Re: (TFT) Man To Man & GURPS - was Re: (TFT) The return of Ogre - Rick did something silly.

[Peter von Kleinsmid <pvk@oz.net>]

At 01:25 PM 8/1/2014, Jeffrey Vandine wrote:
> Let's face it -- D&D WAS the first of it's
>  kind in terms of widespread public access, and sure, the rules are clunky
> and the system is badly dated, especially in terms of how experience points
>  were assessed, but things like GURPS were built on that foundation, and ha
> ve substantially improved the genre, but wouldn't have existed (at least in
>  the form they take) without Gygax and Arneson breaking trail for them.
> To condemn them for being clunky is the same as saying, "Gee, those Wright
> Brothers sure screwed up that airplane of theirs -- take a look at this F-2
> 2 and then tell me the Wright Flyer was an achievement!"

Yes D&D was the first with "widespread public access" in terms of more
people knowing about it and it probably being in more game stores than
others. But TFT, T&T and some other alternatives were also around by the
time (circa 1980) that I remember "common people" knowing about D&D, and
TFT did things substantially differently from the way D&D did many things.

Seems to me GURPS is built mostly on TFT and the Hero Games RPGs, not D&D.
I can't think of anything in GURPS that I recognize as being from D&D,
unless you mean how every RPG maybe got the basic idea of what an RPG is
from D&D being a thing, or the idea of having ST, DX, IQ, Tolkien monsters,
and too many underground locations. Though TFT made ST, DX, and IQ actually
mean something substantial and logical, etc.

And yes, the early D&D rules were pretty good for their time, for what they
were. I wouldn't pick clunkiness as my first target if I were going to bash
D&D. ;-) 

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