The Role-Playing Game is a distinctly modern genre. The roots of Role-Playing Games go back over a century. The first miniatures wargame was published in the 1800's, but it took almost a century between that game and the revolution of small unit tactics games in the 60's, which would become Chainmail, which would become Dungeons and Dragons.
If you're a gamer of my generation, your first RPG was D&D. It had its weaknesses: There were really only a couple ways to interact with the world. You could talk to things or attack them. There were charts for both. Certain classes had other ways to interact with things: Elves could spot secret doors; Dwarves could understand architecture and tunnels; Spell-casters could do a lot of things; and Thieves (they wouldn't be renamed rogues until second edition) had a list of things they could do that were denied all other classes. Some book added secondary-skills, giving each character a useful occupation such as "armorer" or "cooper" but there weren't systems for these skills. The (wilderness and dungeoneers) Survival Guides added a system of non-weapon proficiencies which gave you some new ways of interacting, but, essentially, all characters had a set of buttons, one was fight, one was talk, and then there were a few more that varied by class.
Gaming matured since then and systems changed with them. One of the marks of the new edition of games was that all skills worked by the same mechanics. Attacking with a sword, hiding from a guard, and riding a horse worked the same way. This was a big change: In D&D, the first rolled a d20, and wanted a high number, the second rolled a d100 and wanted a low one, while the third rolled a d20 and wanted a low number.
But, these new edition games brought something else complicated with them: Skill lists. A skill list became a way of looking at the world. They defined those buttons I talked about earlier. They also made something important or secondary. In D&D you didn't have to roll to ride a horse. You just rode a horse. Once they added proficiencies, you could roll to do tricks while you were on a horse, but you still didn't roll to move from A to B on horseback. Skill lists meant that you could roll to ride a horse. Certainly, in the real world, getting a horse to go from A to B isn't always easy, and, when you're in the middle of a firefight, and it's loud and the horse is panicking, it's even harder. But, the game where it's a challenge to get into the fight is a very different game than one where the only conflict occurs once you're there.
Modern games made this even more complicated. The modern world is a busy place full of broken down cars, working computer systems, and VCR clocks that our parents can't set. It became possible to make a character who couldn't fight, and solved problems other ways, but it also created a world where it was possible for a Player Character to be totally useless.
The idea of a totally useless character would be alien in D&D. Even a mage who has exhausted his spells can pull out his dagger or staff and start hitting things. He may suck at it, but he can do something. There may be individual scenes where the Elf negotiates with pixies and everyone else just sits there and waits it out, because no one else took Pixie as a language, but the game would go on and there would always be something to thump with your broadsword.
But, when the fight isn't inevitable in a game, there needn't be a use for every character. I call this the quandary of the computer-hacker. I ran a game once (the system was GURPS, but for those of you who don't play all you need to know is that it was a system where you spent points to build a character and everyone starts with 100 points) that was a spy game. Someone wanted to play the computer hacker, and spent something like 85% of his character points on things that made him a good hacker. The other points existed to keep him out of jail for his electronic mischief.
The character was interesting, and totally viable. In the action movie he would have worked great, but, in the game he filled one of two roles: He either sat in a room and solved problems while the other players ate buffalo wings, or, he sat at headquarters and manned the phones while everyone else broke into buildings, seduced enemy spies, killed people, or blew stuff up. In the real world, he wouldn't have been a member of that team. He would have been a specialist who dealt with things, and the other players would have been a team.
We solved the problem by having Sean make a new character, and his hacker became a plot device to solve specific problems and gather information. The problem wasn't that Sean made a bad character. The problem was the exact opposite: Sean made a great character, for a very different game. I didn't know enough about computer systems to make challenges that he had to do more than roll a die to beat. Meanwhile, Sean's character was wholly unsuited to action scenes: He was a parapalegic in a wheelchair. I didn't know how to make challenges that required both his skill in computers, and his friends' skills in seduction, stealth, combat, and demolitions, that didn't also require him to go up stairs.
This was an extreme case, but, it happens in every game with a poorly designed skill list: Someone takes a skill or ability that they perceive as cool, and they then get punished because they never get the spotlight, while the guy who knows what kind of games Bob runs get to be the stars. Or, the guy running the game starts making up opportunities for guy to use his skills, and suddenly being a computer hacker is way more useful than it is the the real world.
I started thinking about this recently, because a friend of mine, and fellow collaborator on this blog is talking about running an Iron Kingdoms game, and I've started looking at the game. It's decidedly old school. The skill list is about thirty skills long, and the classes are all defined largely by what they do in combat (this guy is really good at killing animals). But, I look at it and think that no one will get stuck having nothing to do, because it's impossible to make a character with nothing to do. All the skills are defined by what they do in combat.
Which is nice, because Sean was way more fun when he became the getaway driver than when he had to sit in his wheelchair by the radio.
No comments:
Post a Comment