How High-Tech Competition Has Helped Tabletop Gaming

Last week there was a nice article extolling the virtues of D&D and rpgs in general. It was titled After 40 years, popularity of tabletop gaming rises despite high-tech competition. It went on to briefly examine the origins of rpgs and looked to answer the question of why tabletop rpgs are still popular (or even rising in popularity) despite the fact that video games are so prevalent. One thing not mentioned in the article, but one I feel is a key factor for tabletop gaming's continued success, is the fact that there is "high-tech competition". High-tech video games have actually helped tabletop gaming rather than hurting them.

Back when D&D first came out it was seen as a game for nerds. You were weird for wanting to live in a fantasy world, even if it was temporary. Fantasy was also seen as this new thing that no one understood. For some people it was too hard to grasp. Times have changed.

Video games have become main-stream. Everyone, at least in most countries, have played or seen a video game played. In some ways, video games have become the new national past-time. It has replaced time spent and investment that people used to spend in sports, book reading and other pursuits. Along the way, video games went from being a thing computer nerds played to something every kid plays.

In many ways, modern day video games are rpgs. There are the obvious games that are rpgs, such as Skyrim or Mass Effect. Then there are the less "obvious" ones such as SimCity, which allow people to pretend to be someone else. Even first person shooters involve some playing of a character, even if its just playing the "guy-with-the-flamethrower". MMOs have expanded this concept into a perpetual world wherein personas are played, bringing the concepts found in tabletop games even more to the forefront.

The concept of pretending to be someone else while playing a game has become main-stream. The high-tech competition has made rpgs popular. No longer is it just nerds that play rpgs. In one way or another, everyone does it. This has made playing tabletop games easier to understand and more socially acceptable. The high-tech competition (video games) that once was feared as the deathnell of tabletop gaming may actually be its greatest aid.

Gary Who?

When I first started gaming Gary Gygax was the man. He was the man who started it all (at least as far as bringing rpgs to the public masses) and everyone hung on every utterance he made. His rules supplements were studied, his modules the epitome of how to create adventures and his Dragon articles were considered canon. If he gave an interview it was scrutinized as additional material on "how to play the game". Even second hand hear-say ("I once played with Gary at a convention and he said...") was given credence as words from the wise. But I have to ask...

Is Gary Gygax still relevant to the modern rpg gaming community?

Many of the gamers coming into the rpg hobby have never heard of Gary Gygax. Players no longer come into the hobby through Gary's creation, D&D; many have come into the hobby through other games. They thus base their perceptions and attitudes on what makes a good rpg on the game that brought them into the hobby. Sure, it's likely that the "new game" is based on many of the things Gary once espoused but there have to be inherent differences and divergent game design from D&D, otherwise it would just be D&D. This new generation of gamers either doesn't know who Gary Gygax is, or don't care.

To me, this is both good and bad. Bad in the sense that Gary actually had a lot of really good advice for playing and running role-playing games...

"The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience."

"There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you're involved in, whether it's a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things."

"Role-playing isn't storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it's not a game."

"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules."

However, it is never a good thing when the viewpoint of one person dictates what is right or wrong. Too often I see comments like "What would Gary say about this?", "What did Gary think about edition X?", "That's not what Gary would do." Too many people have put the words of Gary up on some sort of holy pedestal and any deviation from those words is a form of heresy. This is unhealthy and does no service to the rpg hobby. To focus in on one person's viewpoints of what is right and wrong in something as diverse as rpgs can be detrimental to gaming. There is no one-way of running and playing an rpg. The greatest strength about rpgs is that it is possible to play them in many different ways.

The best-case scenario is that people remember the words of Gary Gygax, but then make up their own minds as to what makes a good game.

Your Favorite Module Series - Results

Last month I ran a poll to see what D&D module series was their favorite. This was not about the best single module, but the best set of connected modules. I offered up 6 different series ranging from 1E to 3E (and allowed for write-ins) and the results are in. We only had 13 participants, but since this site doesn't get a lot of viewership that is a pretty good number. And the results are...

6      Queen of the Spiders (G1-Q1)
3      Darksun (DS1-DSQ3)
2      Desert of Desolation (I3-I5)
1      Scourge of the Slavelords (A1-A4)
1      Rappan Athuk (1-3)
0      Dragonlance (DL1-DL14)

That Queen of the Spiders won is no surprise to me; it has been a perennial favorite for years now. I was a little surprised Darksun did so well, but I think it was more about the world of Darksun than any greatness in the modules. I'm a bit surprised Scourge of the Slavelords didn't do better and even more surprised Dragonlance didn't get any votes.

