My Life As A Gamer: RPGs Are A Wargame, Explained

RPGs are a wargame derivative.

It's time to explain why this is so, and in so doing expose what the appeal of the medium is and why most RPGs utterly fail because they refuse to exploit that appeal and thus play to the medium's strengths.

The appeal of the medium is maximum player agency. They gain this agency through having supreme command authority to decide on what to do and how to go about doing it. Their constraints are those of time, logistics, and intelligence; they may not have the time to act as they wish, the resources to do so, or the information required. They are not the peons given orders to labor by a lord, or conscripts ordered to combat by their officer. They are the shot-callers, and as such they give the orders.

There is no need to provide an antagonist. There is no need to engage in narrative logic. There is only the need to impress upon the players that their present position is poor, that it is solely up to them to improve it, so they must answer the question that drives the gameplay loop: "What do you do?"

The Game Master does not need to do anything beforehand but put down an empty sheet of paper with a square or hex grid on it, designate where on that empty map the players start at, and maybe fill in the adjacent squares or hexes. This is true regardless of the genre; it is as applicable for Dungeons & Dragons as it is for Traveller or any other game. Games with functionally identical conditions, even if that map is already fleshed out, include Shadowrun, Cyberpunk 2020, and Call of Cthulhu.

It is on the players to drive the game. They must engage with the setting to make their situation better. That means that they must go forth from wherever they start, encounter NPCs, and engage with them. That can be via friendly interactions or not, ultimately as the players choose but filtered through both players' skill at play and the qualities of the characters in question.

This is why the Game Master need not create an antagonist; players are plenty capable of creating their own, so let them--deliberately or otherwise--do so and save him the bother. It is also why there is no need to create a story; players' actions are more than capable of creating an emergent series of events that they will reframe as a narrative to explain to others, both in and out of character, after the fact. It is also why the Game Master need not create a vast setting; emergent gameplay, created as required, will produce a far more interesting setting than anything a commercial publisher can produce.

The Game Master does not need to be cruel, or kind, or bend the rules to protect or persecute. The Game Master need only ask that fundamental question, adminster the rules as-written, and faithfully report the results of actions taken to the players. His is, in fact, a very reactive and even relaxing role once properly comprehended. It can even be called "lazy", at some risk of misunderstanding. His entertainment comes from watching the players struggle with imperfect intelligence, limited resources, and precious time as they go about solving their problems.

Compare that to the player, for whom the entertainment is in being the man in the arena facing against the beast before him- literally and metaphorically. His is the joy and pain of facing his own problems, making the best of what he's got to solve them, and then dealing with his success or failure in doing so. Sometimes he fails in spectacular fashion, and sometimes he trimuphs over the odds, but his is the entertainment of accomplishment after expending effort- eventually including the recruitment of others and leading them as a team or a unit.

This is how D&D works. This is how Traveller works. Both games, from the get-go, comprehended and exploited all of this. It is why those two games remain on top of their respective genres despite decades of time and several botched business decisions. Shadowrun remains because it took builds off this model. Cyberpunk 2020 endures likewise. Call of Cthulhu works very well in this mode. Palladium's best RPGs--including RIFTS--work fantastic in this mode. The further away you go from this pillar of strength, this core paradigm, the more you run into failures and fuckups with regard to RPGs. This applies to both the games and the people that make them.

It also explains why RPGs in other media never reach the full power of the medium, and why narrative logic does not apply to RPGs.

Play the right way and you will experience something no other medium can achieve: supreme visceral virtual experience.