RPGs without movies

[Lxndr]

I've always try to speculate as to why Roleplaying developed around 1974 and not before - dice (etc), paper (etc), make-believe and convivial games have all been around for most of human history.

Perhaps it's not necessarily the common references, but the lack of uncommon references.  Roleplaying comes about through the lack of different stories as homogenity occurs?  I don't recall exactly when TV hit critical mass, but I'm thinking that national TV-media saturation and the start of roleplaying as a "fad/hobby" of its own aren't exactly unrelated things, even if they weren't simultaneous.

[Damballa]

Roleplaying comes about through the lack of different stories as homogeneity occurs?

That's a good theory (and, in a way, feels quite heroic in a non-conformist/innovative sense).  

Besides trying to reduce the influence of Televisual/Cinema cultures upon RPGing as a thought experiment, I'm now trying to imagine a world where video/computer/console gaming didn't develop much past "SpaceWar" or "Asteroids"...  

Conceive of a world where that 'parallel evolution' of gaming hadn't occurred in our global society, but instead RPGs were now treated as ~the~ consumer goods entertainment system, occupying a similar social position as mainstream console gaming (but with far greater capital investment, accolades and maybe sophistication than RPGs are currently at in our world).  

The displacement of a monitor/television screen focus (in this alternate world) for face-to-face collaborative RPGs (in all flavours of GNS) might have greater repercussions – a different style of computer use, less ADD/ADHD etc?