Mouseferatu
Hero
It'd be absolutely ludicrous for me--or anyone--to talk about "what people want" from RPGs as if there was any universal answer. Heck, click on any random thread in the forums, and you'll see pretty quick that the differences of opinion are legion.
What you can find, if you're engaged in the hobby, are certain patterns. Things that a lot of people would love to see in their own games. It may not even be a majority, but it's a sufficiently significant subset that the major games would do well to at least try to satisfy that particular desire.
The problem is that RPGs, by their very nature, often prove ill-suited to, or even completely incapable of, providing the desired experience.
(Most of what follows probably isn't news to many of you, but I'm hoping that by laying it out as a specific phenomenon, it might spur some discussion. Or at least provide an interesting read.)
What got me thinking of this recently is Rhukma, my character in the Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane campaign I'm currently involved in. He's one of two spellcasters in the group. He's also a foreign, exotic, mysterious type. (The campaign is set in Eastern Europe. Most of the PCs are European. Rhukma is Indian.)
In a fantasy novel, such as the Robert Howard pulps on which the whole game is based, Rhukma's magics would be creepy, enigmatic, and (above all) ill-defined. When he calls on the names of the various Hindu gods, raises his elephant-head talisman high, and commands the roots to lash out and grab his enemies or the beasts to obey his commands, it would be a bizarre, frightening thing.
And we do our best to play it that way, at least so far as it doesn't derail the game, or offer my character more than my share of the spotlight. But let's be honest. It doesn't actually feel that way. We all know that Rhukma has access to four specific spells from the book, and exactly how they work, and what their limits are.
In almost any ongoing discussion of magic in D&D, you'll eventually come across someone lamenting the fact that magic in the game feels so mundane, so commonplace. The spells have no mystery to them. They're so specifically defined that there's little creativity in their use. People being able to buy or create magic items takes the wonder out of them. The fact that a specific quantity of magic item bonuses is built into the system renders them nothing but modifiers. There's no magic in the magic.
I don't necessarily disagree. Obviously, not everyone shares that feeling, but for those that do, it can be a real downer when it comes to playing certain types of campaigns or characters.
It's also almost entire unavoidable, as the first of the RPG paradoxes. Boil it down to the core, and it's very basic: Something's only mysterious and exotic so long as it's unknown. Make it known--quantify it, limit it, make it accessible--and it cannot remain mysterious. No matter how much flowery prose or adventure-specific myths the DM wraps it in, it's eventually going to be a magic item out of one of the books (or at least following the same rules).
It's possible for magic to feel truly magical for a while, in a new game, but eventually, the fact that it is a game, rather than a novel or a movie--the fact that the players must be allowed to see behind the curtain, at least in terms of making use of their own character's powers and items, means that the mystery must fade. The only way--the only way--for magic to remain enigmatic and mysterious in an RPG, for a game to truly replicate fantasy tales where sorcery is alien and frightening and unknowable, is to keep it completely out of the PCs' hands.
One can make the exact same argument, incidentally, for exotic races. No matter how much you'd like your elves, or dragonborn, or Melniboneans to seem truly alien, that image is going to break down the instant those races become available to PCs. You can't keep the audience in the dark when the audience is actually writing/acting the part of two of the main characters.
Another of the more common laments, at least in my experience, is that many games--D&D in particular, but I've heard it about others, too--aren't lethal enough, and therefore not challenging enough. I'm not talking about the fact that characters in D&D can fight at full effectiveness until dead. There are lots of games that do try to mimic injury with "death spirals," where the more wounded a character is, the more penalties they have. The Solomon Kane game I'm in does that. I hate it, personally, but it's obviously an experience that some games offer.
But a game where combat is realistically lethal? Where a single sword thrust is likely to kill? Where standing toe-to-toe (well, face-to-toe) with a dragon is almost certain to result almost immediately in a character becoming toe jam? Yeah, there are a few games that offer that. (I've heard that The Riddle of Steel is one, but I've not played it myself, so I can't say for sure.) So it's not technically impossible. But I challenge you to find a popular game that does so.
