The Diversity of the RPG: Character Classes, Gaming Types, Player Types
Although it is by their rules that they are distinguished from other genres, table-top role-playing games cannot be reduced to their rules, as there are different gaming styles and player types which determine which rules are emphasised during play. For example, the “Role-Playing Games Glossary” offers a threefold gaming model comprising: simulationist, gamist and dramatist. In the simulation, or world-oriented, model:
the GM and players attempt to simulate a reality (not necessarily the reality, possibly a particular genre or fictional world). Considerations that cannot be expressed in terms of the game world are disregarded.
This model is often associated with player types such as the “historian” and “military specialist.” For Dunnigan, the “historian” uses simulations as a source of detailed information, and wants realism, not balance of play. The “military enthusiast” “finds the tactics and technology of war fascinating” (p. 23), past and future, and is concerned with realism in terms of performance, for example in the exploration of hypothetical (and often novel) military situations. The “specialist” is a “fanatic” concerned with subject and quality. For him, games are usually subordinate to an interest in a “genre, topic, idea, or whatever; if he reads science fiction, he may play science fiction games” (p. 23).
In the gamist model, “the GM tries to create balanced challenges for the players, and the players make decisions primarily to overcome those challenges.” In identifying the “gamist” model, it should be remembered that RPGs are predicated upon a rule-system, and, despite their dialogic characteristics, these systems attempt to subordinate all forms of (inter-) activity to quantifiable, statistical, mathematical models. Unless a gamer is showing preference to “diceless” or “freeform” RPGs—that is, various forms of mutual storytelling that have no formal (that is, written and predictable) rules, and do not use randomisation as a device—the narrative systems of RPGs cannot be separated or abstracted from their rule systems. It is useful here to observe the demographic of (C)RPGs as evidence of how and why this mechanical, mathematical system of rules should remain in place, despite the possibilities of purely story-based, diceless role-playing games. Even in 1980, before computers and the Internet became such a major part of gaming, Jon Freeman was able to write that the typical wargamer
if there is such an individual, is a college-educated man from a middle-class background, recently out of school, intelligent, introverted, and technologically sophistocated (p. 22).
D&D , like the wargames from which it developed, and with which it was sometimes categorised, was a “hobby of the over-educated,” and it has been in educational institutions—especially universities—that computer technology has been naturalised, through the use of word processors, library databases, courses in programming and system analysis courses, and the growth of the Internet. The development of the early computer games and the rise of text-based RPGs occurred largely simultaneously, and just as many CGs were often designed by students or as part of computer research, many of those that designed and played RPGs were students of computer sciences. Consequently, it should be kept in mind that gameplay is marked by the periodic use of tables and charts, such that RPGs often are episodic in structure, with dramatic rhythms defined or limited by tables.
For some players, the rules are their own reward and end, but “good gameplay” may depend upon the transparency of the rules. In general, a gamist is someone who likes the experience provided by the rules. This is evident in three player types: the gamer, assassin, and competitor. Dunnigan notes of the “gamer” player type that he/she just likes games and will play almost any sort of game, as long as it's a good one (p. 24). Though he/she may be attracted by realism, he/she plays for enjoyment, and so expects investment in a game—reading rules, game length etc—to be rewarded. For what Dunnigan calls the “assassin” and “competitor,” rules are merely a means to an end. The “assassin,” or “killer gamer,” is interested in demonstrating his skill and mastery, but does not want to fight the rules in the process. “Realism matters only so far as it validates his victories (or, at least, does not invalidate them)” (p. 24). In the absence of immediate opponents, the assassin will attempt to beat a famous/historical general; generally, he will play games of any scale or type, and “plays for blood” (p. 24). The “competitor,” like the assassin, does not wish to fight the rules, but his goal “is challenge more than victory” (p. 24), emphasising game balance over realism. Dunnigan notes that:
If this [the issue of simulation versus playability] is not the burning issue that it once was, it's only because everyone has become tired of the argument—not because a conclusion was reached. The question is: How realistic (read: long and complex) can a simulation be before it becomes to long and involved to be played—before it ceases to be a game? The question has been argued regularly in clubs and magazines, and, implicitly, every time a new game is marketed. (Dunnigan, Complete Book of Wargames , p. 31).
The dramatist model is “narrative or story-oriented. . . [and] decisions are made on the basis of what would make a good story, in preference to either simulationist or gamist considerations.” The RPG Glossary identifies five “stances” or “modes” of play that define variations in its “dramatic” element: the actor stance, “in which the player is primarily concerned with portraying their character to others”; the audience stance, “in which the player is primarily enjoying their own or other character's stories as a spectator”; the author stance “in which the player is primarily concerned with co-creating a story”; the immersive (or deep-in character) stance: in which the player closely identifies with their character, often describing the sensation as one of “channelling” their character”; and, lastly, the in-character stance, “in which the player makes all decisions from their character's point of view.”
We might, however, distinguish—or identify a continuum—between drama and narrative. Most agree in a broad definition of role-playing as pretending to be to be someone you are not and/or pretending to be in a situation you are not. The term “pretend” is used synonymously with “make-believe,” “imagine” or “take on the role of.” This is misleading, for two main reasons. First, it may lead a psychological process to be confused with the conventions of an artistic form. If “role-playing” is synonymous with “acting,” we are likely to evaluate its “success” in terms of its conformance to a particular theatrical tradition and the achievement of a specific theatrical effect. For example, in Aristotlean poetics, a performance should follow a dramatic model and provide catharsis, while, in the case of naturalism, a performance's verisimilitude would be evaluated in terms of historical accuracy and psychological plausibility. However, while RPGs often are based upon a written “scenario” or “module,” the play itself is spontaneous and unscripted: play, then, does not conform neatly to Aristotle's dramatic model, nor naturalism's priority of believability. In RPGs, the focus of “role-playing” may not be realism or a particular goal—though character development is a central aesthetic in RPGs—“role-play” is an end in itself: a process that may be cathartic, expressive and playful, bound up in psychological mechanisms of development and processes of identity formation and maintenance.
