don't think Tolkienesque fantasy was "bog-standard" at the time. Sure Lord of the Rings was a popular book, but so was The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, Pirates, Conan, the Greek and Arthurian Legends and the Arabian Nights. There were a lot more films with Sinbad or Aladin than with elves and dwarves.