Role-Playing Must Be Fun

This gradually became, within the past few years, how all instances of evolution of the game's design have been explained to the masses.

D&D is a game that ought to be fun. To increase the fun, it thus needs to be faster in game play. It needs to be easier to grasp. It needs to provide all sorts of elements that help players and DMs imagine as quickly as they possibly can, with the most "fun" value out of it. Okay, I guess, but... what kind of "fun" are we, in fact, talking about?

Never, in the last edition's text, do we get a comprehensive explanation of what, exactly, is supposed to be fun when playing role-playing games. I suspect that's where the fallacy of Fourth Edition began: the challenge of 4e's "design team" was to pick up Third Ed and instantly wonder "how do we get this game to be more fun?" rather than "what makes role-playing games fun?" in the first place!

I suspect that the fun that makes one play role-playing games has in fact nothing to do with "game balance" (which truly means "rules' balance in a vacuum" - maybe more about this later). It has nothing to do with the relative complexity of a game system, though it can affect the long term engagement of a player with a particular game.

Nope.

The Fun of role-playing games has to do with that very first day we were given the occasion to play them. It surely varies in tone, feelings and experiences for each and every one of us, but I suspect it always comes down to "wow. I can actually be part of the fantasy world". Some will call it immersion. Others will call it escapism.

I prefer, like others, to call it Enchantment with a capital E.

Yes. Enchantment.

This "wow" factor of "Yes! This time and forevermore, *I* get to be Jack climbing the beanstalk!"

This has been ignored in game design for some time now in favor of a self-contained, self-contaminated, self-inflicted obsession about the rules and how these rules bring about fairness, choices, support to the fun of the game.

This is my theory, and this is why I think it is valuable to get back to the Lake Geneva campaign as a sort of cartharsis to our own first role-playing experiences. A way to understand why role-playing was so fun in the first place, and how, so that we can make our own games profit from this experience and become more "fun" themselves.

I suspect this post may be quite controversial to some people, and to tell you the truth, this is fully intended. Am I wrong in thinking this way? Then please, tell me so by leaving your comments! Whatever your thoughts may be, I hope you will share them and fuel this conversation. I feel this is part of the reasons why we are all here.

Inside the Box or Outside??--EDITORIAL

While perusing the internet for D&D gaming experiences I came upon several "interesting" angles on spells in play. Actually they were more perceptions grounded in assumptions. Assumptions about how certain spells, or even whole swaths of spells, are useless or minimize the game experience. Such as...

"It's a very situational spell."

Hmm. Aren't ALL spells situational? Why yes they are! This was somebody's answer to someone else not seeing the use for a certain spell. This line of thought reveals a disturbing aspect of the D&D game today: set in stone, non-mutable, ever understandable and thus no-where creative or fluid in campaign terms, only in perceptions of what is useful NOW and under "understood circumstances" in a game atmosphere I presume to be riddled with combat challenges. Then again, players rise or fall with their DM, so this is not as concrete an example as the next...

Another post... "101 Spells not to Memorize..."

Huh? Now what line of thought could possibly group 101 spells into the not worth memorizing category? Hmm. One beset with no possibilities of change within a campaign structure or gaming environment, perhaps?

I know that Hackn'Slash is here to stay, especially with computerized FRP games which are at best flashy examples of same, but really, where has the imagination fled to?

In the Original Campaign, we treasured every spell for its possible worth in any given situation that could arise; we even implemented these in ways that were considered non-standard or had not been thought about along those lines by EGG and others who created these. We weighed heavily on combat and escape and detect spells, but so too, if we thought that a certain scenario might present itself otherwise and that we might have to pick from spells already known to excel in the challenge ahead as we perceived it, then these were gold. In other words, no spell could be defined as useless, as gaming situations and dimensions were highly mutable.

Smart DMs will use all manner of dungeon crafting in their scenarios and encounters to force the players out of standard situational responses. This design points to the holistic possibilities of adventuring and indeed attaches to how a dungeon, by example, is designed with these all-round play components in mind. This was done in Greyhawk, as most of the spells EGG perceived as being useful in one context or another had actually been formed around the idea of how these could or would be creatively used in his dungeon encounters. This meant to seasoned players that a lot of what could be achieved once the understanding of what "that" was presented itself was an option always preparing itself through the exercise of a player's imagination (i.e., they had not brought the necessary component to succeed with the perceived objective before them, such as a needed spell or magic item, etc. and now were faced with the expanding circumstances). That lead to their minds exploring the possibilities and took them outside of the box. The Original Campaign as DMed by myself and my counterpart promoted the mutable and expansive notes whenever possible rather than the refrain of sameness. I would put the players from that time and place up against anyone today.

In summary, possibilities are only as limited as the DM's mindset, and clever players will pick up on this after time goes by. Some of the coolest adventures can be generated through the use of non-standard spells as opposed to those emphasizing "beat-um-up-and-get-the-goodies." So too for magic items.

Unfortunate as it may seem, it's increasingly apparent to me that those who sit in a box and make suggestions as to the usefulness of said confines should only receive their echoes back from its four sides. Now if someone would only close the lid...

RJK