Changes in good old roleplaying?

[soltakss]

It's the difference between a Short Story and a Series of Novels or a Film and a TV Series.

In a short story or film you have characters that are introduced, do something and then are thrown away. This is the equivalent to rolling up PCs for a one-off scenario. It's enjoyable and nobody much cares if the PC dies.

In a series of novels or a TV series you have characters that survive for several books/episodes, they develop and change and generally do not die. This is classic campaign play where PCs tend to survive for more than one scenario and players like to see them develop and add to the story.

Personally, I don't much care for the one-shot scenario and much prefer campaigns. That's one reason why I don't go to gaming clubs as they usually go for the "roll up a PC and do a scenario" approach with RQ this week, D20 the next, CoC the next and so on. That and they're full of geeks

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

Let me rephase thing. Now people are more likely to use long term character goals and themes for a series of adventures. The more character driven the campaign the more important those characters are.

I agree, this is another change in roleplaying games the last 25 years. In these days you could feel that the center of roleplaying was not always directly on the character. It was rather the adventure module. You could complete with it with any other character you rolled up during the campaign. Not so important as long as you played through the module.

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

RPGs have a lot in common with fiction. We are introduced to a central character (heroic or otherwise) and we watch him (her, it) face challenges until we get to the end of the story.

Maybe we should explain what "heroic" means in this. Or if non-heroic means that a character could get killed at every moment in the story or not. I think if you answer the question with "not" then the character is not non-heroic anymore. Its just a low skill hero in disguise.

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

If we see the central character get killed off early on, it can derail the story.

I think it depends on the story and the flexibility of the GM/player if this happens. Additionally "story derailing" has a very broad spectrum of interpretation. Eg my interpretation of "story derailing" is that it is sometimes even necessary to play a story upside down and totally different from your plan in order to immerse players. I am always ready do this and change a plot for 180 degrees because of various cirucumstances (actions and ideas of the players, death of a PC or NPC etc.).

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

Now the same holds true in an RPG game. Maybe more so, since the players have a vested interest in their characters that a viewer usually doesn't. No one really want the PCs to die, especially not the GM (if a GM brags about how many characters he is killing something is wrong).

My experiences are different. Its not that I want somebody see dying, but I am a believer of dice rolling and destiny. Never fugding the dice is my credo. Fudging dice means railroading and this I absolutely hate. In your system the players are dealing the whole time with dangerous stuff and live dangerous lives but they should not suffer any consequences untill they approach some idealized final fight. (if this concept of final fight is always necessary is another can of worms) I would not call this a very realistic resolving of situations. Its sounds rather scripted.

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

In order for the game to be exciting there needs to be an element of the unknown and some risk.

But not too many, no?

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

Recently RPGs some RPGs have looked into other ways to maintain the risk other that death.

I absolutely agree and this was one of the main points of my question in my first thread post. (the point "refusal to let a player die")

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

For instance in most films, novels and legends we know the main character is going to be around, at least until the end. That's how stories work. Yet we can usually be kept interested in see how the character gets out of whatever mess he got into. we know Batman, King Arthur, James Bond, etc. is going to survive the current peril and make it to the end of the movie.

Thanks. Now we are at one of the main reasons of the change. Cinema! I am convinced that gaming is for many people just a replacement for interactive movies/TV. It was different 25 years ago because movies/TV has been not so prominent in our brains because there were fewer shows. A good example of this is that every even slightly successful TV show, book and movie gets his own roleplaying game today. 1980 there was not much sign of this. The players didnt play "firefly", "buffy" or "Battlestar Galactica" immortal serial heroes. They didnt play anime heroes or Conan d20. They played generic characters in generic worlds like dwarfs, fighters in ravenloft or a traveller merc.

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by raymond_turney

I've noticed no anime influence. But then I don't play the anime influenced games and I've never lived in Japan, nor has any member of my gaming group.

I dont care about anime too. I find most of it cheesy. But many younger players dont. Eg. Exalted is one of the most successful roleplaying games. Even D&D has some anime influences with the new Eberon world. Cthulhu-Tech is a crossover of anime and lovecraft. The SF and fantasy media is full of anime elements.

