(Way With Worlds is a weekly column on the art of worldbuilding published at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)
So last we met I discussed how using RPGs was actually a boon to Worldbuilding. There were positives in stimulating thinking, in sheer entertainment, and of course using premade concepts to test the consistency of an RPG system.
Now let’s talk the negatives of using using RPG systems in your worldbuilding, be they mapping characters to classes or diving into them for ideas. Yes, there are negatives.
Hey, it’s not all sunshine and worldbuilding here. Some stuff is just bad.
The core issue is that RPG systems are just that – systems – and any use of a system can constrain you. That is actually the point of having a system. The problem is the system is an outside factor influencing your imagination.
Which is good. Sometimes.
In this case however, we’ll look at how it can go bad. (more…)
(Way With Worlds is a weekly column on the art of worldbuilding published at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds).
A lot of people who wolrdbuild get into roleplaying games. I feel I can make this statement clearly; its true in my experience, and of course I’m not quoting any numbers so I have deniability. I’m covered here!
But seriously, it seems like people get ideas from, put ideas into, or think of ideas in forms of RPGs. I’m not just talking the freeform collective storytelling style of RPGs – I’m talking about the rules-and-dice type RPGs that we’re all familiar with.
We wonder what class a character would be in a given game.
We try and build a character we made in a given game.
We think of game rules as writing guidelines.
We get ideas looking over game rules.
And more . . . (more…)
Welcome to Lost in Translation‘s quick – wait, not so quick – series of adapting games to television and film. The series grew, but now it’s time to wrap up.
Part I – Video Games
Part II – Boardgames
Part III – Tabletop Role-Playing Games
Part IV – Adapting Games to Games
Part V – Adapting Games to Games: Tabletop RPGs
Wrapping Up
The core through the series kept going back to the key to adapting anything: respect for the original. In the case of games, there just happened to be a few elements that don’t exist in other media. Game mechanics do create a feel for a game; a game of Battleship should be different from a game of Parcheesi while a game of Clue should be different from a session of Vampire: The Requiem*. Video game adaptations also have to factor in that many viewpoint characters are there to represent the player and have no pre-determined personality. Tabletop RPGs allow the players to create their own characters. Boardgames may not even have a being beyond a marker.
Game adaptations have ranged from successful (Mortal Kombat, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider), failures (Dungeons & Dragons, The Legend of Chun Li), and the in between (Battleship**, Street Fighter). When an adaptation works, the new work captures the feel of the original. The failures, though, seem to miss the point completely or have no respect for the fans of the original. Warner Bros. is developing a new movie based on D&D, with the project originally working on adapting the RPG’s predecessor Chainmail. With luck, the scriptwriter has played the game and can bring the feel through to appease fans while still not alienating the audience that doesn’t play.
This series barely scratched the surface. I focused on television and movies, but skipped past books. Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October began with the Games Designer Workshop wargame Harpoon. Red October would go on to be adapted as a movie, which then got adapted as a wargame by TSR. The Wild Cards series of books got its beginnings in a Superworld campaign with George R.R. Martin as the GM; in 2007, Green Ronin picked up the license for an RPG based on the setting. Works get adapted, then the adaptations are adapted. Pull one thread and the next thing you know, you have half of a different medium following like cats chasing a laser dot.*** With the proliferation of gaming, whether board, role-playing, card, or video, more and more creators are going to find inspiration in what they play. Amazon’s foray into publishing fanfiction (see Steve’s thoughts, parts one and two for more), we could be seeing more game adaptations in a few years.
Next week, an adaptation by any other name.
* Less blood drinking in Clue, ideally.
** Battleship wasn’t a bad movie in and of itself. It didn’t live up to expectations or to the budget it had.
*** There was a metaphor here, but it got lost.
Welcome to Lost in Translation‘s quick series about the ins and outs of adapting games to television and film.* As seen since the first post, if something is popular, someone else will want to adapt it to a different medium. Today, 2013, the most likely medium to adapt from elsewhere is the Hollywood film.
Part I – Video Games
Part II – Boardgames
Part III – Tabletop Role-Playing Games
Part IV – Adapting Games to Games
Adapting Games to Games: Tabletop RPGs
Two weeks ago, I went through how to adapt boardgames and video games as other games, leaving tabletop role-playing games aside for later. A few minutes of quick, barely scratching the surface research later had me wondering just what, exactly, had I gotten myself into.
Back in 1974, Tactical Studies Rules released Dungeons & Dragons, based on a miniatures wargame called Chainmail. Since then, D&D has been the most popular and best selling RPG released, the 800 pound gorilla of the industry. When computer gaming appeared, many games, including Rogue and its imitators**, emulated the feel and, at times, the mechanics of the RPG. Similar adventure games, such as the Ultima series and the Bard’s Tale series, owe their existence to D&D. The influence of D&D is still felt today, with terminology*** appearing in games like The Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, and Diablo, not to mention the concept of a Massive Multiplayer Online RPG (aka, the MMORPG). Two MMORPGS, Everquest and World of Warcraft eventually had tabletop RPGs released, both based on the Dungeons & Dragons third edition open gaming license. A third, Neverwinter Nights was an SSI-licensed game based on Neverwinter in the Forgotten Realms and was available on AOL in the early 90s.
TSR and Wizards of the Coast eventually did license official video games. Strategic Simulations Inc, now owned by Ubisoft, created a series of games based on both the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance settings. At least one project, Curse of the Azure Bonds was created as a video game, an adventure module for the RPG, and a tie-in novel, with all three having good reception on release. When WotC bought TSR and released D&D3E, Bioware received the license and released the Baldur’s Gate series of games.