At times, the dramatic elements of RPGs are ignored in favour of their story-telling elements, and it has been argued that the rules of RPGs merely facilitate their story-telling and role-playings aspects. As Steve Jackson argues, the “experience point system. . . . contributes considerably to the appeal of role-playing” ( Dicing with Dragons , p. 6). The problem with such a position is evident in any description of how players come to familiarise themselves with the game's procedures, in the perceptions of non-players of gameplay, and the many stereotypes of RPG games in other media. Terri Toles-Patkin argues in “Rational Coordination in the Dungeon,” that RPGs like D&D involve players gradually learning and conforming to the rules or etiquette of the game. Initially, the attempt to reconcile narrative (role-playing) and game (rule-playing) leads to an extreme self-consciousness and sense of artifice; it is only experienced players who are able to reconcile the narrative and gaming elements to the extent that their conjunction seems natural. Players of RPGs tend to underplay the fact that players are not only subordinated to a gaming system, their narratives are usually formulaic re-enactments of sequences from the fantasy genre, and not always as open-ended or “free” as it may seem.
The conflation of drama and narrative is evident in academic defenses of RPGs. Terry Toles-Patkin observes that “D&D has been characterized as both participatory storytelling and improvisational theatre, and contains elements of both” (1986, p. 3). Walter E. Meyers identifies RPGs as “folk literature,” an “epic form” of “oral composition” and “communal authorship” (1983, p. 2481), using Francis Lee Utley's definition of “folk-literature”: “Orally transmitted literature wherever found, among primitive isolates or civilized marginal cultures, urban or rural societies, dominant or subordinate groups” (quoted in Myers, p. 2486). He argues that, while not necessarily transmitted, in the sense of being repeated, RPG dialogue is still “literary,” by which he means still a significant cultural form (in the same way jazz and drama remain important despite being improvisational.) In fact (as Meyers notes but does not clarify), RPGs do “transmit” “literature”: they are often simply are re-enactments of typified scenarios in fiction, and players often recount these re-enactments later; they are sometimes recorded and published as print fiction; they encourage interest in and discussion of mythological stories, and, sometimes, early history.
Meyers notes that
one may object that the language of the game is ephemeral, derivative at best, and, most suspicious of all, lacking the traditional literary modes such as dialogue and description. An observer might find the language disjointed, unplanned and unrevised, and frequently interrupted by comments on, questions on, or even arguments over the rules, with each interruption hampering the creation of the fiction. (Myers, p. 2485-6).
However, such objections miss the point of RPGs, which are specifically characterised by frequent shifts between direct narration and meta-narration. While the “rules” of the game may largely be the province of the GM, and RPGs are dialogic and open-ended, the mechanics of gameplay—rolling dice, entering information into character sheets, maps and game notes—lead players to frequently attend to the distinction between realism, game and narrative. To say that there is “co-ordination in the dungeon” creates the false notion of unity in that disparate body of events we call RPGs, and in implying a process of actively resolving conflict at an interpersonal level it ignores the distinctive character of CRPGs. Conflict-resolution certainly occurs in long-term campaigns in that players co-ordinate their efforts and resources, as a party, against “monsters,” but the elements of realism, narrative and gaming elements are not in a state of co-ordination or unity. The game system may intrude upon the continuity of realism and narrative, and, as a consequence, the narrative elements may themselves become more mechanical; the dramatic elements of player improvisation may intrude upon the narrative a GM has carefully developed; and so on. The distinctiveness of RPGs, as I am concerned with it here, lies not simply in the facility for co-operation between players but also in the complex negotiation of multiple aesthetics, naturalised in terms of the idea of “role-playing.” The relevance of this problem emerges when one considers the research on computer games.
A consideration of the diverse kinds of gaming styles, player types and character classes associated with but not exclusive to RPGs are the logical starting point in undermining the notion of genre and signalling the elements whose combination characterises the dynamic of gameplay. In some cases, character classes, player types, and gaming types may be identified simultaneously, but there are different orientations towards RPGs that cannot be reduced to, say, a player's preference for a particular character class. In considering the differences between RPGs, CRPGs and MUDs, I consider several texts produced by gamers, as these provide more useful in identifying distinctions within the “genre” as a discursive practice.
These categories are useful in distinguishing between the limitations of RPGs, CRPGs, MUDs and MMORPGs. While there is usually an option for entering a character's name, character descriptions and drawings may often be provided with the program, and there is usually not scope for developing relationships are developing a distinctive personality, because dialogue is pre-scripted. While a character may pursue an audience stance, an immersive stance, and (sometimes) an in-character stance, there is little scope for an actor stance or a channelling stance.
Most obviously, a variety of gaming styles are signalled by different “character classes” —in AD&D , clerics, fighters, magic-users, thieves, monks, some with sub-class—in that each have slightly differing abilities and so necessitate a different gaming style (Dunnigan 1980; Kim 2000; Kornelson 2000). ( I discuss character classes in terms of mythological (arche)types in chapter thirteen.) A standard RPG party is usually made up several characters from several classes, necessitating not just co-operation but playing to a type. Clerics are strong enough to engage routinely in melee , but will move back if wounded so that they are able to cast “cure” spells on other wounded characters; fighters usually spend much of the game at the front of the party, and are the first into melee ; magic-users hang back to cast spells of attack and protection, and so on. If players do not act their character in accordance with their class, the party is not likely to survive for long.
