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Where Role Playing Games are concerned, Dungeons and Dragons is the grandaddy of them all. The game's release in the 1970's spawned a slew of mimicry from 'Tunnels and Trolls' and 'Dragon Warriors' to the 'Solo-Adventure Gamebooks' craze of the eighties. It would not be exaggeration to say that Dungeons and Dragons was the progenitor of the entire species known as 'Role Playing Games'.

Variants on the system of attributes scored from three to eighteen pioneered by Dungeons and Dragons is seen in many other games, including the little-recalled Dragon Warriors (published as a series of novel-sized paperbacks), the early editions of 'Paranoia' and the spoof system 'Macho Women With Guns' and its spin-offs 'Renegade Nuns of Wheels' and 'Bat Winged Bimbos From Hell'. More recently, the three-to-eighteen range was abandoned by many games in preference for the percentile systems of 'Warhammer Fantasy Role Play' or the simple one-to-ten attribute ranges of 'Cyberpunk' and 'In Nomine'.

The rise in popularity of Massively Multi-player Role Playing Games is a natural extension of face-to-face role-playing, and follows a similar curve in developing complexity and subtlety. Just as the early role-playing games that borrowed their success from Dungeons and Dragons focused on combat rules over complex character interaction, on-line role-playing is dominated by turn-based combat. It is to be hoped that on-line role-playing will follow the form of it's progenitor, evolving to prefer interaction over detailed combat.

The chief advantage of on-line role-playing, or indeed any digital role-playing game, lies in the ability of the computer to rapidly handle complex numbers and instantly determine success or failure in any given player-action without pause for calculation of penalties, repeated dice rolls, or extensive note-keeping. Nevertheless, while the technology certainly exists for complex fantasy economies, extensive background worlds and detailed character lives, the interests of gamers themselves are likely to ensure that the combat bias of Dungeons and Dragons remains prevalent in MMORPGs.

Dungeons and Dragons drew inspiration for its background setting from Lord of the Rings, introducing the player to a world populated by orcs, elves, dwarves and dragons. The adoption by Dungeons and Dragons of these conventions is almost certainly the reason for the prevalence for the same orcs, elves, dwarves etc in On-Line fantasy worlds, particularly World of Warcraft. Were it not for Dungeons and Dragons, the setting of JRR Tolkien's most famous writing would be truly unique, rather than being the default model of a fantasy world.
Tolkien may have invented the orcs, but it was Dungeons and Dragons that popularized the green-skinned races and brought them to our world.

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