The Culture Beneath the Stairs

Beyond the Numbers

Storytelling: What is it you are playing?

by Conan McKegg
October 3, 2001

I am constantly impressed by the vehement commentaries that blaze across roleplaying forums about what makes a good game. The mechanics, the setting, the writing, the design, all these things get bandied around without anyone stopping to consider what game they think they are playing.

One of common arguments I see usually involve the battle between gamers who prefer realism in their games to those who want to focus on the conventions of plot. Neither ever seem to stop and consider the type of game they are playing, they both simply desire to argue over it. I find myself reminded of the very first words our Applied Ethics lecturer told us at the beginning of the course:

"Remember, nobody is ever right. But that's okay, because nobody is ever wrong either. There are just different opinions."

Now obviously there are going to be people who dispute that statement. In fact I suspect that they will argue against it quite vehemently that this is too simplistic a statement. Ironically enough, by doing so they will proving that it is true instead.

So what has this got to do with anything in particular? What am I getting trying to get at? I am asking what makes people think that their style of roleplaying is the only one. There are a great deal of people who like to feel that they are right. That, beyond any doubt, they know the truth and nothing can deter them. These are often the people who like to say things like "Oh, she's not a very good roleplayer." "He's a pretty poor GM" and so forth without thinking about what it is that they are saying. Most interestingly, at least to me, is the division between players who seek realism in their games and players who seek to tell a story or act out a movie.

Realism is a focus on providing a convincing simulation of life through roleplaying. Well, to the degree that any particular game can aspire to. For example, take a look at GURPS. This is a generic system that prides itself on attempts to create a fairly believable level of realism. The trade off has been that the game progressively becomes bogged down in rules with each additional and new world you introduce. In my opinion this raises an interesting question. "What is real?" Realistic games tend to sacrifice heroics in favor of statistical probabilities and physics. Now, before people start saying to me, "What is wrong with that?" I have to emphasize that there is nothing wrong with playing games in this manner. Realistic games can provide a lot of drama and excitement to a game, there isn't the same character confidence that plot driven games can sometimes generate. Your character could indeed die at any time through the course of a session.

On the other hand, the advantages of a story driven game can allow for drama, excitement and fun from a different angle. A well designed game places the PCs at the center of the action. They are the heroes, the main cast to the adventure series that the group plays out. Unlike a realistic game, story-driven games often have a stronger sense of direction and characters are unlikely to die through error. When a character dies in a story-driven game, it will be at a plot-specific moment. These games do have a greater risk of railroading the players however.

So, why is there a battle? A lot of gamers fail to realize that not everyone likes realistic games or elaborate story-based games. Some people like to play character-centered games. Others like to simply goof-off and play around in their game settings. There are those people who desire to play their games as if they were episodes of a television series. Yet there are those people out there who feel that their style of gaming is the correct style.

Now let's be honest. Different games have different aims. Millennium's End was about fairly realistic espionage and Covert Ops simulations. Top Secret (A long lost TSR game) was not. GURPS Supers was an attempt at realistic superheroes in contrast to DC Heroes which was about creating your favorite supercharacter. When playing a game, it is important to establish what level of realism the players are willing to accept as well as making certain that the game system can achieve this. If you want a strictly realistic game, I would suggest not playing D20.

But then, how real is real? Face it, people can argue until they are blue in the face over which system is the most "realistic" of all the systems, but I would have to personally say that there is no such thing. Reality is not something that can be statistically represented accurately. We can find systems that are fairly close, but nothing beats the imagination for being able to replicate that varying factors. My feeling is that the simplest game systems are the most realistic, because they leave most of the actual interpretation up to you, the player. You can place your own level of accuracy onto the system. (Although not ALL simple systems are flexible enough.) In my own gaming experience, I would have to say that Kult without a doubt had the best system for flexible realism. The rules were deceptively simple, freeing the GM and Players to define the level of realism themselves. I do find this somewhat ironic considering that Kult's main theme was that reality was a lie.

Of course the other side of the coin has its flaws. The greatest flaw to a story-driven game is that if it is too story drive, why not read a book instead. There have been an increasing number of these types of games. The word "metaplot" is at risk of falling under the same curse as "Interactive Movie." Games are first and foremost about the players, not the storyline. Sure, there needs to be a plot to move the game along -- but not at the expense of the players' ability to interact. I have seen a great many of the recent metaplot driven products requiring the poor GM to read page long NPC speeches, to which the players become nothing more than an audience watching their GM performing.

Some of the best games I have played involved the GM taking all the differing PC subplots and playing them out. We had an entire campaign where all the GM did was allow our characters to wander around Montreal tidying up our own storylines while sometimes dealing with the darker plot that was slowly hatching in the background. The actual plot that he had written didn't get underway until we started the second campaign. This freeform style is not for everyone though; some players prefer to know what is happening. Still I do note with some interest that there is a distinct lack of guides for freeform roleplaying. In fact it has even been my experience that there is a certain hubris among gamers and designers that everyone knows how to roleplay already. This astounds me, that there is a habit of aiming products at existing roleplayers as opposed to trying to draw in new players.

It is here that I must commit blasphemy and say kudos to WotC for making roleplaying a more accessible hobby. Sure, we are a long way from becoming as big as poker, but at least D&D3e has added more players to the roleplaying "gene-pool" so to speak. And once again, these players tend to play roleplaying games much like a cardless form of Magic: the Gathering. Maybe if other companies would be willing to learn from this lesson however, we may see a new boom in the industry.

Once again I hope that at least some of this article has managed to get you thinking about the way you are playing your games and the opinions that you hold of other people and players. Just remember, judging others simply because they are playing a game differently is pointless. We all have different views of what it is to roleplay, and there is no right or wrong way of playing a game. (Unless, of course, it is in the live-action sense. Come on people, there is such a thing as being sensible.) Until next month, Farewell. See you on the forums.