In CRPGs, the absence of other players is compensated for by attempts to incorporate multiplayer interaction into a single-player interface and/or by the standardisation of an interface in which a single player runs a whole party. For example, when we are generating our character at the start of Daggerfall: The Elder Scrolls , the game asks us questions about hypothetical situations in everyday life to determine our style of gameplay, and suggests a character class on the basis of our answers. If we indicate that we (or our fictional selves) resolve problems using violence, or have no regard for human life, the progam suggests we be a “fighter.” If we exhibit little respect for private property, the game suggests we play a “thief.” If we indicate that we are likely reason through the options in a situation rather than thoughtlessly charge in, the game suggests we be a “magic-user.” If we indicate that we show respect for other people and their property, the game suggests we be a “paladin.”
In CRPGs that allow the player to have more than one character (usually four or six, sometimes with additional NPCs), it is taken for granted that the party will be composed of a range of character classes: for example, a fighter, a ranger, druid and thief. Indeed, some CRPGs, such as Eye of the Beholder , require that there be at least one of a particular character classes, such as a cleric, to pass the game. These single-player games, then, are designed so as to incorporate and naturalise the presence of multiple characters and character classes as part of the gaming interface. In early CRPGs, the player chose the characters at the start of the game, and kept them until the game ended, though one might “pick up” an NPC for a particular “quest.” Also, the initial choice of class determined a largely pre-fixed trajectory for the “development” of a character, in that the “bonuses” a character received upon achieving a certain “level” were fixed, according to the class chosen.
In more recent games, such as Baldur's Gate , player's have only one starting character, and choose the character's who join him from amongst several predefined characters who we encounter through the game. In games like Might and Magic 6 , we may recruit NPCs from anyone in any of the towns or cities. Furthermore, the multi-class characters in the AD&D rule system (for example, Fighter-Druid), are available in games like Baldur's Gate , and many games utilise an optional skill development systems. In Daggerfall: The Elder Scrolls , and Diablo 2 , for example, the player may select what statistics or skills he/she wants to develop. This allows the individual character to incorporate the characteristics of more than one character class, and, especially in single-character games, allows for the incorporation of forms of gameplay which otherwise might have been excluded from the game on the basis of the initial choice of character. More recent titles, like Deus Ex , allow unprecedented variation in the development of a character, yet the existence of skill categories means that character classes are not necessarily abandoned: character classes still exist as an abstraction which the player's character does not measure up to.
Diablo 2 is a useful example, in that its replayability is specifically associated with the different character classes. The “readme” file for the game states:
Diablo II is a VERY different play experience for each of the five character classes. The basic tactics and advanced strategies best employed by a Barbarian, for instance, are not at all appropriate for a Necromancer. After you've played one character class for several hours, try your hand at one of the others. You won't be disappointed. You can also develop a familiar character class in new ways. That is, after creating a new character, this time learn a different set of skills and you will begin to realize the unparalleled replayability offered by Diablo II.
It is, unfortunately, easy to overestimate the effects of this kind of incorporation. The classes in Diablo 2 do, certainly, inform the game's replayability, but not to the extent advertised. The main differences between classes is that fighters and paladins use bladed weapons (for close combat), amazons use bows (for ranged combat), and sorceresses and necromancers use spells (for spells). No matter what character class we are, Diablo 2 is a click and point, hack n' slash game, and its “strategies” relate less to a particular gaming style than to the character's proximity to opponents (right next to them, as far away as possible, behind barrels), the required frequency of rest and healing (rarely, occasionally, or every time we inadvertantly come too close to monsters), and the kind or degree of spectacle (the repetitive movement and visceral sounds of the slashing sword, the distant volleys of arrows, or the flowers of magical light).
Of course, a character does not have to act according to a class if his/her skills are not important in a gaming sequence, and players may make their characters distinctive through their names, character descriptions, self-portraits, and relationships with other characters, through improvised dialogue and interaction. MUDs also have pre-defined character classes with distinctive abilities that require characters to act to a type, however their text-based interface and multiplayer options allows for greater scope in performing a role. P layers of MUDs do not simply act for an object or a previously defined character, as in many computer games. Since one can create one's own character and has the freedom to express himself however he/she wishes to within the limits of the text-based interface, “one can act for oneself” (Beaubien, 1996, p. 182). Suffice to say, then, that CRPGs compensate for the absence of real social interaction through the incorporation of stereotyped “character classes,” and MUDs allow not only for greater freedom in moving beyond these stereotyped classes, they allow for networked social interaction.
“The Return of the RPG”: The Purity of, and Nostalgia for, RPGs
Given that, as I have observed, CRPGs are perhaps the most hybrid of computer games, they are especially useful—given that they are perceived as a “genre”—in signalling that the notion of “genre” masks combinations of gaming elements that cross genres. The way players value CRPGs, however, is also useful in that it signals that “genre” is not merely a category of marketing convenience, but has an ideological function. This is evident when we consider how players and gaming communities define CRPGs in relation to the general ideal of “gameplay.” To begin with, while some players have shown ongoing commitment to computer role-playing games (CRPGs) over the last few decades, other gaming genres have predominated on arcades, consoles and PCs. However, the gaming magazine PC Powerplay has recently identified the “return of the RPG” and a “role-play revival” (No. 61, June 2001, p. 45), and this revival is seen as reflecting a potential, and desired, shift in computer gaming. The question is: How did RPG-related “genres” emerge and in what way did they go way? In what way are their formal and aesthetic elements similar to or different from those of other computer games? Why and how are they “returning”? What ideological value is given to them, or at work, through this “return”?
