Game history and Roleplaying game history

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Game history and Role-playing game history
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Games have come far...

• http//www.newgrounds.com/collections/osama.html

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A little history

• Military Academic computers
• Huge sized computers
• Spacewar (1962) Stephen Russell

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A little history II

• First commercial game
• Arcade
• Pong (1973) Atari
• Space Invaders (1977)
• Pac-Man, Tetris...

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• Insert coin
• Faster, faster
• Cant win
• Glory list
• Mainly graphics

But devices have changed... The PC Revolution
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1980s

• Pac-Man
• Adventure
• Zork
• Ultima
• Donkey Kong

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1990s

• Sim City
• Wolfenstein
• Doom
• Monkey Island
• Myst
• Civilization
• EverQuest

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trends

• Two-player to single-player to multiplayer
• Huge industry leads software development, makes
  more money than movies
  
• Cultural phenomenon specialized shops,
  magazines, conferences...
  
• Online game communities
• i.e Everquest
• Games as objects of study

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rpg history I birth

• Wargames (60s and 70s)
• TLOTR and fantasy literature
• Dungeons Dragons (1974), the explosion and
  sequels
  
• Runequest (skills, smooth system)
• bad press starts end 70s

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rpg history II diversity

• Call of Cthulu, 1981 (cannot win, emphasis on
  roleplaying)
  
• The Dragonlance Chronicles (1984) ADD to mega
  corporation
  
• GURPS (generic universal role-playing system)
  1984
  
• Opposite trend, worlds MERP, Stormbringer
• Rules complexity as serious (Rolemaster)
• From film to game Star Wars (1987)

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rpg history III innovation

• Weirdness Toon, Paranoia (Costikyan) Light
  rules, laughs.
  
• Pendragon (ethos-centered via rules)
• Amber (no dice, cards)
• Cyberpunk, 1988 (with the times)

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rpg history IV revolution

• Vampire (White Wolf and storytelling) simple
  rules, gothic punk theme The World of Darkness
  
• Against hacknslash? /Parodies
• Cards Magic The Gathering
• New ideas? d20 system, settings (7th Seas,
  Legend of the 5 Rings)

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computer rpgs

• character growth
• storytelling quests
• important combat, statistics as emulation of
  real life (get rid of bothersome calculations)
  
• from single player to multiplayer
• Relationship with pp rpgs inspired 2 genres
  Adventure, Ultima, MUDs...

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Vampire The Masquerade. Redemption

• How succesfully can a tabletop roleplaying game
  migrate to the electronic form?
  
• What is lost and what is gained?
• How does the digital medium affect the nature of
  the roleplaying activity?

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The Dot System
You use ten-sided dice

• Dexterity
• Drive
• Dice to be rolled 5
• Difficulty normal6
• Success (dice over 6 determine degree of sucess)

You dont need tables
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How the game was designed...
Using the White Wolf license also meant that our
users would have high expectations in terms of
story, plot, and dialogue for the game. Its a
role-playing license based heavily around
dramatic storytelling, intense political
struggles, and personal interaction. Fans of the
license would not accept a game that was mere
stat-building and gold-collecting.
(Huebner, 2000)
How the game was packaged marketed
Be Immortal Your unholy showdown begins in
medieval Europe and rages on into the modern day,
as you track a soulless enemy in an eternal
struggle to destroy him. (Rodriguez, 2000 backc
over)
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Medium Migration From Tabletop to Computer game

• Interface
• Rules
• Character interaction and objectives
• Gaming Styles

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Character sheets
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Tension Simplification ? Diversity

• digital medium is more immediate
• digital medium is less morally sophisticated
• digital medium is at once more and less faithful
  to reality

This paradox springs from the fact that the
visual environment of V TM Redemption needs a
greater simplification of relationships to be
effectively immersive, whereas the tabletop game
works with a mental immersion that is not broken
by further abstractions (the more specific
rules). The visual illusion has to be kept simple
and intuitive or lose its charm completely.
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VTM R Possibilities for player action

• -explore (the virtual space walking across the
  landscape and inside buildings, the graphical
  quality of the game makes for a compelling
  experience)
• -find/use objects (hidden door switches that need
  to be operated, ancient vampire lore books that
  can be used to learn spells, etc.)
  
• -enter combat (exclusively against NPCs)
• talk (between PCs/with NPCs/with the Storyteller
  in OOC, Out Of Character, mode)

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Trinity
Lily Munster
William Wallace
You can be anyone you want...
Antonio Banderas?
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To summarize
The computer creates an immediately perceptible
world (instead of an imaginary one), thus
eliminating the need for narrative mediation and
facilitating automatic spatial immersion.
The storytelling heart of the game is fully main
tained, but the storyteller now uses computer
tools to create spaces, objects and characters
instead of words to narrate. Interaction is st
ill mainly textual, although the visualization of
oneself as a character-part of the virtual world
is very important to the sense of immersion.
Some of the most subtle aspects of the tabletop
game are lost like the moral progression of the
characters, the accuracy of the description of
actions or the effective use of disciplines, but
this doesnt seem so much an attribute of the
digital medium as of this particular
implementation. Finally, the multiplayer comput
er game encourages different kinds of
socialization and creative collaboration between
participants.
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but this is only an option

• Vampire- Storytelling
• Quake-Hacknslash
• Everquest-Gimme more treasure, quests (strategy)
• Anarchy online theme / plot

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Practical

• The design document

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Brainstorm checklist

• 1.  Setting. Where are we? What is it like? Is
  there a background story?
  
• 2.  Mood / style? Is this run by a striking mood
  / style?
  
• 3.  Basic goals and conflict. (Who is the
  conflict between? What kind of conflict is it?
  How does one resolve the conflict?)
  
• 4.  Basic characters. (How are they related? Do
  they work in groups?)
  
• 5.  Basic structure. (Open, persistent world / No
  time limit but free play for all / 15 minutes
  before a pending disaster / series of quests that
  need to be solved.)
• 6.  Interaction. What kind of interaction is
  provided between the users / between users and
  NPCS / between users and things. How will the
  player's need to work toward the goal lead to
  what interaction? How will you encourage drama?
• 7.  Graphics. What will it look like?
  Photorealism / Toy story / children's drawings /
  oil painting / collage / cutouts from newspapers
  / photos of real locations people.

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The design document

• Table of Contents
• Introduction/Overview
• Game Mechanics (gameplay)
• Artificial Intelligence (game world)
• Game Elements (characters,items,objects/mechanisms
  )
  
• Story Overview
• Game Progression
• System Menus
• Any other stuff