RPG

We are G.I.R.L.S.

What is RPG?• Role-Playing Game• a game in which players take on the roles of imaginary

characters, usually in a setting created by a referee, and thereby vicariously experience the imagined adventures of these characters (Oxford English Dictionary)

• a game in which players assume the roles of fictional characters and collaboratively create stories. Players determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, players can improvise freely; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the games. (Encyclopædia Britannica)

HISTORY

From Tabletop Games to Computer Role Playing Games

War games (19th Century)

• Sumer - idea of simulating battles without the personal hazards

• Prussia – contemporary war games originated• Kriegspiel – a game that introduced the ideas of

arranging markers on a "sand table", and using a dice to determine any random elements in the battle

War games

• H.G. Wells – grandfather of war games- published a set of amateur wargaming rules in a book

entitled Little Wars (“wargamers’ bible”)- first to suggest that miniature figures be collected to

represent respective forces, to add flavour, and a sense of involvement, to the game

• Charles Roberts – released the first commercially available “board” war game

Wargames (60’s)

• peak of popularity of wargaming (no longer a game, it was already an industry)

• 1996 - Lord of the Rings was released in full- No longer did players want to recreate the battle of

Gettysburg, but the battle of Helm’s Deep. The Napoleonic Wars were discarded in favour of the War of the Ring, goblins and orcs replaced foot soldiers and calvalry. People wanted to know just how much damage a Balrog could do, and what the range was on a lightning bolt spell.

War games

• Chainmail - a wargame that gave an accurate model of most aspects of medieval warfare created by Gygax and Perren- Arneson and Gygax combined their ideas which

resulted to the first true role-playing game ever - Immediate predecessor of Dungeons and Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons (1974)

• Dungeons and Dragons – first commercially available role-playing game- popularised many of the RPG conventions that are

still being used today, such as character classes and abilities, races, experience and hit points (EXP and HP), levelling up, and turn-based combat.

- set in a fantasy world populated by elves, dwarves, and dragons.

Dungeons and Dragons• “It was about characters, choices, and stories; it was about

experiencing fantastical adventures through a brand-new kind of collaborative, improvisational storytelling. Players became at the same time script-writers and actors of their own roles; whereas a reader of a book or a viewer of a movie always remained a passive observer, a player at a D&D game was constantly called upon to make choices that propelled the action. Compared to the role-playing dimension of D&D, the stats and battles were only minor aspects.” (Alex Kierkegaard)

Tunnels and Trolls (1975)• According to legend, Ken St Andre, writer of Tunnels and Trolls

(or T&T), actually came up with his idea of a role-playing game independently of Gygax and Arneson. He had even chosen a name similar to that of D&D, and was horrified to find, when he began to try and sell his game, that he had been resoundingly beaten to the punch.

• Second-generation product of D&D• Characters have six similar stats, plus a similar choice of

classes and the settings and adventure formats are practically identical

Tunnels and Trolls

Tunnels and Trolls• Simple rules• Six-sided dice rolls handle almost

everything• Had sense of humor

Dungeons and Dragons

• Complicated rules• Seven multi-sided dice• Serious

• T&T was the first major competition of D&D• However it was always considered “Number Two”

Chivalry and Sorcery (1976)

• Created by Ed Simbalist and Wilf Backhaus•Most complicated RPG ever designed•Rules and style are designed to recreate France in

the late 12th century•Tried to do too much (race, age, sex, height, frame,

alignment, horoscope, mental health, social class, birth order, family status and your father's occupation) with many calculated statistics and vague skill system all just for character creation

Chivalry and Sorcery

•Too realistic (Clerics had to preach sermons, knights had to spend hours of play trying get enough money just to buy their swords, and playing a magic user required so much time and effort to collect ingredients, study spells and perform the rituals, that there was no time left to go adventuring.)

