Captain Anorak's Guide to Gaming
What Makes a Good Roleplaying Game?
Many people have spouted, gushed and declaimed on the subject of what elements are necessary to make a good roleplaying game. This is my foray into this tangled and controversial line of country. It is of course just my own personal view, and many will disagree with it. But because my brain is so much larger and more powerful than those of other, lesser individuals, my opinion must be given vastly greater weight.

EXCITEMENT and ADVENTURE

First of all, an RPG has to be about something exciting. Most people might think that was obvious, but I've known people (let's call them 'arty types' and leave it at that - I think you know what I'm really trying to imply here) who seem to think that games about mundane things are just as 'valid' as games of excitement and adventure. One chap I knew was thinking of writing a game called 24/7 about living day-to-day life in our modern world, having a day job and paying the mortgage. I was horrified.

This is all terribly wrong and people like this need a few good cracks across the face to teach them a lesson.

Getting back to excitement, a good form of excitement is adventure. Fighting, raiding, smuggling and the like are all good ripping sources of adventure and excitement. But there are other forms of excitement too. Political intrigue, for instance, can be exciting without being adventurous.

RISK and CHALLENGE

Commonly, excitement derives from risk. If my charcater has to fight his way through the Caverns of Doom, I want this to be a challenge. It's exciting because there's a risk, and I know I might not make it. This is all destroyed if I can't really be harmed. If I have so many Hit Points, and am loaded down with so many healing potions and magic items, that I know I'm going to come out of it without a scratch, then it quickly becomes dull. Hacking through ranks of the enemy loses its excitment and becomes a dull slog. When the game reaches the point where I know I can't fail because my stats are so high, I lose interest.

I once knew a fellow who could always find a way of creating virtually unkillable characters. On one notorious occasion he created a Vampire character with the maximum level in the vampiric power of mind control (Dominate, I think it's called) and the maximum levels in the stats needed to use this power. Now this was a starting character, not an experienced one who'd gained lots of Experience Points to get this far.

This character was so good at mind control that he just sat in a bunker all the time and used mind control to move mortals around doing his work for him. He could take complete control of any mortal (except for powerful wizards) and then just use them like pawns. This gave him a virtually unlimited supply of mortal bodies which he could use. If he was controlling a body and it got killed, he just got another.

I really didn't see how he could get any enjoyment from the game. To me, that would just be completely dull.

THE FEELING OF REALITY - IMMERSION IN THE WORLD AND STORY

Roleplaying games are the ultimate story games. More than any other they let us get deeply involved in a story in which we are taking part. The player gets to take up someone else's life in an imaginary world. When I do this I have to maintain the illusion of being in a real world. That can be an illusion which is easily shattered, which pisses me off quite a lot.

I remember at one CthulhuCon I went to, in two of the games I played there were incidents where a player asked the name of a certain character who had done something, and the GM in each case (two different GMs) said, 'His name's Mister A N Other.' This was the GM's way of implying 'That's not in the scenario - don't bother with it.' The GMs couldn't be bothered to make the effort to maintain the illusion of a real world. This really wrecked the feeling of being a person in a world for me, and it really annoyed me.

I like to feel that my character is in a world and there are things going on in that world which involve me. I like to feel that people are living their lives and struggling. I like to feel that this world is evolving and changing: big forces are at work that mean things change permanently.

An awful lot of games don't do this. Often I feel like I am moving a gamepiece around a gameboard instead of playing a character who's a person living in a world.

THE NEED TO THINK

I like a game where I get to use my brain a bit. I find the traditional dungeon bash a bit dull, because at the end of the day it's just a matter of wandering along having one fight after another. This doesn't take a lot of mental effort.

Thinking can come in different forms. It could mean sloving a mystery. It could mean using tactics to win. I remember one game where the PCs were pitted against vastly superior forces - they would have never stood a chance against the whole lot at once in open combat - but by sneaking around, ambushing the enemy where they didn't expect it, and finding out vital information about enemy movements, they were able to defeat numerically superior opponents. They did this with thinking. They planned a series of intelligent moves and then carried them out competently. This was quite a surprise considering the usual performance of my gaming group in those days. But it stands out in my mind as one of the best games I've ever played.

SIMPLE BUT REALISTIC RULES

Rules need to be simple and easily managed. But they also need to simulate reality fairly well. It's possible to write quite a simple rules system that is still quite realistic. Unfortunately, many games designers don't. This is a major peev for me.

Going back to my points above on the need to think, there are many games where people win by thinking, but their thinking is a manipulation of the game system. They're not making the tactical choices that a real person would make in the situation of their characters. Instead, they're making the tactical choices of players looking at game rules system.

The challenge for games designers is to make rules that actually simulate reality - so that if my character does something that would work in real life, it also works in the game. In too many games I've played, it seems like this effort has not been made.