Why? Because once again, you run into a paradox between the experience that some people want (or think they want) and the requirements of the game itself. See, the thing is, most of the time, when people are playing a game? They want to be playing a game. Quick, brutal, easy, and frequent death may make the game feel more challenging, but it also results in a lot of downtime as people make new characters. And it's not just the time spent rolling dice or allocating points, but in coming up with new backgrounds and personalities that mesh with the group and the campaign. (To say nothing of the DM/GM/ST having to constantly rework any ongoing plotlines.) Except in games where it's specifically built in (like Paranoia, which can be a lot of fun but provides a limited variety of gaming experiences), excessively frequent character death actually impedes the ability of the players to play the game.
And of course the obvious paradox is that your traditional roleplaying game can't handle some of the most popular fantasy character archetypes. We've already covered why it can't manage the mysterious wizard. But how about the brooding loner? Oh, sure, lots of people create such characters. But the result is almost always one of two outcomes:
1) The character swiftly ceases to be a loner, falling in with the group with relative ease, or
2) The DM spends a whole lot of time with a split party. Now, leaving aside all the various "don't split the party" jokes, there's the simple fact that when a DM is focusing on what's happening over here, it means that any players whose characters are over there aren't actually getting to do much. (There are sometimes ways around this--letting them play NPCs, for instance--but none of these techniques are always appropriate or always satisfying.) Now, I'm not suggesting that a party should never split up, or that this playstyle can't work for some groups. But as a general rule, in a group-oriented game like most RPGs, it just doesn't fly.
So we've got a situation where some of the classic characters of fantasy--Conan, Elric, Solomon Kane--are extremely difficult to port over into most RPGs, because they rarely operated in large groups. And when they did, it was very rarely among equals.
(The Buffy RPG tried to work around this by giving the non-superpowered types extra "drama" points--luck, basically--to keep them on par with the "stars." But even there, it's often difficult to keep the super-folks from overshadowing the others. Again, this works for some groups, but in your average RPG, it's not a good idea to relegate some players to the roll of sidekick.)
Finally, a lot of fantasy tales create drama, suspense, or just tension in battle via the use of scarcity. The heroes are stranded on an island with precious little water. They're trying to hold a fortification against an oncoming horde, and they're short on arrows.
This is something that RPGs can do. Tracking rations and ammunition is a staple for some groups. Here's the problem, though... It's tedious. It's a lot of bookkeeping, and while it may not sound like much to just check off a box with every shot, in the thick of everything else to remember in combat, it can be a serious hassle.
"But isn't that worth it, for the dramatic possibilities?" Well, for some groups, sure. But for many players, the fact that is does boil down to bookkeeping, to numbers on a sheet, strips it of any actual dramatic tension it might have. Much like the magic issue, above, the fact that the players are the ones behind the curtain means that it's not drama; it's homework.
The way around it, of course, is to leave it in the hands of the DM. The PCs begin to run low on food or ammunition based purely on DM fiat. That's fine with a group that trusts the DM not to screw them over, and to use that particular tool only when it's truly dramatically appropriate. But it's difficult to hardwire "skilled DM" into a game's rules-as-written. So this sort of tension becomes something that specific groups can pull off, but your average game, out of the box, can't.
By now, many of you are already getting ready to point out games that are exceptions to these rules. I'm sure they exist. But I'm equally sure that they're either
A) very narrow in scope, doing one of these things well at the expense of a lot of other possibilities, and/or
B) capable of doing these things, but not well.
For a more generalized game, like D&D, Savage Worlds, GURPS, World of Darkness, etc. these particular "paradoxes" are always going to be hurdles to be overcome or, in most cases, grudgingly accepted as limitations.
The more astute among you will have noticed that all of these issues fall under a common heading. They're all problems primarily for people who want to recreate certain types of stories in their campaigns. Want your magic to be mysterious and enigmatic? Want your combat to be swift and lethal? Want your nonhuman races to be alien? Odds are good it's because you're trying to recreate the feel of the sort of fantasy you enjoy reading or watching. (And I don't say that as a negative. On many of these issues, I'm right there with you.)
