The Problem with RPGs
RPGs were originally derived from wargaming, an activity that can be compared in its ultimate goals to most sports, as its main component is skill testing. In the case of wargaming, it is a test of tactics, numerical reasoning, and rules memorization. People who are skilled at those tasks are skilled at wargaming.
RPGs also take a great deal from acting. Acting is not usually considered a game, but when children act, it is considered to be the game of pretending, so we’ll take it to be a game for purposes of this discussion. The main component is human fulfillment and philosophical content.
There, the main problem of the RPG is exposed: can the need for human fulfillment and philosophical content be reconciled with the desire to test for tactical skill?
The problem becomes most apparent when we consider that the Player Characters are supposed to be protagonists of a narrative. In acting, and writing, protagonists do not die unless the author deems there to be some relevance to the human element or philosophical content he is addressing. It would be difficult for George Orwell’s 1984 to be taken seriously if instead of reaching its intended conclusion, the protagonist Winston Smith died about half way through because he lost initiative against a gang of ruffians. Obviously, a good narrative doesn’t take kindly to dice meddling in important affairs, such as protagonist survival.
The reverse is also true. In the middle of a wargame, a player cannot simply fail to remove a piece from the board exclaiming that the piece is vital to his narrative.
Nerd 1: “No, Space Marine B cannot die from your artillery fire because he hasn’t delivered his letter to his brother yet.”
Nerd 2: “Uh. What?”
Nerd 1: “This guy’s name is John Tipper, and it’s important to the narrative that he survives.”
Nerd 2: “I move for disqualification based on lunacy.”
In the above case, Nerd 1 and Nerd 2 are trying to determine who is more skilled at a tactical game. Nerd 1’s pleading to save a character makes no sense in the context, as the game may hinge of whether the piece is on the board or not.
RPGs are effectively a wargame where narrative is supposed to count. Here, Nerd 2 might be the GM, and he might be expected to fudge the roll and continue the narrative in order to keep the game going and his players happy. But rules on these matters in RPG books are usually vague and amount to basically “don’t piss your players off” which contrasts heavily with the large number of supposedly relevant rules the players are supposed to understand and use. Why use rules when you’re simply trying to do some group storytelling?
One way to see this is simply to accept the RPG as a cleverly arranged conspiracy between all the people at the table. The unspoken sentiment is “we’re doing some group storytelling here, but we’ll disguise it as a tactical test so that we can feel like we are winning at something when our character does something cool”. That’s fine, but if that’s the case, then the rules are overly complicated in the vast majority of circumstances.
The biggest problem with the above however, is that since it is an unspoken rule, there are people who don’t actually get it, or who operate on the fallacious belief that the game is a true skill test. This is why there are disagreements between roleplayers (actors and narrative makers) and roll-players (min/maxxers, powergamers, and rules lawyers). They do not come to a meeting of the minds where the purpose of the game is concerned. The final point is this: the rules are to blame for this failure, as they present themselves as a legitimate skill-test while in truth being nothing of the sort.
In recent years, several systems with varying success have come to grapple with the problem. For me, FUDGE is noteworthy (and the more fleshed out derivative, FATE as well): a system which immediately acknowledges the idea that the players are supposed to drive the narrative. Hard rules are replaced by guidelines for gameplay, and players are given points by which they can not only change dice rolls, but also wrest control of the narrative from the GM. (This rant is not an endorsement or advertisement for FUDGE-derived systems. Many people,myself included, feel these systems are lacking something.)
I believe that this is one legitimate way of addressing the problem. There are other ways, however.
1. Make it a skill-test with some other variable keeping track of success, rather than character death. Maybe players can have a score that they subtract points from every time their character dies and the competition is to see who can keep it the highest during the campaign.
2. Introduce “Saving” into the pen and paper world. It’s already done in computer games. The idea would that before every dangerous encounter, the GM records a faithful record of the game status, and if the any characters die, or fail to achieve their goal, the game is restarted from the save point. A written record can be kept of how many places the team failed.
Obviously, these solutions have their problems too. Solution one may make situations that should be tense and nail-biting into boring encounters simply because there is never any danger. Solution two bogs the game down with recording the game state before every altercation or trap.
Conclusion: good rules cannot be built unless the basic purpose of the game is addressed explicitly.
OK, show me an I'm an idiot.
