I’ve been thinking a lot about the seeming disconnect between the various generations of gamers, each of whom are convinced that their way to play a game is the only way to play a game and everyone else is wrong, stupid, or too old/young to really “get it.” It’s cute. It’s really cute, but it’s ignoring a few things outright. For starters, for the first generation of role-players (not the wargamers who converted, but the people who started with some form of D&D in the late 70s/early 80s) they watched the concept of a modern role-playing game come into being, in fits and starts, and they all had a hand in getting role-playing games to their current incarnation. In other words, you don’t get to the concept of a modern-day campaign without going through Weiss and Hickman.

Also, the architecture of role-playing games is complicated. There are a lot of moving parts and tinkering with them isn’t always obvious. New players especially don’t always know what rules they can ignore, what rules they can bend, and what rules they can break. Play style helps define that for them. Not only can rules be tweaked, but game play, as well. I’m saying that because it’s not always obvious to players, if all of the subreddits about bad DMs and horrible gaming sessions are any indicator.

The history of RPGs is a pretty good way to observe the depth and intensity of game play. The parallels aren’t exact, but if you look at it from a macro level, there’s some stuff in these early games that changed how we played in real time, things we take for granted now as being the “best” way to play.

There are five levels of play style that evolved along with the development of role-playing games. The earliest examples of this “Role-Play” thing happened when everything was still using wargame language, skirmish-style maps, miniatures, and so forth. As this coalesced into Dungeons & Dragons and later Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, emotions and narrative bits crept in. AD&D had lists of words and tables to help DMs describe things.

When the early gaming conventions started up, along with early gaming magazines and zines, they were all supporting this cottage industry, and suddenly, there were all these new examples of how to play, things to add to your game, and rules to tweak. Dragon Magazine articles in particular were advancing this idea. There was even an article called “It’s Role-Playing, not Roll Playing” or words to that effect. This is the age of Dragonlance and Ravenloft, two modules that did a lot to move a narrative element or two into role-playing games. And by the way, this wasn’t just happening at TSR, a company that wasn’t afraid to borrow a good idea in the service of their games, either. Chaosium was an early innovator in producing large boxed campaigns, long before TSR started in the mid-80s. Character arcs, back stories, etc. were all becoming part of gaming vernacular.

By the 1990s, we’d moved into the World of Darkness, with Vampire: the Masquerade and all of its myriad spin-offs. These new games used its own Storyteller System (emphasis mine). The focus was on inter-clan politics amongst all of these immortals, but it stood squarely on the shoulders of books by Anne Rice, Nancy Collins, and others. Games like Over the Edge and Feng Shui and offered high concept ideas and with minimal dice rolls and lots of advice on developing your own character’s “story” as well as the long-term overarching story.

Before the decade was over, people were standing up from the table and adjourning to a large city park to throw tennis balls at each other while yelling “fireball!”

And all along the way, people would reach a level of comfort with a play style and hop off the train, content to stay where they were, often with the game that brought them in—but by this time, it was heavily tricked out with home rules to better support whatever level they were playing at. Usually cribbed from other systems and play styles.

Level 1: Tactical

“The cleric is going to heal Lord Kellar.”

The earliest version of D&D. Skirmish-level play, with different roles for each player (similar to having different “victory conditions,” another wargame idea). There’s still a level of separation between player and character.

These were the wargamers who were tired of running Napoleonic battles and wanted to replay the Battle of Helm’s Deep instead. Or Conan in the middle of a horde of Picts, dealing death with every slash. Character death was included in these early RPGs because the developers and players were all armchair generals and were used to the idea of a pawn, a sacrifice play. In wargames, that’s one counter removed from the board. No big whoop. So, yeah, “saving throw vs. death” was a thing.

Level 2: Crawling

“Ammar the cleric grits his teeth and walks resolutely over to heal Lord Kellar.”

This is Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (and later editions of D&D) Similar to Level 1, but with added narrative flourishes and similar additions. The gamemaster puts more emphasis on immersion but the overall view is still third person.

Ah, Satanic Panic, how I do not miss you! We started reading RPGA tournament reports, hearing about gaming groups in other places and getting glimpses of what other peoples’ campaigns were like. Every month in the magazines, we got new rules and read about ways to add more story into the game. While some of the material was still firmly in the aesthetic generated by the earlier versions of the game, the idea of keeping a character around was definitely a new thing. Players started taking their decisions seriously, as the idea of in-game consequences took hold.

