Yesterday's Post Today!
Despite all the kinds of games out there, Role Playing Games (RPGs) are my favorite. They allow a player to take on the role of a character or cast of characters as they pursue a goal. Those goals can be noble, such as saving the world/kingdom/town/self from something, or something sinister, like stealing cars and kill people (or taking over/destroying the world). Different games offer this range of moralities with their own justifications. The Grand Theft Auto series has always been about being a criminal, and while they sometimes offer some kind of justification for the murders and thefts and destruction you will no doubt cause over the course of the game, most people who play them do so to experience that thrill of being 'evil' without the real life consequences. On the same token, games like Dragon Age: Inquisition offers the player a spectrum of options to choose from in pursuing the goal of stopping monsters from overrunning the world, and some are more noble than others. And then you have Zelda, where you're always the good guy, and the worst thing you can do is murder a chicken and smash peoples pots.
The games I just mentioned are video games, but RPGs also come as table top games. By table top I mean a game you play similarly to a board game, on a table with other people, and usually involves dice and a set of rules for how to use those dice to play the game. The game is also usually one by a player whose job it is to tell the story and take the role as the antagonists. These players are generally called Game Masters (GM), since they also enforce the rules. Because of the nature of the game players have virtually unlimited choice of how they want to proceed, tempered by the consequences and results determined by the GM. So unlike a video game, which has a goal in mind and certain limits as to how you can accomplish them, a table top game's only limit is the imagination, with the GM and the results of dice rolls the only thing that holds you back. A good GM will generally take what you come up with in mind, but if you're trying to kill 100 orcs with one arrow by bouncing it off rocks, you are asking to fail. There are still levels of success based on game rules, and some times things are just too ridiculous to work.
For instance, Dungeons & Dragons, one of the most popular table top RPGs in the world, uses a system of tiers call Levels (something many games both digital and physical use) to determine a characters abilities, powers, skills, and more. At level one, killing a single orc with an arrow can be hard,but not impossible. A lucky shot can take an orc out in one hit, or just make it angry and come after you. By level ten, however, one-shotting an orc should be easy, and you begin to be able to do feats such as making an arrow go through one orc and hit another standing behind him. By level twenty, you might even shoot four arrows at once, have them all punch through the orcs, hit the ones behind them, and maybe make the arrows explode for even more carnage. But the trickier the shot, the better your skills and dice rolls need to be. And by level twenty the orcs may just run at the sight of you. The dragon on the other hand...
The thing I like most about table top games, though, is the story. I've played noble paladins fighting for the honor of their deity while slaying the undead that plague the world. I've played warriors who seek to amend a disgraceful past and die gloriously in battle in the name of their ancestors. I've played a selfish, short sighted rogue who thought her (yes, I play female characters sometimes) way was the only way, and hurt both friends and enemies on her personal quest for justice. Table top games allow you to make your own history and goals for your characters, instead of having to follow the script of a video game. I enjoy Skyrim and Dragon Age as much as the next gamer, but even they limit your choices, and your goals. In the table top realms that come either ready to go from the publisher, or you make one up with your friends from scratch, you can do anything in them (GM and dice permitting). Want to be a sorcerer who comes from a cursed family seeking to enslave the very demon lord that cursed your ancestors? Go for it! Want to be a barbarian chieftain set on claiming the civilized world for your people so they no longer need to fear the night? Go for it! Want to help resurrect the God of Murder and watch the world bathe in blood for his glory? Umm, okay, sure.
Your goals don't even need to fit the fantasy genre, which D&D and many other games inspired by Tolkien focus on. There are games that take place in a world of Gothic Horror inspired by authors like H.P. Lovecraft. There are games based on Star Wars, Star Trek, even video game franchises like Warcraft and Dragon Age. You can be a Werewolf, a Vampyre, a Mummy, in the White Wolf "World of Darkness" setting. You can be a super hero, a super villain, a pirate, the options are as endless as the imaginations of players. You can even take a rule set you like and make your own setting where dragons with lasers fight pirates in flying space ships and people drink potions to gain super powers if you wanted.
In every way, an RPG is like getting to actively engage in writing a book in a manner that's unique. You don't have to think about how a battle will turn out, you roll the dice, and fate decides it. And that's what makes it so thrilling. I remember a game where I played a Half-orc samurai-esque warrior just beginning to uncover a plot to turn a peaceful valley into a gateway to Hell. Facing long odds and enemies several steps ahead of he and his allies, he remained determined to stop the evil plot, even at the cost of his life. Though the story ended up left unfinished due to the unfairness of real life not allowing people's schedules to mesh, I always imagined his end to be found stemming the tide of the demons, alone with no hope of victory, as his allies raced to close the bridge between realms, giving them as much time as possible before joining his God, Kord, on the battlefields of eternity.
