RPGs "Wargaming Roots"

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings 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.

Actually the origins of the dispute stem from the "historical wargaming" verses "fantasy wargaming" school.

Remember, way back then, it was, as it is now, a hobbyist sport.  (More or less.)  As with any sport there are certain rules.  For the wargammer, those ground rules were the recreation of historical battles.

Fantasy?  Why that just flew in the face of the premise.  Not to mention people were turning a sport into a mere game.

Historical wargaming was popular with simulationists and historians, as the early wargaming journals would probably reflect.  However, as with any good thing, eventually others discover it and want to "play" it themselves.  I think you will find, if you have the resources to hand, that the arguements were already in place.  Fantasy wargaming just happened to come along at the right moment in time for the brunt of the arguement to be displaced (or rather redirected) to it.

Of course that is a matter of opinion.


Kind Regards.

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings ADGBoss,

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...

Not to count apples in the basket but... Yes and no.

Tarot would probably be far more obscure than it is today if not for the fact it became associated with divination and fortune-telling, to be sure.  But it was as the game of Tarock (or Atouts = Trumps) that the Tarot which we have today originated.

Despite the fact you can probably do a Google search and find a trick taking game or two calling itself Tarock or Tarrochi, very little is actually known about the original game of Tarock.  Which is part of the Tarot's basic enigma.

For those interested most modern Tarock games you will find rules for are really varients of Whist, with elements borrowed wily nilly from other trick taking games.

[wraeththu]

I think that I tend to view Wargames and RPG's on something of an elaborate scale measuring roughly "Role-play content" and "Tactical content".  Not to say that those two are neccessarily opposed - they aren't.  Let me give an example.

I play dnd3e.  Usually I play it as a traditional RPG, with each player having a PC and a DM presiding over the game.  Occaisionally though we play it as a Wargame.  Everyone gets 20 levels to divide amoungst their Warparty, within certain limits and there's no DM.  We play that style out on an actual terrain board with minitures and little to no real RolePlay.

So.. is dnd a Wargame?  It certainly can be played as one - quite well and better than Chainmail if you ask me.  Is it an RPG?  certainly.  The difference is in how we play it.

When playing it traditionally, I generally refer to it as Roleplaying.
When playing with full minis and Warbands, I refer to it as Wargaming.

Somone on here suggested that Wargames don't really care about the psychology of the lone russian fighter charging the hill - I'd put that that's a mistake.  Wargamers *Do* care about that.  Just from a Different perspective.  Wargamers want to correctly mimic psychology so as to mimic the actions of troops in conflict.  They don't care about re-creating it as a method of experiencing it, but instead as a way of more acurately trying to mimic behavior.  Do they care if the individual soldier is in love with his girl back home or is he merely "doing her?"  No.  They do care though about whether or not he breaks in fear at the sight of his opponent.

As an aside on definitions.   Someone posted that there were "Wargames" and "Fantasy Wargames" and "Historical Wargames" etc.... I classify them all under teh same banner.  And I've never really had any trouble from doing so.

Anyway, sorry if I ramble.  My point?  That there's not that much of a gulf between the two artforms.

-wade jones

[jdagna]

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.

Looking at these elements that were supposedly inherited without critical examination, I'm really not sure how you could do away with them in an RPG.

A mechanic for death would be essential in any game pretending to be vaguely realistic, since people die all the time.

The need for physical traits and stats is also important because some people are clearly stronger, tougher and/or faster than others.  How else do we define what the person is capable of doing?  Even if you do away with attributes, skills still provide this information.

The assumption that character must improve (and do so in their power) is another assumption that I think is warranted.  We can all attest that experience, practice and education improves what people are capable of.  Now, D&D's class system makes this advancement much more dramatic than other systems do.  I don't demand that my 20th level character be 20 times as powerful (I don't even like levels), but I'd be a little suprised if you told me a Sergeant with three tours of duty was no better a soldier than a PFC straight out of boot camp.

Your final "inherited mechanic" is that player information and action is limited to what the character can do or know is only assumed by some styles of play.  I personally feel that such player/character separation is the best way to play.  I have seen games encourage other methods (such as director stance) and am still not sure I'd want to play them regularly.



Is it really fair to chalk these features up to assumptions inherited from wargaming?  Haven't you simply described features of Simulationist gaming, and the Actor stance?  Even if early RPGs borrowed these features from wargaming, you haven't mentioned the features of wargaming they intentionally abandoned (concepts like controlling more than one character).

[Mike Holmes]

Looking at these elements that were supposedly inherited without critical examination, I'm really not sure how you could do away with them in an RPG.