And that, really, is the ultimate RPG paradox: The fact that a game and a hobby originally inspired by some very specific fictional influences is quite capable of creating its own stories, but is woefully ineffective at modeling many of the types of tales on which it's based.
What you can find, if you're engaged in the hobby, are certain patterns. Things that a lot of people would love to see in their own games. It may not even be a majority, but it's a sufficiently significant subset that the major games would do well to at least try to satisfy that particular desire.
The problem is that RPGs, by their very nature, often prove ill-suited to, or even completely incapable of, providing the desired experience.
(Most of what follows probably isn't news to many of you, but I'm hoping that by laying it out as a specific phenomenon, it might spur some discussion. Or at least provide an interesting read.)
What got me thinking of this recently is Rhukma, my character in the Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane campaign I'm currently involved in. He's one of two spellcasters in the group. He's also a foreign, exotic, mysterious type. (The campaign is set in Eastern Europe. Most of the PCs are European. Rhukma is Indian.)
In a fantasy novel, such as the Robert Howard pulps on which the whole game is based, Rhukma's magics would be creepy, enigmatic, and (above all) ill-defined. When he calls on the names of the various Hindu gods, raises his elephant-head talisman high, and commands the roots to lash out and grab his enemies or the beasts to obey his commands, it would be a bizarre, frightening thing.
And we do our best to play it that way, at least so far as it doesn't derail the game, or offer my character more than my share of the spotlight. But let's be honest. It doesn't actually feel that way. We all know that Rhukma has access to four specific spells from the book, and exactly how they work, and what their limits are.
In almost any ongoing discussion of magic in D&D, you'll eventually come across someone lamenting the fact that magic in the game feels so mundane, so commonplace. The spells have no mystery to them. They're so specifically defined that there's little creativity in their use. People being able to buy or create magic items takes the wonder out of them. The fact that a specific quantity of magic item bonuses is built into the system renders them nothing but modifiers. There's no magic in the magic.
I don't necessarily disagree. Obviously, not everyone shares that feeling, but for those that do, it can be a real downer when it comes to playing certain types of campaigns or characters.
It's also almost entire unavoidable, as the first of the RPG paradoxes. Boil it down to the core, and it's very basic: Something's only mysterious and exotic so long as it's unknown. Make it known--quantify it, limit it, make it accessible--and it cannot remain mysterious. No matter how much flowery prose or adventure-specific myths the DM wraps it in, it's eventually going to be a magic item out of one of the books (or at least following the same rules).
It's possible for magic to feel truly magical for a while, in a new game, but eventually, the fact that it is a game, rather than a novel or a movie--the fact that the players must be allowed to see behind the curtain, at least in terms of making use of their own character's powers and items, means that the mystery must fade. The only way--the only way--for magic to remain enigmatic and mysterious in an RPG, for a game to truly replicate fantasy tales where sorcery is alien and frightening and unknowable, is to keep it completely out of the PCs' hands.
One can make the exact same argument, incidentally, for exotic races. No matter how much you'd like your elves, or dragonborn, or Melniboneans to seem truly alien, that image is going to break down the instant those races become available to PCs. You can't keep the audience in the dark when the audience is actually writing/acting the part of two of the main characters.
Another of the more common laments, at least in my experience, is that many games--D&D in particular, but I've heard it about others, too--aren't lethal enough, and therefore not challenging enough. I'm not talking about the fact that characters in D&D can fight at full effectiveness until dead. There are lots of games that do try to mimic injury with "death spirals," where the more wounded a character is, the more penalties they have. The Solomon Kane game I'm in does that. I hate it, personally, but it's obviously an experience that some games offer.
But a game where combat is realistically lethal? Where a single sword thrust is likely to kill? Where standing toe-to-toe (well, face-to-toe) with a dragon is almost certain to result almost immediately in a character becoming toe jam? Yeah, there are a few games that offer that. (I've heard that The Riddle of Steel is one, but I've not played it myself, so I can't say for sure.) So it's not technically impossible. But I challenge you to find a popular game that does so.
