Epic fantasy and role-playing games
Dec. 1st, 2013 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philmophlegmI imagine a lot of role-players come to RPGs having already read some epic fantasy. In my case, I'd read a lot of Tolkien and quite a bit of Donaldson before I ever played The Keep on the Borderlands. It is natural for the the epic fantasy fan to want to reproduce that epic fantasy feel in D&D, or his fantasy RPG of choice. Most of the D&D scenarios I wrote in my early DMing days were aspiring to epic fantasy.
The thing is, D&D (and by extension, most fantasy RPGs) is not epic fantasy. What it is, is swords and sorcery. As Gary Gygax made clear in Appendix N of the first edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, authors like Tolkien were not the primary inspiration for D&D. I mean yes, there are hobbits (or there were until the lawyers got involved, and they became 'halflings') and orcs and elves and dwarves, but D&D as originally imagined is all about a party of adventurers entering a dungeon, killing some monsters and getting some loot. That sort of thing has much more in common with L. Sprague de Camp and Robert E. Howard than the likes of Tolkien or Donaldson or Eddings. And indeed, the aforementioned Appendix N lists Sprague de Camp and Howard as "the most immediate influences" on AD&D, along with Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H.P. Lovecraft and Abraham Merritt. Since AD&D was first published in the late 70s, a lot of fantasy has been written*. I'd be interested to see what literary influences were cited by the developers of more recent versions of the game.
Because D&D wasn't created to run epic fantasy scenarios, it's not actually that good at recreating that epic fantasy feel. Most D&D campaigns, even if they avoid traditional dungeon-crawling, still feature lots of skirmishes. Through the whole of The Lord of the Rings, how many times do Frodo and Sam actually partake in combat?
Dragonlance is an example of an epic fantasy trilogy that was D&D. (I've just finished the third book in the original Chronicles trilogy, and have been surprised by how good the third part was - I thought the first book was pretty poor.) However, when you read the books and you flick through the original AD&D modules, it's clear that the modules have much more dungeon crawling and monster slaying than the books. Conversely, the books have more character interaction.
It seems to me that any DM who wants to run an epic fantasy campaign may want to look beyond D&D...
There are other features in D&D that don't really fit in with epic fantasy. In many epic fantasy novels, there are characters who start out as seemingly week and feeble but who end up as legendary heroes able to achieve great feats of endurance, skill or strength. Now at first glance, this does seem to tie in with D&D's levelling up mechanism. Except that to go from a puny first level character to a heroic tenth or fifteenth or even twentieth level character in D&D would only happen after years of adventuring and hundreds or thousands of kills. Consider the example of Merry in The Lord of the Rings. At the start of the book, he's not much more than an upper-class twit, a sort of Hooray Hobbit. By the end of the book, he's helped to kill the Lord of the Nazgul and led a small army to victory in the Battle of Bywater. Now you could say that Merry has just levelled up a few times (possibly quite a lot of times), but in D&D terms, how has he done this? In D&D, you gain experience points by killing things and grabbing loot, not by meeting the King of Rohan.
I think that there could be a different way of looking at this. Here's the RPG mechanic I suggest that would allow you to run Merry as a novice character initially in your fantasy epic, but have him achieve great things later on. Early Merry has a number of skills due to his background. But he also has a number of hidden skills that he would be good at that the player doesn't know about. Only when the character has a chance to try out those skills, do those skills become apparent. So Merry starts with a secret 'military tactics' skill. When he fights alongside Eowyn at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the DM rules that he can see enough of the battle to reveal that he has _some_ skill at military tactics. When he first makes use of that skill at the Battle of Bywater, the DM reveals the extent of the skill (and maybe there is some random element to this depending upon a dice roll).
Another example, from the same book. Early Sam Gamgee has never faced a giant spider. Neither has he ever used acting ability to pretend to be a great hero. When the Sam character faces Shelob, the DM reveals that Sam has something of a special ability in that he is largely immune to most people's (perfectly reasonable) fear of giant spiders. When the player controlling Sam comes up with a clever idea to intimidate the orcs in Cirith Ungol, the DM not only reveals that Sam has a previously hidden 'intimidate' skill, but also that because the acting as an elf prince thing is such a clever idea, he will award Sam some acting skill too. So the player is rewarded for thinking of something clever and the Sam character has acquired - or rather revealed - new skills.
I think this approach makes it easier to get the epic fantasy farmboy-becomes-hero thing without requiring that the farmboy go on hundreds of sidequests just to gain experience. (Sidequests are something that by and large you only see in RPGs and computer games; you don't see them in literature.) Although D&D tends to see 'skills' and 'hitting monsters with swords' as two distinct categories, I'd use this system for both types of ability. Pippin's ability with a sword is hinted at when the character is involved in his first skirmish, but the DM reveals the extent of his ability when he fights the troll officer at the Battle of Morannon. (The secret skill needn't be fixed. For Pippin, his skill might have increased without the player realising when Pippin drank the ent-draught and grew bigger and stronger.)
Thoughts anyone?
