Reynard
aka Ian Eller
NOTE: The definition of "fun" I will be using is the kind of fun that puts a crap-eating grn on your face or makes you high-five the guy next to you -- "fun" in the amusement park, Half-Life 2 Deathmatch, night out at the bar with the boys kind of fun.
I don't always want to have "fun" when I play or run a game. Rather, I want to be entertained, engaged and affected. Sometimes that translates to "fun", but not always. Not every truly enjoyable movie or book is "fun" -- there is very little that is "fun" about Cormack McCarthy's 'The Road', for example, but I couldn't put it down until I had finished it.
'The Road' might be a poor example because it suggests that what I want is heart wrenching emotion and catharsis. That is true sometimes, but not always. I also like to build things that last (at least in the fictional milieu of the game) or explore the unknown or come face to face with embodiments of human evil loosely veiled by green flesh and tusks. Exploration and kingdom building are not necessarily fun; slogging through the underdark harried by monsters with two days wort of rations and no light source doesn't have to be played for "fun" either. Drama and horror and tragedy and epic triumph all go well past fun and move straight into Enterainment.
Even the purely gamist aspects of D&D don't have to have "fun" as the primary component. D&D tactical combat can be every bit as mentally challenging and serious as chess under the right circumstances (not to say that chess can't be "fun" by the way) and the process of working within the constraints of the rules can often be rewarding and engaging without putting the aformentioned grin on one's face.
The greatest strength of the RPG is that it is a medium of entertainment, much like film or literature, that is not constrained by anything but our imaginations. What's more, it is interactive in a way film and literature cannot be by virtue that it is a game. And it is social, as well, informed by and improved by the involvement of others and their own quest to get the most entertainment out of the time they invest.
D&D is not a special case. It is as valid a vehicle for "un-fun" entertainment as any indie press game or any White Wolf game. There isn't an experience, an emotion or a kind of story that you could name that I have not engaged through D&D specifically. D&D doesn't have to be designed with "fun" as it primary design goal and philosophy -- it only has to be designed with entertainment as its goal, to remember that it is a medium and not a genre, that what happens at the individual tables is far more valuable and important than what goes into the books. And it needs to be open enough to allow any given person, any given group to make their own "fun" -- to choose to be entertained and engaged and affected in the way they want to be, not force-fed a particular kind of "fun" because that is what polls and market research say is the best kind of "fun".
Specific Examples:
- In one of the best campaigns I ever ran (which was certainly full of "fun"), many of the characters were siblings (the children of one of the previous campaign's PCs and NPCs that got married). One of the siblings (a PC) was killed early on in the campaign, and another (an NPC) died as a tangential result of player actions. Later, one of the sibling PCs -- a monk -- challenged a NPC orgre-magi to a duel while the others looked on (unhappy about it, but not willing to deny the monk his chance at reclaiming his honor). After the ogre-magi killed the monk (best. fight. evar.) the final remaining PC sibling went home to tell his NPC mother that her son was dead. the first to get to the PC was the youngest sibling, an 8 year old girl NPC, who asked "Where's Ash?" (I did my best innocent-little-girl impression). The player responded flatly, "He's dead," and walked past the girl. I damn near actually cried.
- In an Aberrant campaign that had a kind of silver age fun vibe to it, before we knew all the rules and their implications, the "brick" character with Mega-Strength, during a typical Big Dumb Supers Fight, punched right through a villain. being the improv GM that I am, I described the horror and the gore and we all sat there in stunned silence for a minute. It wasn't fun 'ka-POW' -- it was a sudden injection of Saving Private Ryan in our Hogan's Heroes. It was affecting.
I don't always want to have "fun" when I play or run a game. Rather, I want to be entertained, engaged and affected. Sometimes that translates to "fun", but not always. Not every truly enjoyable movie or book is "fun" -- there is very little that is "fun" about Cormack McCarthy's 'The Road', for example, but I couldn't put it down until I had finished it.
'The Road' might be a poor example because it suggests that what I want is heart wrenching emotion and catharsis. That is true sometimes, but not always. I also like to build things that last (at least in the fictional milieu of the game) or explore the unknown or come face to face with embodiments of human evil loosely veiled by green flesh and tusks. Exploration and kingdom building are not necessarily fun; slogging through the underdark harried by monsters with two days wort of rations and no light source doesn't have to be played for "fun" either. Drama and horror and tragedy and epic triumph all go well past fun and move straight into Enterainment.
Even the purely gamist aspects of D&D don't have to have "fun" as the primary component. D&D tactical combat can be every bit as mentally challenging and serious as chess under the right circumstances (not to say that chess can't be "fun" by the way) and the process of working within the constraints of the rules can often be rewarding and engaging without putting the aformentioned grin on one's face.
The greatest strength of the RPG is that it is a medium of entertainment, much like film or literature, that is not constrained by anything but our imaginations. What's more, it is interactive in a way film and literature cannot be by virtue that it is a game. And it is social, as well, informed by and improved by the involvement of others and their own quest to get the most entertainment out of the time they invest.
D&D is not a special case. It is as valid a vehicle for "un-fun" entertainment as any indie press game or any White Wolf game. There isn't an experience, an emotion or a kind of story that you could name that I have not engaged through D&D specifically. D&D doesn't have to be designed with "fun" as it primary design goal and philosophy -- it only has to be designed with entertainment as its goal, to remember that it is a medium and not a genre, that what happens at the individual tables is far more valuable and important than what goes into the books. And it needs to be open enough to allow any given person, any given group to make their own "fun" -- to choose to be entertained and engaged and affected in the way they want to be, not force-fed a particular kind of "fun" because that is what polls and market research say is the best kind of "fun".
Specific Examples:
- In one of the best campaigns I ever ran (which was certainly full of "fun"), many of the characters were siblings (the children of one of the previous campaign's PCs and NPCs that got married). One of the siblings (a PC) was killed early on in the campaign, and another (an NPC) died as a tangential result of player actions. Later, one of the sibling PCs -- a monk -- challenged a NPC orgre-magi to a duel while the others looked on (unhappy about it, but not willing to deny the monk his chance at reclaiming his honor). After the ogre-magi killed the monk (best. fight. evar.) the final remaining PC sibling went home to tell his NPC mother that her son was dead. the first to get to the PC was the youngest sibling, an 8 year old girl NPC, who asked "Where's Ash?" (I did my best innocent-little-girl impression). The player responded flatly, "He's dead," and walked past the girl. I damn near actually cried.
- In an Aberrant campaign that had a kind of silver age fun vibe to it, before we knew all the rules and their implications, the "brick" character with Mega-Strength, during a typical Big Dumb Supers Fight, punched right through a villain. being the improv GM that I am, I described the horror and the gore and we all sat there in stunned silence for a minute. It wasn't fun 'ka-POW' -- it was a sudden injection of Saving Private Ryan in our Hogan's Heroes. It was affecting.
