Why is fantasy the dominant RPG genre?

[Corinth]

Yes, but once a person starts to play D&D, they do have opportunities to hear about other game brands. If there was a more appealing system out there, they'd start pulling it off the shelves.

They have the opportunity, but they almost never take it. As the WotC market survey made clear, most people quit the hobby altogether when they quit D&D; the few that go play other RPGs are a distinct minority.

Like I said, D&D just has a solid formula. Another important design concept I only touched on before was that of rewarding success. RPG's may be more advanced than Monopoly, but players still want some basic way to measure how well they're doing, and they want to keep doing better. Most other genres--supers, science fiction, horror--don't offer much in the way of a built-in reward system, outisde of just a sense of personal accomplishment. With D&D, OTOH, a good chunk of the DMG is devoted to giving players nice shiny new toys with go-faster stripes.

This is true. Joe Gamer is there to play a game first, last and foremost. He's there to beat the dungeon, not to perform amateur theater, because he views his PC as a playing piece and not as a three-dimensional dramatic persona. His assumption of a role begins and ends with his niche in actual gameplay; so long as he "the fighter", "the cleric" (etc.) it really doesn't matter what his PC's name is or what the philosophical underpinning of the local society may be- in fact, it gets in the way of playing the game. WotC (and TSR before that) understood this, which is why setting information is often scant or non-existant in rulebooks.

D&D is a game first; few other RPGs are. This is a big factor into D&D's past, present and future success.

 

[WayneLigon]

This is true. Joe Gamer is there to play a game first, last and foremost. He's there to beat the dungeon, not to perform amateur theater, because he views his PC as a playing piece and not as a three-dimensional dramatic persona. His assumption of a role begins and ends with his niche in actual gameplay; so long as he "the fighter", "the cleric" (etc.) it really doesn't matter what his PC's name is or what the philosophical underpinning of the local society may be- in fact, it gets in the way of playing the game. WotC (and TSR before that) understood this, which is why setting information is often scant or non-existant in rulebooks.

D&D is a game first; few other RPGs are. This is a big factor into D&D's past, present and future success.

I have to disagree with pretty much every sentence in there. I think the scant setting info is a factor in D&D's success: without setting info, D&D can be whatever the GM needs it to be. I can run Conan, LoTR, Lankhmar, Earthsea, Jhereg, and Theive's World all with making a few minor adjustments to the D&D rules. Or no adjustments. The more setting info you have, the less someone is going to see it as a 'generic' game system that can be adapted.

Joe Gamer might start out that way, but give him about five or six sessions under a good GM and he's doing amature theater with the rest of us.

 

[d4]

Joe Gamer might start out that way, but give him about five or six sessions under a good GM and he's doing amature theater with the rest of us.

or not. not every gamer enjoys that style of gaming -- and not every gamer who avoids "amateur theater" is a newbie or a bad DM/player.

i think Felon is for the most part correct -- for the majority of gamers, RPGs are games first and "dramatic role assumption" (a distant) second.

 

[Imperialus]

forgive me if this has been mentioned already but I also think that in a lot of Sci Fi settings it is exceptionally easy for a character to get lost in the background of the universe. Say you were to play a Star Treck role playing game. I can only really see two real options on how to run the game and both have some pretty big drawbacks.

1) The players are all senor ranking officers on some starship. They get to make all the command decisions, direct the ship in combat, and generally muck about as they please. Big problem with this is the there will be no where near enough players in all but the most gigantic of groups to play even the most senor officers on a ship crewed by say 300 people. I mean bare minimum you'll need a Captain, First Officer, Comms, Helm, Weapons Officer, Engineer, Doctor, Chief Petty Officer, Science, and Navigation, to name a few. This forces the DM to play a huge array of regularly reccuring characters who must remain hugely consistant as the players will be dealing with them nearly every session. The other problem is the fact that each of those jobs is so specialized it would be exceptionally difficult to write an adventure in which everyone can take part. I mean it's all well and good to play an adventure that is a knock down drag em out fight with some alien menace but the poor SOB playing the science officer may as well be sitting with his finger up his nose for most of the session.

