The Advent of Player Control in RPGs
When I first started gaming the DM was God. You rolled dice. The DM indicated what happened. When the DM rolled the dice it might be behind the screen and you took what you got and you didn't get upset. Now that I think back to it, in 1st edition of AD&D combat tables and saving throws weren't even in the Players Handbook - rather you had to go to the Dungeon Masters Guide . I'm trying to remember what the first game I encountered that injected some narrative control into the players' hands. I believe it was Victory Games' 007 James Bond RPG, first published in 1983. This isn't to say it was the first such game - I'm willing to bet it wasn't, but I'm pretty certain it is the first that I encountered. In the 007 RPG your success was rated by a quality rating. The game gave each player a certain amount of Hero Points which could be used to shift quality ratings up or down, allowing a player to improve his or her own quality ratings and reduce ...