Role-Playing Games: A Primer

Not for KnucklebonesI was very pleased in late 2007 when Knucklebones magazine commissioned me to write not one but two articles for their May 2008 issue. I was less pleased several months later when it became clear the Knucklebones had ceased publication … and positively bitter  a bit later when I started to hear rumors that these articles had been commissioned to aid in the sale of the magazine — though my editor said that wasn’t actually the case when I queried her.

One of the worst things that can happen to an author is to have a finished work sitting around, unpublished. Sure, I love to get paid for my writing, but I love even more to have my writing read by others. Unfortunately, My May 2008 Knucklebones articles sat around for a long, long time. My editor at Knucklebones convinced me to leave the articles with her for a whole year and a half, saying that the magazine was going to be relaunched and/or sold, and so the articles would eventually be published.

They never were.

Seven years after I wrote those unpublished articles, I’m collecting all the boardgame writing that I own into a single web site, and so you can now to read my primer on roleplaying for board game readers for the first time. There’s one other unpublished article, on Atlas Games, which will appear in the January 2008 archives. —SA, 1/12/15


Role-Playing Games: A Primer

In early 1974, Tactical Studies Rules — who would later become known as TSR Hobbies — published an innovative new game named Dungeons & Dragons. Authored by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, it was the earliest public release of an entirely new type of entertainment, the role-playing game (or RPG).

Dungeons & Dragons grew out of the miniature wargaming hobby. Various groups were already playing miniatures battles that included individual units, or “heroes.” From here, Gygax and Arneson developed gameplay that was all about those individual heroes. Players in these nascent RPGs explored the dungeons beneath Castle Blackmoor and Castle Greyhawk, fought monsters, and discovered treasures — giving birth to an entirely new medium of gaming.

Thirty-four years later, RPGs are still going strong. Some games are still very tactical, like the original Dungeons & Dragons. However, the field has also grown, offering a many different opportunities for players interested in telling stories about people in faraway places.

Why Play RPGs?

Designers and industry professionals have plenty to say on the topic:

“I love the combination of improvisational theatre, vicarious adventure, creative collaboration and serious friend-time. No other pastime offers all those things in one.”
—Phil Brucato, Author and Designer

“While we all enjoy books and movies, RPGs enable you to explore and immerse yourself in fictional worlds more completely, and with some control over the outcome of the story.”
—Ken Carpenter, Line Developer of the Farscape RPG

“I make computer games for a living, and love board games, but RPGs open the door to subjective actions where I can do things that aren’t pre-configured by the ruleset.”
—Shane Hensley, Creative Director of Superstition Studios & Owner of Pinnacle Entertainment Group

“It is a way to tell stories together while playing in the universes of the movies and novels that fire our collective dreams.”
—Scott Palter, Original Publisher of the Star Wars RPG, Ghostbusters RPG and Other Licensed Properties

“Roleplaying games allow me to be involved with and tell complex stories … I can tailor the pacing, theme, and characters to suit my tastes … In effect, I get to be a better Lucas than Lucas even thought he could be.”
—Jim Pinto, Author and Art Director

“Roleplaying activates a critical human process that has nearly been killed by overrationalization and materialism. Roleplaying is a way for humans to interact with our deep, hidden mythological selves. They are a way to feed our souls.”
—Greg Stafford, Founder of Chaosium and Issaries, Creator of Glorantha

“Nothing else — nothing — is comparable to a roleplaying game in simultaneously providing both an open canvas and a supportive framework for acts of imagination.”
—Jeff Tidball, Designer of Board, Card, and Roleplaying Games

Misconceptions of Role-Playing

As a niche gaming medium, the RPG industry appears shrouded with mysteries and misconceptions to those who haven’t played the games. Following are some of those common misconceptions, along with the actual facts about the industry.

1. D&D is the only RPG

Dungeons & Dragons is still going strong, remaining the biggest seller in the industry by a large margin. However, there have been hundreds of other roleplaying games published over the years, starting back in 1975 with TSR’s own Boot Hill and Empire of the Petal Throne. Though most new players will begin playing RPGs through Dungeons & Dragons, there are scores of other games being actively published today.