2) The other possibility is to have the players all be members of a military unit, like say a squadron of Imperial Space Marines in Warhammer 40K. This has the opposite problem in that each character may as well be a carbon copy of the others. I mean when everyone is a grunt with a gun little can be done to allow the characters to develop specific personalities praticularly when they are fighting along side hundreds or thousands of other grunts with guns. Sure grunt #1 might have some extra skill points tossed into demolitions and grunt #3 might have a few stealth skills but when you get right down to it there is no real position for a lot of characters that players might want to play.

A few games have managed to do reasonably effecteive jobs of provideing futureistic settings, my personal favorite is probably Shadowrun but even in that game I felt the need to outright ban deckers as player characters. I mean for 90% of the adventure they sat around and sharpened penciles while saying "Oh, a firefight? I duck." and on the occasions they actually got a chance to use their decking skills everyone else may as well go out for pizza while the player and the DM spend 45 minutes playing a compleately different game. My shadowrun teams would always have a decker onboard but he would be an NPC and I would run any possible decking beforehand. On the occasions when he would jack in and do his computer vodoo I would simply say "you see joe blow go limp for 10 minutes while you cover his back. Suddenly he reaches up pulls the plug from his head and says, OK guys, we're in."

D&D has the exceptional advantage of nearly everyone being useful in almost all situations. Sure a thief might not go toe to toe with an orc at first level, but he can probably drop him in 1 hit if he makes a sucessful backstab. However a half decent DM can also write almost anyone out of a campaign as needed. For example, you only have 3 players and they are playing a fighter, a cleric and a wizard? Fine tone down the traps they are going to come across. Have a fighter a thief and a wizard? That works too just don't throw them up against too much undead and maby toss in a few extra healing potions. Perhaps you would send group A into a dungon to kill a lich who relies on his undead servents to keep intruders out. Group B may find itself breaking into the manor of a corrupt city offical with ties to the thieves guild, they would be forced to bypass the traps and human guards he has to find incriminateing evidance against him. Even dungons that are almost indentical could be run by either group simply by changeing what they will encounter inside. Take out that lich and make him an equivilant CR sorcerer instead give him orcs and ogres and bodyguards instead of vampire spawn and mummies. Besides if things get too rough the fighter in group A could take a few levels of rouge or the wizard in group B could take a couple levels of cleric.

 

[Rel]

First and foremost I think this is a very interesting discussion. I won't go and kill it by providing the correct answer to the question at hand (there's little danger of this since I don't know the correct answer and there may not even be one ).

I think A reason, though certainly not THE reason and perhaps not even one of the best reasons is similar to what Felon was saying: It's all about the Game.

One thing that appeals to me about fantasy is that I have an easier time believing in the character progression than in other genres. I can envision very easily the fledgling wizard's apprentice who knows how to cast Light, Shield and Magic Missile, rising in power to someday become capable of flinging about Meteor Swarms. Same thing with the lowly squire who will someday be wielding a hugely powerful sword and smiting dragons low.

I have a more difficult time imagining the same progression for more "realistic" genres like modern and sci-fi. Sure, you can always buy a bigger gun or get a larger spaceship. But you could probably afford a bigger gun fairly soon in your career and spaceship battles are dicey affairs that put the whole party's eggs in one big basket that could suffer explosive decompression at any moment. And really, if my character makes it to 15th level and I'm flying around in a Star Destroyer or the Enterprise, the game has probably taken a turn away from being personal and has become more managerial.

The point that I'm sort of getting at here is that, for me, non-fantasy games are tremendous fun. But they tend to lack some of the staying power that fantasy has. I enjoy running "mini-campaigns" for Star Wars or Modern. But my longer campaigns always have been and probably always will be fantasy.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yes, it is possible to run a good Modern game by taking the news story from outside and running a group through it.

But just imagine how much more awesome it would be if, say, the the kidnapper was an orc from a tribe your nation has been at war with for millenia? Or if the gang shooting was actually between rival Doppelganger clans, and involved an assassin who could stick to the walls and turn invisible?