The “return of the RPG” is marked by the release of Diablo , which supposedly “brought the [RPG] genre to the masses” (No. 50, July 2000, p. 39). The recently released Diablo II added more RPG elements to the game interface, and the collector's edition of Diablo II offered “The Wizards of the Coast's pencil-and-paper role-playing game based on the AD&D rule set” (p. 39). Baldur's Gate was another significant game, in that it was specifically an attempt to translate the original AD&D rule-system to the computer medium, with Baldur's 2 , Fallout , Fallout 2 , Pool of Radiance 2 and Of Steamworks and Arcanum using similar interfaces and rule-systems. Ultima Online , Meridian 49 and Everquest took these interfaces online. More generally, games that would earlier have been considered 3D shooters, such as System Shock , are advertised or reviewed in terms of their emphasis on CRPG elements, such as character development and inventories. While PC Powerplay refers to the classic Might and Magic CRPG series as “stale, crusty and distinctly old-school,” it argues that this “old RPG series” has been given the “kiss of life” in the Legends of Might and Magic game, which utilises a first person shooter 3D graphical system (p. 25). In the same issue, PC Powerplay notes that the CRPG Neverwinter Nights is part of “the next generation of online roleplaying games” that “will put the story first,” and that the game “will be one of the first games to take advantage of the soon-to-be-released 3rd Edition of AD&D” (p. 22).
In identifying the ideological value of CRPGs, it is useful to consider players descriptions and defences of their preferences. Individual players of RPGs have not been satisfied with simply defending themselves against criticism and stereotypes, many individual gamers conflate their own love of the game with their supposed value, and aggressively declare the superiority of (C)RPGs (and themselves, as players) over other gaming forms (and other players). In doing so, they speak with antagonism, determination, and wordiness, and their tone is often moralising. For example, a disclaimer at the top of one CRPG archive site (Realm of Kate, http://www.crpg.orc.ru/) states: “I will not allow any 3-D-shooter-player to view content acquired from this site.” How is this significant? First, this disclaimer is an ineffective assertion, as the player is not able to screen people who access his site over the Web. Second, it is a personalised statement of exclusion against a generalised type of player and game (3D shooters). Third, it is based upon an equally generalised inclusive category relating to (C)RPGs, based upon a broader discourse of RPGs. It conflates and incorporates the contradictions between the issue of personal taste versus objective value, and the related issue of exclusion and inclusion based upon an evaluation of a “value” that is co-extensive with the games people play. Most debates around RPGs and CRPGs, though in a more complex way, similarly provide and defend definitions of (C)RPGs in ways that reveal something about broader debates about computer games.
Part of the debate about (C)RPGs stems from the tendency within the gaming industry of appropriating the term to market a category of games, leading to a “mis-use” of the term RPG, and unqualified identification between RPGs and CRPGs. This is evident when, for example, PC PowerPlay notes that:
Diablo revolutionised PC role-playing. It brought the genre to the masses, and paved the way for greater acceptance of the humble RPG by game publishers and consumers alike” (2000, p. 39).
I would agree that, more than any other recent RPG, Diablo brought greater visibility to the problem of how RPGs are defined and defended. However, Diablo did not revolutionise “role-playing,” it simply synthesised some aspects of the RPG rule-system and some elements of the CRPG interface with the interfaces of other genres. More specifically, it incorporated an incidental storyline, rudimentary character development, and an inventory system. The above statement conflates popularisation with revolution, appropriating the supposed prestige of RPGs (“humble” connoting that the genre, although significant in some way, has not been recognised by “the masses”) to explain and legitimate Diablo's uniqueness, authority, and popular appeal.
Upon Diablo's release, (C)RPG players sensitive to the issue (even those who enjoyed the game) reacted against the tendency to categorise it as an RPG. For example, one gamer writes:
Don't get confused - this [labelling of CRPGs] is just a marketing ploy by computer companies to get more people to buy their games. Furthermore, there are RPGers out there who don't exploit the full potential of role playing games, and probably think they should be conducted like computer games. In a computer game, you do generate a PC who goes on adventures. But your PC here is just a collection of statistics and scores. In an RPG, he or she is an actual character, like any other character in a book. (About RPGs, Dreamscape, 1998, http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/2407/about/index.html)
An example of this sensitivity over the “mis-use” of the term RPG is evident in a recent article, “The new trends: Have we lost purity of RPGs?” posted to the RPG Theory website:
The term purist when referring to the RPGer can mean many things. An RPG purist may be a person who plays only the pencil-and-paper RPGs, rolling the dice whenever they are supposed to. A RPG purist may bea person who shuns the newer story-based RPGs which are typically found on console systems, sticking instead with the very statistical and gameplay oriented RPGs more often found on the PC (Shawn Bruckner, 1998)
Bruckner goes on to argue that the new kinds of “purists” “shun” console CRPGs, such as Final Fantasy , because they are set in the present or future, have “different and unique,” “ambiguous” or “less clearly defined” storylines, and have 3D graphical engines. He then adds the significant qualification: “well maybe not those [characteristics] specifically, but the purist is definitely, shall we say, unsure of the trend which recently released RPGs are showing.” Bruckner's qualification betrays the fact that the uncertainty he is describing troubles his own position. The new “trend” in CRPG games creates uncertainty precisely because it forces RPG players to reconsider their assumptions about RPGs.
(C)RPGs, as I have already indicated, share characteristics with other genres. Bruckner, for example, indicates that the “old-style” RPGs were set in the past, were story-based, and had 2D graphics. There have been many RPGs with historical, science fiction, gothic and postapocalyptic settings. The early graphical CRPGs, such as Bard's Tale , may have represented monsters as 2D pictures, but they represented a 3D perspective —looking down the street of the city of Scara Brae and its “dungeons”—using 2D graphics. Furthermore, present console RPGs such as Final Fantasy are more story-based than the earlier PC RPGs, in which the game engine was so mechanical that the story was largely a case of atmosphere.
Of course, the conflict between realism (simulation), gameplay and story-telling (drama) which emerged with wargames and strategy games and was reworked with the emergence of role-playing games, is not only being reworked again in the relationship between RPGs and CRPGs, it is also being reworked in broader debates about computer gameplay. After all, the gaming market is largely driven by the development and use of new technologies. For example, developments in the gaming industry are understood in terms of newer and faster 3D graphics and sound cards, virtual reality adjuncts, such as VR goggles, texture/pressure simulating joysticks, gloves and bodysuits. Games which do not take advantage of the latest capabilities are usually dismissed or seen as “throwbacks,” leading to the privileging of a n aesthetic of spectacle and/or simulation. In the first case, many players are more interested in the spectacle of and psychological or physical involvement in fast-paced, action-arcade first-person shooters or driving games. In the second case, the novelty of using technological means to convincingly simulate “reality” has come to be prioritised within the industry as an ideological basis to justify an industry in which new technologies, new interfaces, new games, need to be seen as “new.”
