Five RPG Ideas That Are Played Out – and Five to Play Again
It’s simple. Here are five things I think have been overdone and five that deserve another go.
- Played Out: The Cthulhu Mythos
- Play Again: Satanic Evil
Yes, the Mythos is literature. We all love it. And if you love something, set it free from numerous RPG rehashes. maybe Ken Hite can kep doing it but everyone else should just stop. And don’t do that faux-Lovecraft thing where you bang your head on the keyboard to get random sounding names. (Mage: The Ascension, I’m looking at you!)
But whatever happened to the Devil? Not the post-Miltonian by way of Gaiman sympathetic dude, but Satan, the ultimate BBEG? Nobody’s used him as a threat in a while, and gamers, frightened of the 80s come again, generally shy away from classic Old Scratch. Let’s bring him back in all his modern pop culture-confused medieval-Baptist mishmash glory.
- Played Out: Ever So Aaaalieen Faeries
- Play Again: Fairy Tales
Yes yes nerds, Faeries are alien and strange and crap – except that this whole thing is now a huge cliche that gamers expect. My work on Changeling was a subtle critique of it. In it, the Gentry can’t be incomprehensible because they’re made of stories – and incomprehensible stories are dead stories.
Fairy tales, where magic is a collection of whimsical special cases and fairies aren’t otherplanar gods but just well hidden, haven’t been used so much. The challenge is making them relevant and not merely aping a romantic childhood approach. Phil Brucato’s Deliria gave it a try but was hampered by a stream of consciousness presentation and odd system. There’s room for a new game.
- Played Out: D&D Clones
- Play Again: Second Wave-Style “Realistic” Fantasy RPGs
There are just too many dungeon fantasy games out there, and none of them will ever beat D&D. At most, they’ll be a valued second fiddle.
On the other hard, there’s room for new games in the tradition of Harn and Runequest. I know we all like to pretend that Runequest was all about Glorantha, but I was there nerds – it’s about nasally arguing over “realism.” You can’t have true realism, but the type of verisimilitude in these designs has been missing from recent RPGs. There’s definitely a demand for it.
- Played Out: You’re Possessed!
- Play Again: Psychics
This one is leveled at White Wolf – with love. Back in the Old World of Darkness, every other supernatural type was born of some form of sophisticated possession, with fae souls and Tem-Akhs and all that. I think Geist (which I worked on) is the last decent implementation to be had before it’s time to say goodbye to this one.
On the other hand, nobody’s done a good psychics game in a long time. Psychic powers are a tradition in occult literature, SF and some fantasy, have lots of associated myths and are even described in gameable power chunks. Many games have ancillary rules for them, but nobody’s put the spoon benders front and center in a while.
- Played Out: Oddball Kitchen Sink Fantasy
- Play Again: Fantasy East Asia
Exalted did the job well. Eberron? Well, it was a handy place to dump ideas, I guess. Dictionary of Mu marked the final degeneration from “trend” to “affectation” and finally, “masturbation.” By and large, strangeness for strangeness’ sake (mixed with pulp pastiche as part of a male-nerd thing) is getting monotonous. “It has a noble title as long as your arm! Mighty thews. Steam power. Spider vaginas!” Yeah, just shut up.
Games set in a region based on the Chinese cultural sphere (places where Chinese customs, religions and written languages had a powerful influence) have never been done well. They’re either too blandly historical, even when the history is violently remixed, or you have Legend of the Five Rings which drops many worthy elements for its CCG-based setup. There needs to be something Lord of the Rings-like – a mythic-historical work that doesn’t try to sell exoticism within the millieu.
Erm, what random names are we speaking of regarding Mage: the Ascension?
K’lashaa, et al. Various Nephandi overlords were produced by keyboard headbanging
I did that myself once. I admit to sucking.
Great article. I wish you hadn’t done it a horrible disservice by bashing specific games towards the end, as that’s all I’ve seen folks really talk about so far. Respect your content next time and focus on the good stuff, man.
I’ve dealt with this over in Judd’s post. Please note what I said about the way this post was cited.
No, you dealt with the way it had been cited over on Judd’s post, not the fact that you undermined the value of your content by bashing other creations.
Listen, we’re talking about Dictionary of Mu, so let’s not be coy about it. Just say “Dictionary of Mu” with me.
