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A role-playing game by any other
name ...
By Eddy Webb
All right then, so you're not a wet-behind-the-ears
gamer. You've played for a while, and you know your way
around a dice bag, and which books make better blunt objects
to club people with than others (personally, I don't
recommend anything produced by Matt Snyder–there's
not nearly enough mass in Dust Devils to cause a good concussion).
No matter how you got into role-playing games, you've
probably read many, many of those tired introductions to our
hobby that compare role-playing games to movies, radio plays,
TV shows, computer games, books, tactical simulation wargames,
comic books, Greek tragedies, Christian passion plays, and
Monopoly (although usually not all at once). These passages
invariably tell you about a few things that the game is allegedly
like, and then they immediately reverse themselves to tell
you how it's not like those things at all. You realize
that the implication of these introductions it to produce
some magical addition and subtraction of common ground that
will show the new reader exactly what the enigma of the mysterious
"role-playing game" really is. Of course, we all
know that none of it made a damn bit of sense until we sat
down and played, but still the introductions come.
Let's not beat around the bush, here. A role-playing
game is a role-playing game, period. It isn't "like"
anything else. Sure, it's fair to say that role-playing
games have some things in common with tactical simulations,
fiction, and traditional games. But, after 25 years we still
feel this need to quantify our games by the things that they're
"kind of like" rather than what they really are.
Even though the initials RPG have come to mean "role-playing
game" to a vast majority of people (even if many of them
associate it with computers games), we are still trying to
push, pull, fold, spindle, and mutilate our hobby into looking
like something it isn't.
These persistent analogies, which appear to be grand unification
theories for the Odyssey, Candyland, and James Bond movies,
are so pervasive that they start to color our perceptions
of role-playing games as a whole. As we keep thinking that
our games are like fiction, like games, or like tactical simulations,
we try to push them in those directions in order to make them
"better." Entire theories of role-playing game design
attempt to cast a game's appeal by how close to fiction,
games, or tactical simulations it comes. While role-playing
games do have elements of each of these, the parts do not
easily extract from the whole.
Role-playing games used to be wargames, but they aren't
wargames. It's safe to say that the emphasis most role-playing
games have on kicking the crap out of this week's bad
guys stems from tactical simulation roots, but there seems
to be a latent terror in admitting that our games evolved
from pushing little metal men around on a table, as if bringing
any detail to the rules might cause players to spontaneously
start spewing out weapon caliber and penetration information
like a reject from a Vietnam film. Most role-playing games
are really fairly poor models of "reality," but
since we keep being told that they are "kind of like
Risk," this perception has stuck.
Role-playing games want to be fiction, but they aren't
fiction. Most popular fiction revolves around one or two core
characters, even if those characters are the first among equals
in a large group of minor characters. Role-playing games tend
to focus on a party of characters, each of whom has equal
say or chance of participating. Besides character emphasis,
fiction has a predetermined and fairly rigid plot as a necessity,
while RPGs are more interactive and fluid, lest the game master
be given the scarlet R for Railroading on his forehead for
all future players to see. The very nature of role-playing
games makes it self-defeating to try to emulate fiction accurately,
but yet we push harder to do exactly that.
Role-playing games feel like games, but they aren't games.
Calling something a game implies a competitive contest with
easily understood goals that determine which competitor has
succeeded, thus ending the contest. Role-playing games are
traditionally cooperative efforts with very vague goals that
are rarely resolved definitively with any one "winner"
in mind.
Even the very name we've attributed to our hobby reinforces
the belief that these are just games with a few extra bits
tacked on, but again that really isn't. Trying to make
role-playing games more like a game is an uphill battle–the
closer it comes to being a game, the further it goes from
being a role-playing game.
As an example of the entrenched identity crisis that the
role-playing industry has, take a look at our muddled terminology.
The game master can take player characters on an extended
campaign. This sentence deftly encompasses all three elements
of tactical simulation, game, and fiction in one lump of jargon.
As a result, many games have the mistaken belief that reinterpreting
our collective lexicon (turning a "campaign" into
a "series" or a "chronicle," for example,
making it more "literary") somehow purges the game
of its undesirable roots. This extends to just about every
term we have. Non-player characters can become "Extras,"
"Set Dressing," or "Antagonists," and
game masters gain enough titles to make a nobleman blush.
Invariably, whether you call your randomizers the Hand of
Fate or Lady Luck, players will still ask you to pass the
dice.
This is where we can stop the tide of muddled thinking. There
isn't any harm in using commonly-understood terms, because
the original meaning of that term has changed over time. Most
of us know that a "campaign" originally meant an
extended series of military conflicts, but now it means a
connected set of role-playing game adventures to us –
it's as connected to the military in our minds as spam
email is to canned meat or Monty Python. Instead of explaining
to players why they should call you the Great High and Mighty
Grand Poobah every time they want to spend their experience
points (excuse me, "Improvement Traits"), can we
forget the pedigree of the haphazard technical terms we've
developed over the years, and just call you the "GM"?
I think it's time we acknowledge that role-playing games
are a unique form of entertainment, even art. I'm advocating
an appreciation that role-playing games are something special
unto themselves, and that they aren't like anything else.
What I'm not advocating is that we stop innovation in
our industry, or that we should become complacent with the
state of gaming. While analogies are good for explaining to
outsiders what role-playing games are, role-playing games
aren't truly analogous to other things. We have to recognize
that. When we strive to improve and better our games, whether
as creators, game masters, or just players we should do so
by improving what role-playing games are, not what they aren't.
Now I'm off–I have to write the introduction to
Midway City, and I've just gotten to the part where I
compare role-playing games to late 1940s flamenco dancing.
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