What is an RPG to you?

[Blue Ghost]

Pulled from the "My (star) kingdom for a resurrection scroll..... " thread.

With the passing of another game designer, a figure of immagination and vision, one can't help but reflect on what their creations actually are, and what they may portend for the future.

That, and I'm kind of bored

So, if Dungeons and Dragons, as we all know it, isn't a game with roots in various pre-industrial pasts (usually medieval), then from what does its fantasy element extend?

With Traveller we all have a notion that we have a set of rules cobbled, kludged and otherwise constructed and built to represent various sci-fi venues. We know what to expect when we create that "phaser" from Star Trek, or "blaster" from Star Wars. These are familiar things to us, and we know how to fit them in the rules. Traveller, even in the OTU, is sci-fi as we understand it. A future that we'd like to adventure in.

But if this is so, then why is it that D&D and other fantasy games dismiss the middle ages as their stem? Their core roots, so to speak?

Thoughts?

 

[aramis]

1st off: D&D is based off of Chainmail... which added a fantasy supplement based squarely on Tolkein. D&D in its earliest editions roots strongly in a "past that never could have been." It was not, however, solely Tolkein. It also borrowed heavily from Jack Vance, RE Howard, and M. Moorcock, and those influences as well permeate even little book D&D.

Tunnels and Trolls, the first imitator, drops even much of the Tolkeinian, and seems to flat out ignore Moorcock. It does, however, take a non-wargame rooted approach. It clearly goes in a unique direction, borrowing from Tolkein, but clearly NOT doing so tightly. After all, Leprechauns and Fairies are PC races! (and, when combined with Monsters! Monsters!, even dragons and Newhonian Skeletons are PC races...). It should be noted that the Author saw D&D being played, loved the concept, bought the box, couldn't make sense of the rules, and wrote a new game based upon the concept... Ken was (and still is) a Librarian. He's quite well read, and was well versed in the pulp Sword & Sorcery novels, and was not so obviously inspired by "Classic" fantasy modes.

Neither game, 1974 and 1975 respectively, intended to model a realistic medieval society. Dave Arnesson's blackmoor had high-tech relics and medieval tech, plus magic, all side by side.

2nd: Another part of it is that, essentially, realistic portrayals of medieval life are pretty damned boring for 99% of the populace... Church, farming, taxes, and ignorance. The nobles were not much more exciting: Church, drilling with weapons, solving petit disputes of the peasants and serfs, extraction of taxes, and feasting. It is these medieval nobles who really give us our "Classic Fantasy"; the Norse Sagas, the various Arthurian stories, the Canterbury Tales... these are product of bored nobles. Peasants who came up with such would be chastised by the local priest... but nobles were, greatly, above reproach by common clerics... or at least out of reach.

Their fantasy worlds are fun, but bear little to no resemblance to history. (The biblical tales are far more historical!)

3rd: in general, most of the people who wanted realistic medieval stuff found the rules too simple to reinforce what made life so nasty, brutish, and short... They also had wonderful sets of rules that permitted reenacting the great battles, often in great detail, of the period, without having to account for the "warming of the trousers" effect upon the peasant levies... and without having to deal with the massively boring and constricted social environments and rampant paranoia which generally described medieval life.

Also, the SCA arises a few years before D&D... it also has tolkeinisms... A lot of gamers flocked to the late 1970's offerings of a certain SCA peripheral player by the name of Greg Stafford... his fantasy world IS inspired strongly by history: Glorantha. Between the SCA, which is essentially "... the Middle Ages minus Peasants, plague, and dysentery." (Countess Ariana Silkenfire).

The games that arise from history tend to be reflective of the rise of medieval reenactment groups, especailly the SCA and ARMA... most still present idealized fantasy worlds, but at least the peasants cower in fear, or occasionally rise up in anger...

D&D and T&T, and even TFT all strive to hybridize classic fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, and Greeko-Roman mythology... the "good stuff"... rather than the mundane and boring life that really happened.

The key element of an RPG isn't the setting; it's the idea that a set of rules can be used to prompt and direct a story in ways surprising to all its pariticpants. That's the sole innovation of RPG's. ConSims with detailed character scale play date back at least 10 years prior. Improvisational radio-plays were a staple of theater classes in the 1950's... It was the Arnesson mix and match that was special.

 

[Supplement Four]

What is an rpg?

At its core, it's a method of shared story telling, where the Game Master is the writer, and the players actually experience life in another reality.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Aramis; that's very interesting. My first exposure to the wargaming/sim world was through Star Fleet Battles. I ventured into a game store south of where I live, and came upon this Star Trek "thing", (with so-so cover art done by some fan).