Ramifications for players’ actions were a big part of every single fantasy novel that D&D cribbed from, and as those other narrative elements seeped in, so did things like heroic sacrifice. That’s when the first stories started appearing (published in letter columns, because, you know, no interwebs), talking about players rage-quitting because their character failed a saving thrown vs. poison and croaked or DMs who took over narrating the game because they had a story they wanted to tell and the players were “doing it wrong.”

Level 3: Role-Playing

Ammar: “I move to heal Lord Kellar.”
DM: “If you do that, the Chaos Engine will explode.”

As with Crawling, but more so. The RPG really takes shape, adding more storytelling elements, like an overarching plot and dialogue. Relationships between PCs and NPCs are established, along with goals and consequences.  

Now that players are really invested in their characters, the idea of adventuring opened up past the idea of dungeoneering and spelunking. These tools and sub-systems had been in place for a while, and there were early examples of things like hex crawling and city adventures, but these all became intertwined and long-running games without an end were a reality. Adventures ran multiple sessions and chained into one another, letting characters level up and keep cleaning out the slavers’ hideouts or tracking the Drow back to their home in the Underdark.

Level 4: Campaigning

Ammar the Cleric: “I can’t heal Lord Kellar! He killed my brother!”
Vartigan the Ranger: “But if you don’t save him, my sister will die!”

The RPG now is complete with a complex story structure, such as intertwining plots for every player and faction. Story narrative is enhanced with and by players, and they have a certain amount of agency in this respect.

Most if not all of the gaming worlds had expanded (go look at all of the Traveller supplements published during the 1980s) and adventures were encouraged to be more epic, like fantasy trilogies. There was a lot of help being given to GMs to aid their creativity and a lot of it looked like advice given to writers when they were stuck. Characters were complicated, each one worthy of their own heroic journey. Satanic Panic had dried up and blown away, and ironically, players were leaning in harder on their imaginary alter egos.

Level 5: World Building

Ammar: “I look down at Lord Kellar.”
DM: How do you feel, looking down at your arch nemesis, broken and beaten?”
Ammar: “I tell him, (new voice) ‘I’ll save you, Kellar, not because you need it, but because I won’t stoop to your level.’”
DM: “Kellar smiles and laughs through blood-smeared lips. (laughing) ‘Fool! Then you have already lost.’”

All of the above with a long form campaign that spans a significant amount of time for everyone involved. Complex goals that impact the world, all centered around each player’s character, who operates as the heroes of their own internal narratives.

At this point, you were probably playing in a secondary world that was entirely yours or your GMs making (and by that I mean a mashup of all the movies and TV shows you were watching, with a couple of your favorite novels thrown in for good measure). Everyone was really invested in the ongoing story. There was probably an original set of rules for determining the weather, I’ll bet, and other bits of minutiae that would have made Tolkien envious. These kinds of campaigns often involved a build up to some grand climax, usually the destruction of a magic item (not a ring, though—that would be copying) in order to save the village/city/kingdom/whole entire realm. GMs’ Homemade Worlds were points of pride and these things—sometimes lasting for years or until everyone graduated high school—were recounted and discussed for long afterwards. We’d all read the stories, even back then, about Gygax’s campaigns, and Arneson’s campaigns and Hargrave’s campaigns and we wanted that experience, too.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but this, to me, illustrates the crux of the matter. Why are there so many people having horrible, cringe-y experiences? Most of these A.I.T.A. gamer stories are rooted in one or more of the players and the GM not being on the same page regarding play style.

It’s not a new problem. Back in the 1980s, I had a guy I played with that, no matter what game we were playing, he was always trying to find a way to make Wolverine. Didn’t matter if we were playing Villains and Vigilantes or not. Boot Hill? Wolverine. Traveller? Wolverine. Toon? Tasmanian Devil—basically Wolverine. The type of game didn’t matter, as long as he had regeneration and retractable claws and could totally kill all of the other players, if he wanted to, because he’s such a bad ass, you know, but he totally wouldn’t, he just, you know…really likes Wolverine. Regardless, or perhaps in spite of, the genre.

And here’s the thing: Right up until the early 1990s, we understood levels of play intuitively, because we’d lived through it in real-time. For some people, they didn’t want or need all of that narrative stuff. Just point them at the dungeon door so they can start unlocking its secrets. For others, gaming for them doesn’t start until Dragonlance, their first D&D long-form campaign. We were all reading Dragon every month (and Space Gamer, Different Worlds, and White Dwarf, if we could find it). Every month we were shopping for articles with new rules, new ways of looking at an old rule, or new ideas for doing more with the rules than just rolling saving throws. Despite there being a lot of games and game companies and no central hub for communication, we could listen to someone describe their game and know right away if this was tactical and you had to count your arrows or if this was narrative and the GM was indulgent. The term used to be called Monty Hall, a reference to the polyester-suited game show host from Let’s Make a Deal.

