Not Too Serious

A game is a fun and joyous thing. It is a vehicle to entertain, to make us think a little and to challenge our minds and engage our curiosity and hopefully to help us share a few laughs along with others. Taking a game too seriously has always struck me as a case of  entirely "missing the point". 

Some games obviously aim to have a laugh at their own expense and I appreciate that. Some other games seem to take themselves fairly seriously and any laughs are secondary. Artistic presentation in the game is a good clue indicating what the designers have in mind - whether it's the game's subject matter, or its genre or its attitude toward play. Even a fairly serious game such as chess can be presented in a more humorous light when the chess pieces are sculpted to represent cartoon characters or other "comic" subjects rather than using the traditional style chessmen.

Tabletop roleplaying games run the gamut from the very humorous to the very serious, and many are in between the two extremes. At its heart, the adventure game is about exploration, combat and acquisition. The illustrations that excite our imagination also inform us about the game designer's vision for what the game will offer. (It's also an aspect of marketing, but I have less to say on that topic.)

The illustration above is taken from the "advanced" edition and seems both humorous and informative. The dark corridor is the setting for a likely encounter between an adventurer and a hideous monster, both are winding the same string about a stick and this is leading them around a corner and into a surprise situation where they will suddenly be face-to-face. It's a bit dark perhaps, but I find the situation humorous.

The Advanced game is ripe with more serious illustrations suggesting that the game is about "scary" creatures who seriously threaten the lives of the paper warriors and wizards we players control as our in-game alter egos. A quick glance through the Advanced books will reveal the designer's intent is to be both seriously dangerous (to the paper heroes) ...

...and humorous. 

In this way, the game offers a juxtaposition between dark and dangerous adventuring and an occasional chuckle that is both light-hearted and fun. The Advanced game essentially "pokes a bit of fun at itself".

What is ultimately revealed is that a sense of mystery and discovery is to be had in the game's milieu that is both fantastic and a bit familiar. This is indeed what the Advanced game promises. 

We can see that a fantastic setting is suggested by the cover illustration to most all editions of The World's Most Popular Role-Playing Game and something similar also appears on the covers of its many imitators, all leading us, the hobbyist and consumer to conclude a lot of this type of thing will occur during game-play. The artistic style and amount of heroic violence on display in the illustrations varies considerably from product to product, but there is a common theme to most - fantastic creatures, especially dragons, warriors and wizards facing a degree of peril and magical violence, and perhaps the seed of a story to prompt our imagination. 

For me personally, I find no better single depiction of what the hobby is about than this full-page interior graphic from the pages of the 1978 Advanced players handbook.

In this scene we see a party of delvers, specifically characters who are likely controlled by the players and consist of peoples drawn from familiar fantasy traditions who armed with torches and swords are traversing the dim halls of some ancient and long abandoned (underground?) edifice. As the delvers pass by the massive stone support column either on their way in or out of the place of mystery they have triggered a "magic mouth spell" appearing upon the wall. The message the mouth delivers is perhaps a warning, a clue to wealth or survival, or it even may contain a curse that will give give players pause. Whatever the message, the magic mouth spell gives the referee a means to engage with their players so as to help them bring the setting alive through imagining the in-fiction action, and to deepen the sense of wonder they may be experiencing as part of the fun of the game.

In the nearly half century since its first publication, I have watched as The World's Most Popular Role-Playing Game has evolved from its origins as an amateurish outgrowth of wargaming, through its more mature "advanced" version as seen in the illustrations featured in this post, and beyond - currently into a 5th edition that seems on the cusp of becoming predominantly an experience on a digital game platform that will perhaps include an A.I. "game master".

If the artificial gamemaster does come about, will its designers program in a sense of humor for it? I wonder?

Be Fair

The Most Important Rule!

The Basic Rules edited by Frank Mentzer remain THE outstanding introductory game, at least this is so in my estimation. No product that I have encountered does the "introduction" job as well when it comes to explaining the concepts of adventure gaming, the role of playing a character in the game, and what a referee/DM/Gamemaster does to setup, facilitate and oversee a game session and campaign play. The Red Box Basic accomplishes all this in a brief and accessible manner in two thin booklets - in which the author also manages to include a solo adventure and a starter dungeon for use by the novice DM to run their friends or family through.

The Red Box is packed with good advice from "Be Fair" as the guiding principal to running/playing the game to "play monsters as they would behave". Advice that today can be found elsewhere, but I first encountered it reading the Red Box text. Looking back on the boxed set today, I can see many examples of how the Red Box has influenced the hobby going forward.

