I DO NOT LIKE D&D

by Kris Wolfe 

Word. Today I plan to discuss some of the issues that Mr. Manson brought up in his editorial, "Common RPG Misconceptions." I am going to be talking about RPGs from the perspective of a console gamer. I also plan to go off on a few massive tangents. This will be long, so break out the coffee. His quotes will be in *** stars.

***Have you ever asked yourself "What is a Role-playing Game"? The term "RPG" usually conjures some similar idea in one's head concerning this much-used acronym. When not bringing forth thoughts of grenade launchers, it usually brings forth thoughts of knights and of dragons, of magic and high fantasy. You see, that's the misconception. None of those things make a Role-playing Game. Rest assured, any Role-playing Game must have some fantastic element to be exciting and thus worth playing, but by no means does it have to be magic and monsters. The fantastic element could be cybernetically-enhanced battle warriors, wizards and dragons, freaks of science, superheroes, or awesome mech combat.***

I agreed wholeheartedly with this part. I'm sick myself of hearing people say, "That's not an RPG! Your guy doesn't have a sword!" or "That's not an RPG, because there's cars/motorcycles/technology of any kind!" To me an RPG must have at least 2 of 3 simple things for me to consider it as an "RPG" and not some other genre (how GOOD a game it is is beside the point). It needs characters who are more than a shell for action/level building; it needs a story that is more than an excuse to go through a dungeon; and it needs the option for you to talk to people in towns. I realize my definition probably sticks in the throats of people who are convinced that the RPG is a complicated higher gaming pinnacle that other genres are striving towards, but it's not. Like any game genre that's been around for a while, it just got more complicated and better, but that doesn't mean that an RPG need BE complicated or what have you. It just needs those basic things to count as an RPG (even if it counts as a really crappy RPG, yes).

I also know my "talking to people" point might seem to most people like it's a weird little side effect in an RPG, and not something that forms a basis for determining genre, but to me the option to wander around talking to people is part of what makes an RPG. See, in most action games (or other genres) you may talk to people till you turn blue in the face, but it's scripted info that you need to get past a part of the game. Usually it's talk that you can't even avoid having (you can skip it, of course, but in theory you had it). But in most RPGs you can walk around and talk to whomever you please, and most of the time they don't say anything you need to hear. Many times you can go into a place, do whatever triggers the next part of the story, and leave without talking to almost anyone. The fact that you CAN talk to anyone, anytime (and in recent games people even say different things after key events) allows you to feel like you're in that world. It lets you feel like you're walking around town with your character, not just learning what your motivation for the latest dungeon is.

I'm sure you all remember that soldier in FF6 who kept giving you letters to take home to his sweetheart. Game relevance? Zero. None. Zilch. But talking to him (and running his little errand as a side quest, if you wished) made me, at least, feel a closer bond with the world and the story of the game. I was SAD when I did the Cyan side-quest later and went to the girl's house. Little things like that make the game more than a power trip. You don't play and beat an RPG to feel like you're a badass macho man who can triumph over challenges; you play it to explore and learn about a world and walk every step of an adventure with someone who you feel like you know. (Well, that's overgeneralizing. There are indeed many people who DO play RPGs for the heady rush of victory they feel when they can beat the game with 2 experience points and a fire spell, but since I'm an egocentric writer I ignore people who are THAT different from me. This sentance exists to let you know that I know power RPGers do exist and that I don't care. I'm not writing this editorial for them.) Okay, that was a huge digression.

Notice that I say "with" your character. Not "as" your character. This will be important soon.

***Other elements often missing in console RPGs are necessary to give the game its "Roleplaying" edge.***

This is where I started diagreeing with this ed.

