RPG design: The Essential Reading List
RPG design: The Essential Reading List
“If you were teaching a intro-level college class on roleplaying game design, what would be the reading list?”Interesting question.I’m going to design this as a survey/history course.
First I'll double up on this one:
Amber Diceless Roleplay
Pair it with Theatrix so you can see two completely different approaches to diceless, non-stochastic games. Amber and Theatrix make a fascinating "compare and contrast" study.
To your list I'm going to add (or at points replace with):
- Chivalry & Sorcery (1st edition)
The first game designed from the ground up as a social simulation where your character's place in society is far more important than grubbing through dungeons, killing things, and looting their bodies. (Indeed for some characters that would negatively impact their experience and growth!) I might put it alongside Traveller to show the difference between a game having a setting and a game being the setting. Also the grandfather of later "mega-mechanics" game systems.
- Bunnies & Burrows
To my knowledge the first attempt at making a game (and a pretty CRUNCHY game at that!) that is 100% based on non-human protagonists.
- Runequest (1st or 2nd edition)
First non-class-and-level game. Second game that came with a detailed, very non-European fantasy setting. Maybe put it alongside 1974 D&D to show how early people started breaking off from the D&D style.
- Maelstrom Storytelling
I'd actually replace Apocalypse World with this because it is the very first game, to my knowledge, that broke completely free of even the vestigial wargames roots of RPGs, complete with traditional story structuring being part of the game mechanisms, no fixed attributes (and no numerical ones), scene-level resolution (you roll once for an entire scene, not turn by turn). It's innovative enough that it's of interest. It's good enough that it's worth studying. And it has enough mis-steps and flaws that it's worth discussing. Pretty much any "storygame" owes a debt to this game.
I played amber at a con and it was incredibly fun. I was first in strength and another guy decided to take a chance as he was second in strength and grab me and I got to you a classic. You dare challenge my power!
champions was amazing. only need stadard dice and the one hardcover book could cover any genre although some took a lot of work by the dm. had a guy in college run a fantasy game with it and used the variable power pool for spellcasters (limitation of having to use found or figured out spells). he would allow people to make custom races as long as the points added up. basically he met with each person and asked them what they would like to do with the only limits being points and he would help them figure out the build for the race and the class and etc. it was pretty cool. gurps was great but the books were unending. hero system had a lot of books but the champions hardcover could handle everything, again if you put in the work.
Champions was amazing, but it was also effectively a derivation (and improvement) of the earlier Supergame. (Yes, I know. Stupid title.) Supergame used d% and d6, not just d6, but let's see if any of this rings a bell: (😁)
- you build a character with 250 points¹
- you get a number of actions based upon a prime statistic (Dexterity or Intelligence, depending on the type of actions)
- two different types of damage (Physical and Agony), one of which is very slow to recover, the other very rapid
- a collection of powers that are more descriptions of effects, rather than specific instances (what, not how or why)
- a specific form of attack for Charisma (like, you know, Presence...)
- ... and a cast of dozens.
Champions' creators have always said they were inspired by Superhero:2044 and Villains & Vigilantes and have never even mentioned Supergame, but I find that a bit sus myself:
- Superhero:2044 is a super-rare book. It was not very common to see it at all, ever. (The earlier pre-Zocci edition Superhero:44 was even rarer.)
- Neither Superhero:2044 nor Villains & Vigilantes are in any way like Champions (aside from attempted genre).
- Supergame wasn't super-rare. It was never a huge seller, but it was in most decent gaming shops in 1980-1981.
- There's a good mechanical overlap of at least 50% between Supergame and Champions.
- The game designer community of the late '70s and early '80s was very close-knit and there was a lot of cross-pollination.
Don't get me wrong: Champions was the better game. Being inspired by Supergame and making a better game is emphatically not a negative. I just think it's a bit weird that they refuse to acknowledge the influence.
And in the context of an RPG design essential reading, Supergame needs to be there to show the dramatic change in ideas that were beginning to pop up around that time.
¹ "Prime Statistics, super powers, devices, trainings, and abilities are all purchased using the same character construction points. The points are allocated according to relative effectiveness and usefulness. In other words, one power that costs 20 points is as useful in a variety of situations as any other power, ability, or device that also costs 20 points. Therefore, what is bought with these points is not the how or why of a power, but only the what."
Thing about listing vampire the masquerade is that the various areas of the world of darkness are different enough that only looking at the vampires is rather limited. Some glaring absences are star frontiers. They have traveler for space but man star frontiers is a lot like looking at old school dnd. Then both the marvel and dc games each had a take that is so influenced by the way the world stories read. Marvel with its levels of success and DC using a logrithmic type scale to deal with the massive power differences of superman and robin. Then what pathfinder has done with its second edition should not be missed especially since it can be looked over for no cost at archives of nethys and pathfinder society play itself is interesting to see how its organized.
VTM illustrates all of the pros and cons of the Storyteller milieu. It is still the game that people talk about, even more than WoD.
Never heard the term "Organization-Based Play" before, and since I've never played Blades in the Dark I have no frame of reference for what it's talking about. What is it?
I would assume the fact that the group of player characters, the crew, has mechanics like a character. Interaction with other crews becomes the faction game.
I'd definitely study the evolution of the hobby using books like The Elusive Shift (Petersen), Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations (Deterding, Zagal) and Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry (Appelcline). Once the students had a grounding in the history I would suggest a unit on Dice and Probability, the Mechanics and influence on settings.
- D&D for level and progression, and contrasting that against Palladium's approach.
- Traveller for the lifepath concept as well as the developing of universal setting.
- Hero System and the rise of point based mechanics, contrasting with GURPS.
- Interlock (Mekton, Cyberpunk) and the emergence of Unified Game Mechanics, maybe contrast with Atlas Games All Flesh Must Be Eaten, et al.
- Vampire, and the development of Dice Pools and the rise of “splats” as a business model.
- Over The Edge and Amber Diceless as differing approaches to non-traditional RPGs.
- Sorcerer, indie games, The Forge, and the story game movement. See also gamist/narrativist/simulationist as styles of play.
- D&D 3.0 and the OGL explosion.
- Apocalypse World and the New Wave of RPGs as a reaction to OGL. (one man's opinion).