Filmed theatre
If you thought "Wow, it’s just like in a video game!", you'd be absolutely right! Putting my attempts at humour aside, let me summarise this scene: Melion the elf failed to jump over a cliff. He falls into the abyss, loses "HP," and returns to where he started. The concept of "restarts" or "extra lives" is common in video games. The idea behind this mechanic is simple: "You failed! Try again." However, unless you're playing a comedic RPG in the style of Paranoia, the case of the elf I just described would undoubtedly elicit protests and funny faces from everyone at the table.But what if I told you that tabletop RPG players do similar things all the time at their tables? Like every new form of media or art, RPGs suffer from being treated and interpreted as if they were analogous to something that already exists. It was the same with photography and the same with cinema. During the emergence of cinema, for example, early narrative movies resembled "filmed theatre." It took time for filmmakers to realise that the fundamental characteristic of their art form was not in copying what was done in theatre, but in leveraging the strengths of their own medium (in this case, the potential of "editing") to take their art form to its zenith.
In his essay titled "Three Clue Rule," Justin Alexander says that the problem with prepping plot for an RPG scenario is that it is like trying to program a computer game: many gamemasters, influenced by the abundance of movies and video games in which a linear narrative experience was the central theme, end up treating their RPGs as if they were a medium also dominated by linear storytelling. Therefore, says Alexander, this type of gamemaster ends up "programming predetermined responses," like someone creating a computer game. This is one of the biggest problems that RPGs face today: the notion that RPGs are a form of "storytelling," just like movies are. That RPGs need to anticipate certain actions from players, just like certain video games do. Being a story, it is necessary to have a "script," to anticipate events, and guide players along this previously written story, beautifully knitted together by the gamemaster. Is this not like a movie simply being filmed theatre?
Since the publication of Justin Alexander's essay, I believe we have made a lot of progress on this issue. The referee’s advice "Don't force your story on the players, build the story together with your players during the game" is now much more widespread in the RPG community. Nevertheless, I say that this advice is not enough. Moreover, it ends up clouding a much more radical issue that I consider essential to our art form (if I may say it that way): Role-playing games, as the name suggests, are (surprisingly) a game. Every attempt to make RPGs a form of narrative before being a game will be misguided. Saying this, I'm not criticising so-called "narrativist" games. On the contrary: I have a great appreciation for this style of RPG precisely because a good narrativist game uses its mechanics and dynamics to direct the group towards a new place, setting up a spectacular stage for players to roleplay in very specific ways.
I don't mean that RPGs and video games are not good channels for telling stories, developing narratives, and creating shared experiences. Quite the contrary: I think both mediums are the most radical ways in which one can do those things. My point is that even though building a narrative is intrinsic to an RPG, it is produced in a very distinct way from a work of fiction because the act of playing comes before everything else. As long as we treat RPG books as literature or history books, as long as we create RPG adventures with the narrative structure of cinema and with video game mechanics, we will not be extracting the full potential from this medium.
(I'm not the type to spoil the fun for others. By no means am I saying, "You should play in a certain way because what you're playing is not a real RPG!" That's part of the joy of RPGs: there's no line of code stopping you. Go ahead, do whatever you want, play however seems more fun. Break the rules of the system!)
What are TTRPGs about?
To me, RPGs are about failing. In no other type of game am I capable of failing peacefully. RPGs allow me to do that. Look at our initial example, for instance. The poor elf Melion, trying to jump over the abyss, had his failure denied, and his entire existence reduced to a parody of Super Mario. As an RPG player, I think a game that does not respect my choices (or rather, that is not concerned with the consequences of my actions) is always heading for disaster. As an RPG player, I like to believe that (1) I am free to choose how to act; and that (2) whatever may be the result of my actions, whatever my character does, the game will present significant consequences. Nothing else, outside the tabletop RPG, can harmoniously unite these two points.After falling down the cliff, a more forgiving GM could ask Melion to make a Luck roll and - would you look at that! - he ends up not dying after all. He just falls into the river. Maybe Melion suffers massive fall damage, breaking his legs as they hit the water. Hell, Melion could even die. But in a good RPG session, even that fatal blunder would have created exciting ramifications in a way that can’t be produced in any other type of game. For example: Melion dies, but the river drags his body directly to his hometown, to the horror of his relatives who had warned him of the danger that lurked in the abandoned castle on the hill. From then on, the referee could say that Melion's village would never help the adventurers who let him die, and stop supplying them with their magical herbs. I'm sure that after reading my examples, you also thought of several other relevant and intriguing consequences for the death of poor Melion. RPGs are a medium that give paranoid, restless minds satisfaction as they connect dots of necessity and verisimilitude.
In short: in RPGs, the game doesn't end when a character fails. On the contrary, the game has the capacity to continue and become even more interesting than it was moments before. RPGs are not only a way to tell stories of great heroes and their inevitable journey toward success, but a game that has the unparalleled ability to go literally anywhere and deal with any eventuality. Respecting the player's failure means respecting the strength of a medium that can sustain the true consequences of a player's decision, whatever they may be. In other words, the ability of this media to turn any event into fuel for even more games is unparalleled. Failing in an RPG can be as fun as winning. That’s what makes RPGs so unique.
