I have started reading Jon Peterson's Playing at the World which is a lengthy history of how our hobby was born. Mr. Peterson uses a large vocabulary with some words I frankly have to look up because I have no idea what they mean. Obviously the book is an education in more ways than one. Mr. Peterson has painstakingly brought the historian's approach to the topic of what he calls simulation gaming. As he points out, what we call role-playing today grew out of wargames which sought to simulate certain aspects of military campaigns and battles. He draws heavily on fanzine's because they are often to only documents relating to the history of the hobby. Personal recollections of participants are treated with more caution, especially many decades after the fact.
Nobody referred to role-playing as a game in 1974 when Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created and published White Box. Mr. Peterson points out that the words Role Playing do not appear in the LBBs and it was only later that people began to refer to the new hobby as role-playing. For a number of reasons, the idea caught on quickly and the game became a popular fad by the 1980s. Popular culture has incorporated many ideas pioneered by the White Box, including widespread awareness of fantasy tropes such as elves and orcs. The core elements of the tabletop game, including assuming the role of a character with hit points, who adventures and gains experience in order to improve are reflected in many video games using the internet and are enjoyed by millions worldwide.
Mr. Peterson points out that White Box introduced the world to some radically new concepts in entertainment. The game allows for an active participation in an imaginary world of fantastic creatures and magic which had only previously been available to the reader as literature. Perhaps for the first time, players can become actively involved in the stories they create through their in-game characters. Coupled with a growing public interest in the yet new works of J.R.R. Tolkien, White Box quickly gained popularity among science fiction fans and on college campuses.
The game mechanics offered players an entirely new experience. Mr. Peterson notes that freedom of player agency, the ability to attempt anything through the actions of the player's character, is an entirely new phenomenon made possible by the presence of a referee and the open dialogue nature of the game.
Improvement through experience is White Box's substitution for traditional victory conditions. This is how one "wins" at White Box. Leveling up is the term associated with character advancement and is a key motivating factor in continued play (besides having fun, of course). The campaign, or long term play involving several sessions in which the same character is played, allows for the accumulation of in game wealth and perhaps more importantly, experience, level advancement, increased character power and standing within the game milieu.
White Box games are controlled by a referee, one who largely creates the imaginary milieu and who adjudicates the rules of play making fair and impartial judgments as required. One of the jobs of the referee is to control the pace of gameplay. Events occur in an imaginary space, involving imaginary beings and under imaginary time. It is the referee who decides to have several uneventful hours, or days pass by so as to get to a dramatic moment when time may slow to passing more slowly than actual time. A six second combat round may require several actual minutes of game play. Mr. Peterson refers to this as "dramatic pacing". The in-game activities of exploration, combat and logistics are managed by the referee so as to make the most of tension, catharsis and banality in a manner similar to that of the director of a play or movie.
Mr. Peterson argues that White Box changed popular culture in a profound and lasting way by introducing a wide audience to a revolutionary play style. White Box not only started a new hobby, it changed how we approach entertainment. No longer satisfied with passive forms of entertainment, consumers have increasingly demanded opportunities to participate in and actively engage their entertainment. How convincing the link between observed changes in how we entertain ourselves as a culture and the mechanics of White Box are remains to be discovered among the pages I have yet to read.
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