It’s trivially true to say that no two RPGs are identical, but it’s also the case that no two RPG groups, even if they share the same system, edition, & goals, are playing the exact same game. Sometimes differences are subtle nuances in style, in other cases, the experiences generated are radically dissimilar.
As I discussed in Beyond Bread & Water, many through the years have attempted to categorize these differences. We have the labels within the aforementioned “GNS” model (e.g., “I’m a Narrativist gamer,”), other labels like, “Old School,” “New School,” and many more. But again, I think that these have limited value in discourse.
I think that RPGs are best understood as Chimeras, the blending of several older activities. The two largest (and oldest) activities are Make Believe and Miniature Wargaming. No RPG experience is evenly divided between its older components, and the proportions of each element create the exact experience being generated.
Make Believe & Mechanics
When we were kids we lost ourselves in the games of Make Believe. Children’s
imaginations are unbridled and Make Believe allowed us to experience “shared imaginary fantasies” with others. As very young children, this worked for a while because we would sometimes just “go along” with what the other kids wanted, embellishing, rather than restraining or competing with, the other children’s narratives. But of course, Make Believe ultimately disintegrated into wars of, “No, my superpower is better than yours ‘cuz…”, and the ubiquitous, “Nuh-uh!”
We still hunger for the old Make Believe experience, but we became more sophisticated, and evolved sensibilities that need structure, checks & balances, & logic (ways of avoiding “Nuh-uhs”). Our minds require structure & fairness—Rules & mechanisms.
But in the early 70s, David Arneson, Gary Gygax and others created a hybrid game by merging miniature wargaming with strong Make Believe, giving us this Chimera, Role Playing Games. This offered us a return to the shared imaginary experience we missed by providing the structure we needed — gaming mechanics.
Many of us played heavily in our adolescence, unquestioningly accepting this Chimera that had arrived to give us joy. We learned to role play by employing both halves of this monster: We have the our character sheets, showing stats, abilities, which dice to roll, listing chances of success (the Mechanics/Meta elements) alongside playing the roles of our characters’ personas within the worlds they inhabit (the Make Believe elements).
But by virtue of these two components being smashed together into one creature, the experience of both are changed. It is now no longer purely Mechanics (Meta) nor purely Make Believe. The melding has created something new.
Imagine that you’re sitting on a sled being dragged across the snow by two horses, where each horse is independently tethered to the sled. One horse is intent on heading North, the Realm of Meta (mechanisms, numbers, algorithms), and the other, East, the Realm of Make Believe (shared imagination, portraying personas, etc.).
Sometimes the northbound horse is dominant, and you move heavily in that direction. At others, the eastbound horse wins out, and that is largely your course for a while. If both horses have equal strength & drive, your journey will have a snake-like weaving of a northeasterly trajectory.
Just looking at these two main components, we see how the mixture we employ sets the stage for the kind of game we’re playing. Some of the time, our minds are pulled towards the Make Believe: Our character's lives, circumstances, desires within a Secondary World, which we consider within its own rights. But we're also forced to toggle our attention away from Make Believe and onto Mechanics: What are my numerical chances of doing this & that? How strong is that foe compared to me? What do I need to do to improve my character's percentages here? And so on. By virtue of switching gears between these two very different mental tasks, a new experience is being generated, distinct from pure Make Believe or pure Mechanics (as we would have in miniature wargaming or board gaming). That Chimera is the core dynamic of your current RPG experience.
While we lack precise labels/categories for these different mixtures, we can see how our experience is affected by them. I think it’s wiser to dodge any such stamps, for they will inevitably fail to communicate what exact experience your group enjoys. But by seeing what exactly is generating our gaming experiences, we’re also able to glean what needs to be done in order to alter our Chimeras when we feel that we're not getting what we truly want.
In the next essay, I will discuss other common components contributing to our RPG monsters.
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