Role Playing Flair in Board Games

[Valamir]

Recently I've been thinking about games I've played that provide some of the same feeling of characterization that I get from role playing.  I'm not talking so much about "adventure board games" like Talisman, Runebound, or Excaliber which are more-or-less RPGs using board game mechanics (and thus feeling more like a CRPG).

Instead I'm talking about games that were never intended to be RPG-esque but which none-the-less provide some of the same feel or thrill.

Recently a game of War of the Ring had a sequence that did this for me.

The situation was thus.

I had raised a force in Isengard and instead of sending them into Rohan sent them north against Bree and the Shire.  It was a powerful army (largest you're allowed to build and full of elite units).  The north was largely undefended.

Seth (my opponent) broke Boromir away from the Fellowship and sent him to raise the armies of men in the North.  With a handful of Bree men and Shire Hobbits he attacked my much larger orc mob.  Taking my horde by surprise many orcs were slaughtered, but my numbers were too great and the free people were being worn down, but then, with a heroic effort Boromir stood nearly alone on the field of battle, the Sheriff of the Shire laying dead on the field and slew the last of the warg riders.

Mechanically, Seth played a card that allowed for the ambush, rolled like a fiend to kill far more of my army than he statistically should have and then in the end using the leadership of Boromir to turn misses into hits killed the last of my units after suffering significant casualties himself.

But in the game it felt much more than that.  Combat in RPGs can be summarized in stark mechanics terms as well, but in this instance I had the distinct sense of Boromir leading the men of Bree in a desperate offensive against a superior force of slavering orcs.

Later Boromir led a fresh force to take Angmar and assault Mount Gundabad (which in game terms would have given him 3 of the 4 VPs needed to win).  It was a significant battle and my forces were not that strong.  Boromir led a series of assaults against the mountain and had just about won the day but his army was too exhausted to continue.  I managed to bring in a relief force led by a Nazgul that was roughly equal in strength and the two forces annhiliated each other.  Boromir slew the Nazgul while succumbing himself to a Nazgul blade.

Mechanically, Seth ran out of the elite troops necessary to maintain the assault which gave me enough time to play a reinforcing card.  Both of armies scored enough hits to wipe each other out and with the armies dead the leaders of both sides die as well.  But despite those rather mundane mechanics both of us had the sense that an epic battle had been fought and there was no doubt to us that Boromir and the Nazgul had been locked in mortal combat and each slew the other.  That I was then able to reinforce Gundabad putting it forever out of Seth's reach turned it into a great heroic tragedy.


When I was a kid we used to play alot of Shadow Lords.  That game was full of cards that represented different characters.  A character was either a warrior, a merchant, or a diplomat and that was the only differentiating feature among them.  But the art on the cards and the names were so evocative and compelling that after many plays, stories from previous games had become the backstory of our current game.  We'd forgo hireing a particular warrior because he had a history of losing and had gained a poor reputation, or a particular merchant who had a tendency to switch sides.  Likewise certain characters became great heroes and we were heartened to have them join our side.  We invented all manner of stories and history for these characters spontaneously during play even going so far as to booting one character out of our alliance when one of his "rivals" joined because we "knew" they wouldn't get along.  Mechanically none of this was in the game.  All warriors were identical.  No one merchant was any more susceptable to being bribed than any other, and there were no "rivalries".  The characters were just names and pictures on a card, yet to us they had become characters as well developed as those of a novel and we were not just playing a game but writing "fan fic" as well.


What other roleplaying like experiences has anyone had in board games that weren't really inspired by roleplaying?

I suspect that its not so much a matter of the game reminding us of roleplaying as it is of the game creating highly thematic story that reminds us of a novel or movie (War of the Ring is basically a 4-5 hour exercise in rewritting the Lord of the Rings Trilogy).  Roleplaying also is reminiscent of novels and movies and so a similiar connection is made.

[ffilz]

Hmm, I've been thinking on some somewhat similar lines, except with a miniatures war game instead of a board game. I have been running Evil Stevie's Pirate Game for several years now. I run my own variant of the campaign game. I'm thinking the way I run it, it's actually a role playing game.

But I think that's not quite what you're talking about because the campaign game is more or less designed to be an RPG (that happens to look like a tabletop or floor miniatures war game). On the other hand, when I have run the battle game, which removes most of the role playing element, people still role play to some degree.

So far, the examples provided have all been games which feature individuals (usually named) as units in the game. Is this a requirement for this RPG like play to arise? If so, is it natural for RPG like play to arise when individuals are units?

Hmm, another example is some of the Wild West skirmish games I have read about. Some of them feature characters who continue to show up in scenarios until they are killed. From what I have read, it seems that some of these games result in RPG like play. Check out some of the scenarios for The Rules With No Name for some examples. Also this page of colonial skirmish gaming features play that is RPG like.

Frank

[Blankshield]

Diplomacy.