A mechanic for death would be essential in any game pretending to be vaguely realistic, since people die all the time.

I find InSpectres to be eminently "realistic", yet it has no rules for character death.

The need for physical traits and stats is also important because some people are clearly stronger, tougher and/or faster than others.  How else do we define what the person is capable of doing?  Even if you do away with attributes, skills still provide this information.

To use another of Jared's games, Idoru, you play computer programs. Certainly Strength would be unnecessary in such a game. In fact, if I were to make a game about Corporate raiding, I'd think that strength would be entirely unneeded. What, am I going to get the head of ReallyBigCo to sign over his proxy rights by putting him in a headlock?

The assumption that character must improve (and do so in their power) is another assumption that I think is warranted.  

Again, if that's what the game is about. However, many, many RPGs are all about stuff that has nothing to do with characters improving. So what do these mechanics add in those games?

Your final "inherited mechanic" is that player information and action is limited to what the character can do or know is only assumed by some styles of play.  I personally feel that such player/character separation is the best way to play.  I have seen games encourage other methods (such as director stance) and am still not sure I'd want to play them regularly.

So, what your really saying here is that these assumptions fit your style of play. Is it so hard to admit that they might inhibit someone elses?

Is it really fair to chalk these features up to assumptions inherited from wargaming?  Haven't you simply described features of Simulationist gaming, and the Actor stance?  Even if early RPGs borrowed these features from wargaming, you haven't mentioned the features of wargaming they intentionally abandoned (concepts like controlling more than one character).

What does it matter what was abandoned? How does that affect what I play today? The fact is that these ideas come from the Wagaming roots. Some like them. Some do not. So what?

Mike

[Valamir]

I'm a little confused by this association with "wargaming roots".

Aren't these things really associated with "First Generation RPGs" and not really wargaming.  I can't think of any wargame that has rules for improvement or physical attributes (or rather so few that they are the exception and hardly the rule).

Wouldn't it be more accurate that the items that have been listed above are those things that the early progentors of this new field of game used to DIFFERENTIATE what they were creating FROM existing wargames.

So in a sense it ties back into those early wargaming days but hardly as an evolution from them.  Rather more as a specifically identified point of departure from them.

[ejh]

Isn't it the case that in the precursors to the published D&D games, people originally played what later became 12th level characters, and the notion of working up to that level from level 1 was one of the innovations?

I remember reading that somewhere.

[jdagna]

What does it matter what was abandoned? How does that affect what I play today? The fact is that these ideas come from the Wagaming roots. Some like them. Some do not. So what?

Mike, you seemed to miss the point of my reply.

I was not saying "These are the things that RPGs do."  I was saying "These things make sense in an RPG in their own right, and are not just wargaming assumptions that never got questioned."

Motorcycles and bicycles both have two wheels.  Bicycles predate motorcycles, so can we say that motorcycles have "bicycle roots"?  I don't think so.  If you want a vehicle that carries one person, you already want something small.  You might try one wheel, but you're going to have stability issues.  Two wheels works well - bikes even proved it.  Three wheels also have stability issues, and they're making things larger to boot so have two strikes against them.  Four wheels makes the vehicle even larger - why not just do a car?  Two wheels have no negative points, one and four wheels each have one negative and three wheels have two negative points.

So motorcycles have two wheels because it makes sense, not because they were merely imitating a bike.

RPGs have features also seen in wargames because it makes sense, not because they were merely borrowed from wargames.

[Mike Holmes]

RPGs have features also seen in wargames because it makes sense, not because they were merely borrowed from wargames.

Sure, but they were included originally because Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax played wargames, and when they made D&D, then used simlar rules, because that's what they knew. Sure they make sense for the style of play that was subsequently created by those mechanics. But people instantly realized that, hey, there are other ways to play. And these parts that come from wargames, they don't make sense in these styles. Then they go on to say, "Hey, if only D&D had been created from something other than a wargame, perhaps the rules would have been different, and they would have supported our style better. But that didn't happen. So when looking at design, we should level a critical eye at the designs that exist and only include the elements that make sense with our style of play. And not just include them because they were included in the first RPG, and that because the designers were wargamers."

Or rather, and to summarize, the rules that are included in RPGs because of the Wargaming Heritage are such that they do not support all styles of play well. And as such one should not automatically include them just because they worked for the style they engendered (which, of course, they did).

I am confused as to how any of this is in any way controversial. It doesn't way that the wargaming heritage is a bad thing. In fact, had it not been for wrgames, perhaps we would never have had RPGs. It just says that some games adhere to tradition for no particularly good reason. And only those ill designed games can be criticized. For the rest that either adhere to the "wargaming heritage" for all the right reasons, or for those games that sensibly break from it, there is no problem at all.

