DragonQuest

Fantasy Simulation
Once the White Box started introducing gamers to the new idea of roleplaying, it seemed to jump-start a lot of imaginative ideas about this new roleplaying concept. The concept was simple, but revolutionary that a player would control one individual "character" who had abilities beyond the norm and who interacted inside the game with a fantastic environment of creatures and beings from myth, legend and literature. Gamers being what they are attempted to improve on various aspects of the white box and soon some of those "houserules" and "improvements" found their way into amateur publication. The hobby was pretty amateurish all around and that was pretty similar to the way things had been done in "wargaming" for some time.  Those white box "variants" and "houserules", some with unique titles that made no reference to the white box, accounted for most of the first generation of roleplaying games and took the hobby outside the dungeon and even away from the fantasy setting into the old west, space and other environments.
Once the roleplaying idea became somewhat divorced from the original mechanics and designers started to create truly unique game systems to facilitate the gaming experience of roleplaying, the hobby entered what seems to me to be its second generation of published roleplaying titles. These games were inspired by, but did not necessarily build upon, the original rules. The second generation games took the hobby into more diverse directions than just change of setting. They often changed the emphasis within play, highlighting one or another aspect of play such as character development, combat, skill systems, etc. and would in many ways re-invent the game.
Many of us who started with the white box and had explored some of the houserules and variants remained open to trying out one or more of these second generation RPGs, not necessarily because of any dissatisfaction with our current game, but often from curiosity. After all, were we not the same gamer-folk who had given this revolutionary new type of game a try in the beginning! The new RPG offerings came from a variety of sources, new start-up businesses and older established names, including the publishers of mainstream wargames (did those two words ever go together?).
Abstraction is a necessary part of any game design, especially one involving topics of violence and magic. Getting the abstraction to "feel right" is part of the skill in game design. People differ, however, with regard to their capacity for abstraction. The old wargamers' quandary of "realism" verses abstraction had quickly entered the RPG discussion and game mechanics were sought that seemed to be more "realistic" by many. A number of the second generation games sought to provide the hobby with such realism and this became part of their marketing.
SPI (Simulation Publications Incorporated) was one of the biggest established publishers of wargames at the time and their DragonQuest (DQ) fantasy RPG was released in 1980 a midst this search for realism in gaming. DQ does away with the character class system allowing greater flexibility in PC development. Skills are introduced to allow any character to be anything through skill selection and customization. The magic system features ten magical colleges, each with a unique approach to magic and separate spell lists, all drawing heavily on magic systems found in literature. DQ draws heavily on SPI's expertise in traditional wargames for its combat system which uses a hexagonal display and fairly detailed percentile mechanics to "simulate" the interplay of experience, tactics and weapons for ranged combat, melee and close combat. The experience and character advancement rules allow the player to acquire new skills and abilities as well as advance existing ones so the nature of the PC may change over time.
DQ is one of the games I purchased about the time it was published probably out of curiosity (it surely wasn't the art!). I had been a consumer of SPI wargames for many years and knew their reputation well. DQ is one of SPI's last games as they were bought out by TSR not long after its publication. The game did last long enough to go through three editions, the 2nd ed. box is pictured above. Despite being out-of-print for three decades, DQ continues to command some respect among gamers. I recently have become interested in it again due to the high praise it is given by some gamers I whose opinions I value. Unfortunately, I only recall having played a few sessions of DQ back-in-the-day and have vague memories to draw upon. A couple of recent read-throughs and I find myself wanting to try DQ again with a group play. It's a different market for games today and I wonder how well a title this old will play given the tastes, expectations and mind-set of today's hobbyist, myself included. It probably needs a few "houserules", but house-ruling is part of the fun of being a referee.