There I also saw things like the first incarnations of Ogre, GEV, other Steve Jackson games, and an entire display rack filled with D&D modules. I'd heard of the thing, my math teacher in 6th grade was an avid D&Der, but I truly had no notion of what it was. When I discovered the mythic setting it was supposed to purport, then I wanted to play, but play as a full fledged knight with charger, lance and shield. But it was not to be.

Which, to be honest, really dissapointed me. To me, as you said Aramis, the whole legend aspect comes from classical and medieval mythos, where the hero was envisioned as being donned in state of the art "BDUs" and carrying the latest military hardware (usually sword or spear and a shield of somekind ... maybe armor). And suddenly, when I was generating my character, I couldn't be a "Chevalier".

The initial limitation was money. I was cool with that, because I figured part of the adventuring aspect was to buy the gear so my character could become a knight. But then that wasn't even the issue. It was more or less that "knights", as I understood them, really didn't exist as such.

That's when I got mildly PO'd

But, in some of the adventures, there were NPCs and castle guards who were listed as "knights". Huh? o:

My thoughts at the time were this; "Let me get this straight... the setting is in an age of metal working, water wheel technology, nobles are running minor political entities (principalities, duchys and so forth), the military types wear armor, carry swords, maybe a bow or what have you, and I can't be a knight? Grrrr..." :frankie:

I understood the fantasy aspect of the whole thing; borrowing from Norse legend and derivatives thereof, but I was still put out by the lack of historical context.

More later.

 

[the angle]

why is it that D&D and other fantasy games dismiss the middle ages as their stem?

Because it's not their stem.

I think people make that assumption on the basis that heroes wield swords, ride horses, and wear mail. Those are trappings of the Middle Ages, but they don't make D&D a game based on the Middle Ages (any more than shotguns and SMGs make Traveller a game based on the 20th century). Swords & sorcery RPGs are based on mythology and fiction. I've played D&D games where the trappings were drawn from the Bronze Age, the Roman Republic, the Middle Ages, and the High Renaissance, but none of them were historical games. I've also played D&D games that were based on DEN comics and tales of Barsoom. In its current (4th edition) form, D&D divorces itself almost entirely from any historical setting. In the final analysis, I think that's one of the strengths of fantasy RPGs and one of the reasons they've endured so long -- they're not tied (some might say restricted) to the Middle Ages.

Steve

 

[aramis]

Not just the norse; Tolkein borrows heavily from the norse...

But from, specifically, Jack Vance's works (for the magic system), Moorcock's eternal champion serieses (Elrick, Hawkmoon, and others; most espeically for the focus on law verses chaos) , RE Howard's Conan and Kull. This crowd, the sword and sorcery, do not have middle ages societies... they have middle ages armors but generally biblical and middle eastern societies, renamed and revised.

Blackmoor itself was a hybrid of fantasy and sci-fi.

From tolkein we get the classic races (Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, and Orcs) and many monsters (Treants, Trolls, Orcs, Goblins, Giant Spiders, Giant Birds, Dragons).

From classic fantasy of the middle ages we get Dragons, Wyrms, Vampires, Ghouls, Skeletons, Rocs, Harpies, and several others... but they generally come in through other sources, fantasy sources.

From S&S fiction we get dinosaurs, undead, evil priests, clerical magics, the myth of the sword-über-alles, the scantily clad warrior maidens, giant snakes, giant bugs, helpless princesses who are not quite helpless, scheming wizards, and vengeful gods who only act when summoned. *

From horror, we get vampires, ghosts, ghouls, skeletons, and other undead; horror literature borrows freely from greek, roman, egyptian, babylonian, and medieval myth.

What is truly interesting is certain movies in fact seem to derive from D&D motifs... Willow is a beautiful example. We see both plate and chain, but we see an otherwise renaissance setting with no gunpowder.

* while the conan movies are NOT faithful to RE Howard's Conan, they are faithful to Pulp S&S. Just not to Howard.

 

[Blue Ghost]

That's interesting. I never read any of Doyle's Conan books. I may take a crack at them some time.

"Willow" as an entertainment piece is interesting. From my point it falls into the same catagory as a lot of other fantasy works.

My perspective on what I understood to be the traditional medieval fantasy was as is described; a smattering of Nordic and Celtic mythos interwoven to the everyday lives of medieval society; from so-called dark ages to the high middle ages, and shades of gray inbetween. As such I was of the impression that, say, a spearman, mounted knight or footnight, would be the military instrument of the higher nobility to go out do good deeds on behalf of the political leadership. Only in a fantasy setting, it wouldn't just be a neighboring barony, but the mean old nasty dragon "nested in yonder cave".