I think you may be reading in some sort of anti-gamist or anti-simulationist stuff with the phrase. But that's only true when that's the agenda of a person saying it. So, if I don't like such games, and say, damnit, why do people have to continue making games that adhere to that wargaming heritage, I'm just stating my opinion. Which is not much different from sying that I like Tiddly-winks, or Cherry Cola. I'm just not sure how you can object to an opinion.

The only "fact" here is that RPGs were inspired by, and were caused by the existence of Wargames, and that has affected their design considerably over the years (mostly just because of tradition). If that's not important to you, then I can't see why all the railing about it is so important.

Mike

[Bankuei]

jdagna,  

I'm not criticizing the rules when they serve a purpose, but I am criticizing the rules when they are kept without any thought as to if that particular rule serves its purpose for that game.  There are many games which use the aforementioned rules very well, and many which do not.  My only beef is with those that do not, and simply have them because they are assumed to be necessary, whereas, in fact, they are not.

Looking at these elements that were supposedly inherited without critical examination, I'm really not sure how you could do away with them in an RPG.

There are several examples available on the Forge and our Resource Library of games that do away with several of the examples I gave, as well as many other game standards.  As you yourself said, Director stance games are one example.

Again, I am not criticizing wargames, but simply identifying the reason many people do(also without thinking).  As I said, wargames are not responsible for by rpg design.  Lack of critical thinking on the part of designers is responsible for that.

If you care to explore what are the baseline framework rules for rpgs, we can do so in another thread.

Chris

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Valamir,

Interesting points.  Let's see, where to begin...

Wouldn't it be more accurate that the items that have been listed above are those things that the early progentors of this new field of game used to DIFFERENTIATE what they were creating FROM existing wargames.

To expand: I think one of the things which are confusing people is what a wargame is.

There are actually three varities that I can think of off the top of my head.  The sort in which you have nice hex maps with flat counters to represent your troops-- viz.The Arab-Israili War, The Battle of Five Armies, Against the Reich, Magic Realm, &tc-- for the most part these are meant as simulations of battles.  Though Magic Realm really simulates a RPG adventure.

Then there are the "miniatures" games.  These come in two basic types.  1) Games using boards and 2) Games that merely use a field/area of play and ofen require rulers and such to measure movement.

In the miniatures category I think some good examples might be Battletech (least I hope that is the right -tech game), Ogre/GEV, HeroQuest (yes, plastic figures are miniatures too), &tc.

That said it must be realized none of these modern classifications really apply because...

So in a sense it ties back into those early wargaming days but hardly as an evolution from them.  Rather more as a specifically identified point of departure from them.

...as Valamir so astutely points out things were different in the ancient of days.  For one there was no Internet when FRP games first started, nor were there many BBSes when they started to fill the shelves of toy stores.  Back then wargaming was, quite literally, a full fledged entertainment cum diversion which people gathered together to enjoy and participate in.  (At least that is how it is often described.)  So, while we may have a lot of computer games that seem to be wargames, they really don't have the same feel of what the wargames of old were.

So what does that have to do with the price of whip cream in aisle seven?

Not much, save to say that AD&D, the much heralded and little disputed "first" true RPG was developed by wargamers.  It evolved out of a *supplement* set of rules intended for use with Chainmail.  However, from what I recall reading about it, this supplement was apparently purchased by a lot of people who didn't realize this was the case.  In fact many thought the rules were just badly written so, guess what?

Yep, they re-wrote them in a effort to make them playable.

Thus role-playing was born.  So it continued, with gamers regularly and freely adapting ideas to fit their game designs, until the dread Lawyer Lizards and Ogres of Copyright came crashing through the Wall of Fun.

Ok, that last bit might have been a tad over dramatic.  ;)


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius


EDIT:  Cleaned up syntax.

[b_bankhead]

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.  

  I sometimes do this myself but for different reasons.  The reasons being that I find miniatures wargames about as fast paced and exciting as watching paint dry. And D&D in particular is an rpg that embodies this.  But in an actual wargame this isnt as much of a problem because even though the game seems sluggish, what is being simulated is combats involving sometime thousands of participants.  An all day miniatures game might actually be occuring in real time because the actual battle being simulated took all day!

 Indeed in most wargames the scale of time in playing the game is shorter than the time taken by the events being simulated. This is particularly the case in grand strategic games where a turn might simulated months of combat.

