On Role-Playing (Part 4 of 11)

The PHB, DMG, and MM all bear the same phraseology on their gold corner bar: Adventure Game. At least, that’s what MY books say…I know there are some older printings that simply say Advanced D&D. “Role-playing” in other words, is something neither TSR nor Gygax were advertising or promoting at this stage. The books were compilations of “essential reference information”…the definitive version of the D&D (fantasy adventure) game, in other words, and if you wanted there to be “role-playing” well fine and dandy, but that’s not what was being offered.

And it really isn’t. Despite the inclusion of thieves and assassins and paladins and monks and alignment, there’s nothing to be found about role-playing within the pages of these books. Certainly alignment has an effect (mainly with regard to spells and magic item functions and there are penalties to be faced for going off the reservation with regard to alignment), but it appears to serve mainly as a description of the various “cosmic forces of the universe” not a behavioral guide. The section on alignment in the PHB is cold and clinical in my opinion, simply stating “this is what it is” and nothing about playing alignment (though it does mention the difficulty in voluntarily changing one’s alignment…probably due to the otherwise “break the game” effect that would occur if one could switch at the drop of a hat to make use of both evil and good magic items).

In fact, the ONLY thing I could find in the AD&D books that I’d construe as role-playing advice or encouragement is a single blurb taken from the foreword of the Players Handbook (guideline #5 for “making the experience more fun”):

Get in the spirit of the game, and use your [character] to play with a special personality all its own. Interact with the other player characters and non-player characters to give the campaign a unique flavor and “life.” Above all, let yourself go, and enjoy!

Quite the admonishment, though one easily skipped over in the quest to “get to the good stuff.” No such directive is given in the later sections of the book…and even the “racial preference charts” seem fairly dry and non-role-play-y in nature.

[EDIT: Yes, I realize there's a bit on page 7 of the PHB in the section titled "The Game" that discusses becoming an artful thespian as you constrain yourselves to the limits of your character...i.e. ability scores and "moral ethics (called alignment)." But while folks who already understand role-playing may retrospectively point to this as proof positive of the rules presenting information on the act, the sections seems (to me) to be more of a call for limitation with the main feature of the game being the unleashing of the imagination (the allowing of fantasies to "enter your life"), not the escape presented in role-playing. As will be explained a bit later, I don't consider play-acting in and of itself to be "role-playing."]

Which is not to say that people weren’t role-playing (in the sense of the term I’m using) back in the 1970s…before people start jumping down my throat please allow me to say, yes, of course a creative gaming group could take a dry and clinical racial preference chart and extrapolate all sorts of role-playing (mental perspective shift) goodness out of it. I am NOT saying that role-playing wasn’t found at the gaming table…fact of the matter is, I think role-playing as I use the term (and its potential within the system and its actual occurrence) are the things that MADE Dungeons & Dragons such a unique, and popular gaming experience!

But I can also see where that old grognard chestnut of “we don’t explore character, we explore dungeons” comes from. One could pick up any of these early rule sets and (especially with a wargaming background) simply use it for small scale wargames and fantastic military campaigns. Such players would be just as creative and kit-bashy as any other “role-playing” oriented individual but with a mind towards “making a better wargame” complete with random hit locations, weapon versus armor, variable weapon damage, critical hits, etc. Oh, wait…that was ALREADY DONE BY GYGAX AND ARNESON. This is the kind of thing that IS present in those old supplements for OD&D:  a plethora of tables and combat charts enough to put it close to par with D20 (if not as slick and elegant as D20) with the aim of bringing more crunch to the game in the war/fighting arena.

No such effort or additional rules are provided to bring "more role-playing" to the game.

Again (and to reiterate)…I am NOT saying role-playing (in the sense I use the term) wasn’t occurring back in the 1970s. I believe it was happening…with at least some folks and probably with more as the hobby grew and spread outside the original wargaming community. What I am trying to point out here is that this “role-playing phenomenon,” whereby players took on the mindset of their character, shifting their perspective to that of the fantasy persona (at least for the duration of a game session)…what I’m trying to point out is that this was happening without a guide or roadmap or explicit instruction (or even much encouragement!) as to HOW to do it…or that such was an eventual or even possible outcome of play.

Why is this role-playing thing important? Because that is the one feature offered by role-playing games that cannot be found in any other medium of entertainment. It’s the only real goddamn reason to play these games. You can get fantasy adventure swinging a sword with a video game. You can get your acting “thang” on with a LARP session if you can find one that suits your taste (and perhaps, in the future, V-R technology will enable a true “live action RP” experience). You can get your beer & pretzel camaraderie over a variety of board games and card games of varying difficult and “challenge” levels. But no other entertainment medium harnesses the human power of imagination to such a degree that you can live a vicarious (and safe!) method of escape and exploration while building an intimate rapport (and strengthening communal ties) through play.