Originally Posted by raymond_turney

There are a wider variety of games that support different role-playing styles - some people love Herouest, it leaves me mostly cold, and some people hate it.

And there is another group of people which dont even understand the HQ rules from a technical POV. (like myself )

Originally Posted by raymond_turney

At the same time that RPG was radiating into different niches and becoming a hobby {like model railroading was when I was growing up} that makes you merely slightly odd as opposed to downright weird; it has lost its original niche of weird college students who had two much time on their hands to World of Warcraft.

So we can say that roleplaying as we know it is dying slowly but steadily out?

Originally Posted by raymond_turney

As for character death, it has probably become more rare for four reasons. The first is that in a fairly complicated system it can take a long time to create a character, so character death costs you something. The second is that as more decisions are made, and characters acquire personalities rather than being simple power gaming avatars, losing a character costs more. The third is that we just have less time to play the games - meeting once every three weeks if I kill off a character it might take 6 months for the player to get as good an understanding of his next character as he has of the one he is playing now.

I agree. These 4 points are very valid. The games has become more and more "character-centric". Just regarding your first point "more complictated character generation" I think is it is the other way round. Its because the change of emphasis of todays games from the module to the character the chargen became more and more complex.

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Always been that way. Most of the early D&D adventures were incredibly linear.

Maybe I played other D&D modules than you, but I remember modules like "adventures in the wilderness" or "dangerous island" (or whatever the names has been) in which you could go whereever you want in a generic country/island drawn on hex paper. (ok, only 6 directions to be honest) This I would call non-linear.

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Well, the truth is that its just that many modern games are more honest about this rather than having it occur by GM fudging.

My GMs in those days never fudged. They let you die with an evil grin.

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by Simlasa

I don't see the anime thing as anymore than one section of the gaming market. None of the games I've read recently seemed to have much anime influence... but then anime is a pretty wide open field.

Of course its easily possible to circumvent anime-influence. But its present in many new style products. Just look at the covers of the games your FLGS has on its shelfs. Even D&D has with Eberon anime influence.

Originally Posted by Simlasa

Since then I've gravitated towards those same sorts of groups... I don't care for cinematic games... I like knowing my character can die... even for ridiculous, meaningless reasons (though none of my characters have ever been killed by a car as they walked out of their house!).
I'm fine with that... but I know a lot of people aren't, and never have been.

Its good to hear that there is another hard lonely fighter in a world of softies.

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by Ken

My only true lament for the longevity of our hobby is that there are some games that have fallen by the wayside and we no longer find in the shops. I would love to be able to go and buy a copy of Ringworld and have it sat on my shelf. Or direct new players to purchase RQ2, IMHO the most complete RPG for the small number of pages in which it was contained. Still I guess that's what Ebay is for

Yep. God bless ebay. And the people which sell their rare roleplaying stuff at ebay. I have alot of old RQ/BRP from ebay.

Sometimes I thought about scanning it in to prevent it to be lost in time. and have the pleasure to read it still in 30 years too. (you know only digital data is REAL data at all)

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by Ars Mysteriorum

I ran to the FLGS and purchased the gift set of the three core rulebooks for D&D 3.5.

You seem to be one of the younger gamers on the board, no? My first version of D&D has been the red box.
Nonetheless I am thankful that the answers here dont come solely from the generation 40+

Originally Posted by Ars Mysteriorum

Talislanta. WOW! So much setting, and yet so much freedom. Sechi's love for the world makes the reader love the world. He shows how vague detail can spark the mind. I ran it and my player, this time a very talented gamemaster I met while I lived in Japan, disliked how his magic was "too weak" and stubbornly pushed his magic into levels where Mishaps occured very often. This makes for a very un-fun game.

It looks like your GM has not been very sensible in those days.

Originally Posted by Ars Mysteriorum

Call of Cthulhu. The masterwork. My first games as a kid were AD&D 2nd Edition. Here were the stats I was so familiar with, and yet applied in a way that was so different. The game is a beautiful narrative system that places the power of the story squarely in the GM's hands (the Idea, Knowledge, and Luck rolls are powerful tools) and the slow spiral into insanity as characters explore the apathetic universe is breathtaking and entrenching. It's very hard to find players for this game where I am. d20 is really the only game and few players like failing and dying. Thanks to the path of games I've read I now find failure to be just as interesting as epic success, if not more so.