Thanks to all those who voted. It was a fun look at modules series.

I Gave My Players a Nuclear Bomb

Actually I gave them two (and technically I gave it to their characters). Am I crazy? This is the embodiment of a game ender. Characters, and the players who run them, can’t be trusted with this much power to change a campaign. Why would I ever give them such a game changer?

Let’s start by putting this into some context. The game I am currently running is a Savage Worlds - Necessary Evil campaign. This is their version of a superhero game wherein the all the good guys were killed off by invading aliens and it is now up to the villains of the world (the player characters) to retake Earth. The setting is near future; a modern world with comic book sci-fi in it (laser guns, etc). In this setting, a nuclear weapon is the pinnacle of weaponry. With a nuclear bomb the characters can kill anyone they want, and a lot of them.

So, back to the original question; why did I give them such a weapon? The initial plan was to present the players with a moral quandary. There is this supervillain who has recently found out the leader of the alien invasion takes psychic damage whenever people within a certain city die (the base city of the campaign and one built by a different alien under mysterious circumstances). In fact, the more people that die there, the more damage the alien leader takes. So this supervillain has decided to kill everyone in the city and hired the player characters to recover a nuclear weapon from a launch silo that was not completely destroyed during the invasion. The PCs know all the background information, thus they were presented with a moral dilemma; use a nuclear bomb to kill the alien leader and 4 million humans and possibly stop the invasion  - or - not use the nuclear bomb and protect 4 million human lives.

The characters ran the mission and made off with two nuclear weapons that were still usable from the silo. And then they told the supervillain that the silo was empty of nuclear weapons that would work. They chose to not use the weapon and protect the lives within the city. But, they kept the nuclear weapon, mostly because they were fascinated by the concept of having a nuclear bomb.

Now I could have decided that there were no usable nuclear weapons within the silo. After all, the moral dilemma had already been presented to the players and the players had already made their decision. But then I was intrigued by the follow-up question; what would the players do with the most powerful weapon on the planet at their disposal? So I let the game go as written.

As a player, I would never expect a GM to hand over such a powerful weapon to the player characters. Doubtless, neither did my players. They probably assumed the weapons would be unusable; basically they were only the draw to run an adventure but that the characters had no real chance at getting a nuclear bomb. And then the truly unexpected happened. They got the most powerful weapon in the world…in their hands…to do with as they desire.

And that is sort of the point of this post. Throw something completely unexpected at the players and their characters. Do this on a meta-game level as well as at the in-game level. There are some meta-assumptions all gamers make. One of them is that the players will never have the ultimate weapon (in this case a nuclear bomb) that functions and that they can use without restriction. Think back to how many adventures and stories revolve around recovering a powerful artifact only to have the artifact be destroyed or otherwise not be recovered (falling into a deep crevasse seems to be the favorite method for doing this).

However, sometimes it is desirable to do exactly that – give the players the very thing no GM in his right mind would give the players. Sometimes we as GMs fear the repercussions of allowing this to happen. “It will destroy the campaign I have spent hours and hours designing!” So what? Let it. Let the players do as they will; the game really is about them after all.

So in conclusion, don’t be afraid to let things go where they will. Don’t second guess your players and deny them the world.

And what did my players do with their nuclear bombs? They buried them in 20’ of concrete below their secret base because they don’t want them to fall into the wrong hands. They may eventually end up using them, but for now they are scared of them – as any player character should be.

Your Favorite Module Series

Everyone has their favorite D&D module and often they are part of a series. That said, I am wondering what people consider the greatest module series to be. By this I mean a series of linked adventures that tie together fairly tightly to tell an overarching story spread over more than one module. Granted this sort of accolade is highly subjective, based on game play and nostalgia. A great adventure can be butchered to mediocrity and a poor adventure can be elevated to iconic status by an excellent DM and players.

Here follows a list of many of the well-known module series. There is a poll on the right of this site wherein you can vote. The poll will remain up until the end of the month. If there is a series that you feel is better than those I have listed feel free to make mention of it in the comments.

Scourge of the Slavelords A1-A4

Dragonlance DL1-DL14

 

Darksun DS1-DSQ3

Queen of the Spiders G1-Q1

Desert of Desolation I3-I5

Rappan Athuk 1-3