An example of just how concise and easy to use the basic rules as presented in Red Box are is to be found when looking at the following "Order of Events" tables. 

By simply following the above tables, the aspiring DM can "manage" play at the table in a logical and organized manner. Mr. Mentzer has gone a long way toward demystifying some of the more obtuse and difficult to grasp concepts and procedures that once bewildered new players and hindered accessibility. I argue that the growth of today's widespread popularity of the tabletop role-playing hobby owes a great deal of credit to Red Box and to the generation of gamers who first delved into tabletop adventure following the guiding text of Mr. Mentzer's Basic. We build upon what came before.

Is This Canon?

... or Lost and Hidden Secrets Awaiting Discovery.

One of the hesitations I have about gaming a well known setting is staying consistent with the source material. A well known historical setting, like 20th Century Earth, poses certain problems for any author of fiction, gaming or otherwise, because there are facts that may limit the fictional narrative. Doing our Research and "getting one's facts straight" have been an accepted and essential part of writing historical fiction, or of making a roleplaying game that feels plausible. Taking "liberties" with what is generally known to have happened, is tricky ground at best. Yes, so called "alternative history" narratives exist, but frankly I find them unappealing (and generally not to my taste). 

This concept of "accepted facts" can be extended to certain fictional settings which are widely known and written about. As a result of this condition, and of my personal bias against alternative history, I have made a practice to avoid using anything in my games that could be easily "fact checked" against the sources, whether one is looking up "what really happened" in history, or merely consulting the accepted canon on a fictional world such as Tolkien's Middle-earth. It just seems more appealing to stick to the fuzzy edges, the unknown areas where known facts are fewer and details are lacking. That way I feel "anything is possible" and I have more freedom to be imaginative and "make stuff up".

As an example, take the classic 1920s mythos setting. Even H.P.L. himself created a fictional New England city and its associated university, mental hospital, river valley and coastal town, all so that he could avoid direct historical or geographic conflicts with the actual happenings in actual places. Inventing a fictional location and a made-up cast of people, none of which appear on the pages of ever really existed but are a close approximation to other better known aspects of the setting, I find helps enormously with the suspension of disbelief that is so necessary in order to engage an audience of readers, or role-players.

With all of that in mind I (much like many other fans) am still drawn to and want to game using certain popular settings including Middle-earth and the 1920s mythos. My approach is as follows... Avoid using "famous characters" drawn from the fiction or from the pages of history and a large element of the problematic becomes less of an issue. Invent a few "fictional" locations and take liberties only with what is essentially the "fuzzy" areas regarding known places or use those for which details are not widely available and I can feel more comfortable with basing an adventure in one of the known world settings.

Another approach is to treat all the generally accepted lore as written by an "unreliable source". Stories about people, places and things are just that. Each witness likely sees things from a slightly different perspective and any narrative they give will reflect just that. Eye-witness accounts, especially when drawn from a memory of remote events, is notoriously unreliable. We can reasonably alter a few minor "facts" and probably not spoil the effect of leveraging our audience's familiarity with the subject setting. In all fairness to ourselves, authors do it all the time.

I have recently read The Book of Lost Tales part one. One title in the 12 volume History of Middle-Earth series, Lost Tales gives us a look at the early, previously unpublished manuscript versions of many of J.R.R. Tolkien's works later published in more "polished" form. It is a peak behind the curtains, to borrow a phrase, which reveals an "alternative" version of some stories, alongside some other narratives which were presumably cast aside in favor of the author's later thinking. What it gives me the reader and fan of the fictional world, is food for thought.

In part one of Lost Tales we are told of a mariner who arrives on a remote island to discover a lost people who tell fantastic tales which our mariner presumably writes down for us to now read. Included are early versions of the story of the musical making of the world, the awakening of the various peoples and the early struggle with the shadowy one who detests light. Yes, the tales I just mentioned appear in other later and more polished versions in The Silmarillion, a work published after the author's death, but also many decades ago and are now accepted canon. 

Alternative versions of the lore, you say? That is very interesting. 

I am reminded that "authorship" of The Hobbit is attributed to Mr. Bilbo Baggins writing his "memoirs" and what comes down to us as The Lord of the Rings is supposed to be a "Red Book" penned by Master Frodo Baggins, with additions by a certain Samwise Gamgee? All completely reliable narrators with complete understanding of their times, at least one would presume so.

While as referee and loremaster I prefer invention over adaptation, I do find there is some advantage in leveraging what is commonly known about the familiar world. Real "horror" is only possible when it is starkly and unexpectedly introduced in contrast with a complacency born of an otherwise mundane and predictable setting.