One of the reasons why Aaron Allston’s Strikeforce is considered a foundational text is because he was the first person in our hobby to identify different player types, an idea that has resonated and moved into actual game theory, where it has been applied to computer gaming. Allston used this idea to help manage a group of different players at the table, another brilliant idea.

This was helpful, because back then, beggars couldn’t be choosers. We had real trouble coming up with three other friends to play D&D with. In some places, like rural Texas, for instance, we had to take what we could get. I HAD to do something about Wolverine-Guy, because if he wasn’t playing, there weren’t enough people in the group.

Not for nothing, but I think this is also where people get sideways trying to define the OSR. Is it a particular kind of game, or is it a play style? Much like pornography and Film Noir, I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it. Trying to pin down an exact definition that everyone can agree on is impossible and fruitless—don’t we have enough to argue about already? But the OSR should get the credit for dragging games with an earlier and also more accessible play style back into the limelight.

We’re enjoying a Tabletop Gaming Renaissance, and I think it’s particularly telling that we have both a skirmish style wargame and a table top role-playing game based on a computer game franchise with its own Amazon series. Granted, Fallout is an outlier in that it’s managed to be successful in every version of itself. Not every game gets the chance, and a lot of those that do tend to squander it. *cough*Assassin’sCreed*cough*.

My point is this: there are games that sit at every level of play now, and there’s every level of play for most games. Sticking a card on the game store’s bulletin board saying, “Experienced DM looking for four players for D&D 5th edition” isn’t helpful. What’s the game? Are we crawling or are we emoting? Are we playing in the DM’s carefully crafted setting he spent years developing, or is it a quick and dirty generic fantasy world that supports the characters being bad asses?

There’s no right or wrong answer, of course. But it’s interesting to me how unaware so many players are about other games, other play styles. Part of it is that D&D has the entrance to gaming all locked up; it’s what people hear the most about, it’s the most referenced game when it’s mentioned a all, and there’s certain enough material to ensure that one never has to play another game for as long as they live, if they so choose. Which they should not.

Another thing: these levels of play are sliders, albeit with some limits. It’s pretty easy to add tactical elements into Dungeons & Dragons. It’s also pretty easy to take Shadowdark and spin it into an incredible shared narrative experience. I’m not so sure you can turn a LARP into a tactical tabletop game, or vice versa, not without altering the play experience to the point that you don’t recognize the game anymore. Far easier to make D&D more narrative, or less narrative, as the situation dictates.

Perhaps ironically, my preferred play style is somewhere between 3 and 4 or if you prefer, 3.5. Heh. An edition joke. I’m not and never will be a 3.5 d20 game player, but it was too good a reference not to use. Anyway. I like players to speak in character and my NPCs do, too. I occasionally throw props or maps onto the table for player to fuss over, but it’s not expected. I play with maps, sometimes, but don’t necessarily build immersive terrain for a whole host of reasons starting with the age-old storage problem. And I like it when a plot runs for several game sessions, or characters advance from Level 1 to Level 10.

As I’ve gotten older and somewhat busier, my desire for a weekly game night has outstripped my ability to host one. Other projects get in the way of me planning such epic campaigns of yore that I don’t do it anymore, because otherwise I don’t get to play at all. As such, a pick-up-and-play style of gaming is what I am leaning on. 2.5? I don’t want to spend valuable writing time assembling a massive, sprawling campaign beforehand, especially if we’re only going to play two or three sessions, months apart. I can’t expect anyone to hold the ongoing story in their head. Most players need reminding during their weekly games what happened at the table.

Bottom Line: it’s okay to ask a group that you are joining what kind of D&D game you’ve signed up for. It’s okay to ask the DM what they expect of the players, and it’s imperative that the DM do likewise. If everyone wants a role-playing game where they spend an hour in the market, chatting with merchants to get their backstories, and the DM has a ten level megadungeon going begging, then no one is going to have a good time.

And for new GMs, a final piece of advice: know thyself. If you’re making the leap from player to gamer, it’s usually because you have an idea for a new campaign world of your own, or you have an idea about how to run the existing game differently. That’s fine, provided you tell the players in advance what you are doing; not the plot details, but the level of interaction you expect. And if you start writing out these intricate plots for things that rely on the players making a certain choice, consider making that your novel’s premise instead of your game night campaign. It’s no fun for the players if they can only listen to the epic you’ve constructed instead of getting to be a part of something you all do together.