***Some people also seem to think (especially the bigwigs at Square, or at least the people that wrote them in to go back to "their roots") that RPGs must have super-deformed heroes and such, and that the setting must be Japanese or Animelike in some manner.***

I agree with this. The setting need not be SD, Japanese, or animelike. The whole point of SD sprites in the days of the SNES or before is that you COULDN'T have a normal-proportioned person (like in FF8, for example) and still have ANY chance of even MINOR facial expressions or hairstyle differences. And if that's so, then every one of your blond characters will look the same and there's only so many hair colors to go around. Solution? Make the heads big enough to make them all a little different. Personally, the sight of FMV Zidane makes me retchingly ill. He's massively unproportioned (look at his hips! ARGH!!!) and it's practically disgusting because SD is NOT supposed to look realistic. That's the POINT. But I've digressed again.

***These are the same people that contend that Americans can not make (or haven't yet made) a good Role-playing Game.***

They haven't, to my knowledge. Not a console RPG, anyway. I'm not dissing this ed's author, but I think he forgets that many people who write eds to RPGamer and people who make the above statement are console gamers ONLY, or else they only play a few PC games. And Americans have barely produced ANY RPGs at all, much less good ones. Things tend to be popular because people like them. It's true there's a certain amount of bandwagoning, but when a lot of people like something (ie Chrono Trigger) then it's probably not because it sucks. The lack of popularity of american RPGs (all what, 3 of them?) isn't because they're "American"... I've met Japanophiles, but most people I know do not care WHERE something comes from as long as it's good. The lack of popularity is, well, because the games aren't good. (And yes, I'm aware of PC RPGs which are good, and no, I don't play them and I don't care, because they're not console-style.)

*** I wonder if these people realize that the original RPG was made in Wisconsin. If this is a real misconception (which I hope it isn't), then if Gary Gygax (creator of that first RPG, a little-known game called Dungeons & Dragons) was dead, he'd be turning in his grave. Since he's not, I assume he's just ignorant of the whole affair.***

Well, aren't WE the smart-ass. I wonder if this ed author realizes that many people do not like D&D. I do not like D&D. I don't HATE D&D, but I don't like the type of people I know in RL who play it, and I don't necessarily have time to play when they do anyway, and NO, I do not like completely making a story from scratch by hearing, "You see a locked door with a candle holder next to it. The candle is not lit. The holder has a curl out front and looks as if it could be pulled down. The door has a pentagram on it. You are standing 3 feet away, what do you do?" and saying, "I check the lock for traps." When I create a story I like to write or draw. I am not saying D&D is stupid or that everyone should do what I do; but I AM saying that there are a lot of people who outright find D&D boring and pointless, or a waste of time and creative energy when they could be creating something more permenent and meaningful. They play console RPGs not because they want to emulate D&D, but because they don't really like D&D and they want something different. I agree that console RPGs are not like P&P RPGs, and that's the point. If you want a P&P RPG, you can go play one. ( Though I hear there's some decent P&P-style games on computers these days, but as Mr. Manson says, a computer cannot be as random as a human, and I agree with him.)

I'm offended by P&P players who state that console RPGs are "bad" because they don't allow you to put yourself in the game and wander around, or because there's a story other than one you make out of your own head or with other players. Those people probably LOVE the idea of MMORPGs -- I don't. Anyway, for me, one of the CHARMS of console RPGs is that you play not as yourself, but as a sort of invisible follower of someone else. I enjoy wandering around with someone else, as it were. As some other guy said in his ed last week (I'm too lazy to look), your best friend can be Locke. You are not Locke yourself. Locke is not your representation in the world of FF6. None of the characters are. You can think of yourself as being the very quiet invisible party member. You are there for the events. You are angered by people who want to hurt your friends, you are shocked by evil villains, you feel as if YOU took every step from Midgar to the crater because you did! But you're still not supposed to BE your characters, unless you have some kind of mental complex, in which case I guess you shouldn't play games because you'd take a sword to someone... but anyway. My point is that you are NOT playing "yourself" or a character you've created to represent yourself (or the facet of yourself that you like the best with some physical improvements). You're walking around a new world, side by side with someone else who's got his/her own personality; how well you get to know that person is at the discretion of the creators.