Medieval society treated things like dragons, fairies, and other creatures as real, only you didn't see them in your everyday experience. You more or less relied on the purported honor of the bard or knight who had come from afar to tell you of such things, or you saw the after effects of their magic manifest; i.e. maybe your holstein suffered from mad-cow or something, or your baby died of crib-death and what-not.

So, yeah, from my point of view, when I saw things like swords and armor, I fell among the masses who assumed a medieval (perhaps classical) setting. I grew up seeing Moorcock's books on the bookstore shelves, but never cracked one. I read Beowulf and quite a few other classic legends from the dark ages. I even read "Le Morte d'Arthur", and other Arthurian spins on myth. So my perspective was only reinforced as to the time and place D&D was supposed to represent.

Tunnels and Trolls was a much different take, and, to me, seemed more of a "free for all", albeit in a kind of unlicensed Hong-Kong knock-off sort of way, of D&D. It seemed more purely mythical and pure fantasy than what I thought D&D was supposed to be. But that's just me.

 

[Madarin Dude]

D&D is more of a pulp fantasy type of setting. I tend to think of Fritz Leiber's swords series and seeing that there is a number of modules based on it that seems to be a big inspiration for it. I tend to play spell casters and i do so well when I play they are a blast sort of over the top fun when you get around 7-8th level all the odd spells get in and you start loading your low level spells with oddball spells. It can be a lot of fun.

Traveller lets me use my wits to and end too. it is a different setting and since i am much more of a sci fi than fantasy fan it is great.

 

[JAFARR]

What about Twilight 2000? Military fantasy in the near future (at least when first published?

Then there was Paranoia. "The computer is your friend." As long as you don't do anything that is.

How about some of the current online RPGs like the MecQuest and AdventureQuest worlds (science fantasy and fantasy respectivly) It is you against the bad whatever it is. If you die, you start over at that point for free.

 

[saundby]

To me an RPG is a way for a group of people to play around intellectually with ideas with enough cotten batting around everything, thanks to the fantastic setting and the fact "it's just a game" that nobody's feelings get hurt, nobody feels their values so challenged that they can't engage and enjoy the fun of the give and take, and folks can experiment with social ideas and values that aren't their own in a safe little sandbox.

When I say "nobody", I mean nobody who isn't somehow determined to find a source of offense.

When the character sheets are out, the dice are on the table, and the ref starts the recap or intro you pass a signpost into something like Mr. Rogers' Land of Make Believe*, where real ideas and problems are presented, dealt with both "correctly" and "incorrectly", but presented in a way that puts them at more than one remove from life, and therefore easier to deal with.

Whether its killing orcish co-workers in effigy in a game of hack and slash, playing out a variation on a favorite book, going somewhere that society really doesn't want to bother going to all the work of going to, or experimenting with odd sets of values just to see how people deal with it, it's a great little shared sandbox.

And yeah, it's mythology, of a participative sort. We get to be Odysseus outsmarting someone (or Bugs Bunny for those without a grounding in the classics) , or Paris trapped between a bad decision and our pride, trying to solve a problem with a sword when it's too late and the choices are really not ours to make any more, etc., etc.

*One time that a group of players got _really_ upset with me was when I put a princess in the game who spoke by going "Mew mew mew..." There was a lot of goofy stuff in that adventure, but when they hit that the game came to a complete stop, and could not continue until the offending character was replaced. One thing you can't joke about in make-believe, it seems, is that it is just make-believe.

 

[BlackBat242]

To me, an RPG is basically the tech 6 version of a man-portable anti-armored vehicle rocket launcher.

 

[Gaming Glen]

well don't that beat all

 

[Gaming Glen]

I want to vent a little ...

Maybe it's just some of the local apes, er, gaming friends , but I really don't understand why they have this view that having a unicorn as a noble steed is seen as gay. A unicorn has it's own lance, for pet's sake! And it's a lot more intelligent than any horse could ever be. Are they that influenced by today's "girlie" cartoons where unicorns are shown being cutsey with flowers in their mane and tail?

In a campaign some time ago I was playing an elven female ranger/bard, and was looking at the possibility of multi-classing to a class that got a unicorn as a steed. All I heard was "how gay". Hello? Female character. *sigh* (and they're all staunch Republicans.. maybe if the unicorn came equipped with an M-16, bandoliers, wore a headband, wore a T-shirt (torn of course) supporting the U.S. 2nd amendment, and was named Rambo it wouldn't be thought of as gay.... )

 

[rancke]

Maybe it's just some of the local apes, er, gaming friends , but I really don't understand why they have this view that having a unicorn as a noble steed is seen as gay. A unicorn has it's own lance, for pet's sake! And it's a lot more intelligent than any horse could ever be. Are they that influenced by today's "girlie" cartoons where unicorns are shown being cutsey with flowers in their mane and tail?

