AD&D 1e, Call of Cthulhu, LBB Classic Traveller.

I actually prefer BECMI/RC and ACKS, and Mongoose Traveller, but it's not about my favorite games. It's about what springs to mind when you say "D&D" or "Traveller".

I think these three are entrenched as the archetypal RPGs for their respective genres, not only because they were massively played and talked about from the heyday of the hobby to today, but because of their incredibly pervasive influence. It sometimes feels like every game out there is either an emulation or a reaction to this time-tested trio. It's difficult to look at Vampire: The Masquerade and not think of CoC's introduction of mental-hit-points-like Sanity. Or just about any fantasy RPG's weapon list.

Their biases shaped everything that came after, for good or for ill. The mass adoption, by casual hobbyists, of a D&D ruleset intended for "hardcore" tournament play, may have played a role in the emergence of the now widespread idea that the DM is just as bound by the rules as the other players. In a similar vein, by not supplying hard-coded subsystems for the Name-level (stronghold and domain) endgame (while at the same time providing subsystems for just about everything else) probably also contributed to its disappearance from further editions starting with AD&D 2e.

Discuss.

GURPS...GURPS...and Moar GURPS!

Quote from: The Butcher;637608AD&D 1e, Call of Cthulhu, LBB Classic Traveller.

These are good picks, yes.

I'd disagree with Traveller, there isn't any one far future sci-fi game giant. And I mean Cthulhu is its own genre, which is a subset of horror. It wouldn't be the first thing that springs to mind when I think of 'vampire horror' for example.

When the words "sci-fi rpg" pops up, nothing springs to mind immediately.  Not Traveller nor even Star Wars or Star Trek.

In contrast, when the word "rpg" pops up, D&D immediately springs to mind.


Though somebody who grew up playing video games like Everquest or WoW, may possibly have a different response to the word "rpg" popping up.

I might go with Original D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and Vampire: The Masquerade.

The first is the Black Sabbath of role playing and started it all.

The second elevated RPGs into an art form and might still be the most perfect RPG ever created.

The third seems to brought the "role" back into "role playing game" in a more extroverted way, and infused a new generation of players into the hobby. Although I'm not a fan.

Restricting it to three is probably sliiiightly too reductive, but I'd agree that love it or hate it Vampire deserves recognition both for kicking off an entirely new subgenre of RPGs and, crucially for getting entire new subcultures hooked on RPGs. I meet loads of gamers who started on the WoD games and know some groups where some form of World of Darkness is a more universally loved baseline than D&D - you'll have some people who just don't like D&D but everyone feels able to sit down and enjoy a WoD game, even if it isn't necessarily their favourite.

Playing at the World nicely illustrates how D&D's success came from its ability to bridge the fantasy fandom and the wargaming fandom, so Vampire's ability to bridge subcultures manages to do something important which D&D accomplished but many other games failed to do: provide something that was recognisably an RPG but at the same time appealed to people that the current RPG scene just wasn't catering to.

My own trilogy would be O/AD&D, Call of Cthulhu and Vampire.

I think there are more games that deserve the moniker of classics though. I'm thinking of Traveller yes, of Warhammer FRP 1e, and probably a few others like Cyberpunk 2020, Shadowrun, GURPS probably too, that is, games that have been widely popular at some point or other, are still played today by gamers who don't give much of a shit about the new shiny, and could be played just as well today as they were back in their day.

Quote from: Replicant2;637627I might go with Original D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and Vampire: The Masquerade.

This.

D&D/Call of Cthulhu/Cyberpunk

Quote from: Benoist;637636I think there are more games that deserve the moniker of classics though. I'm thinking of Traveller yes, of Warhammer FRP 1e, and probably a few others like Cyberpunk 2020, Shadowrun, GURPS probably too, that is, games that have been widely popular at some point or other, are still played today by gamers who don't give much of a shit about the new shiny, and could be played just as well today as they were back in their day.

It's decidedly tempting to suggest that Traveller has a better claim to being in the Holy Trinity than CoC: it was the first non-fantasy RPG to really give a compellingly different model of play from either D&D (see: Metamorphosis Alpha, which is basically a dungeon in space) or Brausteins (see: Boot Hill, which is essentially a set of rules for running a Wild West Braustein), and it was HUGE in its time, taking second place to D&D for a while just as Vampire and its kin took second place to D&D in the 1990s. As innovative and cool as CoC was, I don't think it ever quite got THAT big.

So I might propose a trinity of D&D/Traveller/Vampire.

D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and James Bond 007

I'm rather convinced that James Bond was the birth of "modern game design" as reflected in everything from MSH and DC Heroes, WoD's Storyteller System (which itself was mainly a riff on Prince Valiant's system ), all the way to FATE.

A close contender/substitute for James Bond would be WEG's Ghostbusters RPG, which first popularized dice pools and probably did as much as 007 for the advent genre mechanics and rules-lite games.


Vampire would win for popularity, but not in anything close to originality in mechanics. I would almost say it could be nominated for presentation, but even that's basically just a riff on FASA's early 90s games like Earthdawn and Shadowrun.

Quote from: Benoist;637636My own trilogy would be O/AD&D, Call of Cthulhu and Vampire.

I think there are more games that deserve the moniker of classics though. I'm thinking of Traveller yes, of Warhammer FRP 1e, and probably a few others like Cyberpunk 2020, Shadowrun, GURPS probably too, that is, games that have been widely popular at some point or other, are still played today by gamers who don't give much of a shit about the new shiny, and could be played just as well today as they were back in their day.

I was really about to say something similar, but i fell on that i couldn't decide on just three ... I can settle for two, though:
D&D and VtM.
I'm one of those who clearly prefer Vampire over D&D any day, but i can't deny that D&D is The Classic of classics among rpgs.
Warthur delivers(?) a strong case for Traveller, though, so perhaps i'd agree on that.
The other contenders i tried for that place, was Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, GURPS, CoC and WHFRP ....
But writing this now feels like i'm j ....

Hm, I think i'd nominate KULT, TORG, and Paranoia, too .... but i have no idea what the other ones here would think of those choises.

I think this thread is really discussing the seminal works of RPG design.

On that level, D&D clearly has primacy.

Cyberpunk (Black Box) paved the way for Cyberspace, GURPS Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, and all the rest. One can argue whether it's seminal for the industry as a whole, but it was clearly the first cyberpunk game to reach a critical mass.

Quote from: Catelf;637708Hm, I think i'd nominate KULT, TORG, and Paranoia, too .... but i have no idea what the other ones here would think of those choises.

Torg appears as an influence on several games designed by Torg fans, such as Savage Worlds and FantasyCraft. Several RPG designers have cited it as a strong influence, but its specific mechanics are baroque and don't seem to have been adopted anywhere else.