By extension, games have become part of the commercial iconography of computer technology. As o ne retailer informed me, someone who has just purchased a PC for the first time will generally purchase games that display the computer's capabilities: for example, a first person shooter, a strategy game, and a simulator. This choice reflects a gap between actual gaming practices and the idea of games, or games functioning as a demonstration of technological limits. F light simulators, for example, comprise a well-known “type” that reflects a general fascination with VR and computer modelling, and may function more as a “demo” of what computers can achieve rather than an actual game.
Yet while there is an ongoing emphasis on the most advanced graphics hardware and the latest games, magazines such as PC Powerplay , PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World argue—and retailers and gamers I spoke to agreed—that player dissatisfaction has led to a general shift away from hollow, industry/hardware heavy “blockbuster” games that focus on realistic graphics and world-physics instead of playability. M any players, of various gaming genres, have always been willing to sacrifice graphics for the sake of gameplay and a good story, graphics and gameplay for the sake of a good story, or graphics and a story for the sake of gameplay. The categories are, obviously, blurred, but the emphasis on gameplay and storytelling is especially true of players of RPGs, who tend to be interested in narrative, exploration, puzzles, and combinations of modes of interaction. Final Fantasy VIII , for example, was criticised because while the graphics were exceptional in some places (they were poor in others), it had lost the gameplay elements of FF VI and VII . (I have been told that, as a consequence, FF IX will return to the FF VII interface.) On the other hand, Baldur's Gate popularity has been explained precisely in terms of its (supposedly) exceptional graphics (which, in fact, owed much to Diablo ), in terms of the level of resolution, colour density and detail, and scope (over 18,000 screens). However, the game's popularity can be understood in that its graphics were good enough that players bought it in spite of it being an RPG; that is, people bought it as a demonstration of what computer graphics were now capable of looking like. Subsequently, the kind of conflicts which may be seen as defining the distinction between RPGs and CRPGs are really conflicts that define the computer game industry in general. These conflicts are debated within the industry, within official and player reviews, and every time a new game is released; and they define differences not only between games, but conflicting aesthetics within individual titles.
It is significant, then, that while Bruckner does not dispute the term CRPGs, nor ascribe any particular values to this shift from RPGs to CRPGs (other than gaming preference), he uses the word “purity” His description of the “purity” of RPGs connotes a gradual corruption, contamination or compromising of the “purity” of “original” RPGs, in part because of the aesthetics of spectacle/simulation related to the ideology of “new” technological developments. This notion of “purity” implies that the original games were “better” in ways for which nostalgia and subjective preference cannot account. Certainly, when forced to define what RPGs are, many players argue that “we need to look back at the birth of the true RPG, Dungeons and Dragons” (Jenkins, 1999), implying that the initial D&D gaming experience was distinctive. This bias is evident in the tension between different kinds of “purists.” Hardcore RPG enthusiasts dislike and/or dismiss CRPGs along with all or most other forms of computer games. Players of CRPGs who also enjoy RPGs identify some continuity between the two while dismissing most other computer genres. Some players of PC and console CRPGs may not have played RPGs, and, while they may defend the genre, are not much concerned with their relationship to RPGs. Those who prefer shooters, strategies and sims oftem dismiss CRPGs as tedious, and are as likely as not to stereotype the whole RPG phenomena.
The basis of this evaluation of the “value” of RPGs is evident in Kevin Jenkins' “What is an RPG?” (subtitled “Levels, dragons, and magic don't make an RPG, role-playing does”):
The 80's edition of D&D at the core was about one thing: role playing. Back then, we didn't play for the monsters, for the combat, or for the levels. In fact, the rulebook had extensive references to the importance of proper role-playing and several sections on how DM's (Dungeon Masters) should manage players to facilitate this. What was this all about? It was allowing the player to act out a fantasy role in a fantasy world. You didn't play for stats, stats were a tool used to help role-play. You didn't kill for treasure or levels, you fought the occasional battle to add challenge and excitement. The goal in the game was to immerse yourself in the fantasy world, and therein lie the fun. The DM kept the game moving, the players role played their fighters, mages, clerics, etc, interacting with each other sometimes in sometimes surprising ways. Players kept human knowledge away from character knowledge, and good role players sometimes did things counterproductive to stats or levels in order to role-play well. (Jenkins, 1999)
Jenkins' language, like that of other players, implies that RPGs are better than other gaming forms because they emphasise immersion into a narrative, and the open-ended creativity of human interaction. While this is “fun,” it is not the wasteful fun of shooters, but “a rewarding experience”; that is, we supposedly take something away from RPGs. This is reflected in defenses of RPGs as having educational value: their emphasis on speech and writing can improve communication and literacy skills; they can foster interest in history or a particular subject or activity, like wargames and simulations; their sophistocated rules may foster interest and skills in mathematics. RPGs, then, are not “simply” games; as Steve Jackson writes, they are “a sophisticated form of make believe in which each player creates a game persona, and verbally acts out the part of that persona in a specially designed game-world controlled by a referee” (p. 5). If player's are actively engaged in creating something in “educational” games that are both “sophistocated” and “specially designed,” RPGs become indexes of their player's intellectual and moral superiority.
