RPGs "Wargaming Roots"

[jdagna]

I often hear people refer to the so-called "wargaming roots" of RPGs, almost always used in a derogative sense, the same way people will refer to the difference between roll-players and role-players.  This seems especially true for the diceless fans, who tend to argue that real role-playing is stifled by dice and that more mature players shouldn't use them.

Perhaps it is just me, but I tend to see things in the entirely opposite light.

Now, I do acknowledge the historical order of the games.  Gary Gygax talks about how Chainmail - a 1:1 wargame - formed his inspiration for D&D.  Clearly wargames do predate role-playing games to some extent.  Clearly they were an influence.

But it seems to me that the true roots of role-playing lie in the games played by young children.  Boys, in particular, seem to play either "cops and robbers" or "cowboys and indians" quite a bit.  Both ot these are essentially diceless role-playing games - the children take on the roles of police, burglars, cowboys or indians and then pitch battles and escapes whlie acting out their imaginary persona.  Girls are more likely to play the role of a housewife, but in an identical manner.

Role-playing games simply formalize this early role-playing behavior.  They add rules and resolution mechanics so that players can avoid the "I shot you." "No you missed! I shot you!" arguments and have a deeper, often mathematical concept of their artificial world.

No wargame ever asked you to accurately portray the feelings of a medieval foot soldier or a Vietnam artillerist.  The fact that Chainmail predated D&D and that Gary Gygax was influenced by his design of both doesn't necessarily indicated "wargaming roots."   To me, the inspiration and focus of an RPG is something clearly different from a wargame.  An RPG has "cowboys and indians roots" with features borrowed from wargames to facilitate play - especially combat, because childhood role-playing was often at least as combat-focused as any RPG group.

Perhaps this opinion of mine is due to a relatively late entry into RPGs - my first game was purchased in '86 and happened to be Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play.  I never played D&D much (and my first real exposure wasn't until 2E AD&D).  But, having started play with WFRP (a game with "wargaming roots" if there ever was one), the differences were obvious to me from day one.  Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Warhammer 40,000 are painfully boring to me, but I continue to play WFRP to this day.  They may share concepts and rules, but the roots of the two are (in my mind) absolutely separate and discrete entities.

If anything, I would say that diceless games are a reversion to a more primitive style of play based on that old cops and robbers tradition, except that I wouldn't want to put a negative connotation on any form of gaming - different people enjoy different styles and to each his own.

But I feel like the "wargaming roots" argument is an unjust fallacy based more on historical precedence than on true origins.

I would be interested in other people's opinions on this subject.

[contracycle]

I think that "wargaming roots" is a description of emchanical pedigree; the way that the Actual Product developed hisotrically.  It may well be that RPG is a formalisation fo something that happens automatically in people in a variety of cirucmstances; but in many ways the mechanical conventions we have (like using dice) originate from the wargame context.

[Christoffer Lernö]

For me (a little on a tangent here), "wargaming roots" are painfully obvious in the glaring "suspension of disbelief"-breaking stuff of D&D.

In a wargame, having abstract hitpoints works very well. All we care about is that we have a resource which tells us how close the miniature is to biting it. We don't need the details.

Similarly with the AC system. There is no need to know you hit but it didn't do damage or if you missed when you play a miniature game.

In a miniature system, it's ok to have weapons to do a limited damage.

Levels are a convenient measurement of skill.

And so on and so on.

However, at a more detailed level those things break down. On one hand these things could be bridged by narrative control and things like that, but it isn't. Instead there is the insistence that this is simulating reality in some way. Something which doesn't make sense. You basically kept the wargaming priorities, abstract nature of mechanics and which turning up the detail on which you treat the character. This is what works very poorly. Unfortunately a lot of games kept sticking to the legacy for no other reason than old habit.

That's what my complaint is about anyway.

[Mike Holmes]

Justin, I think when most people mention "wargaming-roots" they, as Gareth points out, are saying that the mechanics of wargaming were used to facilitate doing Role-Playing play, which is, as you point out, a drive that we all seem to have indulged in our youths.

Nobody is saying that the urge to role-play comes from wargaming. Just that the rules do. And this is precisely why this is brought up. As wargaming rules do not seem to be a very good way of supporting certain styles of play. The play styles that it does support well, came about immediately. But the other play styles emerged almost immediately after that, and players of those styles have felt that there were problems with this genealogy of mechanics ever since. In fact it's something that designers of these sorts of games have been struggling to get out from underneath ever since.

Note that his is not an endictment of those styles of play that wargaming rules do support well. For that, I think they are excellent. But that doesn't change the fact that some people would prefer to play in a way that these rules actually hinder rather than support.

