~3,100+ BCE




~3,000 BCE





~.... BCE





~...ACE





16xx ACE








18xx ACE





1913






1954




Allan B Calhamer’s Diplomacy











1968


Jeff Peren and Gary Gygax begin work on what would become Chainmail, a key precursor to the world's first publicly published tabletop role-playing game.




1971



Chainmail

Published by Jeff Peren and Gary Gygax. Miniatures wargame with some important additions for fantasy elements, individual leaders (precursor to "player characters"), and other core elements that would lead to classic concepts associated with tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs).




Blackmoor

Argued some Arneson advocates, an earlier precurosor to thefirst publicly published tabletop role-playing game was from Dave Arneson in 1971. The campaign setting was Blackmoor, and the game system was a modified version of Chainmail.



1974

Dungeons & Dragons (retronym OD&D)





1975








1976





1977





1978







RuneQuest

In 1978, Chaosium published Steve Perrin's roleplaying game RuneQuest, also set in Glorantha





1979





1980





Basic Role-Playing (BRP)

Stafford and Lynn Willis simplified the RuneQuest rules into the 16-page Basic Role-Playing (BRP). These simulationist, skill-based generic rules formed the basis of many of Chaosium's later "d100" RPGs, most notably Call of Cthulhu, first published in 1981.







1981







Call of Cthulhu (CoC)

Call of Cthulhu is a horror fiction role-playing game based on H. P. Lovecraft's story of the same name and the associated Cthulhu Mythos. The game, often abbreviated as CoC, is published by Chaosium; it was first released in 1981 and is in its seventh edition, with licensed foreign language editions available as well. Its game system is based on Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing (BRP) with additions for the horror genre. These include special rules for sanity and luck.






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References



Designers & Dragons by Shannon Appelcline:  https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/141205/Designers--Dragons-The-Complete-Set-BUNDLE



https://www.geeknative.com/63055/what-was-the-first-rpg/





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaosium