I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Clichés, which shows that in some ways we’re still basically playing Dragon Warrior I. Plus I have to point out this page for the BioWare RPG Cliché Chart which is fun but also includes (allegedly) a response from a BioWare rep who kind of takes the whole thing a little too personally.

1. The Arena
   To clarify, it isn’t that I don’t understand why these clichés persist in role-playing games, especially video game RPGs which are typically very combat oriented. In the case of the ubiquitous area battles you can showcase your combat engine and fill up a couple of hours of game time having players hack and slash with the barest of necessary plot development. But for the role-player that lack of context mostly serves to highlight the basic flaws in your combat system. I rarely—perhaps never—play RPGs for their dynamic fighting mechanics, rather I play them in spite of often awkward combat because I like the stories they tell. When you surgically excise the latter I tend to sit there grinding my teeth as I nitpick the former.
2. The Perfectly Balanced Attribute System
   I don’t want Intelligence to factor into how effective my brutish half-orc is at finding chinks in opponent’s armor. I don’t want Strength to determine how many spellbooks my mage can carry. I don’t want Charisma to factor into how good my thief is at sneaking. It should be okay to have a borderline mentally retarded barbarian and a physically frail wizard and an unremarkable, forgettable rogue. Trying to discourage min/maxing in single-player games makes no sense to me, so let me ignore stats that don’t matter for my character class and stop trying to make me well-rounded. Of course the corollary for this is that every game needs to accommodate each class: I should be able to be just as successful as a magic user as I can be as a warrior rather than having to always be some kind of spell-casting, sword-wielding hybrid assassin.
3. The Hero is the Guy Who Does the Most Damage
   Combat is an integral part in a vast majority of video games. Video role-playing games are no exception. But RPGs have for too long eschewed the potential drama of the non-combat resolution. It’s a tired truism that no matter what dialogue options you choose, no matter how high your Negotiation skill, no matter how many non-violent solutions you can come up with, ultimately 99% of your interactions result in either you giving someone cash or services in exchange for goods or information or you hit them with various sharp objects until they stop moving.
4. There is Only One Way to Do It
   There are few things more infuriating in games than having obvious solutions to developer-fabricated problems staring you in the face but having to jump through the sorts of mind-reading hoops that adventure games used to be famous for because some level designer deems it so. This applies to large set-piece puzzles (see the Resident Evil example from this GameSpy article) as well as simpler activities like, say, opening chests. Even the ASCII-based Nethack allows non-thieving characters to access chests via a brute force approach, although there is the potential for breakable items within to be, well, broken. But this is the tradeoff to the alternative which is having a particular skill (rogues) or performing some sort of elaborate series of steps to locate the correct key. Some games have allowed for alternate actions like forced locks but often these inexplicably rely on the same skill as bypassing them. In a way this is the counterpart to the unbalanced attribute system: Let characters be specialized but then allow them to approach every given obstacle from their own unique perspective.
5. The Stationary World
   Few things make a world feel less living and vibrant than one which never changes. Then again, like the Uncanny Valley, the closer you get toward a world that feels like it has its own pulse, the more noticeable it becomes when everything about an environment exists to accommodate the hero of some epic story. Games with no night/day cycle, shopkeepers who never sleep but stand in the same spot for infinity waiting for the hero to come by and give them a single moment of purpose, NPCs who only ever offer a single scrap of information and then simply repeat themselves like malfunctioning robots, all these things can be lovingly rendered in the most visually striking HD but they utterly ruin the spell of a game.

Having never heard of Wushu before this, I read its description carefully and felt my imagination beginning to spin. I, too, feel that D&D 4th is primarily a tactical miniatures game although perhaps unlike Mr. Alexander I don’t really take it as some affront to the D&D brand. I happen to like tactical miniatures games and grafting a light narrative mechanic on top of them isn’t directly offensive to me. However, I also appreciate the story-heavy mechanics of the kinds of role-playing he and other 4th Edition detractors crave and reading about the far-afield Wushu principles was exciting.

I won’t get too deep into Wushu here because I haven’t tried it—though I would love to—but what it really did was start my wheels turning about a sort of non-diceless role-playing game that was focused centrally on something akin to Wushu’s Principle of Narrative Truth but without the on-paper awkwardness of what amounts to lightly gamed improvisational collaborative storytelling. In other words, Wushu sounds delightful, but it doesn’t sound a lot like a game to me, more like a creative exercise. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just not what I as a gamer really crave.

One thing I’ve always despised—and yes, that’s the appropriate term—about role-playing games is that the kinds of brightly imagined scenes and scenarios are often muted by the mechanics of failure, specifically when applied to low-level characters or early campaign episodes. First level characters, for example, frequently don’t have enough raw statistical ability to perform the kinds of extraordinary feats that are hallmarks of typical RPG genres. The basic trade-off between mechanical intrigue (can such-and-such be successful) and narrative strength (is this something a hero would really fail at) is one that falls in favor of the game more frequently than the tale. This is, to my understanding, the guiding principle behind the changes made for D&D 4th Edition: Make a grand game, even if the threads that weave the plot between and amid strategic battle sessions don’t exactly form an artful tapestry.

Wushu clearly tips to the other edge, and what I’m now fixated on is the idea that there can be a game that admires and respects the concept of Narrative Truth without fumbling mechanically with uninteresting game elements. It would take a lot of work to really flesh out the ideas, but the basic principles I think that would start the process would be basically giving character creation a set of loose characteristics: Instead of, for example, Acrobatics as a skill that needs to be checked in order to be used but is frequently found in disparate members of an adventuring party, it is part of a broader set of characteristics called something like “Agile Movement” which allows a player to declare, at any time, an action like leaping through an open window and executing a safe rolling landing. Players without Agile Movement would have to find a different way to get out of the room in a hurry.

The mechanical element of this would be the GM Challenge, in which a GM could declare that a player declaration exceeds the bounds of their assumed proficiency. At that point only is any kind of dice roll made for action. As an example, a character with Agile Movement 1 says they want to tiptoe up a bamboo shoot like in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Agile Movement 1 covers things like basic tumbling, graceful leaping and other lithe motions but not superheroic and physics-bending actions like balancing on thin reeds which might be more like a Agile Movement 5 ability (these numbers are arbitrary lacking any playtesting or balancing). The challenge is then rolled to maintain Narrative Truth (let’s leave the dice rolling mechanics aside for the time being).

Assuming the player succeeds what ought to be a difficult dice test, they maintain Narrative Truth. Improbably, they actually do dance across a fragile bamboo shoot. On the other hand, if they fail, Narrative Truth is passed to the GM, who describes the result of the failed attempt. What you have here is a system where the childhood make-believe system of “I shoot you!” “Nuh-uh!” is actually worked into a game mechanic such that challenged actions are set in a construct to determine whose version of events is correct. As such, for the most part, players will move and interact with their environment unfettered by the GM. The GM exists only to describe things the players cannot intrinsically know: The environment for example. They also exist as the antagonists, the actor in the make-believe shouting “Nuh-uh!” whenever the player stretches credibility.

Due to this role, they are only likely to exercise a GM Challenge when the players overstep their control over the narrative in ways that are perhaps inconsistent with their character or—pivotally—when they attempt to influence something that is resisted. Obviously the GM Challenge to basic characteristic-defined Narratives should be rare assuming the player is operating within the shared vision of the world. However, there will be plenty of times when the player wishes to influence something beyond their PC and the GM must intervene to represent the opposing forces. A player with Firearms Training 2 might be reasonably proficient with common weapons such that when he says “I fire four shots in rapid succession, swinging my arm downward and spraying the bullets diagonally across the mercenary’s body” he is not rolling to see whether he can move his arm and pull the trigger in this fashion. However, he can’t dictate what the mercenary will do as a response, so the GM institutes an NPC Challenge to the action, declaring, “Sgt. Dekker catches the glint of candlelight off the barrel of the gun a moment before it swings to bear on his chest, and dives to the ground in an effort to avoid the bullets.” A test is made at that point to determine whose attempted action seizes Narrative Truth, and that participant (GM or player) then proceeds with the description of the outcome.

The fundamental element straddles the middle ground between Wushu’s concept of narrative as certainty and your standard RPG’s conceit that narrative is largely retroactive after the mechanical elements have been determined. The basic concern is a matter of timing: A GURPS player might indicate that she is attempting to thrust her sword into a foe’s abdomen; a Wushu player says definitively she impales the foe and the difference is that the GURPS player may not actually succeed in thrusting her sword or may in fact succeed and yet inflict no harm while the Wushu player most certainly executes the attack but the outcome is uncertain until the mechanics have been resolved. In my vision, the player may never assume the outcome or even declare a Narrative beyond their direct influence. At best the player may say, “I thrust my sword at waist level with all my strength.” They may strike the abdomen, they may strike a parrying arm, the result will depend on the responding action and the mechanical outcome.

Clearly there is a level here at which these principles could be applied to any standard role-playing game. The problem I would be addressing is mostly one of play style, but I think the construction of most role-playing rules is built such that combat is foremost in the rules as “defined scenarios” and everything else is, essentially, a metagamed skill check. Part of this is the specificity of the skills and abilities. Giving someone a 40% chance at Detecting Traps means they basically walk into a room and roll dice, saying, “I’m checking for traps.” The roll comes up successful and they ask the GM, “Did I find any traps?” Here is the alternative scenario I’m envisioning:

GM

“You stand in the doorway of a cramped room with stone floors and rickety wooden-paneled walls. A single unlit torch is barely visible on the far wall from the light of your gas lantern and in the furthest Eastern corner there is a sagging bookcase covered in assorted nick-knacks like partial bones, bits of parchment and copious dust and cobwebs. You have Narrative Control, Dave.”

Player

“I creep silently into the room and check for traps.”

GM

“There are no obvious traps in the room.”

Player

“Obvious traps? I’m looking for non-obvious traps. Hidden traps.”

GM

“Challenge. You have no way of knowing what might be hidden here.”

Player

“Okay fair enough. I peer carefully at the floor, looking for something unusual—”

GM

“Having never been in this room before, you can’t know what is usual.”

Player

“Good point. I’m checking the floor for something noticeably dissimilar from its surroundings; recessions, discoloration, carvings, that kind of thing. Also as I go, I’ll run my fingers lightly over the nearest walls looking for latches, triggers, mechanisms or signs of wear while being very cautious to avoid placing atypical pressure on anything.”

Should every trap-potential scenario be detailed this way? Most would probably argue it shouldn’t. But then again, wouldn’t “checking for traps” in each and every room the way it is done in most fantasy adventure scenarios be just as taxing and tedious? Narrative-wise, it makes more sense to detail the search for traps where they are most likely to occur rather than to slog through tedium for the sake of statistical protection.

And this is really the thing that has stimulated my mind: Role-playing games present a framework for compelling story but often abstract the elements that could go into such a story into game mechanics that thwart the tale. It’s easy to drift too far the other direction and create something that is barely a game and more of a setting. Somewhere in the middle lies roleplaying nirvana, and I’d love to find it.

Some of this greatly intrigues me, especially since a lot of what I read sounds like Wizards stepped directly into my head and picked out some of the stuff I was asking for. Tougher low-level characters. A more fluid approach to combat. Online tabletop role-playing. I can’t actually speak about the rules themselves yet since my book hasn’t arrived, but I’d be a liar if I said the things I was hearing weren’t stirring a bit of excitement in me for the chance to dive into an adventure.

I like the RPGnet review of the game as a good place to get a broad sense of the changes. Random Average lays out the influences behind some of the adjustments to core mechanics and sirtayls on Dragon Avenue rolls his eyes at the flamewars that erupt as people dissect the new edition. And then Dork Tower’s John Kovalic notes some strange decisions made in the Monster Manual, and decides to run with it.

Part of this intrigue is because, now that tabletop gaming is back in my forebrain, I’m interested in finding not necessarily a steady campaign to participate in but some willing folk to join for a run through a session or two. I also have some ideas for one-shots bubbling in the back of my mind, so goes my fascination with clattering dice (at the moment). In pursuit of this thought I did some digging on other settings and systems and found the free quickstart guide to Call of Cthulu. It was almost enough to make me regret my decision to buy D&D4e instead of the CoC core book. Which suggests there was some sort of internal debate between the two that didn’t exist. It just turns out that buying D&D prohibited me budget-wise from also picking up COC.

But man do I love the base system mapped out in the overview. It’s percentile-based for the most part, but the game also uses other polyhedral dice (bonus) and most delightful to me is the character advancement system which has skills improving as they get used. It’s elegantly handled and very attractive to someone like me who has always, like most role-players, loved advancing a character but personally I’ve always felt the abstraction was pretty hokey.

Some people collect role-playing games mostly to reverse engineer their mechanics and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. I’m not really that kind of guy, though I’ve toyed with plenty of different systems from Palladium’s d20-based concepts to the strict percentiles of DC Heroes through various D&D incarnations, Hero’s low-roll mechanics and more. I enjoy comparing them but my attraction to a particular game is either strictly mechanical (like GURPS) or, more frequently, primarily based on setting (Shadowrun). Which may be why I’m so fascinated by CoC’s impressively intuitive mechanics, because I was drawn to the game because of the setting and I found myself unexpectedly surprised by the rules.

Which brings me back to D&D and I wonder for a minute why I’m intrigued at all with the game. Part of it is the culture of games, it’s kind of like my day-one purchases of Halo sequels. I’m not a huge Halo fan but it matters to gamers so it matters to me. D&D is that way; if you want to guarantee you’ll find a game you can dive right into at a convention or with an impromptu gathering of gamer nerds, you better learn D&D. And like it or not, D&D is a force in the community so it merits attention.

It’s just good they keep making changes or I don’t know what we’d all have to fight about.