And it’s pretty damn inexpensive, too. If I had my druthers, RPGs would be the Great American Indoor Pastime.

Okay, but that’s side-tracking (sorry)…right now, we’re only up to 1979 or so. It was 1981  (where I first entered the hobby) when the whole role-playing thing got a huge kick of encouragement from the minds of TSR: that’s the year of the release of Tom Moldvay’s Basic Dungeons & Dragons set.

I was rereading Moldvay as part of my prep for doing this series and, once again, I’m extemely impressed with the book. To me, it really is the best version of the game ever published…simple, straightforward, educational (in the sense of “teaching the rules”), and entertaining to read. Yes, it has problems (no book is perfect), but you could take Moldvay as a base and extrapolate many worlds of adventure from it. One day, it might be a fun exercise to try building a version of D&D Mine using only Moldvay’s book (skipping everything in the Expert set and later, for example)…I find it fascinating that it has such a more “sword-and-sorcery” feeling due to its lack of monsters and treasures; consider that most of the mythological monsters (hydras, Cyclops, manticores, giants, etc.) and movie/literature monsters (vampires, mummies,  ring-wraiths, purple worms, etc.) are found in the Expert book.  Anyway, that’s another digression (sorry).

Moldvay starts his book with a foreword describing a possible (if fairly unlikely) example of play. However, he tells it from the perspective of the character, not the player (what the player might imagine is happening in his or her mind’s eye). It does not contain flowery prose, but is straightforward in its description…and yet it is not “the DM said this” and “the player rolled X dice.” Anything game or mechanics related is removed from the telling…what we are left with is an anecdote of heroic adventure, as well as Moldvay’s explanation that when playing D&D, one can forget it is a game and instead feel as if it is a novel or film in which you participate.

[role-playing theory, still in its infancy, is understandably difficult to articulate in plain language for the newbie audience]

Class takes the center-stage in the character creation system, and yet while we’ve reverted to the simple options available in OD&D (and Holmes) we have a subtle injection of what I’d consider “role-playing notes” that starts laying the groundwork for players:

RE Dwarves: “Stubborn but practical , dwarves love hearty meals and strong drink. They value good craftsmanship and are very fond of gold.”

RE Elves: “They can be dangerous opponents…but prefer to spend their time feasting and frolicking in wooded glades. They rarely visit the cities of men.”

RE Halflings: “They are outgoing but not unusually brave, seeking treasure as a way of gaining the comforts of home which they so dearly love.”

RE Thieves: “As their name indicates, however, they do steal – sometimes from members of their own party.”

And comparing fighters and magic-users to Hercules and Merlin (respectively) also impresses ideas into a person’s mind, based on the reader’s concept of those iconic figures.

These notes are a waste of space and absolute nonsense for a straightforward “explore the dungeon, kill the monster, take the treasure” game. If D&D is really only as simple as its premise, why would players care what their characters’ motivations are or what kind of food they prefer? If I only gain “points” by finding treasure and fighting monsters, it is ridiculous to even consider stealing from my fellow party-members (who are likely to be irritated by such), let alone waste time “frolicking in wooded glades.”

From a role-playing perspective, however, these notes are golden. Jaded veteran gamers of 30 years might find them to be pretty well-worn “stereotypes” and thus uninteresting, but for a NEW player, they imprint the mind (with a minimal use of words) the beginning of what it means to play a role-playing game.

Hell, I even find LaForce’s illustration on page 6 to be extremely useful…the first time in any D&D edition that there is a visual presentation of the process of conceptualizing one’s character.  I’m sure this is how a lot of us go through the character generation process…at least, I know I do. I check my ability scores and try to come up with an image in my head (i.e. a concept) of how my character might appear. The PC is more than the statistics written down on the page: it is an imaginary avatar allowing exploration of the fantasy landscape, and visualizing the character is an important part of the identification process.

But all that’s just the warm-up; it’s the alignment section that I find to be chock-full of specific role-playing instruction (even if it is not framed as such). Here, Moldvay states definitively that:

Players may choose the alignments they feel will best fit their characters…the alignments give guidelines for the characters to live by. The characters will try to follow these guidelines, but may not always be successful.

Behavioral guidelines for CHARACTERS…as if the character was a real person and not simply a piece on the playing board.

[to be continued]