A justifiable conclusion about CRPGs is that in excluding improvised dialogue, they have made the rule system more visible, and in doing so given pre-emience to what was always a defining characteristics of RPGs. In their defense of RPGs, players may generalise from one or more (idealised) sessions or elements of the game to the rest of RPG gaming experience, and that proponents of CRPGs uses analogous generalisations as a basis of their defense of the genre and as a basis for criticisms of other genres or players. There is, then, a slippage between the ideological value of (C)RPGs and the characteristics of the RPG genre and the CRPG interface. Even when gamers acknowledge that RPGs and CRPGs are related to other gaming forms, (C)RPGs still function ideologically to organise and legitimate attitudes that go beyond gaming practices themselves. Most significantly, when RPGers (often defensively) criticise CRPGs or other game forms by appealing to storytelling or role-playing elements (“plot,” “story,” “depth,” “gameplay,” “originality”) and take a moral ground by romananticing themselves as a priviliged or elite minority, they invoke the traditional authority of “literature” and related values of and education and intellection.
The position of “purists” may have drawn from academic defenses of RPGs, for example, in Myers discussion of RPGs as “folk literature,” but the notion of RPGs as edifying in the manner of literature emerges from the language of the games themselves. The word “imagination,” which had a significant ideological role in the traditional study of literature in the Arnoldian and Leavisite tradition, is an organising signifier here. That this term is seen as indispensible in describing role-playing is evident in the rulebooks, in players discussions, and even in academic descriptions. The recent film Dungeons and Dragons is prefaced by the phrase “The Limits of Your Imagination,” and Reid's (2000) discussion of MUDs, for example, invokes the term frequently, presuming that its definition is self-explanatory. However, perhaps the most blatent use of the term is in the Preface to the Basic Edition of the Dungeons and Dragons Player's Manual (1984, originally published in 1974):
This is a game that is fun. It helps you imagine. “As you whirl around, your sword ready, the huge, red, fire-breathing dragon swoops toward you with a ROAR!” See? Your imagination woke up already. Now imagine: This game may be more fun than any other game you have ever played! The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® game is a way for us to imagine together—like watching the same movie, or reading the same book. But you can write the stories, without putting a word on paper—just by playing the D&D® game . . . . When you bought some other game or book, did you ever think, “Gee, that's nice, but it's not quite what I thought it would be”? Well, your D&D adventures will be just what you want, because you're the one making them up! (inside front cover, paragraphing altered)
Historically, the notion of “imagination” gained much of its meaning in literary studies from Coleridge's distinction between Fancy and Imagination. I discuss contemporary meanings of the related term “fantasy” in chapter six, but it is necessary to note here that Fancy referred to the mechanical reordering of those “fixities and definites” which came readily to the senses into a new spatial and temporal order: it is “indeed no other than a mode of Memory emacipated from the order of time and space” (quoted in Abrams, p. 61). Imagination, however, was able to “create” rather than simply reorder images “by dissolving the fixities and definites—the mental pictures, or images, received from the senses—and unifying them into a new whole” (p. 61). It was a “vital” process: “an organic faculty which operates not like a sorting machine, but like a living and growing plant” (p. 61). This “organic” process was, however, understood in spiritual terms, so that Imagination was coded in terms of divine inspiration. This is evident in that the term “Canon” historically referred to the unquestionable authority of the Church.
In the Arnoldian or Leavisite literary tradition, Fancy was dismissed as the faculty of everyday thought and creation, and only a few were capable of acts of true Imagination. The literary work and artist were identified with one another, such that an artist's mind was seen as “illuminating” the work, and since the Canon of literature was characterised by Imagination, Imagination became an index of literary status. T he “poetics” of literary studies supposedly revealed the presence of imagination, and an artist's or work's literary status. In doing so, it considered whether or not the work addressed the “timeless values” of “Man,” and “Beauty.” A circular logic secured the literary community against charges of subjective evaluation: a work was literary, and part of the Canon, because it manifested Imagination, and manifestation of Imagination was self-evident because of the work's presence in the Canon.
Traditional literary studies, of course, emerged from anxieties about the rising middle class with the increased population of cities after the Industrial Revolution: Arnold 's Culture and Anarchy signalled “literature” as an elitist preservation of “high culture” against the “low culture” of other classes. Yet despite its universal claims, it basically reproduced the conservative and dominant values of patriarchy, class, gender and empire. The term “culture” is now defined to include the entire field of meaningful human activity, and the values of the literary canon have long been questioned. The Canon may have tried to defend itself by incorporating once-excluded texts, for example, literature by women, but when feminists simply offered their own female canon, it became increasingly obvious that the claim of a single Canon was insupportable: there are multiple “canons,” each defined by institutions so as to legitimate and reproduce themselves. Ultimately, the elitism of “high art” as an institution has shifted towards a recognition of a ll human activity as symbolic and creative, leading to a recuperation of “popular culture” as a democratic source of resistent and/or revolutionary impulses, and leftist analyses of “aesthetics” in terms of the formal characteristics and discursive practices which structure “desire” and “pleasure.” Yet while the distinction between Fancy and Imagination is no longer accepted, the values of “literature,” and the moribund authority of the “classics,” still function as a residual ideology, providing terms like “imagination” with a network of connotations.
In the Preface above, then, “imagination” has become collapsed with Fancy, in that while it is a matter of “fun” and largely a matter of recycling old material (“like reading a book”), there is a sense in which the game has a serious subtext. D&D is “fun” not only because it helps “us” imagine, but because it helps “us” imagine “together.” It compensates for the tendency in routine, mundane and urban society for people to become isolated and lose their imaginations by both providing a sense of community and encouraging our imagination. Yet to say that it is more fun for us to imagination with others implies that it is less fun to use one's imagination by oneself. The ideological premise of the isolated artist as having a unique position from which to critique society is here reduced to the concept of boredom or loneliness: RPGs are “fun” and “exciting” because we are supposedly at our most creative (read: “organic”) in company. The Romantic notion of the individual artists' imagination is, then, appealed to, but it is the democratic individual whose imagination is represented.
