What is the best RPG today? This is not the same as the best selling RPG, or the best RPG of all time. It is, in fact, an unanswerable question, which we'll answer anyway. Answering a 'best' is a bit like dating, like finding the perfect mate. Heck, it's an axiom in dating that your friends will ask with incredulity, "just what do you see in that person, anyway?"

In science we say one person's signal is another person's noise. In RPGs, one person's fun mechanic is another person's obtrusive annoyance. We like to make dualism comparisons and 2-axis systems. Rules light or rules heavy, diceless or not, setting-focused or mechanics focused, narrative or simulationist-- all dualism traps. Traps, I tell you, traps!

Was the blockbuster movie 'Titanic' a great historical piece, marred by the addition of a love story? Or was it a great love story with a bit too much historical stuff? Neither, it was the peanut butter cup of moviedoom, a mix of disparate elements that worked. It was, dare we say it, art. Art is defined as a cop-out where we can then safely claim it wasn't something we can analyze. So under the 'art' definition, the best RPG is that one that's the best for some strange reason?

Some do like to fall back on the criteria that the game that sells the best is the best. This makes Monopoly the best board game in the world and McDonalds the best food in the world, though, and I reject that definition. A pure market stance usually carries the implication that the best game will get more (or different) people into gaming. Methods include chasing trends (pogs, anyone?), using tie-in licensing (which doesn't explain why Star Wars is not the best selling game ever), and simply be clever and executing the idea very well (M:TG, Diablo). We run into trouble, here, because eventually the item which reaches the most people ends up being something we no longer call an RPG.

There are some other criteria for best RPG. Longevity versus novelty-- is it a classic evergreen title, or just the equivalent of a summer blockbuster? This can be difficult to assess, however. Looking at the parallel medium of comic books, some classics of yore don't stand up as well today. 'Watchmen' was revolutionary when it came out, but now seems merely good, not earth-shattering. Old 'Avengers' sagas like the Celestial Madonna are lauded as epic but really read poorly compared to better works today.

In gaming, there's been an evolution of players, of the audience. This has evolved the systems we play. There are influences by other media. The form has also changed. To draw a parallel to comic books, superheroes defined that genre, much as hack-and-slash D&D fantasy defined RPGing. In comics, trade paperback collections changed the marketplace from a subscriber/collector model to a reader model. Now many readers skip the single books and 'wait for the trade'. While efforts to be all to all people, or novelty for novelty's sake, often clunk (see DC's many reboots as an example), Kyle Baker notes that DC treats comics as potential IP incubators, so the economic success of an individual book is not as important as the concept of having many properties in play.

Perhaps we should look at RPGs not as the end product, but as an early stage of a larger something. Let the best ideas migrate out to movies, tablets, computer and console games, education and simulation. Under this model, we can get back to an economic evaluation of best RPG. The best RPG is the RPG that reaches the most people across all media. Let RPGs be a niche that's an incubator and crucible.

Or, you know, we could just play D&D or something.

Until next month,
Sandy,
sandy at rpgnet