My Life As A Gamer: The Core Qualities Of A Competent Role-Playing Game

Introduction

For nearly 50 years the tabletop role-playing game business has talked a good deal about this medium and its hobby. It promised an endless entertainment medium of adventure, excitement, and imaginiative play without peer.

Today, despite the recent success of the dominant company (Magic-Users By The Water, "MuBTW" hereafter) and brand (Current Edition D&D), it has long since been surpassed by competing media that also sell "RPGs". On consoles and PCs, single-player and (massively) multi-player, called "RPG" or merely playing as such without the label, the videogame medium has far and away delivered on the promises that the publishers of tabletop RPGs made then and continue to make now- and they do so with superior experience, convenience, and social acceptance.

There is nothing justifying the existance of the typical tabletop role-playing game, especially with the rise of virtual tabletop programs making the medium one step away from a videogame but with the hassle of scheduling meeting times as if it were a job, having to cancel if everyone doesn't show up (as if it were a job), lopsided workloads with the dysfunctions that creates on top of those other dysfunctional hobby practices, and the social space is filled with petty grifters scamming audiences and bullshitting them into non-solutions to known issues.

MuBTW recognizes this and has been trying to pivot out of this legacy business model for years without success until the rise and establishment of Pay-To-Win mobile games riddled with nickle-and-dime microtransactions explicitly based off the same predatory casino psychology gave MuBTW the out it wanted- and is already positioning itself to execute. The corporate response, therefore, is "Fuck those retarded faggot misers. We're going where the real money is."

It doesn't have to be this way.

Due to the Boomers of the day failing to comprehend what Gygax wrote, the qualities that are necessary--the core qualities--that define a competent and complete tabletop RPG were lost for decades and the erros perpetuated due to Cargo Cult mentality taking hold and dominating the discourse until the #BROSR came along and asked one simple question: "Is that was is actually in the manual?"

It turned out that what was said to be there (or not there) was wrong. From there we've come over the last few years to figure out what the tabletop RPG medium does that competing RPG media has not done because it cannot do so- either because it is too great a technical challenge, or it is too costly to make it profitable to do so (the latter being far more aimed at MMORPGs, and current events ensure that it is nigh-impossible that this will change for generations).

The secret? To remember the roots of the medium: Kriegspiel. That means that what we've had as a problem is that, for nearly 50 years, we thought we were playing full and complete tabletop RPGs but instead were playing gimped facsimiles that did no such thing. This is no different than handing your toddler a drivable toy car and telling him it's a real--but small--car just like what Dad uses.

Rediscovering the roots of tabletop RPGs means rediscovering their core qualities that defines them and thus justifies their existence- and that means one thing:

The First: Obviously A Wargame

I keep mentioning Kriegspiel, Braunstein, and Diplomacy for a reason. That reason is to differentiate proper wargame campaigning from the typical, degraded state of popular wargaming represented by Warhammer and BattleTech, where games are isolated incidents with no continuity from one to the next (and thus many things the aforementioned games deal with--logistics, intelligence, long-term morale, ongoing consequences--are ignored as irrelevant.

A complete and competent tabletop RPG will make this a feature and be built around this as the driver of campaign play. (AD&D1e, Gamma World 1e) A competent one will have it in the rules and make it work without issue, but neglect making a feature of it.

This quality is core because of the need for the strategic level of play, represented by Patrons and their Domains, and it forces the need to vest authority in the rules and not the Referee due to wargaming being adversarial--Player vs. Player--by definition. A RPG that lacks the wargame quality will disdain and disavow the authority of the rules.

As the vast majority of would-be RPGs fail this quality, that culls at least 80% of them from consideration right here.

The Second: Clear Expectations For Play

This is what filters out most of what remains, including the superhero games. If you shove AD&D, Traveller, Gamma World, or Shadowrun before someone you do not need to explain what the game--and thus the campaign--is about. There are crystal-clear expectations, and the game's rules work to fulfill those expectations; you don't need to tinker with it to make it work as intended.

