Role-Playing is Not Essential to Adventure Gaming

TL; DR: For me, adventure gaming is funnest when the emphasis is on making consequential choices and creative problem-solving, rather than on strictly "doing what your character would do," and old-school encounter, morale, and reaction checks (and quality OSR modules) support this emphasis and make the game surprising and fun for me as a game-runner.

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I'm looking forward to running a dungeon crawley game at a local puppet and mask theater as part of a fundraiser this coming Sunday. I'll be running The Incandescent Grottoes connected to The Hole in the Oak using Adventure Hour! and pregens made with a random character generator tailored to those adventures (a generator I plan to publish someday soon). But that is not what this post is about.

I'll be running the game for four hours as an open table event, where people can come and go. I hope to get some players that have never played adventure games, because I find brand-new players to be exceptionally creative and fun, and because I love introducing my favorite hobby to others. 

As I look forward to this game and introducing new players, I'm thinking about how folks approach playing an adventure game. One valid approach, and one suggested by the title “role-playing game," is “doing what your character would do.”  The street vendor is storing their meat with their dairy? Well, since my character is a food safety inspector, I’m gonna fine their ass! 

To me, however, it is important that this is not the only valid approach to playing the game. Two other valid approaches are: making a choice that you find funny/fun/interesting (and that's not obnoxious or hurtful to other players), and: asking other players for input on what to do. 

I'm imagining a new player at my event asking "I'm thinking about grabbing the jewels out of the statues' eye sockets, what do y'all think? Is that a good move?" One player might reply, "It's gonna breathe fire on us or something if you do that…Let's all get somewhere safe first and then go for it." Someone else might say, "That's your decision. You have to think what your character would do and just do it. We can't make your move for you." Those are both valid responses to the question about whether to steal the jewel eyes, but the second one rubs me the wrong way. If I were referee, I'd be sure to say: "Doing what your character would do is one way to play, but it's also OK to just do what you as the player think would be fun, and it is totally OK to ask other players for their input."

Credit: Credit: cheezedoodle96 on DeviantArt

In unpacking why I think players should be free to choose among various approaches, my mind turned to the essence of adventure gaming. We may sometimes call these games "role-playing games," but for me their defining (and funnest) feature is not playing a role or "doing what your character would do." They have that feature in common theater.

Combat is also not the defining aspect of adventure games, because it's also a part of skirmish war games, video games, and backyard wrestling-while-pretending-to-be-anime-characters. 

Making consequential choices and problem-solving is closer to the heart of tabletop adventure games, but you can also make such choices in video game RPG's. Problem-solving in tabletop games is limited only by the imagination, but programing and mechanics limit character's possible actions in video games. (Incidentally, I think exploits and glitches are the most playful play to be had in video games, because exploiting is properly toying with game elements in creative, unpredicted ways).

So, I reckon my definition of adventure games is something like: perpetually making consequential choices in response to a presented scenario and to the consequences of past actions, with recourse to tactical infinity* and a sentient game-runner's dynamic and imaginative interpretation and response.

(This also delineates adventure games from improv theater, in so far as the organizing principle is engaging with an adventure/scenario rather than producing an entertaining show)

*I first heard of tactical infinity on the Dolmenwood Discord server. It looks like the source of it is the blog post tactical infinity, rpgs, and wargames.

In an adventure game, you problem solve with lateral thinking and infinite tactical options, and have another human being thoughtfully and dynamically interpret and feedback the effects of such actions. It's basically a conversation, but a very engaging, imaginative, and collaborative one that uniquely engages the creative mind. I've had players say they've found it therapeutic :) 

Once, at the end of a game, I asked "what are your takeaways today?" and one player said: "I don't have a perfect track record with making choices and decisions in life. This game is great because I can practice that. I can practice making choices and decisions, and seeing what the results are." To me, the adventure game is the game of choice and consequence.

