So, we're gonna go a little crazy by starting off with a brief history. RPG games started back in the mid 1970s as part of a military style gaming system combined with fantasy fiction.
Tabletop and pen-and-paper (PnP) RPGs are conducted through discussion in a small social gathering. The GM describes the game world and its inhabitants. The other players describe the intended actions of their characters, and the GM describes the outcomes. Some outcomes are determined by the game system, and some are… See More
chosen by the GM.
This is the format in which role-playing games were first popularized. The first commercially available RPG, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), was inspired by fantasy literature and the wargaming hobby and was published in 1974. The popularity of D&D led to the birth of the tabletop role-playing game industry, which publishes games with many different themes, rules, and styles of play.
This format is often referred to simply as a role-playing game. To distinguish this form of RPG from other formats, the retronyms tabletop role-playing game or pen and paper role-playing game are sometimes used, though neither a table nor pen and paper are strictly necessary.
Bringing in the TSR era of DnD and ADnD followed suit, which led to this:
TSR, Inc. was an American game publishing company and the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D).
When Gary Gygax could not find a publisher for D&D, a new type of game he and Dave Arneson were co-developing, Gygax and Don Kaye founded Tactical Studies Rules in October, 1973, to self-publish their products. However, needing immediate financing to bring their new game to market before several similar competing products were released, Gygax and Kaye brought in Brian Blume in December as an equal partner. When Kaye unexpectedly died in 1975, the Tactical Studies Rules partnership restructured into TSR Hobbies, Inc. and accepted investment from Blume's father Melvin. With the now popular D&D as its main product, TSR Hobbies became a major force in the games industry by the late 1970s. Melvin Blume eventually transferred his shares to his other son Kevin, making the two Blume brothers the largest shareholders in TSR Hobbies.
TSR Hobbies ran into financial difficulties in the spring of 1983, prompting the company to split into four independent businesses, with game publishing and development continuing as TSR, Inc. (TSR) After losing their executive positions due to the company's underperformance, the Blume brothers subsequently sold their shares to TSR Vice President Lorraine Williams, who in turn engineered Gygax's ouster from the company in October 1985. TSR saw prosperity under Williams, but by 1995, had fallen behind their competitors in overall sales. TSR was left unable to cover its publishing costs due to a variety of factors, so facing insolvency, TSR was purchased in 1997 by Wizards of the Coast (WotC). WotC initially retained use of the TSR name for their D&D products, but by 2000, the TSR moniker had been dropped, coinciding with the release of the 3rd edition of D&D.
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Haven't played tabletop RPGs in a long time. I wonder if anyone on would like to start one by using TeamSpeak and Twitch (video).
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