 Empire of the Petal Throne (1975)

• designed by M. A. R. Barker- a game where the system and setting work together

to produce a world that not only felt alive, but felt like you were living in it. (religious and political)

- Players were Tsemels (warrior-cardinals) leading a holy war against their heretical neighbours

• Did not became popular because it was too complex and powerful for gamers to handle

1970s

• StarFaring (St Andre, 1976) – first SF RPG • Metamorphosis Alpha from TSR (1977)• Starships & Spacemen (Fantasy Games

Unlimited, 1978)

Traveller by Mark Miller

• Briliiantly designed and presented new ideas- skill system was the best the industry had yet

produced and became a model for many years to come

- rejected a class or occupation system - characters simply rolled to see what skills they had learnt during their life in the military

- the rules allowed not just for the creation of countries, or planets, but whole solar systems

Traveller

• its release occurred at approximately the same time as the release of Star Wars- flexible and straightforward rules and its open ended

setting- first pick for the role-playing fans

- Huge market success

RuneQuest (1978)

• Greg Stafford began designing Glorantha, the world in which RuneQuest is set, as the background for a board game called White Bear and Red Moon (1966)

• Steve Perrin, Ray Turney and others decided to create a role-playing game set in Glorantha

RuneQuest• Second game to use skills• Invented the idea of the critical success/failure, and

introduced the possibility of skill improvement through training rather than experience (e.g.: in order for mages to increase their power, they had to earn favour and privelige in their particular rune cult - usually by running errands or going on quests.)

• intertwined a frighteningly realistic world with an excitingly realistic system

The Dark Age

1979• James Dallas Egbert III ran away from college, with the intention

of killing himseld- He left a confused note that mentioned the steam tunnels

under the university, and the game Dungeons and Dragons, of which James was an avid and obsessive player

- Through irresponsible journalism, and a confusion by the authorities, it was publicised that D&D was responsible for Dallas' disappearance\

- First “D&D suicide”- Egbert was facing extreme pressure as a child prodigy (he

was 16), was an alleged drug addict, and was highly mentally unstable.

• With reports that the steam tunnels were the site of "live" D&D games, the story rapidly grew out of hand until it caught the media and D&D became a dangerous, cult-like obsession that was a "threat to your children"

1982

• Irving “Bink” Pulling took his own life with the loaded pistol his mother kept in the house- suffered from chronic

depression, isolation and mental instability

- His mother blamed his death on D&D and used it as a scapegoat

BADD (1984)

• Pat Pulling accused a teacher at Irving’s school of killing her son, by placing a "curse" on him during the course of playing D&D- She filed a case to the court about the matter but was

immediately dismissed- Formed the society Bothered About Dungeons and

Dragons (BADD) and began a war of propaganda against role-playing games

BADD

• Pulling involved BADD in the trial of Darren Molitor- was being tried for the murder of a young girl which

allegedly occurred while he was acting out a Halloween joke

- convinced the defence to argue on Molitor's lack of culpability due to the influence of D&D which was dismissed irrelevant

- BADD was also able to convince Molitor of the game's control over his actions

BADD• BADD also campaigned to the Consumer

Product and Safety Commision to have warning labels placed on RPGs

- Rejected- Acquired a private investigation license

and attracted the support of psychologist Dr Thomas Radecki

- Wrote “The Devil’s Web,” a fictional work about a teenager being lured into the occult through role-playing

BADD (1987-1990)

• After BADD petitioned the Safety Commision, the Game Manufacturing Association (GAMA) carried out their own studies

- also commissioned Michael Stackpole to investigate BADD and Pulling which exposed the spurious and manipulative methods used by BADD that led to the discrediting of the propaganda

The effects of BADD

• Many schools banned RPGs, churches condemned them and shops stopped carrying them

• Gaming stores were often forced to close and more than one small company went bankrupt

• BADDs propoganda was able to convince thousands - possibly even millions - that role-playing was dangerous and evil.

TSR

• Made the transformation into merchandising better

• Released the Advanced system for D&D• Invested the Role-Playing Games Association

(RPGA) to help unite gamers across the US

The Dragonlance Chronicles

• the first fantasy series to feature on the New York Times' Best Seller list

• turned TSR into a major paperback publisher and made Larry Elmore a household name.

AD&D (1989)

• richest, most popular and most powerful game in the world

• TSR always ran itself as a corporation, treating their games as merchandisable product.

- also used their money and power to take gaming to new levels of fame and fortune, and thus are responsible for bringing RPGs to more people than all the other games put together.

