Can Pen&Paper RPG be considered as an artform such as improvisation theater ?

Theater has been around for a long time, going from a way to tell stories to a complete art form of literacy. Improvisation theater, as a derivative of theater, is also considered as an art form, but requiring different skills : less memory, but more impulse. RPG have been created in the second half of the twentieth century with “Chain mail”. This genre of games have evolved since then, but the base idea : playing a character in a more or less realistic world, still remained.

What are the things that RPGs and improvisation theater have in common ? First of all, both activities require to play a character. Secondly, you cannot prepare what you want to do. Okay, in some games you can prepare some stuff, but generally, you don't prepare your character to do this or that, and just improvise with the unfolding of the scenario. Thirdly, there are more than one actors. Again, talking about things in general. Finally, the goal of both activities is to entertain each other.

Things sure seem similar. However there are many things that differentiate improvisation theater from RPGs : First of all, there are rules. Secondly, there are spectators in improvisation theater. Thirdly, there is a game master in RPGs there to control and make sure that everyone. Lastly, there can be an emotional link from the player towards his character since a player can play a character numerous times.

From this simple list, there is one major aspect that is CRITICAL to every art and which is absent from RPGs : the notion of spectators. Even in LARPing, gamers play for themselves, and the notion of spectators is an alien concept. When around a table, it is best if the players are oblivious to the surrounding world, to avoid being disturbed while playing. Spectators can still watch players, but the interest is quite limited. Unlike in improvisation theater, a spectator will rarely find much fun in watching RPG players. However, anyone can join a game, but one has to know the rules before playing, making the process quite unuser-friendly.

This is why I believe that pen&paper RPGs cannot be classified as an art form even though there are a lot of similitude with improvisation theater. Every art such as paintings, sculptures, music, books, theater... take the spectator into account, and that concept of spectator is crucial to be considered as an art.

Wow, this was quicker than I thought it would be. I am sure that many will disagree with what I wrote, and I probably forgot a lot of things, but I don't pretend to be a literary guy, quite the contrary ! But I like these types of “philosophical” debate-like themes, so I enjoy writing them. I hope that you took as much enjoyment in reading my articles !

the Game Master of Failure

Today, we will see how Alexander (see previous article) is at Mastering a game. The result is of course a predictable major failure, bringing boredom and yawning around the table as well as a feeling of a wasted day. Why that ? what makes Alexander such a bad Game Master (GM) ?

• Explicit player preference : no-one is unbiased. However, giving one player around 200 points of creation and giving the other one 1500 is over the top. Doing explicit player preference is a good way to bring players against a GM, since players are usually united, except when it's Alexander as a player who has less points than the rest because he will inevitably DIE (and less points means faster character re-creation). Unequal Playing Characters (PCs) will make the players less willing to feel serious about this, and just try to act against the GM's plans.

• Using unexplained things to refrain players from doing unwanted stuff : "the players, after a critical failure to heal an important NPC (non-playing characters) decide to euthanize him by decapitation. At one inch of his neck, the blade is stopped by a strange force..." okay, enough. This is ridiculous ! When players want to do stuff, let them do it, even though it is stupid. Giving stupid excuses to limit the players is extremely bad. Let players do what they want to do, even though it's a very stupid idea.

• Being unoriginal : after a long walk in the forest, we see the big bad guy : the final boss of < insert popular video game name here> with the music related to him. Am I playing DnD or that video game ?

• Being anti-climatic : everyone wants a good final battle after fighting through miles of corridors, let their rage flow onto him, have him suffer 100 fold what they suffered. For example, a "Big bad guy" I created was just a child with powerful necromantic magic but unable to defend himself. The fact that the players had to fight plenty of undeads and a huge undead... THING (which almost killed them), they were more than happy to be able to hit and kill that little bugger, and the overall experience was great because the players were satisfied of getting revenge. But Alexander is a bad GM. basically, the script was like his : find the i bad guy. we walk across a forest and find him. His (unoriginal) final boss looks powerful,but dies in one hit, without doing anything to us. Great going ! why did you need 5 persons search for a guy for 3 hours to kill him in one hit ? Oh and there was no damage roll. It was basically "you touch him, he's dead". Why am I here again ?

• Giving anything to players : "hey Alexander, my character has a lot in 'allies', could he call someone to gather information about the theft we're supposed to investigate ?" "sure, well since you have xxx in 'allies', well your contact knows where the stolen object is, and gives you the address". WTF ?

• Having NPCs act like pussies : the players are in front o the king. One starts asking the princess out, another kills a guard while the others start looting the room. Reaction of the king ? "please, could I have your attention ?". if you want to role-play a kin, at least know how to be authoritarian ! if you can only play pussies, make all NPCs unimportant and insignificant, and therefore, you shouldn't master !