Now read this, which says straight out that I’m not criticising Dictionary of Mu as anything other than hopping on a tired trend — the way I noted Mage, which I worked on did. That’s the whole reason I said it was inappropriate for him to nick that entire excerpt – only one sentence is really about Dictionary of Mu exclusively. It’s why it’s in the same para as those other games.
Do I regret citing it at all? Hell no. I call it as I see it. And as I see it, “It’s the Bible mixed with Conan the Barbarian!” is exactly representative of a high-concept trend that’s been driven into the ground by overuse.
Did it “undermine my content?” I don’t think so. Part of the point is that this applies to everybody – me, you, Judd, everybody. These aren’t the only five things I think could stand to be put to bed, either, but a blog post can only be so long, and there are some things (like dungeon fantasy/elves) that will never go away and aren’t worth mentioning for that reason.
(There’s also a specific way this post was written that I may cover in the future. Remember this in case I do.)
Look at it this way. Over in Judd’s post there’s also something about “He mentioned your book in the same breath as Eberron and Exalted!” as if this is a subversion of what I was trying to say – but it’s exactly what I was trying to say. And that choice of interpretation strikes me as more about how I was mean to people in 2007 than anything happening in the here and now, as comments like this indicate.
Mm. Well, for me, it demonstrably did undermine your content, since I was engaged and nodding and interested in what you had to say — then I hit that and thought “Huh, maybe he’s just talking out his ass.”
That’s content undermining. It might not happen for every reader, but it happened for this one. And it has not one bit of anything to do with how you behaved in 2007. I only know you as the dude who brought Aeternal Legends to IPR.
Fair comment and I’ll consider the advice. I’ll just say again that I certainly didn’t spare lines I worked on from this.
Fantasy East Asia would be good, done well. But hell, at least folks have tried it. Fantasy South Asia is even more underdeveloped, and Fantasy Central Asia might as well not exist.
Srsly, I would pay hard cash money for a game that did for Central Asia and the Silk Road what Lord of the Rings did for North-Western Europe.
This is true, but I think prior attempts have been either too into capturing quasi-authenticity, or have been, well, L5R – not bad, but a bit different from what I’m thinking of. For example, Wa and Kozakura in Kara-Tur were pseudo-snapshots of historical Japan.
Central Asia? Definitely. I think it’s a bit harder to hit the illusion of stasis that permeates many Western settings because you have one continent-shaping defining moment that is hard to get one’s head around.
Good point on the stasis issue.
Of course, given that I have a strong dislike for the end of history quasi-stasis, it’s probably just as well for my aesthetic sense that it be absent.
I agree with you in many cases. A few little points though.
1) Old Scratch, with any accuracy with regards to the old source material, means that the _only_ way to win is to join up with the church and take up evangelism. Not the most fun.
2) Alien Faeries as a trend is mostly due to the fact that we need to inject darkness into the games and, well, us modern north american folks are lousy at understanding the threat inherent in in the Fae so inserting alien/cthonic touches make them “dark” and therefore “realistic.” Love to see a good non-alien fae game, but it’s a tall order.
Totally agree with the remainder of your points. We shall see if these are still lacking once I reach that point in game development.
1) That’s a valid point, but I think we have a sort of agnostic cultural idea where the Adversary can be countered with secular good acts kicking around.
2) True dat.
Oh, also, Supernatural already brought back the devil. Which means Satan has officially jumped the shark.
Yeah, but it also does the “God’s a jerk! Angels are hardcore!” thing. And it lacks some of the dynamics of Satanic evil where moral choices are powerful, since demons can just beat the crap out of you. So it’s close, but not quite what I’m thinking of.
When you say they “deserve another go,” do you mean people should play them, or that people would play them, were they available?
A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.
I’m glad to hear that I’ve got a grandfathered exemption (a Grampa Theobalded exemption?) for Cthulhu Mythos gaming. I shall endeavor to remain eligible for it.
But yes, Satan would be cool. Maybe if that bruited mass-market Dennis Wheatley reprint series ever starts up.
India, India, India, India, India aaaaand India.
I should clarify I mostly meant things deserving of another go. India hasn’t has a first go. I will grant that I drifted a bit in writing the post, though.
Did I ever tell you that I wrote a 300,000 word India setting for 3.5? And that it never got published?
Why don’t you publish it?
For realz, yo.
Hi, great post! I’d like to cite a wonderful East Asia game, Qin: The Warring States. Google it, I’m sure you’ll like it. You know, in case you didn’t know it already.
Regards,
ZOOROOS