Narrativism Rising

There are some times when everyone seems to be on the same wavelength. In the past week I've read several really great blog posts on the do's and don'ts of printer-friendly electronic publishing and about the state and direction of the RPG market in general. As far as PDF formats are concerned, I seem to be pretty much in tune with everyone else. On the subject of the marketplace, some were optimistic and some pessimistic, some cynical and some idealistic. And it all has more or less to do with the way changing technology is affecting how and what we play.

For as long as they've been around, pencil and paper role-playing games have been seen in contrast and often in conflict with computer and video games. Debate has raged over whether CRPGs can really be considered role-playing games, and whether role-players can really be called 'gamers.' There has been a persistent perception that pencil and paper role-players are more 'traditional' or 'old school' than computer gamers, even though the two media have been around almost the same amount of time and both have evolved significantly over the past three decades.

It is true that pencil and paper games are more resistant to change, both in good and bad ways. On the one hand, a 0th edition D&D player would not feel out of place at a 4th ed. table - the rules have changed, but the tools and most of the tropes have not. Some see this as dinosaurian, clinging to antiquated, analog resolution mechanics:

So we both have a bunch of little plastic men, right? And we move them. Manually. Then, when we fight, we roll dice and then do math to figure out who hits who. But there are no actual battles or explosions. We use our imaginations, like a couple of savages.

On the other hand, compare the number of people still playing vintage D&D to the number of people still playing vintage Pong. Vintage Pong has some sentimental value, but vintage D&D kicks as much ass today as it ever did because pencil and paper role-playing is not technology-dependent. Your mind makes it real.

So where will the future take us? Some see pencil and paper role-playing as a fad of the 80's, destined to walk the way of ragtime and the hula hoop. Some see it as an art form, like live theater, that will continue to have a small but dedicated (and, admittedly, elitist) fan base, despite the existence of a much more popular, economically successful, and technological medium competing for the same audience. Some see a marriage or merging of tabletop and computerized role-playing games as inevitable or even desirable. But there is one element of tabletop role-playing that I think could lead a divergent trend, allowing pencil and paper games to flourish in environments where computer games cannot yet survive.

Many role-players are familiar with GNS or threefold game theory, a critical and evaluative framework for analyzing game function. All role-playing games have elements of Gamism, Narrativism, and Simulationism, though they emphasize them to differing degrees. Simulationist games will work better in a computer environment, since accurate and complex simulations are essentially the reason computers exist. Gamist games can go either way; most computer games thrive on game balance and winnable objectives. Narrativism, though, that's where tabletop games really shine and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

No computer can handle the unlimited imagination of human player, and no team of writers can offer the freedom and flexibility to handle the goals and needs of every member of their player base. Unless every player is a programmer, character abilities and actions, and even appearances will be limited to what the game developers thought of, and quest storylines are limited to the predictions of a handful of writers. So far, the electronic game industry has generally tended to sacrifice story for graphics and open worlds for challenging multiplayer PvP content because that's what was economically viable for them. These shortcomings are openings for the tabletop crowd.

Tabletop role-playing games are Gamist and are Simulationist because all games are to some extent, but what they really are is collaborative storytelling. There are people who want to tell stories, people who want to have total control over their characters' actions and goals, who cannot be satisfied by the computer game industry. Narrativism is the niche where tabletop gaming will survive and thrive.

There are a few things the tabletop crowd will have to do for this to happen:

Stop seeing computer games as the enemy.

Computer games are not a threat to our hobby. In fact, they weed out people who were only marginally interested because now a form of gaming exists that better suits their needs. If tabletoppers leverage the qualities that make these games stand out, they will not only survive, but the remaining players will heave a sigh of relief without a lot of the munchkins who just want to pwn noobs.

Stop seeing computer games as friends.

A lot of people saw the fantastic growth and mainstream acceptance of the electronic game industry as a ray of hope for role-playing games. With millions of MMORPG players, that must mean a lot of new people will become interested in tabletop games, right? Wrong. Computerized games are a different animal, and reward players for different types of behavior than tabletop games. Teaching a CRPG player how to roleplay is about the same as teaching a baseball player how to roleplay. Tabletop games are still competing with computer games for players' time and money.

Embrace technological change.

If tabletop games cling to pencil and paper, they really might go extinct. It won't be a group of friends sitting around the table anymore. By embracing computers and social media, improving on the old base of PbP and PbE styles to include tools like Skype, OpenRPG, MapTools, and Google Wave, the physical and geographic limitations that have hindered the growth of tabletop games will unravel, and human-moderated collaborative storytelling games can reach new audiences and really give the MMOs a run for their money.

This is just one, obviously Narrativist-biased and perhaps overly optimistic view of the future; I don't have any special credential that makes my soothsaying any more likely than any of the others'. We really will need a new name for it, though, since both pencil-and-paper and tabletops will soon be a thing of the past, and the term RPG seems to have largely been appropriated by the electronic game industry. Can I go ahead and start calling us HMCSGs?