In rpgs however the time scale of resolution is usually MUCH longer that the scale of combat.  Indeed it was a combat that lasted 2 1/2 hours (when I walked out) between about 10 figures that made me vow NEVER to play D&D again.  Every dungeonmaster promises their game is different and then you look at the clock and you find half of the time of a six hour session  has been spent resolving and  playing combat!

  Look at the battle between the fellowship and the cave troll in the LOTR movie. Frantic ,frenetic,exciting ,pulsepounding  and so fast I had to watch it a couple of times on DVD to get a handle on what was happening.
Would you have enjoyed it if they freeze framed it every few seconds so that it lasted an hour?  If not why should I in an rpg?
Compare with rpg combat which is usually sluggish, turgid,  punctuated by arguments from rules lawyers and people standing around making meticulous measurments to make sure their fireballs wind up in the right place.  The primary reason I hate rpg combat is that for me the game dies when combat starts.  

And this is directly the result of the wargame paradigm.  D&D was based on a mass combat system, it was scaled down directly without being mindful of how the change in scale affects things.  And now we are stuck with tropes irrelevant to the new form because it was the first rpg!

My primary pleasure in rpgs (I have come to realize) is in creation of the narrative.  (yes I can enjoy gamist and sim stuff too, but they are a DISTANT second and third  behind the narrative) and most combat narratives are fun only small doses. I mean really would you read a fantasy novel with 5 pages of  "I hit-I damage, I miss , I swing, I miss ,I hit...' every time there was a combat?

 For me slow pacing is one of the deadly sins if the GMs in this area.  They dont keep things moving ,particulalry combat.

Which I why I stopped using miniatures. Something about them just makes people want to stand around drinking cokes and telling the same 30 year old monty python jokes while they ruffle their charts and graphs.  My own style of running combats follows the rule KEEP IT MOVING.  I give people a few seconds to announce what they are going to and if they stammer or flub, tough beans , you miss your turn!  Myself I yell, roar, jump around throw objects, violate personal space and generally keep things intense and uncomfortable, in my games doing SOMETHING is better than standing around like some jackleg Napolean trying to figure out the perftect move, or select the perfect spell.

Which is one of the reasons I'm moving away from simulationism and gamism in combat.  They almost inherently slow donw the narrative to a degree that is unnaceptable for me...

[Evan Waters]

Certainly, if we're going to agree that D&D was the first RPG, then Wargaming had, if not the primary influence, certainly a big influence on the whole hobby. It's actually interesting to see how it developed, even just in reference to D&D itself: first a supplement to a large-scale battles game, then an odd little psuedo-miniatures game in itself where you have a character and move him around a dungeon and fight monsters and get treasure- and slowly people start to realize what you can do with this. "Hey, it's like a kind of adventure story. What if there was an entire world outside this dungeon, and your character is an epic hero?"- I think maybe at this point memories of "Cops and Robbers" and stuff like that start to creep in, and the infamous "Let's pretend with rules" definition develops.

I purchased the First Edition AD&D books not too long ago from EBay, and in certain sections there is a feeling of newness, like Gygax and TSR saw what others were starting to do with RPGs and applied that to their own game, this time talking a bit more about worlds and campaign play and all that stuff and opening things up. And of course since AD&D is really popular, a lot of other designers see it and run even further- it's like a loop developed, where RPG makers kept building on each other. Soon we arrived at our current sense of RPGs, where it's a bit like a wargame but a bit like a story, too, and maybe like that stuff you played as a kid.

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Evan,

Certainly, if we're going to agree that D&D was the first RPG, then Wargaming had, if not the primary influence, certainly a big influence on the whole hobby. It's actually interesting to see how it developed, even just in reference to D&D itself: first a supplement to a large-scale battles game, then an odd little psuedo-miniatures game in itself where you have a character and move him around a dungeon and fight monsters and get treasure- and slowly people start to realize what you can do with this. "Hey, it's like a kind of adventure story. What if there was an entire world outside this dungeon, and your character is an epic hero?"- I think maybe at this point memories of "Cops and Robbers" and stuff like that start to creep in, and the infamous "Let's pretend with rules" definition develops.

How true.

But here's something weirder which I read in, I believe, "The Role-Playing Gamer's Bible"...  namely that those early gamers used to get together to sometimes play-act their parts out.

Unless I am misremembering that just gave me a funny thought:

So which came first the RPGer or the LARPer?