* Much of it (maybe even most of it) by role-players. Something that wasn't the case in the 1970s is the fantasy influence extending in the other direction. Looking at the new fantasy on the shelves of Waterstones makes it clear that less of it now is epic brave-farmboy-on-a-quest-to-destroy-the-ancient-teapot-of-doom high fantasy. Rather more of it is gritty grizzled-mercenary-desperately-trying-to-escape-his-evil-past low fantasy. That's still the case even for the huge multi-volume series (Steven Erikson, anyone? Joe Abercrombie?). In the old days, low fantasy tended to be pulp short stories and small paperbacks and high fantasy was doorstop novels. I wonder how much of this is the influence of authors' old RPG campaigns on their writing.
The thing is, D&D (and by extension, most fantasy RPGs) is not epic fantasy. What it is, is swords and sorcery. As Gary Gygax made clear in Appendix N of the first edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, authors like Tolkien were not the primary inspiration for D&D. I mean yes, there are hobbits (or there were until the lawyers got involved, and they became 'halflings') and orcs and elves and dwarves, but D&D as originally imagined is all about a party of adventurers entering a dungeon, killing some monsters and getting some loot. That sort of thing has much more in common with L. Sprague de Camp and Robert E. Howard than the likes of Tolkien or Donaldson or Eddings. And indeed, the aforementioned Appendix N lists Sprague de Camp and Howard as "the most immediate influences" on AD&D, along with Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H.P. Lovecraft and Abraham Merritt. Since AD&D was first published in the late 70s, a lot of fantasy has been written*. I'd be interested to see what literary influences were cited by the developers of more recent versions of the game.
Because D&D wasn't created to run epic fantasy scenarios, it's not actually that good at recreating that epic fantasy feel. Most D&D campaigns, even if they avoid traditional dungeon-crawling, still feature lots of skirmishes. Through the whole of The Lord of the Rings, how many times do Frodo and Sam actually partake in combat?
Dragonlance is an example of an epic fantasy trilogy that was D&D. (I've just finished the third book in the original Chronicles trilogy, and have been surprised by how good the third part was - I thought the first book was pretty poor.) However, when you read the books and you flick through the original AD&D modules, it's clear that the modules have much more dungeon crawling and monster slaying than the books. Conversely, the books have more character interaction.
It seems to me that any DM who wants to run an epic fantasy campaign may want to look beyond D&D...
There are other features in D&D that don't really fit in with epic fantasy. In many epic fantasy novels, there are characters who start out as seemingly week and feeble but who end up as legendary heroes able to achieve great feats of endurance, skill or strength. Now at first glance, this does seem to tie in with D&D's levelling up mechanism. Except that to go from a puny first level character to a heroic tenth or fifteenth or even twentieth level character in D&D would only happen after years of adventuring and hundreds or thousands of kills. Consider the example of Merry in The Lord of the Rings. At the start of the book, he's not much more than an upper-class twit, a sort of Hooray Hobbit. By the end of the book, he's helped to kill the Lord of the Nazgul and led a small army to victory in the Battle of Bywater. Now you could say that Merry has just levelled up a few times (possibly quite a lot of times), but in D&D terms, how has he done this? In D&D, you gain experience points by killing things and grabbing loot, not by meeting the King of Rohan.
I think that there could be a different way of looking at this. Here's the RPG mechanic I suggest that would allow you to run Merry as a novice character initially in your fantasy epic, but have him achieve great things later on. Early Merry has a number of skills due to his background. But he also has a number of hidden skills that he would be good at that the player doesn't know about. Only when the character has a chance to try out those skills, do those skills become apparent. So Merry starts with a secret 'military tactics' skill. When he fights alongside Eowyn at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the DM rules that he can see enough of the battle to reveal that he has _some_ skill at military tactics. When he first makes use of that skill at the Battle of Bywater, the DM reveals the extent of the skill (and maybe there is some random element to this depending upon a dice roll).
Another example, from the same book. Early Sam Gamgee has never faced a giant spider. Neither has he ever used acting ability to pretend to be a great hero. When the Sam character faces Shelob, the DM reveals that Sam has something of a special ability in that he is largely immune to most people's (perfectly reasonable) fear of giant spiders. When the player controlling Sam comes up with a clever idea to intimidate the orcs in Cirith Ungol, the DM not only reveals that Sam has a previously hidden 'intimidate' skill, but also that because the acting as an elf prince thing is such a clever idea, he will award Sam some acting skill too. So the player is rewarded for thinking of something clever and the Sam character has acquired - or rather revealed - new skills.
I think this approach makes it easier to get the epic fantasy farmboy-becomes-hero thing without requiring that the farmboy go on hundreds of sidequests just to gain experience. (Sidequests are something that by and large you only see in RPGs and computer games; you don't see them in literature.) Although D&D tends to see 'skills' and 'hitting monsters with swords' as two distinct categories, I'd use this system for both types of ability. Pippin's ability with a sword is hinted at when the character is involved in his first skirmish, but the DM reveals the extent of his ability when he fights the troll officer at the Battle of Morannon. (The secret skill needn't be fixed. For Pippin, his skill might have increased without the player realising when Pippin drank the ent-draught and grew bigger and stronger.)