Oh my god, the roleplaying I've seen in Diplomacy (in both a wow! and yech! sense of the phrase).  I've known people who take on the identity of some great leader of the period and play it like that person, exhorting their troops and holding diplomatic conferences.  These aren't necessarily roleplayers, either.

I think the key element in Diplomacy that brings out the roleplaying isn't so much a similarity to movies/books, although that's clearly a factor, but is more the mechanics of the game encouraging 'don't be yourself', especially among repeat players.  It's so much easier to stab the Russian ambassador in the back and destroy his country than it is to screw over your best friend Joe.

James

[Sydney Freedberg]

Theoretical proposition: Roleplaying games are just one end of a spectrum of all games; and all game are at least potentially roleplaying games. The more differentiation and individualization among the "playing pieces" of the game, the more room for roleplay.

Thus it's difficult (and kind of silly) to emphathize with your checkers piece's emotions when it jumps an opponent or is crowned king; somewhat easier for a card shark to get emotional when the Queen of Hearts shows up at the right time, or for a chess master to identify himself with the King; a lot easier for to identify yourself as the leader of a fictional or historical nation/army/group in a wargame; and very easy to identify if the game actually has individual leader characters or each playing piece represents an individual person.

And you could argue that on the spectrum of "participatory entertainment," RPGs are lie in the region where "games" and "storytelling" blend together.

Conversely, all roleplaying games have at least some level of gameplay strategy independent of story, i.e. even in the most Narrativist RPG you tend to be tracking resources or statistics and occasionally making decisions based on optimizing the effects of those numbers.

[CplFerro]

Avalon Hill's Dune board game has long been my favourite, largely because of the sense of roleplaying colour I get from it.  We used to design add-ons with rules like "No probability machines" (i.e. dice) allowed, and so on, so that nothing disfigured the milieux.

I don't remember many specifics, but I do remember the type of player who kill board games for me:  A group of veteran wargamers one time, and, yuck, they just flatlined Dune for me.  For their purposes, every component of the game could have been featureless cardstock, every name replaced by an ID code.  It was like they all had Neo-vision, seeing nothing but green probability numbers, lacking any sense of the fun of being in Herbert's universe.

[GreatWolf]

When I saw this thread, I had three thoughts:

1)  Those were cool roleplaying moments.  Ralph and I both definitely knew exactly what was going on.

2)  The game must have struck Ralph, because he's posted about it in two different fora.

3)  This article might be a useful part of the discussion.

[Callan S.]

I think it's purely the inspirational parts of roleplay being initiated.

For example, imagine a dungeon room. Now take the random furnishings table from the DMG and roll three times.

Now, does your mind start to form associations between the three objects?

Do those association really have anything to do with results from rules, or is it a creation of yourself.

I'd been thinking of starting a thread on the difference between inspirational rules and rules that produce results of their own. But I've had a bad run of tpoics that are too abstract to discuss. So I'll see if I'm grounded enough with this idea.

[Itai Greif]

What other roleplaying like experiences has anyone had in board games that weren't really inspired by roleplaying?

For us, it happened alot during Risk. For example, after a game when many "lives" were lost claiming Africa, we started calling that place "Plains of Blood", and would hesitate fighting there, even in later games. In other instances we'd make up roles and characters, portraying them when talking to other players, or describing what our units were doing when winning or losing.

I think that, as role-players, we tend to automatically attach visuals to dry results; it makes a far better story, and the game is more fun.

[Keith Senkowski]

Hey,

We had it with Risk and Twilight Imperium.  With Twilight Imperium we even went so far as to photograph the shaking of hands and signing of treaties with the members looking off to the future.  In fact the intergalactic squabbling and backstabbing (much of it role-played) that two players decided to write a new constitution for the empire in the game (albeit on many napkins at the bar) which was ratified in a vote with each of us taking on the roles of ambassadors for our respective part of the galaxy.

Keith

[contracycle]

I'd agree with Risk and Diplomacy, having seen both occur.  Some friends and I did something similar with Wizards Quest (AH 1979).  Similar to the 'Plains of Blood' recounted above, in one game we fought massive engagements again and again in a province called Brecknock, to the point that it took on an identity like the Somme, and I still remember it, umm, 20 years later.

As a reference to computer games, I think you see a lot of this happening at several levels.  The Total War series tends to produce a lot of it becuase characters are quite detailed - I have seen a lot of players recount events in which they made bad decisions becuase these were true to the character general.

[Callan S.]

Actually I'd like to add an almost nar experience in a game. In GTA: San Andreas your faced with turf wars, but you can also be going out with a girl at the same time. Only at certain times is she home, while turf you've taken can come under attack then. It sort of presents the question "What's more important, your turf or your girl?". There were gamist ways around it though, so the problem wasn't exactly as problematic as nar games usually have. But the question was there and I liked it.