The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [57]
In the Strategic Review, Gygax took to task game masters who let characters level too quickly or too highly. He felt it should take up to five years to reach twentieth level. Five years into the game no character in his Greyhawk campaign had risen beyond fourteenth level (1976:23). The pace of advancement would change in later editions of the game, both in the range of levels (up to 30) and in the speed of advancement.
Gygax cited the diversity of classes and levels as the “single obvious shortcoming” of Dungeons & Dragons, such that the participants lose sight of why such diversity exists. Level was explicitly tied to personal power instead of social status or good standing in a community. As Gygax saw it, the end results for player characters was perpetual adventure or retiring as a nonplayer character as a tool for the game master (1987:29). The fourth edition addressed this issue head on, dividing levels of adventure into tiers. These tiers include the heroic, paragon, and epic.
The heroic tier is the same level of adventure established in traditional Dungeons & Dragons, which in turn was inherited from The Lord of the Rings and the gritty pulp adventure of Conan. Ranging from first to tenth level, this form of adventuring sticks to relatively mundane fantasy; dungeons and humanoid foes, where magic is rare and deadly.
The paragon tier encompasses eleventh through twentieth level. Paragons are on the level of Gandalf, engaging extraplanar threats like Balrogs head on. They go to places most mortals would never dream, including realms where mortals are not meant to go.
The epic tier, ranging from twenty-first to thirtieth level, strides in the footsteps of the gods. These are levels of deity-shaking power that were hinted at in the third edition but never integrated into the core rules. More importantly, there is a definitive end to the character, something Dungeons & Dragons only unequivocally defined in its high-level basic rules set. Level increases would spiral to ridiculous heights in CRPGs, MUDs, and MMORPGs, going well beyond 100 levels.
Conclusion
John Tynes views Dungeons & Dragons as a vehicle for heroic storytelling and creation of a fictional power structure. He sees the tabletop game as being doomed to irrelevancy due to its undeniably escapist nature. If role-playing is to be anything more than child’s play and frivolous entertainment, Tynes proposes, an engagist approach is necessary. Engagist works embrace the modern world and use it as an opportunity to explore real life issues (Tynes 2007:222).
But there’s hope. A sort of fantasy shorthand has been developed as a result of The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons in modern culture, such that even non-gamers know that dwarves live underground, elves have pointy ears, and wizards cast spells. If role-playing games are perhaps not as interested in delving into reality to prove political points, the future may lie in other fantasy gaming mediums.
When Gygax was asked if he resented the Dungeons & Dragons clones in other gaming mediums, he said he was flattered. “In fact,” said Gygax in Master of the Game (1989:155), “I am saddened only that there isn’t more exploitation ... the greater the exposure to the imaginative, creative, and social aspects of role-playing, the greater participation in the field, and thus the prospects of better things to come.”
FOUR
PLAY-BY-POST AND BROWSER-BASED GAMES
People have been playing chess by mail for a long time, and people (John Boardman in particular) were running pbm Diplomacy and charging a fee before I started in 1970. But I like to use the slogan “We Created the Play-By-Mail Industry” (emphasis on the word “industry”) because I was the first person to start doing this full time as my only job. I was DEFINITELY the first person to buy my own computer JUST to run games! [Loomis 2009].