Themes in RPGs

Since I've been thinking about Oriental Adventures lately (particularly this post), I'm mulling over how different OSR type games and different RPGs in general handle different genres of fiction.

Recent D&D, since around the time of Dragonlance in the latter days of AD&D 1st Edition, has been very focused on High Fantasy: dirt-farmers becoming heroes that save the kingdom or even the world. The grognards will tell you that older D&D was Sword and Sorcery: you're mostly in it for gold and glory things are more Conan-style with the strange weirdness of Lovecraft and Clark thrown in. Though few OSR games capture that sort of feeling for me except Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperboria or the Conan d20 game. A Song of Fire and Ice / Game of Thrones, thus far, began a bit more in the Sword and Sorcery realm, but is turning more High Fantasy. But we don't really have the Wuxia or Chambara sorts of elements in many fantasy games.

One of the things I yearned for after reading Oriental Adventures was to implement the Honor system in lieu of alignment for a D&D game. OA Honor reminds me to an extent of the World of Darkness morality type system (Station in Al-Qadim pales in comparison), and that seems eminently usable and easier for players to grasp than a nebulous alignment system. Of course, the themes of duty vs conscience and preserving face are ripe with conflicted story possibilities.

On the Wuxia end of things, I like the idea of a corrupt and/or distant bureaucracy, where past tragedies call out for revenge and justice can only be found in the acts of individual heroes.

I have a hankering to run an Al-Qadim game still, based on the Ruined Kingdoms where the characters are trying to found a new city, and have been reading the Arabian Nights now. I have an actual enjoyable translation rather than the old drivel of the Victorian era. And I hope to distil some of that into sets of recurrent themes and tropes that could be put into a game similar to some of the ideas of Wuxia, Sword and Sorcery, and Chambara.

I don't necessarily see all these as incompatible, but it is too much, perhaps, to roll into one game. Which is a damned shame if true. But I'll be damned if I don't consider adding this into whatever games I may run next. Furthermore, I think this is one of those areas where players can and should be consulted. There's nothing to say that my Al-Qadim game couldn't be influenced by Wuxia themes rather than Arabian Nights ones. But I think the idea of having a few stylistic guidelines for your campaign (and changing them up for the next one) can really help in personalizing a module or crafting the next adventure.

Oriental Adventures (also) got it wrong (But Al-Qadim got it right)

Though I just posted about how Oriental Adventures did classes right, it also has some failures we can learn from. Chief among these are the broader compatibility and conceptual familiarity (or exoticism).

First, on the compatibility issue. While it is refreshing that OA doesn't need a generic fighter or thief, it isn't entirely clear why everything "western" was excluded. That isn't to say that you couldn't have an eastern adventurer in a western setting or vice versa, but why are there no indigenous thieves? Is the idea of a thief too foreign to the world of Oriental Adventures? And what is the point of the Wu Jen? They're just a magic-user basically with a slightly different flavor. As a part of the broader D&D world, it isn't clear why a few things couldn't have been recycled. Put it another way, why did OA have to be so different? (I realize this may contradict my previous post a little, but there's something to be said for simple design and it is simpler to use what you've already got.)

This brings up the issue of conceptual familiarity or exoticism. While most people probably knew what a Samurai and Ninja were, every other class gets an exotic name as well. Shukenja, Sohei, Bushi, Kensai, Yakuza, Wu Jen... It feels like its starting to get a little much, when Weaponmaster or Magic-User/Wizard/Sorcerer might have helped a little. I think we see a better balance in Al-Qadim (i.e. Arabian Adventures) where we see some of the subclasses (i.e. kits) have transparent names (Desert Rider, Corsair, Elemental Mage, Sorcerer, Mystic, Beggar-Thief, Merchant-Rogue, Barber, Holy Slayer, Mercenary Barbarian, Pragmatist, Ethoist, Moralist) and only a few have Arabian names (Askar, Faris, Hakima, Matrud, Sha'ir, Mamluk, Rawun, Kahin, Sa'luk). Its about half-and-half, and then you can add in their "outlander" kits (Outland Warrior, Outland Priest, and Ajami; ajami is the wizard while outland rogues are sa`louk). While it is considerably more options than OA/Kara-Tur, half of the AA/Al-Qadim are named in a relatively transparent and familiar way. There's no additional work to figure out what a Barber or Desert Rider are, and relatively little to figure out Corsairs or Pragmatists.