Is that something we can agree with?

Mike

[MR. Analytical]

To my mind the remark that something shows its "wargaming roots" is not entirely about mechanics but is also about style of play.

As has been pointed out no wargamer cares about how a napoleonic footsoldier cares about charging  into the Russian guns.  Similarly, I think that to say that an RPG is a bit like a wargame is to say that characterisation and plot have little to do with the game, what's important is winning and (more importantly) playing in a tactical way.

So in D&D ( the usual suspect) some might argue that it's all about checking for traps and effectively using fireball spells as artillery while the fighters wade in.  It's about checking for traps in the dungeon and generally caring more about the tactical details of roleplaying than the plot or story (the strategic side fo the game).

Is it a stupid prejudice?  Well yes and no.  Yes in that there's nothing inherrently wrong with playing this way if the players enjoy it; no because roleplaying is capable of much more sophisticated and subtle play than wargames and to roleplay in a way consistant with wargaming seems to be a bit of a "throwback".  I don't think that the latter is objectively strong but it is a reason and a valid reason at that.

Ultimately I suspect that this is another variation on the gamist Vs. narrativist wars.

[damion]

I actually started off as a wargamer, before realizing I liked RPG's better and hated painting. :)   I'd say wargames major contribution to RPGS is the concept and prototype of simulating reality, i.e. having a mechanical infrastructure that would determine the outcome of events, a resolution system, which could be blended with the imaginative play jdagna mentioned.
If you consider wargames basicly very complex board games, then RPGS are a combination of imaginative play and board game resolution mechanics.  
Later inovations were for different types of resoltion systems, such as microeconomic ones(frex tokens that depend on the number of players). Another later development was that this resoltion system could by applied to things other than resolving the outcome of actions of things that couldn't happen in the game anyway, i.e. resolution could be applied to the imaginative play side and not just the board game side.

Well, that's my way of thinking of it, if it makes sense.

[Valamir]

I actually started off as a wargamer, before realizing I liked RPG's better and hated painting. :)    

Heh...I love to see comments like this, because it really does highlight the transitory nature of these labels and feuds.

Damion is obviously referring to a past as a minis gamer, yet he simply refers to it as "wargaming".

There was a point in time where he'd be crucified for such a statement.  Where miniatures gamers and wargamers hated each other with almost the same passion as RPGers and CCGers did (to make a sweeping generalization) a few years back.

"Wargaming" as a term refered to paper hex maps, cardboard counters, and d6s rolled on a CRT.

"Historical Miniatures Gamers" reviled them and vice versa.  Of course the "Historical Miniatures Gamers" reviled the "Fantasy Miniatures Gamers" with equal fervor.

Now Damion can just casually refer to it all as "wargaming" and no one but a few old grognards really cares.

I figure this whole Wargaming / RPGing thing will eventually go the same way until its all just "gaming".

[Kester Pelagius]

Now, I do acknowledge the historical order of the games.  Gary Gygax talks about how Chainmail - a 1:1 wargame - formed his inspiration for D&D.  Clearly wargames do predate role-playing games to some extent.  Clearly they were an influence.

The problem here (and the line blurs if you look too closely) is that the term "role-playing" is generally accepted as being a relatively recent, and modern, coinage.  Thus many forget the games which pre-dated modern role-playing which contained elements of "role" play.

This is evidenced in many of the "party games" of yester year, especially those from Victorian times.  Of course as anyone who has had the misfortune to have their filters turned "off" can attest there is also a whole other world of "role-playing" out there for your perusal on the spiny dragon's back (Internet).  Obviously the taking on of a "role" is nothing new, actors have been doing it for centuries, as have young children in their timeless pursuit of imaginative games made up on the spur of the moment.

Of course it is not until the existance of a form is widely recognized that is gains acknowledgement and attribution of origin.  This can be plainly seen in how compilers of dictionaries often take several years to add new words, especially slang or minor derivations of established word meanings.

And I wont even go into the sort of festival events which pre-dated LARPs in which people ernestly took on roles, dressed up in those roles, and literally played those roles out.  Save to say that Mardi Gras is one of the few hold overs of those ancient folk customs.

But it seems to me that the true roots of role-playing lie in the games played by young children.  Boys, in particular, seem to play either "cops and robbers" or "cowboys and indians" quite a bit.  Both ot these are essentially diceless role-playing games - the children take on the roles of police, burglars, cowboys or indians and then pitch battles and escapes whlie acting out their imaginary persona.  Girls are more likely to play the role of a housewife, but in an identical manner.

