On What RPG truely Means
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All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind. – Abraham Lincoln
RPG. Remember when that used to mean something? Role. Playing. Game. Role playing. Immersive, complete, take over Role. As much as a love a good MMOrpg , and the graphics that come with it, I can’t help but feel, there is something missing. I enjoyed Neverwinter Nights beyond anything I could dream or fathom, and it was so close to perfect I still think about loading it up for another try. Almost everything I wanted to imagine could be done with it. I recreated my greatest characters, DMed games and made items and lands, quests, and even (dare I saw) dropped in few zingers. But…I was missing something… That something about “The time when we [all our characters] were all splayed across the floor, every item used, every potion expended, and T Man stood up.., pointed at our DM and said ‘this is done. I’m rolling a 20.” Stepped back, and opened up the heaven of woop ass.”
We. Our. My. It was real (within the context of the game world.). I was invested, (and still am). I remember to this day, the incredible feeling and awfulness the first time (after years) my character died, and how it made my next character an obsessive defense master.
But I also remember Diablo, and shouting and yelling as we had a “Leroy moment”[running into the room, activating all monsters] and realized someone had aggrooed all the guards in hell….that first character death was bitter, more so when I looked up from my computer walked out of the room to yell at my roommate who had gotten us all killed. It wasin’t the playing, but the social interacting of the panic, the yelling at the screen and of course talking about it at lunch with the other Diablo players. That shared experience about hell and wild panic. A hidden geek social contract.
Online playing vampire, and Mage and so many others, I still have stories about the man cliff hangers, the tension and the 20 character rooms waiting for the pin to drop. RPG at it’s finest. We knew each other by character colors, descriptions, methods of typing. Who knew who ruled, in truth and online… it was a community. What did they have in common?
1. The Social aspect. Whether it’s net gaming, internet chat, or Xbox, being part of the group was always about… being part of the group. Things happened in the group, the jokes, the Coke, the “I can’t believe you just jumped off a cliff” and GM reacting to the whim and craziness of the players. My chat room days was just as fun describing a battle as being in the battle afterwards, and my good friends relived mass moments of gaming lore, where someone did something we’d remember together.
2. I love seeing it, but I also like describing it. Gamers talk with their hands, and their imagination. There is not a GM, DM, storyteller, et al on the planet who has not had the perfect game fall apart, as the player does something ….unintentional. Better yet, the adversarial (GM vs Players) nature of the game is preserved, and trust is rewarded. The GM is not out to get you, because you CAN win…. But you can fail, and it will be more than creating another character or rebooting.
This game up because I saw a slide for a website. The slide had “RPG” on it, and described real mechanics, gorgeous graphics, storyline and epic quests, and strategy based battles, and right then I figured out what I didn’t like about modern RPG’s of the video game Varity. I figured out what was missing in today’s RPG’s. They are Role playing in title only. You are not “Grandro, King of Servat. Or Jim Danger, unlikely mage.” No, you’re playing a video game, where you get to make choices, sometimes, but it has an end, it has a story, and when you play again, it will be the same story, and no record of it will be kept.
Immersion is missing. No, it’s not Mass effect. Or Bio Shock. That’s just you, and some hanger on NPc’s you get to drag along, and when you die you curse and restart. You’re forced to know about the world, because you need it to get the shotgun, and the “bio weapons of Boom” you really could care less about why.
Yeah, how many people know or care about the actually WORLD in Warcraft? Halo? It’s just a nice mechanics. Very nice mechanics. The backstory is Useful for if you raid or guild or which character you start as, but.. what about when you enter a town and the towns people boo? Or if you and the other players assemble to take the Castle and can’t overcome the defense. Just long on and try again right?
Why does this matter? For years, I’ve had this game in my mind, and everyone who plays get’s invested in the game, their characters, and more importantly, the people they play with. The game is mechanics heavy, but truly, it’s not (not if I can work it out) but it does require trust (as all rpgs) and time.
When White Wolf Studios closed their chat, I realized we’d lost something. Many many people couldn’t find a group, lost the ability to really get into roleplaying as much as they could. Furthermore, it was very much the way the game could be played, exposed to sooo many people, and so many lives, it showed me a microcosm of life I didn’t know, as much as it sucked away my weekends. I miss it. I know it’s gone for the best (and my eventual growth) but just once, I wish to once again type out … “I enter.”
OceansOfThought @ June 1, 2010