You are on an interesting and very good path I think.

Originally Posted by Ars Mysteriorum

My failures with Call of Cthulhu groups have been terrible. One player said he hated it because he didn't like failing. I looked at him oddly. What fun is a game where you can only win? This player was a fiercely competitive person and prone to sighing loudly when things did not go his way in-game and out-of-game. Another product of today's gaming.

I agree. I have a friend who has the same character trait as you described and I even if he asks me every half year or so, I dont let him participate in my games anymore.

Originally Posted by Ars Mysteriorum

Ugh. This kind of controlling, yet strangely controlled, gamer seems to be a product of the new kind of gaming.

This is my observation too. The modules of today seem overbalanced and "overdesigned" (sorry for the probably unsuitable term, but english is not my native tongue)

Originally Posted by Ars Mysteriorum

Sorry for the rant, but it felt good!

No prob. Feeling good is an excellent reason for posting here.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by soltakss

It's the difference between a Short Story and a Series of Novels or a Film and a TV Series.

In a short story or film you have characters that are introduced, do something and then are thrown away. This is the equivalent to rolling up PCs for a one-off scenario. It's enjoyable and nobody much cares if the PC dies.

In a series of novels or a TV series you have characters that survive for several books/episodes, they develop and change and generally do not die. This is classic campaign play where PCs tend to survive for more than one scenario and players like to see them develop and add to the story.

Yes, that's it exactly.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Enpeze

Maybe we should explain what "heroic" means in this. Or if non-heroic means that a character could get killed at every moment in the story or not. I think if you answer the question with "not" then the character is not non-heroic anymore. Its just a low skill hero in disguise.

That wasn't what I meant by the distinction. By heroic I was referring to the character's actions in the story. Many stories have normal people, or central characters who are less that noble. It's not really about if they can get killed or not. That is the thing, they really can't. It has to do with narrative structure. If you kill off the central character partway through the story, it derails the rest of the story. The loss of the main character can be dealt with in several ways, usually by promoting another character to central character status for the rest of the story. Other approaches are to use a non-linear story. An example would be in Pulp Fiction, where one of the characters gets killed in one scene, and they appears later in the movie n a story that is assumed to have taken place at an earlier time. That sort of solution is hard to implement in RPGs, and sort of makes it even hard to maintain suspension of disbelief. You can start a novel or movie with the main character's death and then go into a flashback, but the technique isn't very common in gaming.

Originally Posted by Enpeze

I think it depends on the story and the flexibility of the GM/player if this happens. Additionally "story derailing" has a very broad spectrum of interpretation. Eg my interpretation of "story derailing" is that it is sometimes even necessary to play a story upside down and totally different from your plan in order to immerse players. I am always ready do this and change a plot for 180 degrees because of various cirucumstances (actions and ideas of the players, death of a PC or NPC etc.).

As a GM should be. THat is really a central point to a RPG. If we wanted to be spectators we could read a book, or watch a TV show or movie. It is the interactaive quality that makes RPGs appaelaing. The ability to do what yuo wouldn want to do (or what your character would want to do) rather than what action someone else has decied for the character that is fun.

But by story derailing, especially in terms of a long term, on-going story, I am talking about situation where adventures are tailored to the characters rather than just being something that characters are "plugged" into. For example, if a PC is out looking to find his long lost brother, that is an important campaign goal for that character. If that PCs dies, a lot of the interest in that particular storyline will die with him. Maybe some other PC could decide to take an interest, or find the brother to honor their deceased companion, but the whole stroy arc could just as easily be left unresolved. This can be a bit of a problem since the PCs are not only actors, but the audience as well. For instance, if Luke Skywalker got killed by the Wampa ice creature, the audience would still be interested in Darth Vader, even if the other characters don't have a personal motivation to go after him.

