I am just woolgathering here on RPGs or rather, D&D in particular, but hopefully it is of interest to some of you. This train of thought is really a continuation of an earlier off-the-cuff post on my portfolio site a couple months back, that was ostensibly about “what 5E is for,” but which really was split down the middle between being about “how to run 5E when you’re used to previous editions,” and “beginning to mull over a question about role-playing games”. Just adding one to the pile, which maybe I’ll return to.
So. The way I think of it, there’s a gradient between games that strictly dictate your range of actions as well as the mechanics of the space/world it occurs in (chess, say), and partially or fully unrestricted (and potentially unruly and directionless) free play. RPGs fall somewhere on this spectrum, and where it falls always entails some trade-offs. Some systems strictly delineate the range of possible actions, others attempt to be more abstract, all of them try in some sense to blend “story” with “game”.
I’m going to pick on D&D a little here, although this isn’t a “D&D sucks play my indie game” post (…although would it kill ya?). I enjoy D&D, with the right group. I just think it’s a little duplicitous about the experience that its systems are trying to create, and that’s what I’d like to dig into a little bit.
As one example, look at just how much “flavor” dictates the differences between character classes, races, and so on in 5e, and really how little the system seems interested in incentivizing the type of play that the books claim to be for. (While they do actually lend themselves to other things, as I’ll get into).
As an experiment, I took the same character concept and was able to develop them with different race, class options and so on, in several different campaigns, in which I played him as characters and NPCs. I’ve done this before for various reasons, but hadn’t before considered to change their class, race, and overall “build” before. It worked perfectly well, almost too well. In the course of playing these different iterations, something else seemed increasingly obvious. It’s not that the system is so flexible that the same character can be “skinned” and spec-ed out differently and roleplaying them was essentially the same, it’s that the two things — “roleplay” and “game” — have no particular relationship with one another.
The point is that the system, by and large, only cares about how abilities manifest in combat — and where there are variations, those are intentionally smoothed over for the sake of “balance”. There’s plenty of lore about the races and classes, but when you get down to what comes out in sessions and drives / limits player actions, it’s... again... mostly left in the hands of players how to connect their character and the story their in with the system that are meant to represent them, or else it’s a couple little stat perks that are even more incidental now that they can (optionally) be swapped for one another to represent “cultural” differences.
The optional rules in Tasha’s are well and good in themselves, actually, but they don’t fix the disconnect between the system and how you roleplay that character.
At most, a major respec like that tweaks the specific methods they use to slice and dice or blast their opponents. How I play him, and in fact, if I “play” him at all, that’s up to me. What are his goals and motivations and fears? What about his character development, obstacles?
How do they connect with any of the systems that take up the bulk of the rulebooks? Doesn’t matter. You’re only playing a character if you want to be, either way it’s a “skin” atop the same Swiss army knife. If you can manage to shoehorn your characters development into a pre-fab adventure, it certainly wasn’t included in that module’s design. All you really need is a couple stock phrases and a desire to vanquish your foes.
All of this raises the question of what a game system is even for? The short answer I would give is that system is for subtly incentivizing certain behaviors and deprioritizing others, helping to realize a story-like dynamic by directing / restricting your character’s actions and agency within the world as much as keeping them open. That balance, and the balance of agency, is part of what defines one system from another. The objective is to help replicate an experience. Of course, no matter how effective the system is at doing this, it always comes down to the specific group playing and running it, but when it comes to game design, that is the variable you don’t really have control over.
I think this is indicative of an internal conflict within D&D both in the books and in how it’s played, about what it actually is. Character and story are intended to be a core part of the “roleplaying”, or so we are told, yet most of the books are filled with rules that actually have very little to do with meeting that end. Roleplaying is something extra, something you just do, supported vaguely by skill checks (at times), but mostly handled as an adjunct that’s handwaved a bit with “creativity”. Give a Warlock an Eldritch Blast, they’re gonna use it.
Before anyone gets out pitchforks, I should reiterate that I play and run D&D and have since the late 80s, so obviously I’m not simply attacking it or suggesting that no one play. In fact, let me say here for those of you who play with me, or in 5E campaigns I run — none of this is actually too much of a hindrance in situations where you’ve already accepted the “game” for what it is, or are mutually willing to make adaptations.
Either they know how to roleplay a character and track their basic motives and character arc already, without re-enforcement and incentive from the system, OR they’re interested in the more regressive almost board-gamey elements in D&D — you’re having fun playing hack n’ slash with friends, and who cares? As I’ve said before and will likely say again — D&D is a monster hunting and looting game with some roleplaying characteristics, often posing as a high fantasy character-driven roleplaying game. If you let it be that, it’s a lot of fun. You can also push it to be more than that, though at that point I would suggest maybe looking at other systems.
But this has been a massive problem for me when I’ve tried to play at Cons, or with complete strangers at events, or online. (Especially using a modular approach like Adventure League or tables that take system as a literal tablet of dictates to be followed, to the detriment of story, of fun. “The dice are Gods here, we are merely their puppets.”) If your character is a cardboard cut out anyway, the game makes its own covert demands. “We are doing a roleplay. Roll 1d6.”
This also becomes an issue when it comes to thinking about public assumptions about what roleplaying games are, since D&D has insisted and to some extent won the consensus view that D&D and roleplaying are synonymous.
Given the popularity of D&D, I find this disconnect both fascinating and a little troubling, because instead of being a problem, this lack seems to be a strange sort of benefit where Wizards are able to reassert itself as the Ur-RPG, and leverage that disconnect between character, story, and system as a feature rather than a benefit. The issue isn’t whether dark elves or orcs are or aren’t inherently evil, it never was — it is the absurdity of taking a game premised on killing foes and taking their shit and pretending it’s something else entirely.
Though given Wizard’s sales numbers, they’re clearly doing something right. And, you know, I enjoy the monster hunting game just fine, when that’s what we’ve chosen to play. But if you are still trying to use D&D to drive character and story, there are a long list of systems you might want to look into.
(On that note, maybe next up in the RPG chronicles, some more thoughts on what System actually is, and what it does — and doesn’t do).
Finally, this was written in a smartphone in the Medium app, which is hot garbage, so apologies if the text formatting is all weird.