I purchased the First Edition AD&D books not too long ago from EBay, and in certain sections there is a feeling of newness, like Gygax and TSR saw what others were starting to do with RPGs and applied that to their own game, this time talking a bit more about worlds and campaign play and all that stuff and opening things up. And of course since AD&D is really popular, a lot of other designers see it and run even further- it's like a loop developed, where RPG makers kept building on each other. Soon we arrived at our current sense of RPGs, where it's a bit like a wargame but a bit like a story, too, and maybe like that stuff you played as a kid.

Yeah 1st ED was nice, then I am probably biased since that (and the Red, Blue, and Black D&D books) is mostly what I used when I DMed.  My old group had a sort of hybrid system which I can't even remember how worked, but it must have because all I remember about it is we had a lot of fun playing!

Of course we also used miniatures from time to time, though mostly just to show who was where in party order when traveling and such.

Anyone else?

[CowperColes]

I remember reading an old article on the creation of D&D by Gygax in which he elaborates on the game's "Wargaming Roots".

He wrote Chainmail as a large scale medieval wargame with a figure ration of 20:1 or 40:1 per figure.  Any size figure could be used, but at the time Gygax and his buddies owned tons of 54mm plastic and tin Marx Co. toy soldiers.  They made battlefields in a big sandtable in Gygax's basement.

Occassionally they'd refight sieges.  Gygax made a special Man-To-Man chapter in the rules in which 1 man = 1 miniature.  There was even a section on "sapping", in which an invading force would dig tunnels under the castle walls to infiltrate the castle or burn the foundations under a wall section, causing it to collapse.  He developed special rules for counter sappers intercepting the attackers, in which a GM kept track of where the two groups of sappers were on a map, and then a "tunnel fight" occurred underground when contact occurred.

Gygax also made special rules for fantasy troop types (orcs, dragons, trolls, etc) in another chapter in the back of the book.

The story is that Dave Arneson, a guy who GMed a wargames campaign in Minneapolis, set up a fantasy-themed wargame.  Set in "Blackmoor", the players all invented alter egos to serve as army leader characters in the game.  This "role assumption" has been done a lot by historical wargamers, who would get into the spirit of their games by say, acting like Napoleon (strutting around, talking in a silly french accent) when leading the French army in a wargame.  It's not true roleplaying though.  It's more akin to making silly car noises when you use the racecar token in a game of monopoly.

Arneson was the judge or "Game Master" for the campaign.  Running a game with an impartial judge to simulate the kind of "fog of war" that happens in real life has been around ever since the Prussians started doing it in the 1840s to train their officer corps.

Anyway, Arneson developed the man-to-man tunnel fighting rules into a stand alone game.  Blackmoor players ran their fantasy countries economies as part of the campaign (kinda like axis and allies).  To get extra money to finance their wars, players could play "raid the mines of moria" style tunnel wargames by gathering a force of figures, led by a general character and hacking their way through a dungeon, stocked with monsters and treasure by the GM.  Sometimes rival players would battle each other underground.

It was pretty much a dungeon crawl skirmish wargame, similar to Games' Workshop's HeroQuest or Warhammer Quest games.  Arneson gave Gygax a copy of the rules to see if he'd want to publish it.

Gygax then made major changes in the rules.  He changed the emphasis from fighting small unit actions in tunnels to players fighting with individual characters.  Gygax was brought up on fantasy stories like Conan & Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and thought it would be cool to play a game in which you could fight battles with these cool characters.  Gygax took his tactical wargame and combined it with make-believe games like Cops & Robbers.  Characters were heavily statted up to stand out from other figures.  The rules focused on scoring "experience points", "levelling up" and keeping your character alive.  He eventually rewrote the combat rules so that they stopped using the Chainmail system.  Instead they used a new skirmish rules set called "Swords & Spells" which was the prototype of the Hit Point/Armor Class/THACO system used by D&D.

The game focused a lot more on playing characters and telling stories.  It still relied heavily on it's wargaming roots through the use of an impartial  gamesmaster to simulate "fog of war".  The main story of play sessions was about fighting underground battles with miniatures and scoring "gold" and "experience" points to "power up" the characters.

So here's my take on the development of RPGs from miniature wargames.  Gygax made a wargame which could be expanded into a campaign system.  Campaigns used judges (Gamemasters) to simulate "fog of war".  Arneson made a dungeon crawl game as an expansion to the wargame in which role assumption occurred (players pointed to their general figure on the table, said "that's me" and acted silly for the sake of having fun).  Gygax developed the game into a dungeon crawl where players each commanded a force of just one character, and infused the game with classic "let's pretend" games like cops n' robbers.  As more people played the game, they invented their own games and own styles of play.  RPGs today aren't exclusively about fighting a skirmish game with some pretend characters and a story tacked on.

just my 2 cents worth