Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Brand X Roleplaying: Preferred Over the Leading Brand?

From Wikipedia on the origins of TSR: 
"worried that other companies would be able to publish similar projects first, [Gygax and Kaye] convinced acquaintance Brian Blume to join TSR in 1974 as an equal one-third partner" 
If it is indeed true--not just Wiki-true--that Gygax was worried about competitors beating him to the punch, does anyone know who these competitors might have been?  To the best of my admittedly lacking knowledge of this part of history, Tunnels and Trolls was the next game out of the blocks but not only did it come out a year later, but it was clearly a response to D&D.  I'd be very interested to know who these feared competitors were and how their Brand X game would have differed from the game we've all grown to love to argue about.  Anyone got anything?

3 comments:

  1. I have no idea what that quote is talking about. T&T was directly inspired by Ken St. Andre reading OD&D and deciding he could do better. Traveller was already in development when D&D came out, but it was reportedly retooled to be more D&D-like.

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  2. Jeff--Thanks for the update. I'm gonna have to find out what this new fangled Traveller game is all about.

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  3. Wiki-true is a beautiful term, and I'm going to be encouraging its use.

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