Another thing Oriental Adventures got wrong is the races. Gone are the Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits we know and love. In are spirit folk, animalistic spirit-folk with strange names, and some sort of dwarf-like creature. Al-Qadim took a different approach: the setting is inclusive, racial hatreds are gone, but things are still human-focused. This lets people play elves or dwarves. Or goblins, kobolds, ogres, etc. in the City of Delights boxed set; if Al-Qadim had been released after the Complete Book of Humanoids, that little bit would probably have been included in the main book itself.

Oriental Adventures loses out on the familiar races because of this, and doesn't get much to make up for it. Dark Sun, according to legend, originally would have been bereft of the standard D&D races too. I think Dark Sun is more powerful for including the basic races and turning their archetypes around, plus they still included a few new/crazy things (Half-Giants, Thri-kreen, and later Aarakocra and Pterrans and Dray). In a fantasy Japan or China (or Mongolia or Tibet or India or...), is there no room for the elves and dwarves?

I suspect that Tolkien and later fantasy gives us an idea what elves and dwarves and hobbits and orcs are. And that may be one reason why Gnomes have been a strange addition to D&D: they're not clearly portrayed in some of the canonical fantasy fiction. So a stronger OA would have, perhaps, found a place for Elves and Dwarves in a fantasy Asia. This is what OA got wrong, perhaps. It is too different from normal D&D, both in terms of some of the mechanical aspects which perhaps didn't need to be changed, and some conceptual elements which were excised or exoticized rather than form a natural bridge.

Oriental Adventures got it right

Now that D&D 5th Edition is about to come out, I've been musing a bit more about what would make a better game. I just bought the PDFs of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperboria (AS&SH) and it kind of hit me that there are a number of different classes in the original game and retroclones, but Oriental Adventures hit on a core rightness that other versions of the game haven't. Maybe it was a comment that veteran players tend to prefer the basic 4 classes and get a deeper experience from them, but since the addition of the Paladin and Ranger and so forth, something is off. Here's the quote itself:

Utilizing only the four principal character classes is recommended when introducing young or inexperienced players to AS&SH. A game with but these four classes is also easier for a novice referee to manage. Furthermore, veteran gamers oft deem the four principal classes as more gratifying compared with a dozen or more subclasses; indeed, the classes of fighter, magician, cleric, and thief suitably cover the gamut of archetypes portrayed by such literary sword-and-sorcery masters as R. E. Howard and F. Leiber.  (AS&SH p16)

They're all redundant classes, other than the basic four. An illusionist is a focused but lesser magic-user in the same way that an assassin is a lesser thief and the paladin/ranger are fighters with a little something different. The paladin and ranger seem to be more iconic because they actually do something a little different than the fighter, whereas illusionist and assassin are more focused (and possibly lesser) versions of the basic class. Druids are apparently distinct enough from clerics to have caught on.

The subclasses of older editions have been copied and recopied in retroclones, but there's very little that distinguishes them from their basic versions at times. I've particularly noticed this in the magic-using classes and fighter. AS&SH has illusionists, necromancers, and pyromancers but they're basically just magic-users with a specialization. Third Edition added the sorcerer, which was a nice change. Maybe this is why I like the Wizard-Sorcerer-Warlock trio for magician classes since they actually cast spells differently, and can support their own sub-classes or specialties (based on school specialization, bloodline, or pact). They feel like classes, not just like variant wizards (as necromancers or illusionists do).