In a campaign some time ago I was playing an elven female ranger/bard, and was looking at the possibility of multi-classing to a class that got a unicorn as a steed. All I heard was "how gay". Hello? Female character. *sigh* (and they're all staunch Republicans.. maybe if the unicorn came equipped with an M-16, bandoliers, wore a headband, wore a T-shirt (torn of course) supporting the U.S. 2nd amendment, and was named Rambo it wouldn't be thought of as gay.... )

The qualification for riding a unicorn has nothing to do with your sexual orientation (Indeed, I would guess that most out-of-closet gays would lack it). It's just one that few males in a male-dominated society feel comfortable admitting that they still possess. (Not my own; Poul Anderson uses it in his excellent urban fantasy novel Operation Chaos).


Hans

 

[Drakon]

maybe if the unicorn came equipped with an M-16, bandoliers, wore a headband, wore a T-shirt (torn of course) supporting the U.S. 2nd amendment, and was named Rambo it wouldn't be thought of as gay.... )

Nope. Still gay Choosing to play a female character is kinda gay, if you are male. But these perceptions are only valid if one supposes that the fictional character is indicative of an aspect of the player. Or that such an aspect is even revalent in either the game play, or personal friendships between the players. How a person's sexual attitudes is revalent in non-sexual situations is something I never got. I never understood the whole sexual orientation is identity thing. Sex has always been something you do, not something you are. At least to me that is.

Besides, I've always been more of a pegasus kind of guy.

Also I have my doubts about the whole using a unicorn's horn as a lance thing. Your steed has to essentially head butt your opponent, potentially breaking its neck, or giving it a concusion. And if the horn should shatter, how long does it take to grow back? On the other hand, your steed could parry the opponent's lance while you attack with your own.

 

[travlar]

I'd think a unicorn would be more useful without someone riding it; wouldn't a rider get in its way for fighting? Other than that, I don't see the problem with riding a unicorn...

 

[sabredog]

An RPG is a way for me to spend a few hours writing up what amounts to a basic storyline born of my imagination, and then turning my friends lose within it for days or weeks of continuous mutual storytelling that more often than not spawns even more of the same until we all have found ourselves living out the adventures we all wish we could have if the world was a perfect place.

For years afterwards we retell the stories of our adventures both from within and without the context of the continuing campaign until the smallest, least interesting adventure has become an epic worthy of Beowulf. Or at least something so hilarious to retell that it causes epic beer-spewing.

No matter how it all turns out, though, the most rewarding part for me is to watch the fun my friends have playing in my games. Its like a gift I try to give them every time we play - I can't wait to see what they do with some puzzle or opportunity that pops up as result of both the planned and unforeseen consequences of events. If haven't done a good job, I feel like I let them down for wasting their time - so it always forces me to grow more as a storyteller, writer, and the chaos they often spawn helps keep my mind nimble.

And for some strange reason I never mind when I have to throw away some carefully crafted idea or plotline because the players came up with something that sounded like it'd be more fun - not that I let them know that, of course. I gotta maintain the illusion until the campaign or adventure is over at least.

 

[BlackBat242]

To me (strongly heterosexual, 8 years USMC, Republican family, raised "fundamentalist Baptist", member of the NRA, presidential voting record: Rep 7; Dem 0; other 1) the phrase "that's gay" (and the attitude that produces it) indicate the speaker's lack of emotional maturity more than anything else.

I have (over the last 26 years) played ~30% female characters no matter what system (AD&D, Traveller, Twilight 2000, Gamma World, Champions, etc)... most of those games played with other (mostly male) Marines or US Navy (onboard ship).

A number of my characters (male Rangers, female Druids & Rangers) would have snagged a unicorn mount without pause if one had been available.


And the horn is not used like a lance (Drakon is right in that point), it is used to slash (like a katana). A good hit can see that unicorn decapitate the target.

 

[Whipsnade]

Gents,

A very thought provoking thread with very thoughtful answers. Let me cherry pick a few.

The key element of an RPG isn't the setting; it's the idea that a set of rules can be used to prompt and direct a story in ways surprising to all its pariticpants.

At its core, it's a method of shared story telling...

To me an RPG is a way for a group of people to play around intellectually with ideas...

An RPG is a way for me to spend a few hours writing up what amounts to a basic storyline born of my imagination, and then turning my friends lose within it for days or weeks of continuous mutual storytelling...

All those quotes pretty much sum up roleplaying for me. Setting and genre really don't matter.


Regards,
Bill

 

[aramis]

No more on the Gayness of Unicorns, on either side. The issue is bordering on a political hot button, and people are citing their political affiliations to explain their views of it... all no-no's outside the pit, and the pit is closed.