My wife played a Fantasy RPG game in the early 70s at Beebe, Arkansas. Carl and I found a fantasy rule set in a war gaming magazine printed for a convention in New England about that time and I thought that could have possibly been the rule set they used in Arkansas. Or ... maybe they used the fantasy appendix from this book. Is the fantasy appendix playable without the entire book? Just curious.
When I enrolled into college many decades ago I had never heard anything about roll playing games. It never occurred to me that it might be a thing. Well other than drama students working hard to play their rolls in front of an audience. I was amazed when I saw my first play there and I was impressed by how hard the students worked to make it as believable as they could.
It takes a lot of courage to play a character with completely different ideas and interests than you have. Imagine standing on the stage and arguing with another actor as to whether you're up to it. Our director overhearing us said there was no time to hunt up replacements and to make the best of it.