This “imagination” retains its educational and moral values, then, but “leisure” and “fun” have supplanted aesthetic or spiritual evaluation or appreciation of the artists' work in the public-political sphere. The creative imagination is applied to leisure, not politics: our creative collectivity is limited to the private sphere at the moment it is celebrated. The public sphere, by contrast, may be presumed to be boring, bureaucratic, characterised by anomie, and as repressing imagination, play, and fun. Indeed, the effacement of the public sphere as a source of valuable, satisfying or fully-realized communication means that its potential positive values, as well as those of the individual Romantic artist, are displaced onto the gaming partnership. This partnership, while it may be “rewarding,” is not seen as political, nor does it criticise, satirise or often even acknowledge the world beyond it. It principally reinforces the individualism that forms an ideological basis of the capitalist social order which has given rise to the alienation against which (at least in a broad, historical sense) this partnership reacts. Furthermore, if the individual is seen as imagining best in the company of others, it implies that the individual as an agent of political action is attenuated. It thus performs the ideological role of leisure by compensating for and expressing repressed or resistent anxieties which might make us less capable of working, and obfuscate the forces at work in contemporary society by incapacitating the notion of the individual or group as politically capable or relevant. At the same time, RPGs, like the notion of “imagination,” functions as a form of “cultural capital,” as an index of their players' moral and/or intellectual superiority over other gamers.
RPGs seem passe , an over-and-done with and subordinate form; the significant issue is, however, that RPGs CRPGs, MUDs and MMORPGs have a nostalgic character. The nostalgia of which I speak is not particular to RPGs, as is evident in weekly/annual lists/reviews of the “Top 100 Games” and early “classics” in gaming magazines; in the production of “clones” or “mods” of “classic” or popular games (there are endless “clones” of Doom and Quake, for example, often using the same 3D engine); in the rise of software emulation programs for arcade and other gaming platforms C (the MAME project, for example); and, finally, in the “upgrading” of “classic” games into new graphics engines ( CyberChess , 3D Space Invaders , and so on). However, nostalgia for the “classics” has specific import to CRPGs, given the release of collector's editions or archives of CRPG series, such as, The Forgotten Realms Archives , Might and Magic Collector's Edition , Ultima Special Edition and Collection Series: Quest for Glory ; and I have already noted that a Diablo II Collector's Edition includes a copy of the Wizards of the Coast RPG system. The development of CRPG series has happened over a long time, and while this means that changes in the capabilities of computer capabilities—as well as the structural and visual development of the CRPG genre—is visible in these series; however, they also reinforce the static form of the CRPG genre.
What is interesting is that these earlier versions function primarily nostalgically, for they are (fanatics aside) almost unplayable, compared with contemporary RPGs. The graphics draw attention to themselves, the interface is text driven and requires greater familiarity with short-cut keys, often without icons or mouse control. The pre-installation message of Might and Magic Classics says “endless hours of playing time,” but few gamers nowadays would have the patience or interest to test this promise. As for those who once played them when they first came out, more pleasure will come from that initial flux of excitement at seeing all the games packaged, that is, in the act of consumption, than in actually playing them. Playing them today may, arguably, devalue the pleasure we might have in our memories of playing them. Nonetheless, CRPGs refer back not only to a earlier or “classic” CRPGS. These series also refer to the history of RPGs as the mythic equivalent to the shift from classical oral traditions of epic storytelling, the rise of the novel, and the information revolution in terms of a shift from oral and text-based RPGs, text-based CRPGs, to CRPGs with hardware-dependant GUIs.
This nostalgia functions in relation to the futurism evident in the rhetoric of “new” gaming hardware, especially inasmuch as p roponents of CRPGs, MUDs and MMORPGs often attempt to assert the “trendiness” or “nowness” of their chosen games by appealing to their technological aspects. The 50th Issue Anniversary Edition of PC Powerplay 's, in its regular segment on the “ultimate gaming rig,” or “beast,” to which a “hardcore” gamer might aspire, describes: “the most nitro-burning, hard-rocking, computer system this side of a Silicon Graphics Onyx2 RealityMonster. (Yes, it does exist!)” (Sept 2000, No. 52, p. 110). This “ultimate gaming beast” (and I have chosen a slightly outdated “rig” deliberately) consists of a Dual Pentium III 93 EB SMP CPU on a SuperMicro P6DBE Motherboard, with 256 MB KingMaxx TinyBGA PC133 SDRAM, a Quantum Fireball 28GB CM hard drive, Asus v6800 Deluxe Videocard, Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Platinum soundcard, and a Sony G500 21” Trinitron monitor. The text is accompanied by the b/w image of a (silhouetted) monster holding a glowing computer card.
The discourse of “hardcore” gaming is here situated amidst discourses of: street-smart slang (for credibility, youth appeal, and as an index of its trend-setting nature); technical excess and mastery (with its unintelligible, state-of-the-art jargon, supposedly, but not necessarily, transparent to a technological elite); automobile fetishism (with the mystical plenitude of the fetishised “vehicle”—the computer— transfigured by linguistic excess); hysterical futurism (the strained limits, disastrous exhaustion and pheonix-like crash-and-burn of the upgrade, occurring with exponential frequency); and, lastly, monstrous power (repressed and/or unleashed). Indeed, the rhetoric must be monstrous (bordering on non-signification and the sublime) to deny the fact that the term “ultimate” refers to a temporary, and ultimately unfinished, orgasm and transcendence of an always-obscolescent fetish. At the time the magazine was bring printed, the rig described aove was in the process of being superceded by ongoing hardware research and design, and was superceded as an ideal the moment average player became able to afford it (at which point the inflated rhetoric associated with it became ridiculous). Since the “futuristic” rig becomes recycled scrap, and previous computer systems are denied visibility in this futuristic rhetoric, the nostalgia is generally displaced onto a particular game or gaming experience. The player's increasing investment in a PC “gaming rig” ceases to feel so much like an endless, money-draining punishment for having chosen to play computer games as a form of leisure, and becomes a masculinised, vehicular acceleration of, and contribution to, Progress, and the individual player's place in this spectacular (undescribable) Future.
