For the first couple decades after D&D, virtually all roleplaying games looked fundamentally similar: There was a GM who controlled the game world, there were players who each controlled a single character (or occasionally a small stable of characters which all “belonged” to them), and actions were resolved using diced mechanics.

Starting in the early ’90s, however, we started to see some creative experimentation with the form. And in the last decade this experimentation has exploded: GM-less game. Diceless games. Players taking control of the game world beyond their characters. (And so forth.) But as this experimentation began carrying games farther and farther from the “traditional” model of a roleplaying game, there began to be some recognition that these games needed to be distinguished from their progenitors: On the one hand, lots of people found that these new games didn’t scratch the same itch that roleplaying games did and some responded vituperatively to them as a result. On the other hand, even those enthusiastic about the new games began searching for a new term to describe their mechanics — “story game”, “interactive drama”, “mutual storytelling”, and the like.

In some cases, this “search for a label” has been about raising a fence so that people can tack up crude “KEEP OUT” signs. I don’t find that particularly useful. But as an aficionado of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, I also understand the power of proper definitions: They allow us to focus our discussion and achieve a better understanding of the topic. But by giving us a firm foundation, they also set us free to experiment fully within the form.

For example, people got tired of referring to “games that are a lot like Dungeons & Dragons“, so they coined the term “roleplaying game” and it suddenly became a lot easier to talk about them (and also market them). It also allowed RPGs to become conceptually distinct from “wargames”, which not only eliminated quite a bit of confusion (as people were able to separate “good practices from wargames” from “good practices for roleplaying games”), but also allowed the creators of RPGs to explore a lot of new options.

Before we begin looking at how games like Shock: Social Science Fiction, Dread, Wushu, and Microscope are different from roleplaying games, however, I think we first need to perfect our understanding of what a roleplaying game is and how it’s distinguished from other types of games.

WHAT IS A ROLEPLAYING GAME?

Roleplaying games are defined by mechanics which are associated with the game world.

Let me break that down: Roleplaying games are self-evidently about playing a role. Playing a role is about making choices as if you were the character. Therefore, in order for a game to be a roleplaying game (and not just a game where you happen to play a role), the mechanics of the game have to be about making and resolving choices as if you were the character. If the mechanics of the game require you to make choices which aren’t associated to the choices made by the character, then the mechanics of the game aren’t about roleplaying and it’s not a roleplaying game.

To look at it from the opposite side, I’m going to make a provocative statement: When you are using dissociated mechanics you are not roleplaying. Which is not to say that you can’t roleplay while playing a game featuring dissociated mechanics, but simply to say that in the moment when you are using those mechanics you are not roleplaying.

I say this is a provocative statement because I’m sure it’s going to provoke strong responses. But, frankly, it just looks like common sense to me: If you are manipulating mechanics which are dissociated from your character — which have no meaning to your character — then you are not engaged in the process of playing a role. In that moment, you are doing something else. (It’s practically tautological.) You may be multi-tasking or rapidly switching back-and-forth between roleplaying and not-roleplaying. You may even be using the output from the dissociated mechanics to inform your roleplaying. But when you’re actually engaged in the task of using those dissociated mechanics you are not playing a role; you are not roleplaying.

I think this distinction is important because, in my opinion, it lies at the heart of what defines a roleplaying game: What’s the difference between the boardgame Arkham Horror and the roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu? In Arkham Horror, after all, each player takes on the role of a specific character; those characters are defined mechanically; the characters have detailed backgrounds; and plenty of people have played sessions of Arkham Horror where people have talked extensively in character.

I pick Arkham Horror for this example because it exists right on the cusp between being an RPG and a not-RPG. So when people start roleplaying during the game (which they indisputably do when they start talking in character), it raises the provocative question: Does it become a roleplaying game in that moment?

On the other hand, I’ve had the same sort of moment happen while playing Monopoly. For example, there was a game where somebody said, “I’m buying Boardwalk because I’m a shoe. And I like walking.” Goofy? Sure. Bizarre? Sure. Roleplaying? Yup.