Why? Because once again, you run into a paradox between the experience that some people want (or think they want) and the requirements of the game itself. See, the thing is, most of the time, when people are playing a game? They want to be playing a game. Quick, brutal, easy, and frequent death may make the game feel more challenging, but it also results in a lot of downtime as people make new characters. And it's not just the time spent rolling dice or allocating points, but in coming up with new backgrounds and personalities that mesh with the group and the campaign. (To say nothing of the DM/GM/ST having to constantly rework any ongoing plotlines.) Except in games where it's specifically built in (like Paranoia, which can be a lot of fun but provides a limited variety of gaming experiences), excessively frequent character death actually impedes the ability of the players to play the game.
And of course the obvious paradox is that your traditional roleplaying game can't handle some of the most popular fantasy character archetypes. We've already covered why it can't manage the mysterious wizard. But how about the brooding loner? Oh, sure, lots of people create such characters. But the result is almost always one of two outcomes:
1) The character swiftly ceases to be a loner, falling in with the group with relative ease, or
2) The DM spends a whole lot of time with a split party. Now, leaving aside all the various "don't split the party" jokes, there's the simple fact that when a DM is focusing on what's happening over here, it means that any players whose characters are over there aren't actually getting to do much. (There are sometimes ways around this--letting them play NPCs, for instance--but none of these techniques are always appropriate or always satisfying.) Now, I'm not suggesting that a party should never split up, or that this playstyle can't work for some groups. But as a general rule, in a group-oriented game like most RPGs, it just doesn't fly.
So we've got a situation where some of the classic characters of fantasy--Conan, Elric, Solomon Kane--are extremely difficult to port over into most RPGs, because they rarely operated in large groups. And when they did, it was very rarely among equals.
(The Buffy RPG tried to work around this by giving the non-superpowered types extra "drama" points--luck, basically--to keep them on par with the "stars." But even there, it's often difficult to keep the super-folks from overshadowing the others. Again, this works for some groups, but in your average RPG, it's not a good idea to relegate some players to the roll of sidekick.)
Finally, a lot of fantasy tales create drama, suspense, or just tension in battle via the use of scarcity. The heroes are stranded on an island with precious little water. They're trying to hold a fortification against an oncoming horde, and they're short on arrows.
This is something that RPGs can do. Tracking rations and ammunition is a staple for some groups. Here's the problem, though... It's tedious. It's a lot of bookkeeping, and while it may not sound like much to just check off a box with every shot, in the thick of everything else to remember in combat, it can be a serious hassle.
"But isn't that worth it, for the dramatic possibilities?" Well, for some groups, sure. But for many players, the fact that is does boil down to bookkeeping, to numbers on a sheet, strips it of any actual dramatic tension it might have. Much like the magic issue, above, the fact that the players are the ones behind the curtain means that it's not drama; it's homework.
The way around it, of course, is to leave it in the hands of the DM. The PCs begin to run low on food or ammunition based purely on DM fiat. That's fine with a group that trusts the DM not to screw them over, and to use that particular tool only when it's truly dramatically appropriate. But it's difficult to hardwire "skilled DM" into a game's rules-as-written. So this sort of tension becomes something that specific groups can pull off, but your average game, out of the box, can't.
By now, many of you are already getting ready to point out games that are exceptions to these rules. I'm sure they exist. But I'm equally sure that they're either
A) very narrow in scope, doing one of these things well at the expense of a lot of other possibilities, and/or
B) capable of doing these things, but not well.
For a more generalized game, like D&D, Savage Worlds, GURPS, World of Darkness, etc. these particular "paradoxes" are always going to be hurdles to be overcome or, in most cases, grudgingly accepted as limitations.
The more astute among you will have noticed that all of these issues fall under a common heading. They're all problems primarily for people who want to recreate certain types of stories in their campaigns. Want your magic to be mysterious and enigmatic? Want your combat to be swift and lethal? Want your nonhuman races to be alien? Odds are good it's because you're trying to recreate the feel of the sort of fantasy you enjoy reading or watching. (And I don't say that as a negative. On many of these issues, I'm right there with you.)
And that, really, is the ultimate RPG paradox: The fact that a game and a hobby originally inspired by some very specific fictional influences is quite capable of creating its own stories, but is woefully ineffective at modeling many of the types of tales on which it's based.