I'll digress just a little further before getting back to my main point about valid player approaches. For me, the definitive aspects of adventure games are well supported by old-school oracular dice procedures like morale and reaction checks, random encounter rolls, overloaded encounter dice that incorporate the dwindling of light sources and other resources, and random tables in general. These help keep the game lively, unpredictable, and surprising, even for me as a game runner. The randomization of NPC and monster behavior, and of events and their timing, encourages me as a game-runner to present a diversity of scenarios and reactions rather than defaulting to my usual repertoire. This supports the whole "perpetual choices, reacting to scenario and consequences, tactical infinity, imaginative game runner" thing I like so much and, I like to think, encourages dynamic creativity from the PCs, rather than a pat response to sameish encounters.

For example, in a recent run of The Waking of Willobwy Hall, the encounter die and a d12 direction roll brought an angry cloud giant right outside the room the PCs were exploring (and exploding; what do you expect when you give PCs bombs?). Per that module's excellent rules, the giant encounter triggered an escalation in the interior of the haunted manner, lighting fireplaces and waking up a death knight in the next room. All of this ignited (an appropriate pun - the party set off four bombs in this encounter!) a climactic showdown with the giant on one side, the death knight on the other, and the quickly-dying party in the middle! And it was SO exciting for me precisely because the dice called for it and surprised me.

More praise of procedures: random encounter checks lend consequence to actions because time-consuming actions come at the cost of possible encounters; oracular dice spur my imagination and keep my creative well from running dry as a game-runner; and interpreting and presenting dice results into the game is an imaginative act that enriches and expands the scenario and engages me in problem solving, too - solving the problem of result-interpretation. (I think random character generation likewise engages a great degree of player creativity). 

Along with such randomization procedures, I value the concrete context provided by a well-made adventure, which guides my adjudication and interpretation of actions, consequences, and random inputs from oracular dice. Someday I hope to experiment with running the freest of free-wheeling FKR and Engels matrix games and rely purely on the situation, the world, and/or the genre conventions for interpretive context, with minimal recourse to dice procedures, like my buddy Matt did in the Legendary Coin Flip Dragon Battle!

So yeah, there's my argument for why imaginative problem-solving (supported by old-school procedures) is a more unique and therefore more essential feature of adventure games than is role-playing. Whether or not that's true, it is how I prefer to play the game. Thinking laterally to solve creative problems in an OSR-style adventure is my favorite aspect of adventure gaming. Different individuals and groups will favor other aspects of the game, and that's just fine.

Returning to the consideration of player approaches. I think it is important to encourage a diversity of player approaches (do what your character would do; do what is fun/funny/interesting; solicit others' input for your actions, etc.) because none of these approaches gets in the way of the essential activity of creative problem-solving, and the freedom to choose between different player approaches at different times opens up creative thinking possibilities, whereas rigidly adhering to "one right way" risks gumming up the creative works, fizzling out the brainstorm, turning off the muse, or otherwise censoring valid ideas/actions/choices. 

Here's an example from real life™: As a player in a Saltmarsh campaign, my barbarian, Hamit, murdered two lizardfolk sailors on sight in a bloodthirsty rage. I chose to do this because Hamit's a ragey barbarian and because lizardfolk raiders occasioned his intense shame and survivors guilt when they attacked his tribe in the dead of night and he fled because he was afraid of the dark. I deployed a "what would my character do?" rationale in making this consequential choice. (And it was consequential! I killed them blindly before realizing I could have pumped them for info about where Hamit's family was!)

Later, in the same campaign, I had Hamit prostrate himself before an aboleth and swear allegiance to it. Why? Not because Hamit felt any type of way about what was going on, but because I – Christof, the player – love aboleths (and illithids!) and wanted to become a slimy psychic thrall for fun. In the same campaign I deployed different, but equally valid rationales, while making consequential, creative choices in response to the scenario. I reckon that's what most of us do, right?

All the Ham ever wanted...was his family back

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Well, that's about does 'er. Wraps 'er all up. My blog is now littered with the chaff of the well-beaten straw man, and the virtu of Sovereign OSR is well secured! To the comments, brave and intrepid readers, to celebrate another victory over the oppressive silence of un-bloggéd musings! Hear! Hear!