1980

• superhero comics enjoyed a powerful upturn in popularity and presence, culminating in the big movie cross-overs towards the end of the decade which led to the industry of superhero games

Champions (1982)• Developed by Hero Games• encouraged imaginative character creation,

so that players could carve out their own, unique superhero instead of using popular heroes which were licensed to Marvel and DC

• provided a well designed and fairly universal system which stressed the players using their own imaginations.

• first game to showcase an entirely points-based character creation system

GURPS

• Made by Steve Jackson• Originally Great Unnamed Role-Playing System

but was changed to Generic Universal Role-Playing System under Steve Jackson Games.

• Universal (allowed gamers the luxury of always having a system, no matter what game they want to play)

West End Games (WEG)

• most prolific producers of licensed games• Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars

(best licensed game ever created)• Star Wars used a simple D6-based system, which

had originated from Ghostbusters, and eventually evolved into the award-winning generic system known as "D6"

Palladium Games

• TMNT, Robotech, Palladium Fantasy, and eroes Unlimited.

• created a generic “world” which could be used with any setting by the combination of many dimensions

Call of Cthulhu (1981)• comes from a series of deeply horrifying short stories

written by H.P. Lovecraft at the beginning of this century- Centers around the Old Ones, ancient and god-like

aliens who exist just beyond the scientific world of post-Victorian New England

- Sandy Peterson, staff of Chaosium, decided to turn Cthulhu into a game

- CoC's rules balance the needs of both game and story in a way that has arguably never been beaten.

Aftermath (1981)• Fantasy games Unlimited• presented for once a more realistically

bleak post-apocalyptic world, and reinforced it with equally brutal rules- Players were still pretty powerful and the

games were very combat-oriented, but here you were battling for food, or shelter, or just to stay alive. The rules made the players have to fight every step of the way, with equipment, allies and safe ground all very scarce

Bushido• gave an enthralling and realistic view of

roleplaying in Feudal Japan• historic setting was reinforced throughout,

from mechanics, to NPCs, to adventure archetypes, with extensive use of Japanese names encouraging the feel of things

• tweaked the experience system, such that it required players to act in ways suitable of their class and standing in the Nippon society

Toon (1984)

• West End Games• set in the universe (and mindset) of Warner

Brothers-type cartoons, complete with falling anvils

• one of the first free-form, rules-light games, another revolutionary step.

Paranoia• Dan Gelber and Eric Goldberg• death is meaningless because each player has several

clones of herself in case one is damaged• PCs are special agents of the Big Brother-esque

Computer, chosen to undertake the most dangerous task of rooting out traitors

• plays this frightening world for laughs, hamming up the dark patches to produce a game as funny as Toon, but also more subtle and with a dash of political satire.

• only game that is based solely on the PCs working against each other

Other games

• Ars Magica (Lion Rampant, 1985) • Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay• Amber (based on the novels by Roger Zelazny)

and Everway – uses cards instead of dice• TORG (West End Games, 1990) - used both

cards and dice in its universal system

Gaming Workshop

• John Peake, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson• Jackson and Livingstone published the very first

Fighting Fantasy Game Book entitled The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, an ingenious attempt to write a solo roleplaying experience in a novel form

• released the boardgame Talisman

Ultima Series

• Ultima 1 was released in black and white in 1980, and was followed by seven sequels, each game making use of the cutting edge technology at its time

• One of the most popular computer RPGs

Strategic Simulations Incorporated (SSI)

• Dragonlance Series• setting was torn straight from the pages of TSR's

phenomenally successful Dragonlance series• gameplay was a close model of an AD&D game

• Pools of Radiance• you roll your characters' attributes, chose a class and a name,

bought equipment, and then went adventuring, gaining experience and levels with each victory

• improved on Heroes of the Lance, being even more entertaining and bringing roleplaying to the computer at an unprecedented level.

MUD• Multi-User Dungeon

• simultaneous online roleplaying• internet-chat environment adds an important social

element to the adventure game•Roy Turbshaw and Richard Bartle

• With the growth of the internet, MUDs have proliferated to the point of omnipresence. Some are free, some very expensive, some use graphics, some text, and they run the gamut of all genres, settings and styles

Mobile games (1989)

• Mobile gaming were introduced earlier but became more popular through the introduction of the Gameboy in 1989

• Later models were introduced such as the Gameboy SP and Gameboy Advance.