Superhero games hit this filter because--as the folks in videogames, film, and TV found out the hard way--"superhero" is a STYLE not a GENRE. In gaming terms, this translates to a different set of campaign scenarios that are applicable for play; Counter-Intelligence (crimefighting/anti-terrorism) is not Cosmic Adventure despite both parties wearing garish costumes. It is required to tinker to get the superhero games that otherwise are viable as games to work; this is why "dev kit products" like HERO and GURPS lag behind those considered "ready out of the box" like AD&D.

Some get hung up on the stylings in a similar manner. Crime and Spy games are really the same thing, just with different emphasis of pace and means to resolve the scenario; they are both games of Intelligence (i.e. spooking) mixed with action with the key variable being autonomy (i.e. are you able to settle things yourselves, or are you just tasked with handing a target over).

Other games run into similar issues. Palladium's RIFTS always comes with "And what, specifically, are we playing?" attached since there is no clear expectation to the game (and Palladium has refused to make it so, despite clearly prefering one). Runequest needs to be explained; that's not a clear expectation.

This is a filter about players knowing what they're going to do before agreeing to play; everyone knows what BattleTech is about, which is why people get mad when there's a lack of stompy robot action (same as Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, Robotech, and Mekton Zeta).

Horror has similar issues, which is why very few of them endure; everyone knows what Call of Cthulhu or All Flesh Must Be Eaten is about.

The Revealed Preference of the tabletop gamer--even after correcting and rectifying past dysfunctions--show that games with unclear play expectations are ditched for those that do have them. This, again, plays into why D&D remains on top despite all that's been done to damage it.

The Third: Not Redundant

This filter culls a lot of those that made the first two filters. The not-D&D fantasy adventure games that are perennial also-rans (e.g. Palladium Fantasy) hit this snag due to not being different enough to justify playing them save as a protest. (Yes, Pathfinder, looking at you.)

A lot of the licensed games only exist due to their licensed IP; on their own merits, they often fail and there are few exceptions (one of them being After The Bomb, the de-licensed version of their TMNT RPG, but rendered redundant by RIFTS first and then Gamma World).

This quality matters because it demonstrates that the designer and the publisher comprehend that a market niche is already filled by an existing competitor--you have to be a fucking retard to make a fantasy game to compete with D&D; those that got away with it had specific circumstances in their favor which no longer exist and never will again--so they went where they can define an unmet demand and become the dominant game in that niche instead.

As RPGs are a medium that depends entirely on Network Effects for value, First Mover matters. That's why it takes so much to supplant an incumbant game, and that is never a guaranteed success--again, just as Paizo--because the would-be victim can come back from the dead and retake their crown.

A redundant game will always struggle to find players because it's going to be the also-ran to the dominant game, especially if the dominant game has a company actively pushing it, and it will take a nigh-revolutionary effort to get the players to reconsider that established opinion (usually by a radical reorganization of how the game works; designers and publishers, that's your hint- the #BROSR has shown you how to win).

As a consequence, the few games that got through the first two filters will be winnowed down to a handful of worthies because they are trying to fill a space that is already occupied.

The Consequences

You can count the number of tabletop RPGs worth playing on two hands at the most, and that is being generous; you could probably count them on one. The vast majority of those available for sale, or floating around the used market, can be ignored and probably should. If they are not unfit for purpose, they are redundant and impractical to keep around- you may do so for sentimental reasons (I do), but expecting them to work without undue effort (that will not be appreciated) is unreasonable.

Designers and publishers would do well to reconsider their catalogs in light of this.

Make your RPGs into proper wargames. Make certain that would-be players can just look at your covers or ad copy and know instantly what they can expect to play (and be certain to deliver on that in your rules). Cull redundant products from your catalog. We don't need Yet Another D&D Clone. We don't need Yet Another Space Game, another Robot Game, and so on.

Maybe this means you reinvent a product as a card game or a board game. (It wouldn't be the first time.) Maybe this means that you stop using games to satisfy your urges to tell stories and learn how to write fiction people will buy and read (and enjoy) instead.

Because most "RPGs" are nothing of the sort. They are unfit for purpose, made redundant by better or more popular games, or both, and if they were wiped out tomorrow no one would notice or care.

If that's your output, it's time to reconsider what you're doing here because you're not making games. You're making half-assed toys and calling them what they are not.