The SECOND oldest roleplaying game

[kyonshi]

We were joking around on Mastodon about posting slightly wrong
information to get people to interact, when I remembered this particular
gem from Peterson's site: Rules for the Game of DUNGEON (1974) is likely
the second roleplaying game ever published, and the author did so
without knowing of the existence of Dungeons and Dragons.
It was likely not someone coming up with the idea independently though,
a local gamer had played with Dave Arneson's group before and brought
the concept to Minneapolis. The author of DUNGEON Craig VanGrasstek
collected the variants into a ruleset and published them to share with
the wider world. But of course the existence of DnD brought all that to
an end.
I wonder if other variants were around at the time as well.

http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2012/08/rules-to-game-of-dungeon-1974.html

and here is a copy of the rules as pdf

http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2014/08/1974-dungeon-variant-now-for-download.html

Does anyone have some more information about that old Minneapolis scene?

[kyonshi]

Post by kyonshi
and here is a copy of the rules as pdf
http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2014/08/1974-dungeon-variant-now-for-download.html

Of course only after posting it I realized that the link to the pdf in
the article doesn't work. Thank the Gods that Wayback Machine exists:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191222015731/http://www.unreason.com/files/RulesToTheGameOfDungeon.pdf

[Ubiquitous]

Post by kyonshi
We were joking around on Mastodon about posting slightly wrong
information to get people to interact, when I remembered this particular
gem from Peterson's site: Rules for the Game of DUNGEON (1974) is likely
the second roleplaying game ever published, and the author did so
without knowing of the existence of Dungeons and Dragons.

Was FANTASY ROLE PLAYING before or after D&D?

--
Let's go Brandon!

[Justisaur]

Post by kyonshi
We were joking around on Mastodon about posting slightly wrong
information to get people to interact, when I remembered this particular
gem from Peterson's site: Rules for the Game of DUNGEON (1974) is likely
the second roleplaying game ever published, and the author did so
without knowing of the existence of Dungeons and Dragons.
It was likely not someone coming up with the idea independently though,
a local gamer had played with Dave Arneson's group before and brought
the concept to Minneapolis. The author of DUNGEON Craig VanGrasstek
collected the variants into a ruleset and published them to share with
the wider world. But of course the existence of DnD brought all that to
an end.
I wonder if other variants were around at the time as well.
http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2012/08/rules-to-game-of-dungeon-1974.html
and here is a copy of the rules as pdf
http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2014/08/1974-dungeon-variant-now-for-download.html
Does anyone have some more information about that old Minneapolis scene?

Empire of the Petal Throne was published originally (only 50 copies,
self published) in 1974 as well. Closest I've been able to find for a
time in the year is "spring" so probably predates DUNGEON.

That first print is available in PDF

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/99646/empire-of-the-petal-throne-original-manuscript

The author is from England though, not Minneapolis as far as I can tell.