Part II - Origins and history of the RPGs.

‘He who denies his heritage is not worthy of one.’
- “Vampire: the Eternal Struggle” CCG

As it was said before, RPGs have unexpected origins, maybe because they are such natural ones. The act of “role-playing” is much more common than one would expected - for instance, when we are children, playing ‘make believe’, like ‘Cops and Robbers’ or ‘Cowboys and Indians’, we are actually role-playing, as we take the role of someone else.

 
This basic instinct of ‘assuming the role of someone else’ eventually evolved to more complex games, like, for instance, “Monopoly”, where we take the role of powerful, heartless business tycoons, sellingand buying, mercilessly dealing with stocks, property titles and mortgages, and having a great time doing all those awful things that we would never do in real life.

1 - The Antecedents.

All games like “Monopoly”, where a certain amount of strategy is necessary had the same origin: the old wargames, like chess, fox and hounds, and other forms of highly abstract strategy games. But, in 1824, Von Reisswitz, a Prussian officer, attempted to adapt strategy gaming with real model conflict. And so “Kriegspiel” (which can be translated precisely as “Wargame”) appeared, a game that used topographical maps and metal markings to represent terrain and armies. Dice were used to resolve combat.

Since this game was developed in the early Napoleonic era, it soon became a very popular way to train officers, teaching them to direct their armies. In fact, its popularity was such that it soon spread to other countries.

2 - Historical Background.

 
Wargames such as “Kriegspiel” quickly became so popular all over Europe that ascended from their military use, and they started to be seen with a hobbyist interest. Shortly after the beginning of this century, H. G. Wells wrote a set of rules called “Little Wars”, that set out the necessary parameters for engaging in battles and resolving combat. Without a shadow of a doubt, “Little Wars” was the catalyst for the development and growth of this gaming hobby.

But it was in the 30s that more development took place: Fletcher Pratt, a Civil War historian and a fantasy author, developed a set of rules for naval engagements, that covered everything: from effects of long-range gunfire, to tracking torpedoes once launched.

Pratt was respected for his historical and fantasy writing, which was an unusual combination for that time. In “The Complete Enchanter”, he tells the tales of Harold Shea, a psychologist-turned-wizard, whose adventures are set in a variety of mythological and fantastic backgrounds. Pratt also wrote two of the best fantasy novels of that period, “The Blue Star” (1952) and “The Well of the Unicorn” (1948).

That strong connection between science fiction & fantasy and the gaming hobby would continue until the present day. But the great master of the fantastic elements was a British professor, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Tolkien wrote “The Lord of the Rings”, which he completed in the late 1950s. Initially, “The Lord of the Rings” only got modest reviews. But the elements in it, including the conflict between good and evil, in a fantastic world populated by elves, dwarves, hobbits, orcs and men, would become an integral part of fantasy role-playing.

 
The 50s were the years of recovery in all sectors, including the games sector - it was when Charles Roberts founded the “Avalon-Hill Games Company” that there was a resurgence of interest in strategy games as a hobby. The games produced by Avalon-Hill, like “Tactics II” and “Gettysburg”, and some design elements invented by the company, such as the hexagonal grid system, used on gameboard maps, would later affect the design of role-playing games. Some of these elements were refined, and new ones were added, by a new gaming company, Simulation Publications, Inc. This was the starting point for the gaming industry as we know it today.

3 - The 60s

By the 60s, there was a well-developed miniatures hobby and a growing strategy game hobby, although both were very small in numbers and scale. But two elements caused an unexpected revolution in the miniature and gaming industry. The first one was the publishing of “The Lord of Rings” as a trade-paperback, which received the highest praises. It caused various 'sword and sorcery' novels to appear, including Robert E. Howard’s books about his barbarian hero, Conan of Cimmeria.

The second was the creation of a set of medieval rules called “Chainmail”, written by the British Jeff Perrin and Gary Gygax. Until that moment, all miniatures were very similar, and where only different from one another when they belonged to different armies. The damaged they caused and their movement velocity was set and true for the entire army. But “Chainmail” had given players the possibility of individual combat, which lead to a new kind of miniature – each had unique and different abilities. With such a high level of detail, the miniatures also started to develop unique and different personalities.

And thus appeared tabletop games as they are known today.

4 - Tabletop Games.