D&D isn’t the only tabletop RPG, though. Other RPGs have been adapted as well. White Wolf‘s Vampire: The Masquerade has had two video games released – Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption. Hero Games’ Champions was the original inspiration for City of Heroes, which led to the Champions MMORPG. GDW’s MegaTraveller had two games, The Zhodani Conspiracy and Quest for the Ancients, both based on elements in the Third Imperium setting.
The goal, as it was back in Part III is to keep the feel of the tabletop experience. However, since many RPGs are simulating a genre already, care must be taken to avoid the added filter that the game might need. The game mechanics can be hidden away in the code; the player doesn’t need to know why he or she missed the dragon with the crossbow shot, just that the dragon’s full attention is now on the player’s character. Since there’s no guarantee on the type of character that will be played, since that will be the player’s choice, the writers will need to have the plot come from a non-player character, with the PC out to thwart the evil plans. If a game comes with a setting, the feel of the setting needs to be replicated. Fortunately, most RPGs come with illustrations, which should allow the video game designers to get a visual feel of the game. When done well, the game is successful. If not, fans of the game may avoid the video game.
This holds even if the RPG is being adapted as a boardgame. Vampire would not work well as a boardgame; the elements of the RPG include the struggle to keep the monster within in check, political machinations, and keeping the mundane world unaware that the supernatural exists and is hostile, none of which is easy to portray on a board. D&D, however, has had several boardgames based on the elements of exploring a subterranean maze and killing the evil creatures who dwell within. Ideally, an adaptation should fit within the setting, or one of the settings, of the game, feature iconic character types, and be representative of a typical game if possible.
Next week, the series wrap up.
* And theatre, though I’d be surprised if someone made that leap.
** Known as “roguelikes”, and includes Larn, Hack/, Nethack. and Diablo.
*** A non-exhaustive list of examples: Class, Level, Hit Points, attribute names
Welcome to Lost in Translation‘s quick series about the ins and outs of adapting games to television and film.* As seen since the first post, if something is popular, someone else will want to adapt it to a different medium. Today, 2013, the most likely medium to adapt from elsewhere is the Hollywood film.
Part I – Video Games
Part II – Boardgames
Part III – Tabletop Role-Playing Games
Part IV – Adapting Games to Games
Adapting Games to Games
So far, I’ve looked at adapting games as movies and television. There is still one more way for a game to be adapted – as another game. Already, a questions appears; “Why? What’s the point?” A popular game, though, is ripe to be exploited.
Starting with boardgames, what usually happens is the game gets adapted as a video game. The main advantage is that the player can get a computer opponent when there is no one else available to play with. Another advantage is having an impartial judge, the computer or console, make sure that the game is played fair. With the integration of the Internet into day to day lives, updates to the game, in the form of new content, is easy to get. Trivia games, such as Trivial Pursuit, can add new questions and fix wrong answers with a patch instead of waiting for the next expansion pack to be published. A successful adaptation of a boardgame has to keep the gameplay the same in the video game; otherwise, why play the video game when the boardgame is within reach. Most boardgames have simple mechanics, relatively speaking. The rules have to be easily interpreted by the players to keep the game flowing and keep the number of arguments to a minimum. The computer opponent needs to be challenging but not impossible to beat. The experience has to be similar to the original game, though added details like animation are a plus.
Video games, usually ones that have become household names, do get adapted as board games. Sometimes, it’s a brand applied to another existing game, typically Monopoly**. Other times, there’s an effort to bring the feel of the video game to the board; the Frogger adaptation involves trying to cross a highway and the Pac-Man board game was a multi-player version of the video game. World of Warcraft has spawned boardgames, a trading card game, and a miniatures game. HeroClix, a miniatures game, has sets for Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, Gears of War, Halo, and Street Fighter. Again, the experience the players have must be similar to the original video game. Pac-Man‘s board is set out like the video game’s, with the players’ tokens looking like Pac-Man himself. There will be cases where it will be difficult to bring the video game experience to the table; first-person shooters will lose that perspective. The HeroClix examples, however, add a new dimension; all HeroClix sets are compatible. It is possible to find out if a team up of Master Chief from Halo and Chun Li from Street Fighter can win against Batman and Robin.
Video games have also been adapted as tabletop rpgs. Not many, the market for a tabletop RPG is already a niche, and the cost of licensing a title may be more than the game can bring in. That said, the three adaptations that come to mind are Dragon Age: Origins (adapted by Green Ronin), Street Fighter II (adapted by White Wolf; currently out of print], and Everquest (adapted by Sword & Sorcery Studio, an imprint of White Wolf; print status unknown). Adapting a video game to a tabletop RPG means that the coding used to play the game, especially determining success with tasks, needs to be made available to the players in a way that is understandable by a human, not a machine. As with the case of the Street Fighter II and Everquest games, a tabletop game company may use its house rules and try to fit the video game’s setting around those. White Wolf used its Storytelling system with Street Fighter; the fit wasn’t ideal; the Everquest tabletop RPG used the third edition Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License as a base, recreating the classes from the video game to fit. Green Ronin, however, created a new system for the Dragon Age RPG, one that reflects what happens during gameplay. The key for a successful adaptation is to have the tabletop RPG feel like the video game while still being approachable by both people new to the tabletop hobby and people new to the video game’s setting. Characters should be capable of doing what their counterparts in the video game do; Street Fighter didn’t manage to do this while Everquest presented the same type of character that a new player just starting the video game would get.
As for tabletop RPGs, the adaptation of those spans the history of video games and will be dealt with in Part V
* And theatre, though I’d be surprised if someone made that leap.
** When the Monopoly movie comes out, will there be a Monopoly Monopoly?