And the list goes on. Finding what makes such a person a bad game master is hard do do because it is such a pain to be a player at one of his tables. Please, Alexander, if you read me, do not master a game, EVER ! (reminder : Alexander is a generic name chosen at random).

Player of Mass Destruction

Playing is often a good experience, with lots of laugher, some thinking and gaining XPs. Having good players around the table usually tends to make the whole session more enjoyable, while bad players tend to make things turn to the worse. I am going to talk about that second category of players : the bad players. To ease the understanding of everyone, let's name the bad player "Alexander". Alexanders who read this article should not take this personally as this name was chosen completely at random.

Alexander is a role player, or at least he considers himself like that because he plays RPGs with other people he considers as friends (friendship might not be mutual). We will observe Alexander and determine what makes him a bad player :

• stupidity in role-play: from whatever angle you analyze Alexander's actions in role-play, they are inevitably STUPID. For example canceling his huge concert to go to the invitation he had by an anonymous letter, taking a cig during an infiltration mission in a place where dozens of snipers can see him, believing every NPC and distrusting PCs everytime...
• stupidity outside role-play: Alexander, as well as playing stupidly, acts like a total idiot. Attitudes such as saying "lol" aloud or going to light a cig while the group of characters (including his) is being chased by a group of zombies is quite... idiotic.
  
• out of character : These interruptions, while acceptable to say a little gag or other stuff, are not enjoyable during a role-play moment (discussing with an important NPC) or when it's simply uninteresting. Alexander often makes out-of-character unneeded comments, and that affects drastically the opinion of other players about him.
• cheating: need I say more ? Alexander is a cheater. I saw him cheat repeatedly at some tables, and if he cheats on a table that I'm mastering, I'll be sure to tear his character sheet, and ask him to not play at my table ever again. Nobody likes cheaters, and losing someone like Alexander is not a major loss.
• Playing characters he is unable to play : Alexander is a stupid person. This would normally limit him to making stupid characters, and then, once he has grasped how to play correctly, try some different characters. However, this is Alexander, so his characters tend to be sexy intelligent women with tragic pasts (parents killed) who are powerful. Somehow, he didn't understand that powerful on the sheet doesn't mean powerful in the mind. Therefore, Alexander had countless characters who were raped, duped then killed by other players because of all of his character's attitude. Oh yeah, making all of his characters having the same attitude is a big letdown too. Try to do something different when you see that the 15th copy of that character dies also.
• Thinking that it's a video-game : sorry Alexander, but we are not in that type of game, where you can simply go back to your previous checkpoint when you did something stupid like insulting the big vampire or selling your powerful NPC friends to bad guys (or players). Asking for this to happen is like asking to get your face punched.

So why is Alexander still playing ? Why is he still around a table playing his stupid DOA characters and ruining some fun ? I don't really know. Maybe it's a mix of pity and sadism ? Having Alexander in the team is like having a monkey : he isn't useful, but his incredible actions sure can be funny ! at the end of the session, 95% of the game funny quotes are from Alexander, which is not negligible.

Be sure to check next week's article for Alexander as a game master !

Survival of the fittest

The world turns into a post-apocalyptic setting, zombies invade... what will you do ? who can survive ? Today I am gonig to see if role-players are capable of surviving in such a setting.

Why could role-players be more apt than others to survive in a dangerous post apocalyptic world ? because they role-play in such settings ! Of course, by saying this, I exclude all players who only play medieval games or any other games that don't involve such a setting. However, I believe that most role-players have played many games so they have already played in a similar universe.

The characters played by role-players (PCs) are faced to plenty of different situations, involving survival, treason, fights... so theoretically, a player is able to think through certain situations, since he is more or less "trained" into these situations. People who don't role-play don't have any sense of how to react in such a situation any other way than just donig the obvious. Of cuorse, there are still people who will have read books such as the zombie survival guide or other books concerning necessary knowledge, but the readers are a minority. Therefore, role-playrs have a theoretical advantage in suriving than other people.

However, role-players only have an outside view of things. The ones who know how real pain feels like or how one would react under a huge stress are quite rare. Therefore, role-players only have a theoretical experience of the situation, but in reality, they could be as helpless as anyone else. Also, most role-players are quite fit like their characters. It's easier to say that the character runs through the street to the next house dodging the monsters and throwing a dice than actually running across the street when there are monsters, especially when the player hasn't done any physical excecise in the past 5 years. Other factors that doesn't come into the player's equation is other people's reactions and stress. As players, we do not panic like our characters, and manage to stay calm, analyse the situation precisely and do the correct choice or say the right thing to the other characters. In real life, panic blocks the way of thinking, so we are not as apt as if we were around the table. Other people, also under stress can do actions that no-one can predict, or some could turn out to be the leader or try to use everybody.

