Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling, Second Edition

Chapter 10. Role-Playing Games

Role-Playing Games (RPGs) predate computers. The first RPG was a paper game called Dungeons & Dragons (1974). A group of players formed a party exploring a dungeon under the aegis of the Dungeon Master, who served in the role I call Fate (see Chapter 15, “Fate Makes the Storyworld Go ’Round”). The game consisted of a large number of rules specifying how the responses to player actions would be calculated. The Dungeon Master (DM) had considerable leeway in interpreting the rules. As the RPG genre developed, DMs exercised greater editorial control over the game, designing their own dungeons and developing extensions to the standard rules. The genre became wildly popular, with lots of different kinds of role-playing ...