Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 24, 2011

In my mind, for a game to qualify as an RPG, it has to implement at least some of the player’s commands through the filter of character skill. The canonical example is attacking an enemy. In many kinds of non-RPG games, the player hits if he (or she) has aimed correctly, and does damage based on the weapon. In an RPG, the chance of hitting or the amount of damage that is done, or both, are determined by the character’s skill. The player’s “aim” may or may not be a factor.

But this does NOT mean that an RPG does not require player skill.

The dependence upon character skill and random chance does not remove player skill from the game any more than it removes player skill from Chess and Poker.

It’s all about interaction and choice. I’ll go back to Dungeons & Dragons, a game many readers will be familiar with at least by its computer analog. By my understanding, the lowly fighter (or “fighting-man”) was originally conceived as a beginner’s option in earlier versions of the game. Lacking spells, the fighter had fewer options than the other base classes (in original D&D, there was no thief class – it was just fighter, cleric, and magic-user).

But what options did a fighter have?

#1 – Decisions when and how to engage an enemy: While many fighters (and every other class) used Charisma as a dump stat, in theory they could parley (or bribe) as well as anybody else. They could avoid combat.

#2 – Tactics: There was an emphasis once upon a time (somewhat lost in the art today, sadly) on using your noggin to cleverly defeat monsters at minimal risk to yourself using surprise, the environment, or tools (quite open-endedly, requiring “Dungeon Master” – referee – adjudication) to provide an advantage. Unfortunately, some DMs got annoyed when players decided to bury a hydra in a landslide or engage a fire-breathing dragon from an underground lake to reduce fire damage, and would award reduced XP for cleverness.

#3 – Movement and positioning: This could also be treated as tactics, but was more universal. There’s a reason kicking the door open to fight monsters was so popular – the doorway provided a convenient bottleneck, especially when the party was outnumbered. Skilled players would maneuver to maximize their advantage, encourage the enemy to get into a convenient grouping, and so forth. A lot of games didn’t use miniatures and relied on more abstract, verbal descriptions of positioning, which limited this activity, but most DMs still allowed players to describe particular maneuvers so this could remain a skill factor.

#4 – Target selection: While this only rarely requires much rocket-science to make a good choice, skilled players combined this with #3 to make the most of the probabilities of the system. In the early days, enemy morale was another factor, and triggering a morale check at the right time could be just as critical to success as keeping the enemy away from your fragile magic-users. So sometimes it was better to knock down the weakest enemies first, and other times the stronger opponents were better targets. It was all in how you played the odds.

#5 – Magic item usage: For fighters, magic item usage generally meant “potions,” and more often than not “healing potions.” Knowing how and when to sacrifice an attack to drink a potion – or change weapons, or use some other magic device – was another differentiator for skilled and unskilled players.

#6 – Bugging out: Er, “disengaging.” This was (and still is) pretty difficult to pull off once combat is joined, especially since heavy armor tends to slow a character down. For less-skilled players, the difficulty of disengaging makes it something they never consider… every combat is a battle to the death. For skilled players, it’s a difficult decision, which may result in leaving characters or treasures behind, but always a potential option if exercised early enough and carefully enough.

#7 – Non-combat activities: While the results of attribute rolls might not favor the intelligence or wisdom checks for fighters, outside of combat the player could contribute to puzzling their way through the challenges of dungeon exploration as well as anybody else.

While an unskilled player might perceive the early D&D rules as being nothing but chance and “character skill” as they do little but rolling for attack and damage every round (“hack-and-slash”), skilled players recognized their rolls (pun intended) and took an active part in maximizing them and mitigating the impact of randomness.

A good RPG does not favor character skill over player skill. Neither must it assume that “player skill” must be a direct action-based analog of the character’s activity – swinging a sword or picking a lock. A good RPG should be a blend of player decision-making and activity (whether action-based or a more thoughtful pace) with character-based skills and limitations.