It is important here to foreground that while CRPGs may function as a form of cultural capital, it is not simply a matter of players passively accepting the ideological value of the games and reproducing it through their preferences. The preferences of anyone particularly commited to any form of social activity need to be related to their investment in that activity. In this case, it is useful to relate the kind of rationalising involved when players who have invested much time and effort in (C)RPGs find them dismissed by others or repeatedly find their own interest in current releases not meeting their ideals of the “RPG.” The significance is that RPGs, across various media and genres, require a great deal more investment than some other games. A quick perusal of any RPG rulebook indicates a lengthy learning curve. The GM has the initial burden here, but players, through adventuring, gradually learn more of the rules. The same applies to CRPGs, in which the learning curve is usually two hours or so, depending upon one's familiarity with earlier versions of the CRPG interface. W imulations and some strategy games may require an equal amount of time in mastering the interface, but CRPGs organise this investment in terms of a deliberate cultivation of a “role.” This learning curve, and the ability to transfer previous experience to new forms of RPGs, leads to an ever-increasing investment in the “idea” of the RPG as a consistent genre. If someone who has spent hours or years playing a game finds the game dismissed, and is unable to defend the game because a simple definition cannot be supplied, this may create what social psychologists define as “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger, 1957).
According to this theory, humans have a need to attain “cognitive consistency”: “harmony and congruity between cognitions of objects and persons in the environment” (p. 119). That is, the presence of dissonant cognitions often arouses psychological tension, and is often accompanied by attempts to resolve them. Of course, the means by which this psychological mechanism works varies according to the culture and individual, and there are complex relationships between cognition, attachment, and signifying systems. Someone operating in a concrete-operational mode may utilise an inductive mode of reasoning, while someone operating in a formal-operational mode may utilise a deductive mode of reasoning. An individual may resolve the dissonance by dismissing, privileging or changing either or both cognitions, by adding intermediary cognitions, or by attempting to render the cognitions in a syllogistic form, in which the dissonant cognitions are taken as premises that are seen as establishing the truth of a third proposition: the conclusion. In practice, of course, such reasoning will be fallacious.
For example, a player may reason: (a) I play RPGs; (b) I enjoy RPGs; and concludes, (c) RPGs are good. If another gamer says: (a) I played an RPG; (b) I hated it; (c) RPGs are awful, the player may feel the need to reconcile the two views and reinforce his/her original conclusion. The player may replicate the circular logic associated with the inclusion of “literary” texts into the canon of “literature”: (a) RPGs are good because they facilitate “imagination”; (b) this is evident in that by playing them my “imagination” is stimulated; (c); anyone who does not like the game is “unimaginative,” and therefore inferior. The player may attempt to provide a more specific definition that legitimises the genre by excluding those who dismiss it. This may lead towards the more benign areasoning: (a) the other player didn't play the game properly because of a poor GM, a poor module, or through not knowing the rules properly, (b) that is why they did not enjoy it, and so (c) they are not in a position to judge the genre. Alternately, the player may simply fall back on his/her incommunicable experience or subjective preference as a source of justification: (a) I've played the game for X-many years, (b) I have invested much in and/or have fond memories of it, and (c) that is why they are good for me.
Acknowledging this kind of work on behalf of players helps to undermine the assumption that players simply reproduce the ideology of RPGs: their preferences are not always specifically motivated by ideology, rather they may be motivated by a personal desire to defend one's investment in a form of leisure, albeit a defense that appropriates ideological associations where useful. This said, the way in which the defense of the “purity” and “value” RPGs moves uneasily towards personal experience and memory can be easily related to the function of RPGs as a particularly evocative form of “nostalgia.” The nostalgia about (C)RPGs takes multiple forms: nostalgia based upon familiarity with and preference for a particular RPG experience or a particular form of RPG; nostalgia for an earlier era of computer technology, evident in earlier, more primitive, installments of RPG series; nostalgia for CRPG experiences or CRPGs; nostalgia for the freedoms of the imagination and childhood; and nostalgia for an RPG community. T he RPG exploits the pleasure of allusion, or, more generally, the reward of self-recognition, through players constantly being reminded that they are partaking of a tradition that is both personal and public. So the debate about RPGs is motivated as much by investment in a particular gaming experience as it nostalgia for any actual community.
Of course, many players of CRPGs may never have had the experience of playing RPGs, and so may regard the CRPG as simply another genre; however, for such players (and their number will most likely rise the next generations), the RPG community is always-already a myth, but one whose semantic structure nonetheless determines the nature of the imaginary or virtual gaming communities. This begs the question: to what extent has the relationship between private and public changed in RPG and other gaming communities with the rise of computer arcade, console and PC games and networked gaming practices? Has the improvisational dialogue of RPGs simply “returned” with networked games such as Vampire: The Masquerade ? Can we then speak of the same or a new kind of RPG community?
As with many “fan” or “cult” phenemena, RPGs may be seen as having an “imagined community”: an (assumed) body of fellow gamers that may be realised as an actual community when gamers attend gaming sessions, meet people who turn out to be gamers, attend gaming conventions, and/or meet in real-life someone they met on-line. For a generation of gamers, like myself, CRPGs refer back to the actual community of RPG gamers—the people with whom I actually played—as well as an imaginary (C)RPG community—other people who play or played one of the editions of (A)D&D , and other RPGs. Yet it is easy to generalise about what this community was, and so facilitate the legitimation of an idealised “pure” and “original” (A)D&D community. Generally, CRPGs offer a series of related nostalgic cues related to the parallel development of computers and (C)RPGs, early experiences with computers, imaginary or actual (C)RPG community, the investment in a form of leisure or cultural capital, and a general nostalgia of the freedom, play and imagination associated with youth.