Let me try to make the distinction clear: When we say “roleplaying game”, do we just mean “a game where roleplaying can happen”? If so, then I think the term “roleplaying game” becomes so ridiculously broad that it loses all meaning. (Since it includes everything from Monopoly to Super Mario Brothers.)

Rather, I think the term “roleplaying game” only becomes meaningful when there is a direct connection between the game and the roleplaying. When roleplaying is the game.

It’s very tempting to see all of this in a purely negative light: As if to say, “Dissociated mechanics get in the way of roleplaying and associated mechanics don’t.” But it’s actually more meaningful than that: The act of using an associated mechanic is the act of playing a role.

As I wrote in the original essay on dissociated mechanics, all game mechanics are — to varying degrees — abstracted and metagamed. For example, the destructive power of a fireball is defined by the number of d6’s you roll for damage; and the number of d6’s you roll is determined by the caster level of the wizard casting the spell. If you asked a character about d6’s of damage or caster levels, they’d have no idea what you were talking about (that’s the abstraction and the metagaming). But they could tell you what a fireball was and they could tell you that casters of greater skill can create more intense flames during the casting of the spell (that’s the association).

So a fireball has a direct association to the game world. Which means that when, for example, you make a decision to cast a fireball spell you are making a decision as if you were your character — in making the mechanical decision you are required to roleplay (because that mechanical decision is directly associated to your character’s decision). You may not do it well. You’re not going to win a Tony Award for it. But in using the mechanics of a roleplaying game, you are inherently playing a role.

WHAT IS A STORYTELLING GAME?

So roleplaying games are defined by associated mechanics — mechanics which are associated with the game world, and thus require you to make decisions as if you were your character (because your decisions are associated with your character’s decisions).

Storytelling games (STGs), on the other hand, are defined by narrative control mechanics: The mechanics of the game are either about determining who controls a particular chunk of the narrative or they’re actually about determining the outcome of a particular narrative chunk.

Storytelling games may be built around players having characters that they’re proponents of, but the mechanical focus of the game is not on the choices made as if they were those characters. Instead, the mechanical focus is on controlling the narrative.

Wushu offers a pretty clear-cut example of this. The game basically has one mechanic: By describing a scene or action, you earn dice. If your dice pool generates more successes than everyone else’s dice pools, you control the narrative conclusion of the round.

Everyone in Wushu is playing a character. That character is the favored vehicle which they can use to deliver their descriptions, and that character’s traits will even influence what types of descriptions are mechanically superior for them to use. But the mechanics of the game are completely dissociated from the act of roleplaying the character. Vivid and interesting characters are certainly encouraged, but the act of making choices as if you were the character — the act of actually roleplaying — has absolutely nothing to do with the rules whatsoever.

That’s why Wushu is a storytelling game, not a roleplaying game.

More controversially, consider Dread. The gameplay here looks a lot like a roleplaying game: All the players are playing individual characters. There’s a GM controlling/presenting the game world. When players have their characters attempt actions, there’s even a resolution mechanic: Pull a Jenga block. If the tower doesn’t collapse, the action succeeds. If the tower does collapse, the character is eliminated from the story.

But I’d argue that Dread isn’t a roleplaying game: The mechanic may be triggered by characters taking action, but the actual mechanic isn’t associated with the game world. The mechanic is entirely about controlling the pace of the narrative and participation in the narrative.

I’d even argue that Dread wouldn’t be a roleplaying game if you introduced a character sheet with hard-coded skills that determined how many blocks you pull depending on the action being attempted and the character’s relevant skill. Why? Because the resolution mechanic is still dissociated and it’s still focused on narrative control and pacing. The mechanical decisions being made by the players (i.e., which block to pull and how to pull it) aren’t associated to decisions being made by their character. The fact that the characters have different characteristics in terms of their ability to be used to control that narrative is as significant as the differences between a rook and a bishop in a game of Chess.

GETTING FUZZY

Another way to look at this is to strip everything back to freeform roleplaying: Just people sitting around, pretending to be characters. This isn’t a roleplaying game because there’s no game — it’s just roleplaying.