Tabletop games resemble greatly the original wargames: two players wage their armies of creatures (that can be anything from humans to dark elves, including robots) against each other. The combat unfolds on top of a special table (hence the term ‘tabletop’), where there is a whole set of elements (in 3D or not), such as rocks, hills, lakes or even castles, which represents the battlefield. Each army is different from the other (even if both players are using, for instance, an human army), because within each army there are many different creatures, each with their own abilities, and each player will probably combine them in a different way from his opponent.

 
Tabletop gaming is an interesting hobby, however it has several drawbacks.

First and foremost, it is extremely expensive - for instance, foot soldiers or infantry (the less powerful, they are the ‘cannon fodder’ of any army) are sold in packages of four, and cost between 1400 to 2000 escudos. Furthermore, the figures regarded as individuals (they have their own name and personal history), have an astronomical price - such as Warhammer’s “High Elf Dragon Lord” figure, which costs around 10 500 escudos! Therefore, one has to be extremely wealthy or will have to wait a long time to have a half-decent army. It is particularly annoying for a good player with a weak army to face a low-class player with a strong army, since it is likely that the latter wins just for his better army.

Secondly, all figures come unpainted (and some of the larger ones even come unassembled), and their small size makes them extremely hard to paint (specially if one does not have any talent for painting at all).

 
And finally, tabletop can be very repetitive and dull. After all, it is always the same principle: war between two armies - there is no other type of interaction.

 
That was the problem that Gygax had experienced - but, when he came across Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”, he discovered a way to solve it.

5 - Of Dungeons & Dragons

Gygax wanted to make tabletop games more interesting, by making each gaming session unique and different from the previous. It was then he decided to create a set of rules that would allow to send one’s miniatures in quests against monsters and evil wizards instead of sending them against another player’s army. So, near the end of 1973, “Dungeons & Dragons” was published by Tactical Studies Rules (TSR).

 
The company was utterly caught by surprise by the success of the game and the demand of the public that ensued, as the book sold out at an impressive rate. Gygax realised he had found a gold mine. So he immediately started to think how he could improve it, how he could advance into the next level of gaming.

6 - Into The Next Level - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

 
Gygax realised quickly which were the changes he could make to improve “Dungeons & Dragons”, and so the miniatures were removed from the game and left forever for tabletop playing. The rules of “Dungeons & Dragons” were adapted to a new sort of gaming - one where there was no need for miniatures anymore. All it was necessary was the player, a sheet of paper and some dice.

And thus was the first role-playing game born - from that point on, RPGs became more and more popular, and, since then, hundreds of games have been published.

7 - The Future.

Since the publication of “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” in the 1980s, many other games have been created. The popularity of role-playing games quickly spread all over the world, and, thanks to the Internet, today is already possible to play online with role-players from all over the world. Instead of paper, pencil and dices, one uses a monitor, a keyboard and special software to simulate dices. And instead of gathering all your friends in your living-room, you simply get online with players from all around the globe, by accessing special Internet sites like White Wolf’s, at  http://www.white-wolf.com.

8 - Portable Role-Playing Games.

Recently, a new kind of RPG appeared. Technically speaking, they are not RPGs ‘per se’, but they borrowed many elements from them. Collectible Card Games (‘CCG’ for short) are similar in many aspects to both RPGs and tabletop games.

Basically, the objective of a CCG game is to defeat an opponent by means of an army of minions (that can range from anything, from unicorns to minotaurs or even vampires), empowered by special items, weapons and abilities, all represented in different cards.

Games such as “Magic: the Gathering”, a game where one assumes the part of a powerful wizard, or “Vampire: the Eternal Struggle”, where the player takes the role of a Methuselah, an ancient vampire, are examples of CCG games.

A normal RPG is something that requires some patience and a lot of imagination to organise. The Gamemaster has to prepare the story in advance, check the players’ characters, find a place where to play, and a lot of other things that must be thought of before a game is started. CCGs, on the other hand, can be improvised and played anywhere, only with two players, if necessary. No Gamemaster is required, nor creating a character, just having a deck of cards.

However, like tabletop games, CCGs are much more linear: the objective is always the same – to defeat the player’s army. And, although they aren’t as expensive as tabletops, CCGs are much more expensive than RPGs, since a deck still costs more than paying for a couple of photocopies of the character sheet. Furthermore, in order to have a more powerful deck, it is necessary to buy a few more decks to get different cards.