The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [17]
And yet Dungeons & Dragons and The Lord of the Rings share a common heritage that goes beyond the attributes of certain fantasy races. Although Gygax admitted that Dungeons & Dragons was not designed with Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces in mind, he also recognized that the monomyth is strongly present in fantasy role-playing games (Office of Resources for International and Area Studies [ORIAS]).
In the monomyth, the hero receives a call to adventure, usually at the behest of a guide. The threshold of adventure takes place in a particular setting where the hero faces a difficult task. He overcomes it with some supernatural assistance. During his adventure, he makes “father atonement”—usually to a father-like figure or government authority.
In return, the hero receives a token of his heroism, monetary or honorific. His triumph, or apotheosis, is the climax of the adventure. The hero returns home to rest and recuperate. The adventure has been completed, his heroism acknowledged, and the cycle begins again. All these elements are present in The Lord of the Rings and fantasy literature in general (1989:166).
Risk
The novel and the role-playing game share more than just fantastical literary artifacts. As Janet Murray explained in First Person (2004:2), novels and games share two structures, the contest and the puzzle.
The War of the Ring provides the backdrop for a multitude of contests. A key staple of Dungeons & Dragons and its successors is a strong combat element, such that a new player could be forgiven for assuming that the games constitute nothing but battles.
The riddle, from the Anglo-Saxon “raedan,” which means to advise, guide, or explain (Montfort 2003:4) is the literary precursor to ergodic fiction. By posing a riddle, the author challenges the protagonist as well as the reader. Both are invited to solve the problem, although the outcome is inevitable in literature. Specifically, the situational puzzle, in which a situation is described and the listener is challenged to give the full context of the description, is perhaps the closest riddle form to interactive fiction (2003:41).
In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien frequently uses riddles and prophecies to provide twists in the story. The inscription on the One Ring and the prophecy associated with it is a challenge to the reader to predict the outcome of the tale, and ultimately Tolkien’s to solve. Tolkien included several other riddles in his stories, from “Speak friend and ye shall enter” to “No man will kill the witch king.”
For those systems that either deemphasize combat or provide alternatives to it, the puzzle is a strong element in the various forms of role-playing games. This is most prevalent in systems that do not easily convey combat, like textbased interactive fiction. Zork, for example, consisted almost entirely of riddles and challenges between the game designer and the player, who had to figure out the “right” way to succeed.
The novel and interactive fiction intersect in Choose Your Own Adventure books, which allow the player to read a story usually involving traditional conflict, but resolve it through puzzle solving and trial and error. We will discuss gamebooks and interactive fiction in a subsequent chapter.
Roles
First recorded in English in 1606, the term “role” has its roots in the Old French word “rolle.” It refers to a roll of parchment or a scroll, and more specifically to the text from which an actor learns his part. There are both creator roles, who help invent the narrative that the participants experience, and participant roles, who receive that experience and explore it.
Creator Roles
In fiction, creator roles are