[Bat in the Attic] Rob S Conley's thoughts on Dave and Gary

[Havard]

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2019/ ... -dave.html

Part II is in the works.

-Havard

[Havard]

Part II.

-Havard

[robertsconley]

Thanks for sharing this here.

My reply to your comment over on my blog about alternatives.

The key to any good alternate history is not just understanding the main thread of what happened but other things that were going on at the same time. Because with that additional information you can construct a plausible alternative path from the circumstances of the point of departure.

I just don't know enough about what everybody else was doing at the time, their capabilities, or interest, to see what other plausible paths there are. I do know that the idea that game have rules, and that you play the game by the rules or you are cheating is pretty ingrained and hard to shake.

It not just a case of Dave saying yes to the zany idea, it is a case of Dave saying yes repeatably and then following up with support in terms of what was happening in the campaign and additional rules. Unless you know somebody at that time who had that amount of flexibility and zeal, I am hard pressed to see an alternative path to a form of tabletop roleplaying we enjoy today.

I do see however many paths to wargames that are more social and features the players playing as individual character. Even with a referee. Diplomacy on steroids is one way to look at it. However like Korns I strongly feel that they would all draw little boxes around what they deal with. And stepping outside of that box would be viewed as disrupting the game instead of a feature like it is with RPGs.