The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [101]
Tolkien’s influence on races in CRPGs is strong. As Barton points out in Dungeons & Desktops, many early CRPGs hewed closely to the Fellowship model from The Lord of the Rings, including races named “hobbit” (2008:202). Like Dungeons & Dragons, races were predominantly Caucasian in appearance. One unfortunate exception was Blood and Honor, which cast an African American as the sole thief character (Barton 2008:310).
Phantasie is perhaps the best example of fantasy race diversity, where the player couldn’t intentionally choose which character he received but could nevertheless still play nonstandard races including gnoll, goblin, kobold, lizard man, minotaur, ogre, orc, pixie, sprite, or troll. Might and Magic’s Day of the Destroyer even featured the ability to add a dragon to the party. Phantasie didn’t just provide a wide range of races, it made a point of having the race attributes matter in the game, including race relations with merchants, certain races able to enter certain areas, and even differing age rates (Barton 2008:102).
Race-level limits were ignored by most CRPGs, as were multiclass restrictions—rules that only debuted later with the transition of official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons to the desktop.
Class
Early CRPGs featured one character, a jack of all trades. These multitalented characters were less susceptible to the inherent flaws of the Dungeons & Dragons class-based system, which were made to rely on each other. In CRPGs, everyman heroes could battle competently as a fighter, sneak quietly as a thief, and read scrolls or cast a spell as a wizard or cleric. All in all, early characters were much more like Dungeons & Dragons bards or rangers.
As CRPGs evolved, the classes became more specialized, featuring the same combination of classes available in early Dungeons & Dragons: fighter, wizard, and thief. The reasoning for those three classes is likely due to the complexity of the system required to handle each class’s abilities. Fighters interacted only with the core combat rules, and thieves were marginally more complicated in interacting with the environment (walls, doors, and so forth).
Wizards, on the other hand, complicated the game immensely with their spells. Spell-casters go beyond the basic rules of combat. In early CRPGs, spell systems were simple affairs that could be cast regardless of the player character’s abilities or class. Spell casting in CRPGs evolved to a point-buy system, with the majority abandoning the Vancian style of magic. The spellslot system didn’t make an appearance until Advanced Dungeons & Dragons– licensed games made their debut.
Perhaps the class that became most popular as a result of CRPGs is the bard. The Bard’s Tale worked hard to make the bard an appealing, charismatic character. It also featured an array of bard songs, fleshing out the class well beyond the original sketch of Dungeons & Dragons (Barton 2008:94).
Participant Roles
According to the Wizards survey, the average age of computer gamers was 26, the average age of a console gamer was 23, and the average age of gamers who played both was 20. Of gamers who played computer games, the majority (52 percent) were single, and 46 percent had partners.
Of the games played monthly, 72 percent of computer gamers played tabletop role-playing games as well, 57 percent played both console and computer games, and 54 percent played only console games. As Dancey explains, people who play electronic games still find the time to play tabletop role-playing games. “It appears that these two pursuits are ‘complementary’ or ‘noncompetitive’ outside the scope of the macroeconomic ‘disposable income’ competition.”
Nonplayer Characters
Nonplayer characters (NPCs) were perhaps the biggest challenge for CRPGs to bring to life. So long as the player was controlling the character, the apparent intelligence of the character was evident in the player’s decisions. But when the