What is a role-playing game?

Well that certainly is a pretentious title, eh? I don’t really mean for it to be pretentious and, in fact, I’m not all that interested in defining role-playing games. What I’m going to do is take the standard definition (aka Wikipedia’s) and highlight its various components and stress the elements that I prefer in a game.

I think that there are three key elements of this definition and most player styles or preferences are a combination of these three elements with one or more being more dominant than the others. In no particular order, they are:

• Challenge Oriented
• Character Oriented
• Story Oriented

A player who is predominantly challenge oriented approaches the game as though it is a series of challenges that can be overcome. More often than not, these challenges take the form of combat. Negotiations, investigations, and other activities may also be considered challenges to players with this orientation. Such players are often experts in the rules of the game and are quite adept at maximizing their characters to best succeed at various tasks. These players tend to emphasize this part of the defintion: “Participants determine the actions […] and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.” They want to be challenged, want to feel clever or have a sense of victory or just kick some ass, and want to be rewarded for it.

A player who is predominantly character oriented strongly identifies with their character and approaches the game as a medium for expressing that character. Such players are often considered more-interested in “roleplaying” and will often see the game as a stage. Others see the game as an opportunity to play their favorite type of character. Regardless, such players often claim center stage during play and emphasize this part of the definition: “participants assume the roles of fictional characters [and] based on their characterization […] improvise freely.” Such players want an emotional kick from playing their character; they either want to have the opportunity to have their character (or his or her defining traits) to shine and are typically more interested in why their character does what they do than they are in what their character actually does.

A player who is predominantly story oriented sees the game more as an ongoing fictional narrative. Such a player isn’t overly interested in the rules or numbers of the game or individual success or failure as much as they are in moving a story forward and pursuing various plot threads. A story oriented player will often forego or compromise their own characterizations if it drives the story forward. Such players emphasize this part of the definition: “collaboratively create or follow stories [and] their choices shape the direction and outcome of the games.” They want their character involved in various plots and sub-plots and want to see them advanced in each session.

Obviously, unless a player is fairly extreme in their preferences, no one of these three elements fully defines him or her. Most players have a little bit of each element favoring one over the others most of the time but not always (sometimes, even the most diehard story-oriented player just wants to kick some butt). Similarly, most roleplaying games have all three elements in varying degrees with one typically being more important or central than the others. The problem arises, however, when players come into a game expecting one element to be dominant while the GM and/or other players expect another.

This brings me, finally, to the whole point of this exercise…my preference as a GM. I tend to prefer to have the story oriented approach to be the dominant approach. I’m most interested in a game that collaboratively tells a story based on the characters choices and actions and responses to them. This does not mean, however, that players who like to overcome challenges or play their character will find my games to be lacking.

I enjoy what I consider to be a healthy dose of characterization and have had some memorable NPCs and role-playing interactions with the PCs. My games have often had sessions that are little more than PC to PC or PC to NPC interaction and “roleplaying.” Of course, being more of a story-oriented type, I prefer that such interactions also play a role in driving a story forward and are not simply roleplaying for the sake of roleplaying (although that is okay too as long as everyone is having fun with it). On the other hand, I definitely do not enjoy having players who create characters who, simply because it is “in-character” for them to do so, are disruptive or overly secretive or anything else that makes them not function well as a member of a group. Characters who are so focused on their own goals and ideals such that they can not or will not compromise to pursue other things really have no place in a story oriented game.

My games also have had their fair share of challenges to overcome be it simple combat or complex investigations. Much to my chagrin, there have been some sessions that have been little more than big fights. Being more story oriented, I prefer it if the challenges are such that they somehow advance the plot as opposed to being simple hack n’ slash. For example, it is very, very rare for a random encounter to just happen in my campaigns. I like for there to be some reason for an encounter…beyond just that the creature or person happens to live in the area that the PCs have entered. The reason doesn’t necessarily have to be related to the particular sub-plot the PCs are currently pursuing but I do like to have some sort of backstory for most every encounter. So if all you want is a player is a hack n’ slash, just kill monsters and take their stuff, then this may not be a good fit for you.

So I basically prefer for the challenges and roleplaying to largely be within the structure of contributing to an ongoing story or as being elements of the story as opposed to being the predominant elements themselves. That’s what I think a role-playing game is and, to emphasize this, I would re-write the Wikipedia definition as follows to describe a FRG campaign:

I don’t know if any of this made much sense but if this sounds something like what you prefer in a role-playing game (or at least interests you), then you might just like a FRG campaign. I’ve rambled on long enough for now. Next up, I’ll elaborate a bit more on what I see as collaborative storytelling and talk a little about “emergent storytelling.”