2. All RPGs Are About Elves and Dwarves

Because the first RPG was a fantasy game, elves and dwarves are among the most common features of the industry. However, there are also a wide variety of games published in other genres. Science-fiction games have also been popular; the leader in the field, Traveller, will be reprinted by Mongoose Publishing in the next few months. In early days the top horror RPG was Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, but it was surpassed in the late 1980s by White Wolf’s World of Darkness game. Superheroes have been another perennially popular RPG genre, currently represented by Hero Games’ Champions and Green Ronin’s Mutants & Masterminds. Even within the fantasy genre, not everyone imitates J.R.R. Tolkien’s elves and dwarves. Atlas Games publishes Ars Magica, a game set in “Mythic Europe” that is based on the folk tales and beliefs of the Middle Ages. White Wolf’s Exalted is a more superheroic fantasy game. Even TSR publishes a techno-magic setting called Eberron.

3. RPGs Use Tons of Funny Dice

This one’s actually somewhat true. When Gygax was polishing up Dungeons & Dragons he decided to use “polyhedron” dice that ran the gamut from 4-sided dice (which are pyramids) to 20-sided dice (which look somewhat spherical). However this is by no means a requirement for RPGs. Most modern games use fewer types of dice. World of Darkness uses only 10-sided dice, while Mutants & Masterminds uses all 20-sided dice. Steve Jackson’s GURPS is one of several games that rejects “funny dice” entirely, and only uses the common 6-sided die. There are also games that don’t use dice at all. The currently out-of-print Amber Diceless Roleplaying was the first major game that used no randomization methods, while Pinnacle’s Deadlands is one of several games that use decks of cards.

4. RPGs Involve Foam Swords

Generally, not true. RPGs usually involve sitting sedately around a table with your friends and talking. The games with the foam swords are “boffers,” which are a sort of LARP (or Live-action Role Playing game). LARPs aren’t as common as tabletop games, and there are lots of them that don’t use foam swords either. Most LARPs actually involve standing sedately around a room with lots of friends and talking. The most popular are White Wolf’s Mind’s Eye Theatre LARPs, which are cousin to their World of Darkness tabletop games.

5. RPGs Take a Lot of Work

The “gamemaster,” who runs adventures for the other players, can do a lot of work. At a minimum, he needs to read published adventures and have them ready for play. A more industrious gamemaster might design his own adventures or even his own world, and if he does this, it takes a ton of work. However the average player doesn’t need to do any more preparation for an RPG than he would for a board game. He shows up, he plays his character, and he goes home. A more active player might choose to do more, writing stories about his character or the campaign, drawing portraits, or otherwise introducing his own creativity into the game, but this is definitely not required.

6. RPGs Are Bad

In the mid-1980s, RPGs got a lot of bad press from groups that had previously demonized rock ‘n roll music and have since moved on to video games. This outcry has thus largely died out. Nowadays, people are more likely to talk about the benefits of RPGs. They encourage creative thinking, group participation, and social behavior — all things that aren’t encouraged by a lot of modern entertainments.

The RPG Field at a Glance

Although the field has changed a lot over the last thirty-four years, the biggest game around continues to be Dungeons & Dragons. In 2000 it was introduced in a new “third edition,” which was a massive redesign of the original rule set. At the same time publisher Wizards of the Coast — who’d purchased D&D’s original publisher, TSR, in 1997 — introduced an Open Gaming License that allowed other publishers to create D&D-like games, and a d20 Trademark License, which allowed them to put a logo on their books which showed their compatibility.

The d20 and Open Gaming licenses caused a huge proliferation of D&D-based fantasy material in the roleplaying world. Publishers Goodman Games and Paizo Publishing have been two of the most successful companies putting out high-quality material for use with Dungeons & Dragons.

The d20 license also made it much harder for games using other rules or modeling other genres to survive. Nonetheless, some games weathered the storm, whether others have appeared in recent years as the d20 boom weakened.

White Wolf is the second largest publisher of RPGs. Their main focus is their World of Darkness line, which includes three core games: Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, and Mage: The Awakening. They are all games of modern fantasy and horror, reminiscent of everything from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles to Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files.