Thoughts anyone?
* Much of it (maybe even most of it) by role-players. Something that wasn't the case in the 1970s is the fantasy influence extending in the other direction. Looking at the new fantasy on the shelves of Waterstones makes it clear that less of it now is epic brave-farmboy-on-a-quest-to-destroy-the-ancient-teapot-of-doom high fantasy. Rather more of it is gritty grizzled-mercenary-desperately-trying-to-escape-his-evil-past low fantasy. That's still the case even for the huge multi-volume series (Steven Erikson, anyone? Joe Abercrombie?). In the old days, low fantasy tended to be pulp short stories and small paperbacks and high fantasy was doorstop novels. I wonder how much of this is the influence of authors' old RPG campaigns on their writing.
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Date: 2013-12-02 05:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-02 01:29 pm (UTC)Or maybe the player themselves can be involved in their secret skills. Say each character started with 3 blank slots for hidden potential - things they've never done before, but will turn out have a natural aptitude for once they're in the right circumstances. During the course of the game, it's up to the player to nominate these skills as and when they become relevant - all done in negotiation with the GM, of course.
On the other hand, though...
One of my concerns with RPG systems as opposed to novels is that RPG systems tend to be focused more on skills and abilities, and novels more on character and motivations. The way I see it reading the novel, Sam does what he does in Shelob's Lair not because he has any latent skills at acting or hitherto-unrevealed immunity to the fear of giant spiders, but because he's so devoted to Frodo that he will dare anything.
Which is why I want to play the Dresden Files RPG. I've only skimmed the rule book, and that was a while ago, but IIRC, it's very based on character traits. In that system, Sam would probably start with a "devoted to Frodo at all costs" trait. The player could invoke this trait to argue for bonuses in certain situations. Conversely, the GM could invoke this trait to make things harder for the player in other situations, by pointing out situations when Sam's devotion might cause him to do unwise, potentially fatal things.
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Date: 2013-12-02 02:53 pm (UTC)I guess your rules make sense if you want to capture the feel of a character going from zero to hero in one game. The problem is there would be no repeatability... run them through that questline and they're heroes, so where do you go then? D and D levelling is slow for a reason, because character progression feels "earned". The character takes years even in regular play to level from novice to godlike -- the levels going to level 36 and then the "immortals" ruleset kicking in. (Never played that and it surely sounds really very weird.) If you run that in one adventure players might feel it's all a bit easy and there's no opportunity for a second game. Then again, that's epic fantasy isn't it? Unless you're David Eddings in which case the universe can be threatened a second time by a near identical prophecy.
I always preferred the low fantasy so when I was playing D and D I was thinking of Leiber's Fafhrd and the Mouser rather than Gandalf and Frodo.
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Date: 2013-12-02 05:17 pm (UTC)Firstly I think you’d find that it you analysed any genre that RPGs have appropriated you’d find that James Bond has fewer fist fights & gunfights in novels/films than in an RPG, Wyatt Earp has fewer shoot outs than in an RPG, Mr Spock does fewer Vulcan neck pinches than in an RPG, etc etc. Especially in any RPG where you kill people and take their stuff for character advancement. Fights do have the advantage that it is something the GM can throw at the whole party, whereas seducing the Russian spy, playing cards with Doc Holliday and talking logic with the Vulcan ambassador are more individual pursuits. So fights predominate.
Secondly, the whole farmboy to hero thing only really works for systems where being a farmboy doesn’t suck. If being a farmboy means flailing around ineffectually any time you do something other than milk a cow or drive a tractor, then that is Not Fun. (Believe me, I’ve played games like that. I’ve even played games where milking the cow was a task with a 20% chance of success). So farmboys start out being unusually competent at all sorts of stuff anyway. It isn’t much of a leap from that to the famous “If you can fly a Sopwith Camel, you can fly anything!” quote from the Biggles movie, which seems to be what you are after.
Where the farmboy to hero will work is where the farmboy/s start out with stuff the regular world doesn’t get. They are farmboys… with mutant superpowers. They are farmboys… who have psychically bonded with large, irate lions who like eating their enemies. They are farmboys… who are really immortal Highlander type folk.
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Date: 2013-12-02 05:25 pm (UTC)In D&D terms, at level 1 Merry has a great many skills that no-one knows about, because at that stage no-one has defined what they are yet. By level 20 he's realised he's good at all sorts of things. The thing is that in D&D they aren't pre-ordained: the player can decide what sort of things he's going to end up suddenly being good at each time he levels up. The only difference is that your system would allow skills to come into play as they're needed, rather than after the event.
All you need is a tweak rather like the one we brought in for last Game of Thrones( which I now find is pretty much how WHFRP does things): when people level up, give them points to spend on new skills which they can deploy as and when they need them. So in Pippin's case, it may be that he had a left-over feat to allocate from the last time he levelled up, and at the crucial moment with the Troll the player decided that it was Power Attack, plus maybe a few points into Discipline and Concentration and Knowledge:Troll Anatomy.
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i like this