Up The Beanstalk

A follow-up on the fun of role-playing. Thanks to Greg from Ontario for inspiring this entry!

Earlier on this blog, I alleged that gradually, modern game design discarded the Enchanting value of role-playing games in favour of a self-contained, self-fulfilling gaming logic. The fun of the game came from the rules, and the rules provide the fun of the game. To improve the fun of the game, one must then improve the rules.

I believe this is a false premise that just ends up divorcing role-playing games from their unique nature as products of our imaginations.

We play role-playing games, I believe, because one day we felt enthused by the idea of being Jack, now and forevermore, climbing up the beanstalk.

What does this mean? What made this moment so special? What happens then that does not occur, or to a much lesser degree, when playing Diablo, World of Warcraft or when reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time?

I believe the answer resides in countless tales and legends we’ve heard, read, witnessed ourselves at a very young age. This is the substance of what built the Arthurian tradition, the appeal of Greek Myths, the allure of Sagas. What made the stories of Cuchulain, Hercules and Erik the Red ring true for us as young lads. What Jean Markale called this “Eternal now where all the contradictions blend into each other”.

This is the nature of Myth which gives us this ability to connect with what it means to be alive. To quote Jean Markale from Le Roi Arthur et la Société Celtique (King Arthur and the Celtic Society) :

Imagination is real in the sense that it is a reality of thought and that the one imagining is persuaded of the reality of that which he imagines at the very moment this process intervenes. Once again, reality is movement, movement of thoughts which can only cease to exist in the stasis of death, of non existence. Imagination, in this regard, is a personal, subjective movement of individual thought, which can however be transmitted to others, alienated within the context of the tale. Others are then free to consider the tale as real or imaginary: it will in any case result in a movement of another’s thoughts, and this movement will thus acquire a quality of reality, however different this reality might be from the original input. Epic tales, legends and myth are thus perpetual movements of thought which now and forevermore create the Now where all contradictions blend into each other. There is no more Past or Future but an eternal Now which is the only existing proof of a reality of the Mind.

This, I believe, is why we play role-playing games. It is not necessarily, and as a matter of fact, often isn’t, a conscious decision on our parts. We might play because we want a pause from the tribulations of our daily lives, what some would call “escapism”, of all things, while in fact we are doing exactly the reverse: we reach forward to share this perpetual movement of thought that existed since the dawn of time. We take part, not only as witnesses like so many before us, but as actors, due to the inherent magic of role-playing, in a tradition that depicts humanity in its moments of suffering, despair, hope and glory, a Now that makes sense of all contradictions and communicates to us what it truly means to be Human.

I know some will scoff at this. “I play to have fun. D&D is just a game”. It is absolutely true. What I am trying to wrap my mind around here is what, exactly, is fun about role-playing games. It’s not about some pompous definition designed to make the game greater than it already is. It’s not to create some sort of agenda that would point out right and wrong ways to enjoy role-playing games. Not at all.

It is about what makes role-playing so appealing in the first place. It’s about that very first moment we played role-playing games and felt Enchanted by the premises before us.

This notion points out not only the fundamentally social nature of this game which reaches well beyond the gaming table into the unknown depths of our very own souls, but also why the game may feel so right, so personal, so engaging to many of us. This is where we trim ourselves to our bare bones and gaze at ourselves through the eyes of fictional characters in a land of make-believe. This is where we feel we exist, where we can grasp the vibrant reality of our very minds.

We climb up the beanstalk and stare at what makes us truly alive.

Now, and Forevermore.

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.

High Adventure and Low Humor

But if serious purpose is integral to a successfully ongoing campaign, there must be moments of relief as well. Such counterplots can be lesser and different themes within the whole whether some side dungeon or quest, a minor altercation between petty nobles, or whatever. Occasional "pure fun: scenarios can be conducted also. That is, moments of silliness and humor help to contrast with the grinding seriousness of a titanic struggle and relieve participants at the same time. After all, ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is first and foremost a game, a pastime for fun and enjoyment. At times the fun aspect must be stressed.