Now add mechanics: If the mechanics are designed in such a way that the mechanical choices you’re making are directly associated with the choices your character is making, then it’s probably a roleplaying game. If the mechanics are designed in such a way that the mechanical choices you’re making are about controlling or influencing the narrative, then it’s probably a storytelling game.

But this gets fuzzy for two reasons.

First, few games are actually that rigid in their focus. For example, if I add an action point mechanic to a roleplaying game it doesn’t suddenly cease to be a roleplaying game just because there are now some mechanical choices being made by players that aren’t associated to character decisions. When playing a roleplaying game, most of us have agendas beyond simply “playing a role”. (Telling a good story, for example. Or emulating a particular genre trope. Or exploring a fantasy world.) And dissociated mechanics have been put to all sorts of good use in accomplishing those goals.

Second, characters actually are narrative elements. This means that you can see a lot of narrative control mechanics which either act through, are influenced by, or act upon characters who may also be strongly associated with or exclusively associated with a particular player.

When you combine these two factors, you end up with a third: Because characters are narrative elements, players who prefer storytelling games tend to have a much higher tolerance for roleplaying mechanics in their storytelling games. Why? Because roleplaying mechanics allow you to control characters; characters are narrative elements; and, therefore, roleplaying mechanics can be enjoyed as just a very specific variety of narrative control.

On the other hand, people who are primarily interested in roleplaying games because they want to roleplay a character tend to have a much lower tolerance for narrative control mechanics in their roleplaying games. Why? Because when you’re using dissociated mechanics you’re not roleplaying. At best, dissociated mechanics are a distraction from what the roleplayer wants. At worst, the dissociated mechanics can actually interfere and disrupt what the roleplayer wants (when, for example, the dissociated mechanics begin affecting the behavior or actions of their character).

This is why many aficionados of storytelling games don’t understand why other people don’t consider their games roleplaying games. Because even traditional roleplaying games at least partially satisfy their interests in narrative control, they don’t see the dividing line.

Explaining this is made even more difficult because the dividing line is, in fact, fuzzy in multiple dimensions. Plus there’s plenty of historical confusion going the other way. (For example, the “Storyteller System” is, in fact, just a roleplaying game with no narrative control mechanics whatsoever.)

It should also be noted that while the distinction between RPGs and STGs is fairly clear-cut for players, it can be quite a bit fuzzier on the other side of the GM’s screen. (GMs are responsible for a lot more than just roleplaying a single character, which means that their decisions — both mechanical and non-mechanical — were never strictly focused on roleplaying in the first place.)

Personally, I enjoy both sorts of games: Chocolate (roleplaying), vanilla (storytelling), and swirled mixtures of both. But, with that being said, there are times when I just want some nice chocolate ice cream; and when I do, I generally find that dissociated mechanics screw up my fun.

2020 ADDENDUM: TABLETOP NARRATIVE GAMES

If we can move beyond arguing that vanilla ice cream is actually chocolate ice cream, we have the opportunity to step back and recognize that these are both different types of ice cream. I propose that both roleplaying games and storytelling games are tabletop narrative games.

Now, here’s the cool thing: Recognizing that these are different things within a broader paradigm will make it easier for us to explore that paradigm. Much like having a different word for different colors makes it easier to distinguish those colors, clearly seeing the distinctions between associated mechanics and narrative control mechanics will not only make it easier for us to develop better games of those types, it will also likely make it easier for us to discover completely new types of games.

Compare this to video games, for example. Grand Theft Auto started as a maze-chase game. When they iterated on that design, nobody launched a holy war insisting that this was the One True Way of making maze-chase games. They said, “Oh. Hey. Look at this cool new type of game.” Instead of spending twenty years arguing that Grand Theft Auto 3 was a maze-chase game just like Pac-Man (and how dare you suggest otherwise?!), they identified the new form as an open-world game and spent twenty years making lots and lots of open-world games (that were in no way still trying to be Pac-Man).

Video games and board games do this all the time. And we have better and more varied video games and board games as a result. Wouldn’t it be great if tabletop narrative games could reap the same benefits?

