The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [5]
Characters do not view their universe as a set of game rules, but players do. In systems where there are clear target numbers to perform an action, players may choose their characters’ actions depending on the likelihood of success. Players have become accustomed to having some level of “meta-knowledge” about how the game works, like hit points or ability scores. This is why MMORPGs and CRPGs still display numbers for skill use and damage inflicted even though all the rules can be masked through the game’s interface.
Player Unawareness of Character Reality
Just as players can provide their characters with information they would not normally possess, players inevitably lack information their characters should know. My most recent Dungeons & Dragons character, a fantasy version of a Roman standard bearer named Quintus Aurelius Ignatius, certainly knew more about military protocol and procedures than I did. It is often up to the game master to adjudicate situations in which the character should know something but the player doesn’t. Modern realistic settings and characters that have characteristics in common with their players help reduce this disparity.
Awareness Context of the Game Master
Game worlds are massive universes, fabricated by another game company or by the game master. As such, each game universe is only as detailed as the amount of time and effort invested in it. There’s only so much diegesis a game universe can realistically convey. If players focus on macro- or micro-levels of information, such as the population numbers for a particular race across a continent or the different kinds of microbes that infect a peculiar breed of sheep, the game breaks down. It is up to the game master or coding authority to fill in the blanks, sharing the right information at the right time.
If the information isn’t shared appropriately, the players fail to experience diegesis and the game experience is less engaging. During an investigativestyle tabletop game session, one of my players correctly deduced that a character wasn’t important because I didn’t immediately have the details of her profession at my fingertips. If she was important, he declared, I would immediately know what kind of lawyer she was. He was right.
This analysis of frames helps sheds some light on the “right” way to play a game. A LARP, for example, minimizes character awareness of player reality and increases agency because the player physically inhabits the character’s body through his action. There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong way to game so much as player agreement on which frames they will use to play the game.
Because role-playing isn’t just about inhabiting a role but playing it, narrative inhabitance requires interaction with others. And because there isn’t always a means of determining a player’s level of inhabitance of his role, the only way to discover this is to role-play with the character. This interaction can be jarring for the widely differing levels of inhabitance, because a roleplayer’s diegesis is partially defined by his interaction with other players, while a “roll-player’s” role is defined by his agency. A role-player needs other players to play along with his role. A roll-player does not.
We will define role-playing in this context as not just inhabiting the role but interacting with others. At first blush it might seem that it is not necessary to review the single-player game experience because it does not reflect true social interaction; however, even single-player games attempt to model a group of characters, with the role inhabited by the computer. The effectiveness of the computer’s ability to mimic these characters helps determine the level of interaction within the game. Or, to put it another way, computers are another form of player.
Time
Tim is a currency that all forms of fantasy gaming have in common. Experiencing a role