Yes and no.

Attempting to find the elusive origins of role-playing is like trying to identify when the first Tarot deck was created.  We know the Tarot exists, it sells in droves, but of its origins?  There are many possible ways to explain it.

For modern FRP games it is a fact that they grew out of wargamming, if only because those games to which the term "roleplaying" was first applied were games which combined various elements of game play.  Elements which typically included rules for table top play, meaning the use of miniatures.

Then again it is also a histotrical fact that a certain king (though which eludes my imp of memory at the moment) used to play chess using live people dressed up in their parts.

Why mention that?  Because while many will attribute wargamming as originating either with Napoleon or H.G. Wells, games of this type actually predate the modern variety.  Only they weren't necessarily called wargames.

Why?

Wargames, by definition, are games meant to simulate actual historical battles.  Which is why the early FRP games were not well recieved by hardcore wargammers.  They were not recreating actual events but rather playing out fantastical battles with no basis in reality, as they saw it.

Confused yet?

Role-playing games simply formalize this early role-playing behavior.  They add rules and resolution mechanics so that players can avoid the "I shot you." "No you missed! I shot you!" arguments and have a deeper, often mathematical concept of their artificial world.

As has been pointed out in the introductions to many a role-playing game.

Although I wouldn't necessarily say there is any sort of "deeper" (which to me intimates forethought) organized "mathmatical concept" to most FRP game mechanics.  Most simply use what, on the surface, appear to be arbitrary charts.  Which is a natural development from the ratio systems used in most miniatures rules.

Of course only a mathmatician would care for a game with deeper mathmatical formulae, for the rest of the gaming community a simple system which consistent rolls works just fine.

Which also explains the D20 mechanics that have been used in D&D for all these years.  They are quick, simple, and easy to use.

What every gamer loves.

No wargame ever asked you to accurately portray the feelings of a medieval foot soldier or a Vietnam artillerist.  The fact that Chainmail predated D&D and that Gary Gygax was influenced by his design of both doesn't necessarily indicated "wargaming roots."   To me, the inspiration and focus of an RPG is something clearly different from a wargame.

Alas one can not divorce FRP games from wargamming so easily.

Remember how I mentioned the Tarot?

Tarot could not exist without the pre-existance of *cards*.  Cards had to exist before the Tarot could be created.  Without the one the other could not exist, so it is with *modern* role-playing games.

Although *conceptually* you are correct.

The game designer of today need not ever have played a wargame to create a decent FRP.



But if you want that FRP to be more than a mere excersize in mental masterbation then you need rules.  Most rules will generally be written reflective of some sort of table top environment, irregardless of whether or not the designer has played a wargame.

Why?

Because it is far easier to conceptualize a board game environment with pieces moving about.

Don't think so?

Take a Monopoly board out of its box.  Find someone who has never played the game before.  Give them the board.  Tell them the concept is to create a environment in which they are to move pieces around the board, oh, and the rules, well that's up to your imagination.  The dice, well, you know, be imaginative.

I think you'll find it wont work.  In order to explain something, even a storyteller game, one first must have some basic understanding of the concept.  That is why role-playing developed out of wargamming.  Because the first authors of FRP games were wargammers, thus they explained things in wargamming terms, even though they were probably well aware their games were not, by a long shot, traditional war- or  boardgames.


EDIT:

Interested in historical games?  Try one of these books:

"Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations"; R.C. Bell, Dover, 1979.  (reprint)   ISBN 0-486-23855-5

Want to read a book on the subject from around the time the lines were still blurred?  Try this one:

"Fantasy Wargaming"; ed. Bruce Galloway, Stein and Day, 1982.  ISBN  0-8128-2862-3

[jdagna]

For me (a little on a tangent here), "wargaming roots" are painfully obvious in the glaring "suspension of disbelief"-breaking stuff of D&D.

Actually, I don't think it is a tangent, and in some ways gets to the core of what I was talking about.  The interesting thing is that I hear the wargaming roots argument used most often against games with a high level of combat detail - the kind of games you'd prefer.  Generally, the ones criticizing a game for having wargaming roots want to see fewer rules for combat, faster resolution and are willing to sacrifice buckets of detail to "get on with the story."

In my mind, the concept of applying wargame mechanics to the question of an RPG is an appropriate step.  After all, wargames (especially those where one figure represents one soldier) answer some fundamental questions like where you are, how you got there, what you can do and what your health status is.  These are fundamental mechanics for an RPG.