I have something a little out of the ordinary for you today: An interview with Margaret Frazer, the award-winning author of the Dame Frevisse and Player Joliffe mysteries. As I’ve mentioned recently I’ve been producing book trailers for her novels. She’s recently released the e-book novella Winter Heart and she’s on a blog tour to celebrate. (Hence the virtual visit.)

A lot of people reading the Alexandrian are mostly interested in roleplaying games. A big challenge in roleplaying games is creating worlds and getting players to invest in them. In your books you do an amazing job of creating the world of medieval England. How do you get in that mindset? What sort of details do you use for creating that world for the reader and making them care about it?

Margaret: I’m a big fan of going otherwhere and otherwhen. When I got interested in medieval England, lo, these many years ago and wanted to get inside the heads of the people, I started reading everything I could find. I began with the easy-read, no-footnotes kind of books. Those led me on to biographies, and those had not only footnotes but bibliographies, and I’ve ended by reading not just scholarly works about the Middle Ages but what medieval people actually recorded about themselves – the stories they wrote down, their chronicles, the account rolls, the illustrated fight manuals made at the time. When I travelled, I went to medieval places – castles, cathedrals, ordinary churches, ordinary houses, battlefields, highways that have existed since Roman times. Anything and everything that would let me see their world as they did. When I belonged to the Society for Creative Anachronism, I wore medieval clothing, learned and used the manners and some of the arts of the time, authorized in sword and shield fighting and fought in melees. I know what it is to have in my hand a sword so beautiful balanced it practically lives, and what it is to go into close combat with the very real possibility of being hurt – not killed in this case but definitely dramatically bruised and battered!

Relating this to roleplaying, I can tell you I fully understand the adrenalin surge that carries your characters forward into a fight regardless of the danger! Because of all that, I have more than a book-knowledge of medieval life. I have a feel for what it was like, and that feeling informs my stories, making it possible for me to draw the reader in, for them to feel it, too. And what a reader feels, they hopefully care about.

Quite a bit of “Winter Heart” dwells on the matters of memory and age. Are those issues which have a particular resonance for you right now?

Yes. Several chronic ailments have been making my life a tad hellish of late. I’m being forced to embrace my “inner elderly” somewhat before the time I expected. But as with every other happenstance that comes to an author, the thought (unbidden and ineradicable) at the back of the mind remains “I have to remember how this feels. I can use it in a story sometime.”

“Winter Heart” is being released as an e-book. I know you’ve been working to get your older books available online as well. You often joke about living in the Middle Ages, so why are you embracing the “digital age”, so to speak?

Long before I came to medieval England, I was reading science fiction with vast delight, and it’s still where I go for refreshment. Why, I was [insert doddering old geezer’s voice] watching the original “Star Trek” before it was in reruns! So I’m fascinated with the wild things modern technology is coming up with. Also wary and
inclined to keep a safe distance (see above: geezer), but I have sons who keep putting things in my hands and showing me how great they are. That said, when flip-open cell phones first appeared, I had a hard time taking them seriously – I mean – really – they’re straight out of “Star Trek”, right?

The great thing with having my mind spread over several time periods – I like Prehistory as well as Medieval and Modern – is that by doing a kind of time travel, I see modern life from a different perspective than if I were immersed in only it and no other when or where. Those otherwhens and otherwheres let me see my own world with shadows and highlights I might otherwise never perceive.

Will we eventually see some of these books back in “real” print?

Almost certainly. My hope is to eventually have them all available in all the possible forms. It’s not my fault that technology keeps coming up with new forms faster than I (or rather, my Computer Person) can keep up with them! But we’re trying. That said, I must add that “real” print is still majorly important to me. Just a look at my home will tell anyone that. Nearly all available wall space is lined with bookshelves, and the shelves are mostly full. There’s a lot of general reading but nearly half of the books are for research – everything from fashions and fabrics, to recipes and how to set the lord’s high table, to agriculture and village life, to running the royal bureaucracy, to studies of warfare and particular battles, to politics, religion, economics, philosophy, international trade, and more. Medieval times were complex and far more multi-faceted than the clichés of most novels, tv shows, and movies show. I need to understand all of these aspects of medieval life in order to tell my stories well.

