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How D&D Shaped the Modern Videogame
PC Gamer UK, via the CVG site, has a feature up on the influence Dungeons and Dragons had on the development of videogaming. The role D&D has had in inspiring gamers is fairly well known; Masters of Doom chronicles the inspiration the Johns' campaign had on the creation of Doom and Quake. The article discusses more recent confluences of the tabletop game and videogame development, such as Obsidian's use of pen-and-paper to develop the early areas of Neverwinter Nights 2. Ideas for the late, lamented, Fallout 3 were sparked by a number of tabletop roleplaying moments from developer campaigns.
A Game built around Math, paper, and your imagination inspired the development of other games.
I've been a long time player of D&D type games, and I personally think they should be done in school. They helped me in school early on learning Math, giving me a solid foundation to build on. Story writing being the DM of such a game gets developed quite well if you're sucessfull anyway.
But the most important part is it spurs your imagination into high gear. Something that alot of people, old and young, are lacking more and more. Its nerdy as hell, but its fun to pretend to be that strong warrior loping the head of an orc off.
What D&D still rules at is emergent gameplay- IE, setting the gigantic boss villain on fire by collapsing the house on her, etc. Rather than focusing on simple "dice mechanics," game devs should be putting their money towards physics engines and other things that will let players PLAY with the world.
What's funny is a lot of devs get it backwards trying to emulate the simplicity of D&D: D&D uses simple mechanics because players have to do all the work themselves. Computers are happy to calculate THAC0 a hundred times a minute if it makes for better gameplay.
CoD absolutely had HPs. Just because they added some temporary damage as well doesn't mean it's suddenly a new concept. If I recall correctly, when you got hit you took some permanent damage and some temporary damage that slowly returned. Temporary damage wouldn't kill you, but if you got hit again while your temporary damage had you below zero you would die.
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It even had a bar that clearly represented a hidden numerical value (Hit points) and you died when it was empty (zero).
Not sure if this link will work, but here is a screenshot (off GameSpot) showing the hit points in action:
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/pc/call