*** I believe it was a book called Heroic Worlds (a RPGer's buyers' guide) that deemed a RPG "quantified interactive storytelling". All characters in the game have statistics which are represented in numbers, or quantified. The Player Characters (i.e.: characters controlled by a human player) interacted with their surroundings as vessels in the fantasy world.***

See, I just said that most console gamers are not looking for this sort of feeling of putting themselves into the game ("feeling like you're there" and "putting yourself into the game" is as big a difference as a good novel and a "choose-your-own-adventure" book). Certainly there are the kind of people (like Mr Manson, perhaps) who play them and feel a bit unfulfilled, but many console gamers like console games BECAUSE they aren't like P&P games. As Mr. Manson said, the technology doesn't really support the kind of game that could be even a decent emulation of a P&P RPG. And yet more and more people play them all the time. I don't think this is because these people WANT to be playing P&P-style RPGs and they can't; I think it's because they LIKE the way console RPGs are. I love the feel of a "console style" RPG. That's why I DON'T tend to play most PC RPGs -- they just don't have that console feel that I like.

***The game's Referee (at this point I request console players to bear with me, I'm sure this is an alien concept for you) creates a (not necessarily) simple background scenario to give the players a reason for performing dangerous acts of heroism (which in "heroic" fantasy, consists of going into monsters' lairs, killing them, and stealing their treasure).***

Great, now we're all stupid people who've never heard of a DM. Thanks.

***Creating a simple background scenario keeps the Referee from having a well-thought out story become ruined by the Player Characters' whims, since, in a true RPG, players have autonomic control over their characters, unless the characters are charmed or under some other duress. And not even the most imaginative Referee is prepared for every contingency.***

Okay, so basically within a frame of something that someone else thought up, players act like themselves only more capable and attractive. Right. You know, the difference between these games may not be as great as I thought. </sarcasm.> Seriously: a P&P RPG's attractiveness lies in the fact that if you've got an imaginative DM and players, the "adventure" that the players are on can get very complex and go off in any direction people can think of, whereas in console RPGs, you're not yourself: you're walking alongside a person who has somewhere to go already, and a life and personality that isn't something you have much control over as a player. To some, like myself, the second sort of game is very good. Yes, I DO think of it as "sort of like a book," the same way that anime is "sort of like a live-action show." In other words, it has the same basic goal: tell a story. But a game tells a story in a completely different way than a book does. Things are possible in every medium that are impossible in all the others. Therefore, there's no need to get all sniffly just because console RPGs are not P&P RPGs you can play by yourself. That's one more difference: P&P-style is often attractive because OTHER PEOPLE are playing with you. Console RPGs are usually meant to be enjoyed on your own, like a good book. I honestly don't think console RPGs are meant to be much like P&P RPGs at all.

***These, and only these, are the necessary elements for a Role-playing Game. Sure, video games are fun, but as long as computers can only process information in strings and bytes, and not possess the ability to think and create on its own like a human (and God help us all if that happens), a computer can not run a true RPG (and this includes even the Playstation 2's God-like "Emotion Engine" (which is very much a joke, it just goes to show that Japanese developers will put any two English words together to make it sound interesting, not to mention fooling even the Americans who speak it natively, but I digress again)). There is no substitute for the human imagination. At least not yet.***

What's with all the digs at Japan? Geez. Anyway, anyone who reads this ed might notice that Mr. Manson's idea of what are "necessary elements for an RPG" and mine are SUBSTANTUALLY different. And why? I believe it may be because I'm a console gamer and I'm looking at it from that perspective, and not from the perspective of someone who is disappointed in console RPGs because they're not P&P RPGs in the least.

These days when you talk about console "RPG" it's sort of like talking about "alternative" music. It's a label for a genre; it's not a completely and utterly accurate description of the thing involved. So to all those P&Pers out there who are offended that something so linear as the average console game is called an RPG: remember, it IS a console RPG.

Thanks for your time. Flames and people who wish to disagree offensively need not write me, but if you have a comment or debate, or if you want to agree with me (I'll always take that kind of mail! ^_^), feel free to write me at krswolfe@inav.net. Or I'm in #rpgamer sometimes as Vash_the_Stampede.

Look forward to my next editorial: Why Don't Guys Realize Girls Play Video Games?

--Kris Wolfe [Angry Cow Productions]