Isn’t that a lot to cram into a story?

I leave most of it out of my stories. All of it informs what goes into the stories, but very little actually surfaces. And when it does, I try to make it flow with the narrative, not intrude on and interrupt the story. “Winter Heart” was a particular exercise in this, because a number of aspects of medieval life are wound together to make the plot and yet I couldn’t allow them to obscure the action, only enhance. To put in all the facts needed to take a reader into another time and place, while keeping my research invisible, is the lovely and unending challenge I enjoy in all my books and stories.

That’s interesting. I talk about similar issues for Game Masters trying to parse out necessary information to their players in Getting Your Players to Care. Getting readers (or players) to invest can be tough, but it can be impressive how much depth you can build up — and how immersive you can make a fictional milieu — when you can develop it over time. You’ve been writing the Dame Frevisse books more than two decades now. How do you keep a series like that fresh?

I’ve been asked if I don’t get bored with writing the same book over and over again, and the simple answer to that is that I don’t write the same book over and over again, so I don’t get bored. This notion of writing the same book over and over apparently comes from the fact that a great many books are written to formula. If it’s a mystery, someone has to be dead very early in the book, preferably in the first few pages. Then there has to be a requisite amount of violence, conflict between the detective and some authority figure, and (if the author knows what’s good for her/him) a romantic/sexual entanglement. Following that template over and over would indeed bore me cross-eyed. So I don’t follow it. In many of my books I keep deliberately clear of those clichés. I’ve written one book where someone is dead in the very first pages, but usually there’s no corpse until much later in the book, when the reader has had time to get acquainted with the characters, making the death when it comes a far more personal matter. Too, in the Dame Frevisse series the story is told from two points of view – the main character’s and the title character’s – so that every book explores a different aspect of medieval society, letting me look at the world from all these different angles, keeping the stories fresh, and me very far from bored!

The malero (meaning “the taking of sin”) is a religious ritual of cleansing.

Its origins lie in the auto da fes performed during the Years of Heresy by the Imperial Church. In these public processions, those found guilty of heretical crimes would be marched through the streets of a city before being led to a place of judgment where many would be tortured or executed.

The first bearer of the malero was Saint Alesia of Malthusta, who received a holy vision to lift the burden of sin from her town and bear it herself before performing a mighty geas to cleanse her own soul of its weight. Similar maleros were performed throughout the Years of Heresy, allowing those accused of heretical crimes to instead go free.

The practice of malero continues today in a lessened form: Holy warriors and knights are given tasks by the church in order to periodically cleanse their communities of the “vestige sin” which accumulates wherever men gather in great numbers.

More rarely, a malero be assumed in an effort to lift a curse or blight from a particular region.

THE MALERO IN YOUR CAMPAIGN

A malero can serve as a convenient scenario hook. Knights, paladins, and clerics associated with the church may be called on directly to perform them. In other cases, churches may put out a general call for anyone willing to undertake a malero. (This is particularly true for smaller churches with more limited resources.)

Notably, maleros are often called for in the wake of great tragedies. Have the PCs just captured a serial killer? We’ll need a malero to cleanse the community of such weight sin. Did they just save the village from some natural calamity? The gods must be cursing us with such times of trouble because of our sins; must be time for a malero.

A failed malero is a particularly weighty manner. If Sir Godric has taken on the community’s sin and has fallen before it could be cleansed, that means that the sin has merely been concentrated and is now free to roam once more. Who knows what mischief such sin might get up to? Once the players are familiar with the concept of the malero, you can use a failed malero to crank up the stakes for them.

You shouldn’t forget to play up the ritualistic component of the malero, either. Functionally it may not be much different from a guy hiring them at the local tavern; but the devil is in the details, and you can imbue the malero with a lot more unique flavor than that: Anoint them with oils. Make them swear a holy oath. Let them receive a proper blessing.

Make the malero significant.

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time delving through the 1st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide recently. Which means I’ve spent more than my fair share of time staring at the cover… which I have always hated.

The poses are stiff. The composition boring. The anatomy problematic. It is, in short, a disappointing and amateurish piece of work.

