Games People Play

Of all of the things I tend to talk about here, my personal interests and hobbies are only rarely among them. That's mainly because I'm boring... there isn't much about me worth talking about, and I'm not into my hobbies to a degree that makes me, or them, all that interesting.

That said, I was poking around in some old files and found this quote.

A good role-playing game provides the framework for a unique kind of narrative, a collaborative thought experiment crossed with improvisational theater.

I first encountered it, if I remember correctly, in a Slate article after Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax died. The article is something of a hit piece, blaming the late Mr. Gygax for the fact that so many Dungeons and Dragons games descend so easily into what it commonly called murder-hoboism within the hobby.

In any event, I call BS. Not simply because Eric Sofge chose to throw stones at a man who was no longer there to defend himself, but because the basic premise of his article, as articulated above, is false.

That is, in my opinion, not the hallmark of a good role-playing game (as in rules system), but rather the hallmark of a good role-playing campaign. Most game systems rely on probabilities to resolve outcomes, which, left to its own devices, creates a scenario about as theatrical as a game of Vegas craps.

But more importantly, the collaborative thought experiment and improvisational theatrics are the hallmarks of a certain type of sophisticated PLAYER, and not all players are capable of that. (To this day, I dislike the improvisational acting aspect of many role-playing sessions, preferring to narrate my characters in the third person.) When I first started playing, I was eleven years old, and if you'd told me that I was embarking on a "collaborative thought experiment," I wouldn't have had the first idea of what you were talking about, and "improvisational theater" would have sent me searching for a dictionary. I just barely had a grasp of the idea that these odd dice and arcane books would somehow allow me to pretend to be a Hobbit and/or a Knight better than I could without them, and that's really all that I was after at the time.

There is nothing wrong with wanting a hobby to be an avenue for some sort of self-improvement. And, truth be told, Dungeons and Dragons does not force its players down this path. But neither do GURPS or Runequest, games made by Steve Jackson and Greg Stafford, whom Mr. Sofge idolized in his article. Having played both, I can speak from firsthand experience that one can just as easily play a murderhobo in those games as in any other.

A good role-plying game provides what any other game provides. Fun. And, okay, in the eyes of Mr. Sofge, Dungeons and Dragons provides for what gamers term "badwrongfun," but it's fun never the less.

For me, what makes a tabletop role-playing game fun is the puzzle aspect of it. There is a goal (sometimes of my own devising, sometimes not), and at the start of the game, I don't know how to attain that goal. And through some combination of trial and error, observation and experimentation, I figure it out. And I find that process to be enjoyable. If a good story (one that's worth telling to other people) comes out of it, awesome. But that's the gravy. Am I a bad person for not seeking to rise above the simplistic man-versus-monster dichotomy that Dungeons and Dragons often rests on? Perhaps Mr. Sofge would have thought so. But the myriad of universes that people have created to play in have room enough for both of us. And that was the innovation of Dungeons and Dragons, and why it's lasted so long. It can be whatever someone wants to make of it. Few other things in life are that pliable.