The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [13]
But there is one additional level of immersion. Rather than using imagination alone to create a character or computer graphics to depict one, why not dress up as the character? In a LARP, the player IS the character. The player is playing a role, but his features, attire, and actions all translate to some ingame effect. With LARPing, there is a delicate balance between character and player, just as actors struggle with their roles. That intersection means less control over the game’s presentation. A fact I learned all too well in my first LARP experience.
Structure
This book is structured in order of fantasy inspiration. Beginning with Tolkien’s works, we follow the path of gaming evolution to miniature wargames, which in turn birthed tabletop role-playing games. From there multiple paths diverge into interactive fiction, play-by-post, and CRPGs. MUDs and MMORPGs follow. We finally end with LARPs, which have developed along their own divergent path.
Throughout, I attempt to trace a common historical narrative and compare it to my own personal experiences. Although I have played many different games, I have not participated in every piece of gaming history in this book. Whenever possible, I have asked players, designers, and game scholars to fill in my gaps of experience. Each chapter is broken down into the following sections: History, Fellowship, Narrative, Personalization, Risk, Roles, and Status.
The history section provides a necessarily brief overview of the history of each gaming medium. The murky history of gaming is fraught with contradictions for many reasons, not the least of which that it is in designers’ best interests to “be first” to protect their intellectual property. When a game is published, when its manual was published, and who exactly owns what elements of a game’s intellectual property are beyond the scope of this book. Each history section is by no means the final word on gaming. Other authors have devoted entire works to just one gaming medium, like Barton’s Dungeons & Desktops, an extensive overview of computer role-playing games, and Nick Montfort’s exploration of interactive fiction in Twisty Little Passages. My goal is to show the commonality amongst the various gaming mediums.
The fellowship section covers how teamwork is a fundamental part of role-playing games. We review how players find each other in the game, how they work together as a team, and the support that each game provides for team play.
Narrative focuses on the overall message that games convey through ingame influences and the game’s interface. Games that claim to be about story might undermine that goal by giving players endless opportunities to just kill monsters. Role-playing games that promise an immersive experience but offer “+1 swords of fire” are falling short of their promise. Narrative encompasses the world, the key concepts as outlined by developers, inherited by the cultures they live in real life, and influenced by popular tropes laid down by Tolkien and other early fantasy authors.
The personalization section reviews the extent to which the game is modified to suit the players’ needs. In a novel this doesn’t happen at all, but in interactive games it is one of the defining characteristics. CRPGs cater exclusively to the player, personalizing the game to his needs. On a more dynamic scale, tabletop game masters provide personalized content as appropriate for their group, balancing a huge variety of variables to find a common ground between all participants.
The risk section provides the motivation for characters to exist in the world. It binds them together and encourages them to work in groups; provides a common foe for them to defeat and a means of advancing through