However, in that conversion, one has to provide the features that apply most to the RPG setting.  You cite the need for more specific detail (again, something that most people say is actually because of wargaming roots).


In response to Mike:
I can definitely agree with what you say.  I guess the best way to sum up my problem is the pejorative use of  "wargaming roots" when I see wargaming elements as being grafted onto the top of a pre-existing role-playing structure in order to facilitate certain elements of it.  It's a lateral transition, not a linear evolution.

Which doesn't mean people haven't royally screwed up at various points (past and present).  If D&D had done it perfectly, there wouldn't be much call for the Forge.

[Valamir]

"Fantasy Wargaming"; ed. Bruce Galloway, Stein and Day, 1982.  ISBN  0-8128-2862-3

A great book to read, and a great example to use.  The actual progression from table top minis war game (and the rules for that are actually quite good if you can dredge them out from the lousy presentation) to the main part of the rules of actual old school RPG (with alot of really innovative features that I still borrow from to this day) is right there in black and white.  The author made absolutely no distinction between the two in the sense of "here's a seperate minis game that is compatable with the RPG game".  To him it was all part of the same game and the very title of the book bears this out.

[Kester Pelagius]

"Fantasy Wargaming"; ed. Bruce Galloway, Stein and Day, 1982.  ISBN  0-8128-2862-3

A great book to read, and a great example to use.  The actual progression from table top minis war game (and the rules for that are actually quite good if you can dredge them out from the lousy presentation) to the main part of the rules of actual old school RPG (with alot of really innovative features that I still borrow from to this day) is right there in black and white.  The author made absolutely no distinction between the two in the sense of "here's a seperate minis game that is compatable with the RPG game".  To him it was all part of the same game and the very title of the book bears this out.

Yes, back then it was all about the game.  Alas someone let that imp the Rules-Lawyers out of Pandora's box and it's been breeding like a devil rabbit ever since.

To add to what Valamir said the book really is a great resource.  Not just for a presentation of FRP/wargamming rules in transition but also for historical reference.

Plust you get stats for angels, demons, Satan, and God.

What more could you want in a role-playing game?  ;)


Don't know why I didn't think to mention any of that.  Oh, yeah, I was rambling!  heh

Great follow up post!

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Of course only a mathmatician would care for a game with deeper mathmatical formulae, for the rest of the gaming community a simple system which consistent rolls works just fine.

Which also explains the D20 mechanics that have been used in D&D for all these years. They are quick, simple, and easy to use.

What every gamer loves.

I can only assume that these three paragraphs were intended sardonically...?

[Bankuei]

I think the major issue with the wargaming roots concept is that a lot of the mechanics or more importantly, assumptions about what is necessary and unnecessary in order to play a roleplaying game, have been passed down without critical examination.  

Some examples:
•There must be a mechanic for death/elimination from play
•Characters must have physical traits/stats
•Characters must improve/improvement must be in power
•Players can only act through characters, player information is limited to the character's information.

Etc. etc.
Of course, many games have already demolished these assumptions as being necessary, but many gamers and game designers are still operating with these and many more assumptions.  Of course, the derogatory note aimed at wargames really reflects worse on roleplayers, since it's not the wargaming community that continues to create stagnant rpgs. :P

Chris

[Andrew Martin]

Of course, the derogatory note aimed at wargames really reflects worse on roleplayers, since it's not the wargaming community that continues to create stagnant rpgs. :P

One could even take elements from wargames now and create more interesting RPGs. For example Crossfire, with movement that isn't fixed in length, but can be any length.

[ADGBoss]

I think more so then anything that its not mechanics that have spread down the line as it is the Assumption of Conflict.  You play  awargame under the premise that you will be coming into conflict with a side or sides.   This has been passed on to skirmish gaming or Role playing if you will, in that when you Roleplay there is an assumption of Conflict.... NOTE I did NOT say combat.  There is a difference. In RPG's the conflict can be no violent but its always there.  Even in Narrativist game where the conflicts are internal in many ways.

However, there has been a tendancy with War games that are Campaigns to have a kinf of NArrative Gamism, asking oneself for what is it worth to take that country?  Well that may be a reach but I believe its there...

Yet why do we have to say War Game with such distaste? Not having read the history of Role playing or anything (1 history book I missed) I can tell you that Role Playing a General or COlonel or King has been around for some time.  The Original Prussian Wargames, with HUGE halls and small wooden soldiers. Diplomacy is as much role playing as it is wargaming and it is DICELESS.

Also the Tarot analogy can be taken a little further, as if it were not for Cards AND the Art of Divination, Tarot would not exist...

SMH
ADGBoss