The above quote appears in Gary Gygax's magnum opus, the Dungeon Masters Guide, immediately before sections in which are offered rules conversions between AD&D, Boot Hill, and Gamma World. As a younger person, this section was one of my favorites, precisely because I could still find enjoyment in flinging the PCs, via a cursed scroll, to Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881 or having them face off against a band of Knights of Genetic Purity, armed to the teeth with blasters and photon grenades. I'd not yet taken the game too seriously, which was a common malady afflicting some of my older contemporaries in the hobby and one to which I eventually succumbed in turn.

It's a very common story in my experience. Nearly everyone I've ever met in this hobby started off with an expansive understanding of "fantasy," one that could accommodate literally anything their mind could conceive, no matter how outlandish or "silly" it might seem. Then, bit by bit, that understanding contracts, becoming more rigid and codified, with clear boundaries distinguishing what is acceptable and what is not. Gone is the genuine open-mindedness of childhood, replaced by the feigned seriousness of adolescence. Banished along with that open-mindedness are the infinite possibilities that first drew us into the hobby in the first place.

If we're lucky, we eventually grow out of this serious phase and recognize the wisdom in the paragraph quoted above. No, not everything in one's play must be silly or nonsenical, but then neither must everything be deadly serious. As with so many things in life, balance is key. Knowing when to introduce a little levity is one of those skills all good referees acquire, just as all good players learn to enjoy it and introduce some of their own.

My friends and I long ago realized that the most satisfying fantasy campaigns were those that freely mixed high adventure with low humor. Many of the situations that arise in a long-standing fantasy campaign are genuinely absurd, if looked at with a dispassionate eye, and there's absolutely nothing wrong in occasionally allowing that absurdity to step into the foreground. Indeed, we would argue that it's essential that this happen every now and again, to ensure both the freshness of the campaign and to maintain interest in it. Nothing is surer to kill an ongoing campaign than unrelenting seriousness, which is why, even now, I try very hard to remember how I originally approached the game and to use that knowledge to keep the game fun for everyone, most especially myself.

Possibilities Marching On

I learned quite a lot in a very short time period as a young lad of 13 years and while associating with the adult males of the LGTSA (Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association) and IFW (International Federation of Wargamers); then too the Midwest Military Simulation Association members whom I grew to know as they associated with the LGTSA, and by helping maintain the Castle & Crusade Society, where more friendships made only expanded my travels upon the roads of comradeship and perception.

New vistas were opened for me by association and friendship shared with intellects whose wide-ranging imaginative stance on life were impressed upon my own; and this exposed to me its many possibilities, not only in the games we played and designed, but thus in thought in general. I had become a student of life in "high gear" and I soaked up things, as Jeff Perren once said of me, "as a sponge does water." Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) and GENCON grew out of this, for sure; and this is where people today seem to tread in studying this part of history that is for the most part clouded by the very fact that it was hobbyist in nature.

The rise of anything great does not stand upon just a single set of shoulders, or even multiple sets thereof, but upon many so grouped to maintain the weight and thus the direction of such greatness. Within that shared experience is where I found the continued march of possibilities amongst its members' mindsets; and this too was forwarded on with me through my youthful days at TSR and thus in the continued and expanding growth of the hobby.

Thus the continuance of our many-faceted hobby of games today is not forwarded by any one single person (nor by a single concept), who in sudden realization exclaims, "By Jove, I have it!" Indeed, this wellspring has fed us all, and originates chapter by chapter, verse by verse, person by person, and stretches all the way back in times as far removed from us now as it was in thought then. It is through the distillation of philosophical treatment given over to the historical wherein truth is discovered for the wagon of the mind to continue its progress along the road of possibilities and so as not to become wrested from its ancient course by one of its spinning wheels.

It is a great pleasure for me to announce that I have invited several people well known to me from those days and times to participate in our expanding discussions here: game designers, historians, educators, and others who all have in common a single point of view as I do: to share in the wellspring of thought and to continue exposing in different ways the roads of possibilities inherent to our singular and grouped experiences as gamers. I hope you find their thoughts as enlightening as I found them in my youth.