But recently, I've been in the middle of buying a home, moving, quitting my job and searching for new employment. It doesn't take many words to say all that, but it has been an ordeal. As a result, I haven't had much time to spare for gaming. Hopefully, this entry will signal a return to form.
Game books seem to be obliged to have some blurb at at the beginning which explain what a roleplaying game is. This is strange. Monopoly doesn't bother to explain what a board game is. Yet as fundamental as roleplaying is, we feel some need to explain ourselves.
Anyways, If I were to create my own system (which is the ultimate purpose of this blog) and write a book for it, this is how I would explain roleplaying games and how they are different:
Most people who pick up this book will already be familiar
with traditional "pen and paper" roleplaying games and how they work.
However, authors are nonetheless obligated to explain roleplaying games, on the
off chance that a reader is unfamilar with the concept, or perhaps learning
about traditional roleplaying for the first time.
Traditional roleplaying games have an ancestor in
miniatures-wargaming. Their most prominent descendents are certain genres of
videogames which emphasize adventures, tactical combat or narrative. These
electronic derivatives are also called RPGs. Yet traditional RPGs have a potential and an
appeal which war-gaming and videogames cannot really duplicate. The appeal of
traditional RPGs can perhaps be explained by telling how they developed.
Before electronic gaming, people played tactical war games
with tin soldiers and rules for how to move the miniature troops and resolve
combat between opposing forces. In the late 1960s in Wisconsin, a few men created rules for
medieval-fantasy wargames so that they could play out battles in the style of
the fantasy authors who they admired. A few years later, in the early 1970s,
the same group of men had the idea that instead of controlling whole armies and
large groups of soldiers, they would control only one or two or three
combatants.
When they made this switch, the war-game took a strange
turn. They played a scenario where their combatants were to storm a fictional
castle which had been invented and mapped out soley for the game. The players
found they could be very specific and creative about what they wanted their
characters to "do" in the scenario. The tin soldiers took on aspects
of character. The players named them. The players described what the characters
would say, and they spoke as their characters. They used funny voices and it
was loads of fun. The lives of these fictional characters were short and
violent. Allies and enemies appeared and reappeared. There was a sense of drama
and narrative about these small-scale wargames which had not previously been a
factor. The game had become about
playing the role of a character and spontaneously creating a narrative with the
cooperation of the other players.
They had invented a new kind of game and published the rules
for it. But oddly, the term "roleplaying game" would not be invented
for another few years yet to come. The concept proliferated. The game which the
gentlemen in Wisconsin
published emphasized roleplaying in medieval fantasy settings. But people
quickly developed games which featured all sorts of milieus; from futuristic
science fiction to gritty pulp and horror and contemporary settings. The medium
of roleplaying begged to be tweaked to suit the fancies of the players. The
open-endedness of the medium was the main source of its appeal.
As home computers became more powerful in the late 1970s and
1980s and the video-game was invented, game makers set to imitating
pen-and-paper RPGs in a digital format. The numerically-based rules of the
standard RPG were easily translated into digital programs. These games still
bear the marks of their ancestry. Any electronic game which utilizes notions of
hit-points, character class, character level, or uses numerical values to
describe the power of a character or object is showing its roots. The electronic
RPGs allowed the users to play roles within a fictional scenario and to explore
and interact with a game-world. They were very successful at this. Yet
electronic games are limited by their programming: They lacked the true open-ended
freedom of analog RPGs. Videogames are limited by their programming. A player
in an electronic RPG can only interact with the game world in the ways which
the game designer has anticipated and allowed for: Certain characters are
unkillable because they will be important later. Some objects are visible, but
are merely part of the background and cannot be interacted with. Mountains are
visible in the distance, but cannot be visited. There are dialog options, but
only a limited selection. Videogames are largely judged by the extent to which
they offer broad or interesting new options in their gameplay. But ultimately they
can offer only so much freedom and room for creativity. Certainly in the
future, as programming and atifical intelligence become more advanced and video
games will be able to offer truly open-ended scenarios. Until then, only traditional
RPGs have a mechanism which makes them truly open-ended.
Traditional roleplaying games are played by groups of
people, usually sitting at a table or possibly chatting over an internet
connection. Typically, most of the players in the group control a character in
the scenario. But one player will be responsible for describing the world and
all the people and things in the scenario. This player is usually called a Game
Master, referee, or story teller. This special player serves as the eyes and
ears for the characters which the other players control. The other players ask
questions and tell the Game Master what they wish their characters to do. The
Game Master then describes the consequences of the players actions. This
process continues and the game progresses. If a player wants their character to
do something unexpected, like put an innocuous object to some ingenious use,
turn against an important quest-giver, or write and deliver an impromptu speech
in hope of rallying the local populous, then it is the Game Master's
responsibility to invent some reasonable means of determining whether the
character succeeded, and what the results of their actions will be.
At first glance it may seem that the Game Master has too
much control over the game. But it is important to note that the Game Master is
not the opponent of the other players. The Game Master's responsibility is to
present interesting, reasonable challenges and to serve as a sort of referee;
ensuring that the rules of the game are practiced consistently and fairly. A good
Game Master knows that there is no game at all if the rest of the players
cannot trust the Game Master. This is
the mechanism by which traditional RPGs allow for novelty and creativity within
the game.
...
btw, when I find myself having to explain traditional rpgs to people in person, I use a much shorter and more informal version of this speech. Usually, I gauge whether the other person is more likely to know about tin-soldier wargames or be familiar with videogames, and I use a similar explanation-from-historical-context from whichever side the subject is more familiar with. I am generally satisfied with the results as it doesn't take more than a few sentences to describe and heads off any social awkwardness. But I haven't had any enthusiastic questioning and interest either.
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