{"id":1193,"date":"2005-03-06T17:08:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-06T23:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=1193"},"modified":"2005-03-06T17:08:00","modified_gmt":"2005-03-06T23:08:00","slug":"roleplaying-games-typology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=1193","title":{"rendered":"roleplaying games typology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday after gaming a bit with as I was chatting with both him and , I shared my typology of roleplaying games.<\/p>\n

Type 1, the rollplaying game, is the stat wanking, my-character-can-kill-your-character sort of silliness. It’s fun up to a point, but generally has serious sustainability problems for me. Games of this sort are characterized by religious adherence to rules, endless comparisons of character abilities, and weighing of character development options. Also, lots of monster-killing-item-grabbing-leveling-up type stuff. Computers are amazingly good at these types of games. Diablo would be a great example from the computer genre; D&D, GURPS or, god-forbid, rolemaster would be a great example from the table top genre. This may be the most popular sort of gaming, and there’s almost always a certain quantity of this in any given game. <\/p>\n

Type 2, the plot-oriented game, is more like an interactive movie. Best served with byzantine politics and plot twists, rich scenery, and, in the computer varieties, lots of artfully crafted, 3d cut scenes. This also shows up in some video games, “final fantasy”s 2e(4j), and 7 definitely have some type 2 roleplaying going on. This also fails to stimulate my gamergeeky happiness. My impression is that this is the sort of thing that Vampire the Masquerade (and other world of darkness games), and perhaps to a certain extent, Shadowrun are supposed to thrive on.<\/p>\n

Type 3, is a bit more mercurial and emotional. It’s the appeal of the imaginary person. In final fantasy 7, there is a character who is pure goodness and light personified, and she bites it while trying to save the world from the big bad nasty of the game (actually, it’s the big bad nasty that kills her). It’s hard to say which character has the more devout cult following, but they both certainly do (really the bad guy’s cult is bigger, but I was more into the good girl). Also Vivi (the cute, retro blackmage) from ff9. But what I really love is the creation of these unique characters, and giving them a chance to express their own identities. This works best in table top games (maybe in larp, too, but I never larped, myself). I will remember with great fondness my “slutty bi elf-chick cleric who was mother to the party’s half-elven rogue and had a thing for human bards” and my “nearly-adolescent street kid mega-mage” and their interactions with the other personalities in their respective parties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday after gaming a bit with as I was chatting with both him and , I shared my typology of roleplaying games. Type 1, the rollplaying game, is the stat wanking, my-character-can-kill-your-character sort of silliness. It’s fun up to a point, but generally has serious sustainability problems for me. Games of this sort are characterized … Continue reading “roleplaying games typology”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}