• Some of the famous games played on a Gameboy were Pokemon, Final Fantasy 1 and 2, and Snake(the one were you get to play as “Snake’ not as an animal snake).

1990s

• William Gibson revolutionised science fiction with Neuromancer

• GURPS CyperPunk•onfiscated in a Secret Service raid on the GURPS

office, because it was thought to be "a handbook for computer crime“

• Steampunk• shifts the same dark themes to a world of Victorian

Europe

Vampire: The Masquerade (1991)

• Mark Rein-Hagen• Captured the unearthly horror of Cthulhu, the

gritty, paranoid, dark edge of cyberpunk, plus it featured super-powered unearthly heroes which were still the popular trend and tapped directly into the Gothic subculture

Collectible Card Game

• Magic: The Gathering•Richard Garfield• first Collectible Card Game

• CCGs proved more resilient, but they too have dropped in popularity

• RPG industry suffered a serious decline in sales

• Wizards of the Coast announced in 1996 that they were dropping their entire RPG line to concentrate purely on selling CCGs

• TSR, the biggest, oldest and most venerated company of them all, went into bankruptcy

• West End Games, another giant, soon went the same way, and so was the nature of the times

• old standards like Steve Jackson Games, Chaosium, White Wolf and WotC/TSR continue to produce their high quality lines

1994 - 2001

• In 1994 the Play Station 1, a new gaming console was introduced wherein again RPG games takeover

• Later on 2001 the XBOX was invented.• RPG games on this platform were now more high

in graphics

2005-The PSP

• A new kind of mobile gaming was introduced by SONY with the PSP(Play Station Portable). The games here were like the ones on Play Station, but now made portable.

Present Time

• Nowadays RPG games can now be played on virtually anything. It can be played on an I-pad/phone/pod, Android tablets and etc.

• However RPG games are now rich in science. Some games are either more realistic or more on imagination or fantasy and impossibilities.

Notable Games

Final Fantasy (Square Enix)

World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)

Diablo (Blizzard Entertainment)

Dungeons and Dragons (Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. & Wizards of the

Coast)

The Elder Scrolls (Bethesda Game Studios)

Pokemon (Nintendo)

Difference with other genres:

• Adventure – Unlike adventure games, RPG’s don’t usually involve puzzle solving and exploring a big world instead, its main focus is physical challenge and combat is its primary activity.

• Strategy – Players of strategy games are often forced to use their decision-making skills in determining the outcome of the game. These kinds of games usually require critical thinking to win the game.

• Shooter - The main goal of these kinds of games is to test the speed of the player and his/her reaction time to things unlike RPG’s wherein you are not that required to be fast and accurate while playing. A common thing used in these games are ammunition (ammo’s) and long range weapons like guns or other weapons which require precise aiming to be effective. Its main point is to shoot, kill and stay alive.

• Action – Unlike RPG’s, the main point of action game is to control a character throughout a level and fight his way to the end avoiding some obstacles, picking up items on the way, killing guards or enemies and usually fighting a hard enemy or boss at the end of the level. It’s not like RPG’s wherein you have a party with their different roles and fight your way to the end chapters after chapters.

• Sports – Obviously, RPG’s are different from sports. Sports are just a virtual reality of the different sports out there so even if you don’t know how to play a certain sport, in these kinds of games, you will learn how easily and without even spending hundreds or thousands of money.

Issues/Controversies

Super Columbine Massacre RPG!

• Based on the 1999 shooting in Colorado where 13 people died and 21 were injured

• plays the role of the shooters who plant bombs throughout the Columbine High School

• was initially accepted, then later rejected from the Guerilla Gamemaker Competition at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

• ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board ) rated T with target audience 13+

• but due to a mod that made characters nude, ESRB changed the rating to M

RapeLay

• role of a man who stalks, molests, and then forces himself upon three women in explicit, graphic detail.

• Released in Japan in 2006 and sold as hentai aka X Rated game meant for adults only

• became controversial in 2009 when found available on amazon

• called for tightening the regulations for v.game sales

Sources

• http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_role-playing_games/

• http://ptgptb.org/0002/history2.html• http://www.denofgeek.com/games/12107/a-histor

y-of-rpgs• http://www.armchairarcade.com/neo/node/1081