Originally Posted by Enpeze

My experiences are different. Its not that I want somebody see dying, but I am a believer of dice rolling and destiny. Never fugding the dice is my credo. Fudging dice means railroading and this I absolutely hate. In your system the players are dealing the whole time with dangerous stuff and live dangerous lives but they should not suffer any consequences untill they approach some idealized final fight. (if this concept of final fight is always necessary is another can of worms) I would not call this a very realistic resolving of situations. Its sounds rather scripted.

Not really. Like I said earlier, it is a balancing act. I don't fudge, or have done so very infrequently. I've reversed a ruling a re fought a few battles when I felt the PCs weren't given a fair shake. For instance, one of my players was blind and sometimes he thought that he was at one part of the room instead of another, so I accommodated when he did something that seemed suicidal. But generally, I let the dice (and the PCs) fall where they may. As a GM I also do a lot of prep work to avoid that, though. If the PCs die every week then no one has fun. So I usually set the adventures up with a strong bias for the PCs. Everyone really does that. If it were 50-50 every fight, then 90% of campaigns wouldn't last 6 weeks.

Of course style and lethality varies by genre and game. I have run RQ and L5R campaigns where I literally wiped out half the group each week ("You can't fix stupid."). I've run Morrow Project and have generally wiped out over 95% of the PCs with only a single session being successful for the PCs. I've also run games like Marvel Superheroes where not a single PC was killed in the running of the adventures. Beaten senseless and buried under 40 tons of rubble, swallowed whole by a dinosaur or abducted by aliens, sure--but not killed.

Originally Posted by Enpeze

But not too many, no?

THe key word being "too". That's subjective. You could have an exciting RPG game by having everyone wake up with amesnia and knowing nothing. Maybe even spending points on skills or rolling attributes during play.

Originally Posted by Enpeze

I absolutely agree and this was one of the main points of my question in my first thread post. (the point "refusal to let a player die")

Well, I see two differernt issue here. One is simply providing variety buy coming up with something else to risk besides the character lives. That is good. If the players can get into something other that fighting and care for something you have tension and things can be exciting. There is nothing wrong with a high stakes poer game that won't lead to violence, or a contest of some sort. It is the challenge that is important. The stakes (the characters lives or not) are really only important for keeping the players interested. That why killing characters isn't fun, just a unpleasant duty that is required tomaintain the excitement of a campaign. But, if another meaninful contest is substituted for combat, that's fine.

On the other hand, some RPGs do go out of the way to make characters invulnerable, and that can be a bore. But then one of the biggest exmples of this is the most popular RPG out there. Not too many other games let you shrug off a .50 caliber bullet like D&D. At least not many that don't dress characters up in capes and tights.

Originally Posted by Enpeze

Thanks. Now we are at one of the main reasons of the change. Cinema! I am convinced that gaming is for many people just a replacement for interactive movies/TV. It was different 25 years ago because movies/TV has been not so prominent in our brains because there were fewer shows. A good example of this is that every even slightly successful TV show, book and movie gets his own roleplaying game today. 1980 there was not much sign of this. The players didnt play "firefly", "buffy" or "Battlestar Galactica" immortal serial heroes. They didnt play anime heroes or Conan d20. They played generic characters in generic worlds like dwarfs, fighters in ravenloft or a traveller merc.

I disagree. I think film/cineman is the most noticeable expression, but really the concept comes from the narrative structure. Rpgs are probably inspired more by literary sources than TV Or cinema. We expect Conan, Aragorn, John Carter, King Arthur, and such characters to live through their adventures (most if not all) and for good to triumph over evil and feel cheated and surprised in they were to bite the dust on page 8. The film/TV tie in RPGs might demonstrate that, but the source goes back to older forms of story telling.

If Tarzan of the Apes had ended with the Apes bashing the baby's brains out against a tree in the first chapter, or Tarzan getting eaten by a lion during his "first adventure" the story does work. THe same feeling does accompany RPGs.

Keep in mind RPGs are not really a game/contest. It's a rigged game. It isn't about who wins and looses, but how they do so. Any GM can wipe out any character at any time. The GM holds all the cards.

[Trifletraxor]

PULP...
What is pulp? What makes a story pulp?
It's come up so often now I just gotta ask.

SGL.