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Great article on essential RPGs

July 2nd, 2009 (Visited 1266 times) Tags: game design, game history

Game Design Essentials: 20 RPGs on Gamasutra is an excellent and in-depth look at RPGs.

I do miss at least some mention of MUD or DikuMUD, rather than jumping direct to World of Warcraft as the sole exemplar there; almost all MMORPGs today draw from those roots. And there’s also a curious lack of mention of the influence of free-form stuff or more storytelling-based RPGs, even in pen & paper.

Still, an excellent article.

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Reader Comments

Luke Mc said on July 2nd, 2009 at 11:31 am:
Hmm Yea their are some more pen and paper rpgs I would toss into the list.

At least White Wolf Storyteller but if we look also at the Sci-Fi world. Traveller.
Yukon Sam said on July 2nd, 2009 at 1:20 pm:
The author of that article must have had a seriously mean DM for his D&D campaign. Mine always fudged the rolls like crazy or started characters at level 5 or so, to get around the fragility issue. And we roleplayed! The improv was as much fun as the game.

But yeah, if you’re digging at the roots of the family tree, you’re going to find a lot more than D&D down there; and while WoW may be in the highest branches at the moment, there’s plenty more fruit on the tree.

There was a computer version of Traveller way back in the olden days… I think I’ve still got in a box somewhere on 5 1/4″ floppies. I wish someone would option that property for an MMORPG.
heartless_ said on July 3rd, 2009 at 4:38 am:
Good find.
Peter S. said on July 3rd, 2009 at 2:51 pm:
Not bad, I really enjoyed reading it, yet it strikes me as hastily written. A better job could have been done at pointing out the threads between these different games (such as Vancian magic, which is actually part of the first Final Fantasy game and the old Wizardry titles but isn’t mentioned in either article. To give a brief and easily spotted example.)

Given that the point of the article is to show how all of these things tie together, dude needs more string.

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