For the last decade and a half, Palladium has been the third-place RPG company, but they’ve fallen on hard times recently. Their main product is the genre-spanning Rifts game, though they’ve recently also announced plans for a new Robotech game. Palladium has traditionally aimed their games at a younger demographic, and thus is more likely to appeal to first-time roleplayers, or those moving on from Dungeons & Dragons.

The rest of the field is more scattered, but contains numerous publishers of note.

Steve Jackson Games and Hero Games are both companies who largely ignored the d20 boom, and instead published their own “universal” systems which could be used in multiple genres. For Steve Jackson that’s GURPS, which genuinely supports everything from mysteries to science-fiction. For Hero Games that’s Hero System, which has game lines supporting a handful of major genres, the most successful of which is Champions, their superhero setting.

Chaosium is another non-d20 survivor. They’re best known for Call of Cthulhu, based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, but last year they also rolled out an expansion of their own universal system, Basic RolePlaying.

Green Ronin and Mongoose Publishing, meanwhile, were two companies that started out publishing fantasy supplements under the d20 license, but have since moved on to their own game systems. Green Ronin publishes the superhero game Mutants & Masterminds as well as the True 20 gaming system, while Mongoose publishes the fantasy RPG RuneQuest, the science-fiction RPG Traveller, and several licensed properties, such as Babylon 5 and Conan.

Finally, the advent of the Internet and PDF publication have allowed for the creation of a whole new tier of small-press publishers. These include many “indie” creators who are releasing innovative new games that expand the boundaries of storytelling in RPGs.

Though the roleplaying industry is well past the period of massive growth that it enjoyed in the 1970s and 1980s, it’s still a vibrant industry, full of many types of games. If you want something more social than your normal board games, then RPGs might be an option for you.

Coda: RPGs & Board Games

In the 1970s there was a booming fantasy and science-fiction board game industry. New companies like Chaosium, GDW, and Metagaming appeared and began publishing genre board game titles, while even older stalwarts like Avalon Hill and SPI began putting out fantastical games of their own.

This was the same trend that led to the creation of Dungeons & Dragons, which ultimately proved even more popular than the fantasy and science-fiction board games. This caused many young genre board game publishers to create RPGs of their own, including Chaosium’s RuneQuest, GDW’s Traveller and Metagaming’s The Fantasy Trip. Slowly, board games were abandoned in the face of this new trend, with rare exceptions like Steve Jackson Games — an RPG publisher who continued publishing cult-favorite strategy games too, such as Car Wars and Illuminati.

Greg Stafford of Chaosium explains the transition, saying, “When we were successful with RuneQuest we’d decided to stop producing boardgames. They took twice as long to produce, cost twice as much to manufacture, and sold half as much.”

A few decades later, and that trend has reversed itself. Computer games and collectible card games have both eaten away at the RPG market, while at the same time the board game market has grown thanks to the new energy created by the European design community. As a result, RPG publishers are now moving back from RPGs to board games.

Michelle Nephew of Atlas Games says that the company has made the change because of the changing face of the RPG market: “When the D20 glut hit hard, we’d [already] known it was coming for quite a while and had started to turn our focus toward other things. That’s when we starting moving more heavily toward card games with releases like Cthulhu 500, Let’s Kill, Dungeoneer, and Gloom, and toward board games like Recess, Grand Tribunal, and Seismic.” Irrespective of the RPG market, Marcelo A. Figueroa of AEG sees the move into board game production as advantageous, calling it “a natural evolution.” He generally sees board games as easier to play, saying they “don’t take nearly as long to prepare” and appeal to “a more mainstream audience.”

AEG is just getting into the board game field, while Atlas has been publishing board games for over a decade — but has increased its production in the last few years. They both represent RPG companies riding the trend back into board games. Steve Jackson Games too is moving back into the card game field (which they never entirely left), largely based on the success of their Munchkin games.

However, the company to have most successfully moved from RPGs to board games is doubtless Fantasy Flight Games. From day one they were a mixed RPG and board game company, but today board games are the largest part of their new production, and they’re putting out some of the biggest and most impressive games in the industry.

All four of these companies continue some RPG production as well, including AEG’s Legend of the Five Rings, Atlas’ Ars Magica, Steve Jackson’s GURPS, and Fantasy Flight’s Midnight books for d20. However, board and card games seem to be the biggest area of current growth for these RPG publishers.

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