Slaying the Dragon

ince I was about twelve, I've harbored loves for two distinct pastimes: pencil-and-paper roleplaying and video games. Generally, the two catered to different needs: on the one hand, traditional roleplaying games allowed me to be creative, crafting immense worlds for my friends to explore; on the other, video games provided a mindless escape from the day-to-day with fantasies that were instantly gratifying. To this very day, I still toy with both hobbies. It was just last year that a group of friends suggested starting up a Dungeons & Dragons campaign via the internet — feeling a little bit exhausted by frequent bouts of World of Warcraft, I leapt at the opportunity. After all: pencil-and-paper gaming was its own beast, able to provide an experience that was completely different from that of the modern fantasy MMO.

Pencil-and-paper gaming can provide an experience completely different from an MMO — or so I thought.Or so I thought. Times have changed since I picked up my first Player's Handbook back in 1993 — the Dungeons and Dragons line now rests in the hands of a new publisher, Wizards of the Coast, and they seem determined to bring pencil and paper gaming into the MMO era. Short of defining wizards as a "DPS" class with many area-of-effect spells at their disposal, the writers behind Dungeons & Dragons' fourth edition have clearly placed their focus on combat. Gone are the days when a ranger may have to describe to the gamemaster what they intended on doing with their longbow. Instead, they merely need to say: "I'm going to use my two-fanged strike ability," and the GM knows to add x to a die roll. While I'm certain this focus on rules is a joy for some, I find it to be about as creative as pressing my 6-key, thus casting a "mind blast" spell. That is to say: where's the roleplaying?

When Gary Gygax and his collaborators first set about creating the game that would become Dungeons & Dragons, their intention was to shift tabletop gaming's focus from the army to the man — what began as an expansion to a fantasy wargame's ruleset quickly evolved into a game that centered around individuals and the assumption of a new persona. While miniatures were sometimes used to illustrate character placement or the scale of an adversary, they were usually frowned upon as being regressive — roleplaying games were meant to be played in the theater of the mind, not over hex tables with meticulously painted miniatures.

I once asked myself: Why on Earth would anyone play anything besides Dungeons & Dragons? Now I know.As the years went by and commercial realities set in, Dungeons & Dragons' treatment of miniatures changed, but up through the game's second and third editions, they were merely suggested and never required. In the game's present state, it would be nearly impossible to play without a stable of pewter props and premade map sheets — how else would a gamemaster be able to keep track of the "tank's" location relative to the "healer"? Was I being too hard on this latest version of the world's most recognized roleplaying game? Admittedly, but there had to be others out there who felt as I did — players who wanted to keep their two pastimes separate and distinct.

I can still remember standing in a bookstore back in 1993, my Player's Handbook clutched close to my chest. As I looked around at the other roleplaying games on the shelf, I stopped and asked myself: "Why on Earth would anyone play anything besides Dungeons & Dragons?" Well, young Ed, now you know. There are a great many games in this world, and there are a great many ways in which to play them. Wizards of the Coast has created a product that caters beautifully to the analytic gamer — the player who wants to vanquish foes without giving a great deal of thought as to their motivation. Countering this model are publishers like Paizo. Their new Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (which is basically a retooling of Wizard's own third edition Dungeon & Dragons rules) clearly focuses on storytelling: combat might be the means to an end, but it is never the end itself.

Was there a point to this rant? Only that for as much as I obsess over World of Warcraft, even I need a break every now and again. It's good to know that pencil and paper gaming lives on as an outlet for creativity, problem solving and fun, even if it's going by a different name these days. Keep on playing folks, whatever your game.

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