So are role-players more apt to survive than the average joe ? they have the theory, but they could, in my opinion, hardly do what they think of doing. Therefore, players could be the brains while other, more physical people could act. It's all about teamwork.

To be or not to be ?

Are there limits to what someone should role-play ? Would role-playing a SS Nazi from the Second World War be appropriate ? Is torturing in-game really alright ? All of these come down basically to a single question : can we laugh about everything ?

I personally believe that yes, we should be able to laugh about anything. However, we should not laugh with everyone, since some people are easily offended. How does this transfer into role playing games ? Through role-play.

I have had a character in Vampire : The Masquerade who was a guy surnamed “Herr doctor” because he's a German doctor who “operated” on Jews during second world war. I basically had to defend Nazism and tell the glory of the Reich at every occasion. I played this character with players from Arabic origin, and all went very well because we all know that it's in the game. If I could play this character, it is all because I was with open-minded people, and that I was not serious at all when talking through my character. Most players were laughing out loud since I talked with a strong German accent and kept saying “Ach Ja” from time to time. These details let you get a little distance between the character and myself which is a good thing considering all what the character said or did. The character died, but will remain for a long time in the memory of the game master and the players, at it was shocking, yet humorous.

However, in other conditions, a player could be unable to do a choice that the character would do because the player feels guilty if he does it. My character would be capable of raping that woman, but me, telling the game master that I'll be doing it is something very hard to do, especially if the game master is good, and that my character had an interaction with said woman. This limitation is personal, and I know that some other players would feel no guilt in having their characters kill and rape, while others would be unable to make their characters be aggressive. Of course it's all in the game, but when someone is immersed into the game, a player tries to blend with the character in order to make the right RP choice. However, the most important part is to know how to leave the character once you have finished playing.

Playing an evil/controversial character requires some things in order for it to be accepted around a table : firstly, the player needs to know how to play him correctly. Secondly, the game master must be 100% alright about it. Thirdly, take into account the spirit of the group of players (are they going to punch me if my character back-stabs theirs or if my character says racist/homophobic/whatever things ?). Fourthly, will it be enjoyable ? It's a role-playing game, so everyone must enjoy themselves.

a Die, a life

Isn't it funny how dice simply just do the rolls that are appropriate to the moment ? they can turn the perfect plan into a fiasco or on the contrary let a novice humiliate an adept. Randomness ? I think not.
I believe that critical rolls involving the life or destiny of a character do not follow the principles of probabilities, but instead, they evade Newton's laws, have an awareness of the situation, and turn it for the best, or the worst. The result depends on the situation and, obviously, the die.
I have been playing role playing games for a couple of years now ( 5 I believe) and the choice of the die is very important. I still remember my very first game : playing a rogue in DnD 3.5. I didn't have any dice, and had to borrow some. 90% of my rolls were "4".( move silently, detect traps, saving rolls...) After I asked for another D20, it went great ! You choose dice not because they do good rolls, but because the dice accepted you, and both of you will together make this critical hit on the final boss, for the despair of the game master.

Situation is also a critical factor (pun intended). The simple player - master situation makes rolls a whole lot different. I have mastered an Anima once, and all my rolls that could potentially kill a player were criticals ! Thankfully, the player who was in said critical situation did also 3 open rolls, so the attack was nullified, but the power of dice can be scary.
As a player, I have so many anecdotes about critical failures at the wrong moment that it would take too long to tell all of them. I'll instead give one that was just last Saturday : Playing a Bard in DnD 2.0, I did a roll for bardic knowledge for the entity "door" (a NPC told us that it existed), and succeed. The game master then turns towards me smiling, and tells me the famous "do me a saving throw". I had to do a natural 20 (difficulty 15, with a -5 modifier on my roll) to save my character as the power of the entity started to make him bigger and slightly transparent. Guess what ? I did the natural 20 !
"The dice, they are trying to kill me" is simply a stupid statement. A bond of trust is necessary between the player and the dice, as well as a necessity. Do you need a critical in that battle ? Of course some dice are sadist and won't let an opportunity to make the group suffer from a critical one at the worst possible moment, since natural ones often lead to stress as well as hilarity around the table.
All in all, trust your dice, make sure you've got some reciprocal love, enjoy the ignorance of laws of probabilities, and most of all, enjoy the game.


EDIT : 13th of november :
After thinking it through, it seems that I am somehow dismissing Murphy's law. That is somewhat true : a critical failure is always bond to happen at the worst possible moment. However, a natural 20 can arrive at the most appropriate time, saving a character's life.

And there was Blog

Welcome to my blog ! this is simply a little project I must do, but at least it will be updated more or less regularly.
What will there be in this blog ? Personal thoughts, random ramblings or some things I find interesting. I believe that I will talk a lot about pen&paper RPG, since it is a subject that interests me, but we'll see what will become of this blog.