And this is particular true when you compare it to the back cover of the same book, which depicts a glorious, panoramic shot of the City of Brass which seems to invite you to a world of adventure in a dozen different ways.

The interesting thing, of course, is that these are both the same piece of art. It’s a panoramic cover that wraps around the spine. Because of its composition, however, this can be rather difficult to appreciate unless you can look at the whole thing all at once:

I really like the framing effect which the fully visible arch has on the City of Brass. That half of the painting is great.

Sadly, seeing the full piece in context only makes the other half of the painting look even worse. I mean, the composition of the efreeti and the adventurers was already suffering from some internal problems with its perspective. But once you put them into the context of the larger scene, where exactly are they supposed to be standing?

Look at what happens when you draw in the perspective lines of the wall:

As far as I can tell, the efreeti is standing in the wall.

I’m as much a fan of non-Euclidean geometry as the next guy. But this just looks sloppy to me. And it actively repulses my eye.

EDIT: Those of you suggesting in the comments that the efreeti and possibly the adventurers have actually been painted on the wall have an interesting theory. But if that were actually the case, we would expect the cover to look something like this:

Which, of course, it doesn’t.

I suppose one could argue that this is a painting of another painting which has been painted in order to appear 3D from the position which the meta-painter has placed his easel… But, honestly, there comes a point when you’re just making excuses for sub-standard art.

Common meme: Art is eating our RPG books. The number of illustrations have been increasing per page.  Customers won’t buy books without a lot of art in them. And this is totally new. Didn’t used to be this way. Back in the day we were willing to buy books even if they didn’t have any art at all.

Really?

Fact check time.

OD&D White Box: 44 illustrations, 116 half pages = 0.37 illustrations per page (0.75 per full page)

AD&D1 PHB: 35 illustrations, 128 pages = 0.27 illustrations per page
AD&D1 DMG: 50 illustrations, 240 pages = 0.20 illustrations per page
AD&D1 MM: 246 illustrations, 112 pages = 2.19 illustrations per page
AD&D 1st Edition Total: 0.61 illustrations per page

AD&D2 PHB: 95 illustrations, 256 pages = 0.37 illustrations per page
AD&D2 DMG: 81 illustrations, 192 pages = 0.42 illustrations per page
AD&D2 MM: 326 illustrations, 384 pages = 0.84 illustrations per page
AD&D 2nd Edition Total: 0.60 illustrations per page

D&D3.5 PHB: 68 illustrations, 317 pages = 0.21 illustrations per page
D&D3.5 DMG: 71 illustrations, 320 pages = 0.22 illustrations per page
D&D3.5 MM: 203 illustrations, 320 pages = 0.63 illustrations per page
D&D3.5 Total: 0.36 illustrations per page

D&D4 PHB: 67 illustrations, 317 pages = 0.21 illustrations per page
D&D4 DMG: 48 illustrations, 221 pages = 0.22 illustrations per page
D&D4 MM: 208 illustrations, 288 pages = 0.72 illustrations per page
D&D4 Total: 0.39 illustrations per page

Exact counts may vary.  (For example, I didn’t count the 23 illustrations on pg. 21 of Volume 3 of the White Box depicting various types of construction as separate illustrations. I just counted the whole pageonce.) But the conclusion is self-evident: The number of illustrations per full page in D&D’s core rulebooks has actually decreased over time. If we want to talk about black-and-white art vs. full color art or the merits of border art, let’s have it. But RPGs have been art-rich literally since day one.

“But, Justin,” you say. “That’s just D&D. What about Traveller? The little black box practically had no illustrations at all!”

True. The original Traveller black box only has 3 illustrations in 150 half pages. On the other hand, the relatively recent Shock: Social Science Fiction has 3 illustrations in 90 two-third pages. Books that feature stark, austere layouts haven’t exactly vanished off the face of the planet.

Now, if there is one trend that has appeared in the last 20 years its the technique of putting a big piece of art behind the text. And I think we can all agree that this technique should be taken out into the desert and left to die.

But if you want to complain about how much gosh-darn art there is in roleplaying games these days?

Check your facts.