And Star Wars is fantasy, not so much sci-fi. Sci fi is more Trek; it's more about humanity and human tendancies writ large in a world created and maintained by human beings. Star Wars is about magic and monsters and Good and Evil.

Basically, I think the reason is, yes, playing someone running for thier lives through a city filled with undead is fun....but wouldn't it be more fun if those undead included the shambling corpses of giants and behemoths? And if they were raised by an elven necromancer? And if instead of runnign for your life, you could fight back effectively, and save the town isntead of just survive?

And, yes, Fantasy is easier to learn, because we can ignore Reality while we do it. We don't need too much of a justification for why we have been at war with an orc tribe for millenia. On the other hand, if you say we've been at war with, I dunno, Germany, for millenia, people are going to want to know why, and why the hell no one knows about it....

 

[Ycore Rixle]

I think there are many reasons why fantasy makes a great genre for RPGs, but I believe the one that sets it apart from the other genres is that it is easier to believe in. Jester and Rel made similar points.

At first, it may seem easier to believe in an uber-realistic d20 modern game with AK47's and MRE's and hummvees backfiring in the desert. But then you start adding in the game components: to make it fun (to most gamers), you have to add in lots and lots of combat; you have to have a combat system that allows for a character to survive multiple conflicts; you have to allow for advancement; you have to allow for a sense of wonder, for numerous scheming villains, for all sorts of dramatic conventions. These things are easier to take - easier to suspend disbelief in - in a fantasy world rather than one that is trying to be "realistic."

 

[Desdichado]

At first, it may seem easier to believe in an uber-realistic d20 modern game with AK47's and MRE's and hummvees backfiring in the desert. But then you start adding in the game components: to make it fun (to most gamers), you have to add in lots and lots of combat; you have to have a combat system that allows for a character to survive multiple conflicts; you have to allow for advancement; you have to allow for a sense of wonder, for numerous scheming villains, for all sorts of dramatic conventions. These things are easier to take - easier to suspend disbelief in - in a fantasy world rather than one that is trying to be "realistic."

Yeah, because all those action movies and books aren't at all like that even though they're set in a modern setting.

 

[Orius]

Say you were to play a Star Treck role playing game. I can only really see two real options on how to run the game and both have some pretty big drawbacks.

1) The players are all senor ranking officers on some starship. They get to make all the command decisions, direct the ship in combat, and generally muck about as they please. Big problem with this is the there will be no where near enough players in all but the most gigantic of groups to play even the most senor officers on a ship crewed by say 300 people. I mean bare minimum you'll need a Captain, First Officer, Comms, Helm, Weapons Officer, Engineer, Doctor, Chief Petty Officer, Science, and Navigation, to name a few. This forces the DM to play a huge array of regularly reccuring characters who must remain hugely consistant as the players will be dealing with them nearly every session.

That's an interesting point. The various Trek series usually revolve around a crew of about 7 or 8 characters (DS9 being the exception). Game groups often aren't that big.

The other problem is the fact that each of those jobs is so specialized it would be exceptionally difficult to write an adventure in which everyone can take part. I mean it's all well and good to play an adventure that is a knock down drag em out fight with some alien menace but the poor SOB playing the science officer may as well be sitting with his finger up his nose for most of the session.

Not really, you're talking Star Trek, right? The science officer basically would spend most of the combat whipping up some kind of miracle tech based on junk science to miraculously win the fight in the portion of the game representing the last 5 minutes of the episode.

 

[MerakSpielman]

"Uhh.... can I rig my tricorder to do something to it's unique, alien biology?"

"Sure! You win!"



Seriously, though, I love fantasy, and probably everybody here on these boards does, too. We can't properly comprehend the idea of somebody not liking or understanding High Fantasy.

To get a better response to this topic, I'd recommend posting it on a Star Wars RPG message board. Why do they prefer Sci-fi over fantasy? Or some other game's message board. You know what I'm saying?