Some day...
In a time where writing my novel was a chore, table tops gave me a creative outlet that I could use to try out tropes and ideas in unrelated settings, and seeing how a character might develop in a more natural way (as opposed to an author forcing things to happen, which might be described as artificial). That is why I write, and that is why I game.
The games I just mentioned are video games, but RPGs also come as table top games. By table top I mean a game you play similarly to a board game, on a table with other people, and usually involves dice and a set of rules for how to use those dice to play the game. The game is also usually one by a player whose job it is to tell the story and take the role as the antagonists. These players are generally called Game Masters (GM), since they also enforce the rules. Because of the nature of the game players have virtually unlimited choice of how they want to proceed, tempered by the consequences and results determined by the GM. So unlike a video game, which has a goal in mind and certain limits as to how you can accomplish them, a table top game's only limit is the imagination, with the GM and the results of dice rolls the only thing that holds you back. A good GM will generally take what you come up with in mind, but if you're trying to kill 100 orcs with one arrow by bouncing it off rocks, you are asking to fail. There are still levels of success based on game rules, and some times things are just too ridiculous to work.
For instance, Dungeons & Dragons, one of the most popular table top RPGs in the world, uses a system of tiers call Levels (something many games both digital and physical use) to determine a characters abilities, powers, skills, and more. At level one, killing a single orc with an arrow can be hard,but not impossible. A lucky shot can take an orc out in one hit, or just make it angry and come after you. By level ten, however, one-shotting an orc should be easy, and you begin to be able to do feats such as making an arrow go through one orc and hit another standing behind him. By level twenty, you might even shoot four arrows at once, have them all punch through the orcs, hit the ones behind them, and maybe make the arrows explode for even more carnage. But the trickier the shot, the better your skills and dice rolls need to be. And by level twenty the orcs may just run at the sight of you. The dragon on the other hand...
The thing I like most about table top games, though, is the story. I've played noble paladins fighting for the honor of their deity while slaying the undead that plague the world. I've played warriors who seek to amend a disgraceful past and die gloriously in battle in the name of their ancestors. I've played a selfish, short sighted rogue who thought her (yes, I play female characters sometimes) way was the only way, and hurt both friends and enemies on her personal quest for justice. Table top games allow you to make your own history and goals for your characters, instead of having to follow the script of a video game. I enjoy Skyrim and Dragon Age as much as the next gamer, but even they limit your choices, and your goals. In the table top realms that come either ready to go from the publisher, or you make one up with your friends from scratch, you can do anything in them (GM and dice permitting). Want to be a sorcerer who comes from a cursed family seeking to enslave the very demon lord that cursed your ancestors? Go for it! Want to be a barbarian chieftain set on claiming the civilized world for your people so they no longer need to fear the night? Go for it! Want to help resurrect the God of Murder and watch the world bathe in blood for his glory? Umm, okay, sure.
Your goals don't even need to fit the fantasy genre, which D&D and many other games inspired by Tolkien focus on. There are games that take place in a world of Gothic Horror inspired by authors like H.P. Lovecraft. There are games based on Star Wars, Star Trek, even video game franchises like Warcraft and Dragon Age. You can be a Werewolf, a Vampyre, a Mummy, in the White Wolf "World of Darkness" setting. You can be a super hero, a super villain, a pirate, the options are as endless as the imaginations of players. You can even take a rule set you like and make your own setting where dragons with lasers fight pirates in flying space ships and people drink potions to gain super powers if you wanted.
In every way, an RPG is like getting to actively engage in writing a book in a manner that's unique. You don't have to think about how a battle will turn out, you roll the dice, and fate decides it. And that's what makes it so thrilling. I remember a game where I played a Half-orc samurai-esque warrior just beginning to uncover a plot to turn a peaceful valley into a gateway to Hell. Facing long odds and enemies several steps ahead of he and his allies, he remained determined to stop the evil plot, even at the cost of his life. Though the story ended up left unfinished due to the unfairness of real life not allowing people's schedules to mesh, I always imagined his end to be found stemming the tide of the demons, alone with no hope of victory, as his allies raced to close the bridge between realms, giving them as much time as possible before joining his God, Kord, on the battlefields of eternity.
Some day...
In a time where writing my novel was a chore, table tops gave me a creative outlet that I could use to try out tropes and ideas in unrelated settings, and seeing how a character might develop in a more natural way (as opposed to an author forcing things to happen, which might be described as artificial). That is why I write, and that is why I game.
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