We often have alternate-history roleplaying games, but what about the ways roleplaying games had arisen in other time periods? Gygax and Arneson's D&D was very much a product of its times: developed from wargaming, inspired by the popularity of Tolkein during the 60's and 70's, created by science-fiction/fantasy fans, etc. That set the model for rpgs in terms of style, mechanics, and even packaging (wargame-like boxed sets).
So what if something akin to the modern day roleplaying or adventure game had been developed earlier. If we regress a bit, an RPG created just a decade or so earlier--the 50's, perhaps--may have been based on a different inspirational genre than fantasy. I suspect the first RPG if created then would be more akin to a science-fiction game like Traveller or a straight Western game. Mechanics might have been more towards more common die types--D6's--than the different polyhedrals used in D&D. A 50's RPG would probably look more like a primitive version West End Game's D6 system.
What about a Victorian Era RPG, written without the influences of modern sf&f fandom? I suspect it would be seen as an "evening's entertainment" by adults, and resemble card-deck mechanic storytelling games like Once Upon a Time. Genres might be more straightforward medieval chivlaric epics rather than high fantasy. Or perhaps "adventures in the Empire or the frontier". A children's RPG might resemble more the Fighting Fantasy novels--prescripted "pathway" adventures--with a heavy emphasis on teaching morals.
Andrew
Well, there was a recent thought experiment over at RPGnet about roleplaying in medieval Europe, in the form of unscripted mystery plays and an evening's entertainment for the nobility.
Quote from: GrimGentWell, there was a recent thought experiment over at RPGnet about roleplaying in medieval Europe, in the form of unscripted mystery plays and an evening's entertainment for the nobility.
The Dark Ages was actually a huge LARP. On with more plague and syphillis.
Andrew
Olivier LeGrand's "Mazes & Minotaurs" examines a question similar to the one that your asking. What if Gygax and Arneson were inspired by Jason and the Argonauts intead of Frodo and friends?
The result is a very playable retro game, with hoplites, minotaurs, and gorgons.
Its all pretty pointless speculation.
One of the things you learn about history is that, total accidents aside, most things happen because of a configuration of events that combine as the weight of circumstance to make it such that, after point x, y was bound to happen.
Im not saying that Gary Gygax was, specifically, destined to invent RPGs; but that it was inevitable that RPGs would have to come out of that wargaming scene in the 70s in north america, and that it came out that way because of a combination of all kinds of different factors that mixed together to lead to the RPG.
In any other scene, including the 1950s wargame scene (which was quite different), whatever came into existence would be something so different that it would not be an RPG. It'd be something else.
RPGPundit
Apart from that, even the fifties wargaming scene was heavily into E.E Smith and Tolkien etc.
Look at old Diplomacy fanzines...
If there's anything I've learned from history, it's that nothing is as inevitable as it looks with hindsight.