DP ServBot
08-22-2015, 03:20 AM
http://forum.digitpress.com//images.eurogamer.net/2013/articles/1/7/7/6/2/6/5/alexis-kennedy-on-how-it-happened-to-happen-1440145505180.jpg/EG11/resize/300x-1/format/jpg/1776265.jpgJack Cohen is a reproductive biologist who gives talks on speculative xenobiology. I once heard him explain how we had happened to evolve from a species of fish that kept its reproductive organs next to the pipes it used to eliminate waste from its body. Here are the things, he suggested, that this gave the world: our whole attitude to sex; the sense that it was something filthy (pleasantly or unpleasantly); the design of toilets. We might have evolved into creatures with our genitals in our heads, which would make hats more complicated, toilets simpler and, more significantly, would have completely transformed our attitude to procreation. But it happened to happen the way it did.
In 1971, two guys in Wisconsin - indie developers, in today's terms - released Chainmail, a ruleset for miniatures wargaming. It included rules for pitched battles, for jousting and for castle sieges. It did pretty well for what it was - it sold a thousand copies in its first year. One of those two guys happened to add a fourteeen-page 'Fantasy Supplement' to the end of the book, with rules for wizards and dragons and whatnot.
If you're a geek of a certain age, you've guessed this was Gary Gygax, and the Fantasy Supplement was what became Dungeons and Dragons. Here are some of the things that Dungeons and Dragons gave the world: classes, levels, experience points, stat scores at the top of a character sheet, health points topped up by potions or priestly healing spells, Tolkien-based ecologies, random loot drops, and the equipment upgrade treadmill that powers everything from Borderlands to FTL to Diablo.
Read more… (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-08-22-alexis-kennedy-on-how-it-happened-to-happen)
In 1971, two guys in Wisconsin - indie developers, in today's terms - released Chainmail, a ruleset for miniatures wargaming. It included rules for pitched battles, for jousting and for castle sieges. It did pretty well for what it was - it sold a thousand copies in its first year. One of those two guys happened to add a fourteeen-page 'Fantasy Supplement' to the end of the book, with rules for wizards and dragons and whatnot.
If you're a geek of a certain age, you've guessed this was Gary Gygax, and the Fantasy Supplement was what became Dungeons and Dragons. Here are some of the things that Dungeons and Dragons gave the world: classes, levels, experience points, stat scores at the top of a character sheet, health points topped up by potions or priestly healing spells, Tolkien-based ecologies, random loot drops, and the equipment upgrade treadmill that powers everything from Borderlands to FTL to Diablo.
Read more… (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-08-22-alexis-kennedy-on-how-it-happened-to-happen)