Weaknesses from the Past

Historically role playing games come out of war-gaming. The focus of war-gaming is to recreate the combat situations from various epochs from humanities past. Typically these are either small squad based events or large epic battles.

Types of Conflict

These archetypes of conflict however tend to focus on a handful conflicts that make up the human experience. They also tend to only focus on the physical impacts of those conflicts.

When we look at the sorts of conflicts that

Character vs. Nature - This struggle can be modeled within the framework of traditional role playing games as long as the outcome of the struggle is physical. Examples here would be a man lost at sea during a storm. But another example that might be hard to model within traditional role playing games is social and mental stress a character experiences as a Cast Away on an uninhabited island.

Character vs. Society - This struggle is different than Character vs. Character, which is personal. Character vs. Culture is a character fighting against the assumptions that all of society has. Examples of this include prejudices, moral senses of right and wrong, meanings of happinesses, freedom, justice or love.

Character vs. Character - This struggle is very easy to understand within the framework of traditional role playing games as long as the resolution system to the conflict is based on using their body to resolve the conflict. Examples could be one person racing another person around the track. But another example might be two leaders trying negotiate peace between their two tribes; this is very hard to model within traditional role playing games. Another difficult could be one character flirting with another character.

This conflict can also encompass characters that are so different from each other that they have a hard time understanding each other. Examples of these others include: Aliens, Gods, or Artificial Intelligences. In all these cases the conflict should be personal. They should also trigger conflicts related to the next area of conflict, Character vs. Self, as the character in conflict works out answers to questions along the lines of “am I just like that other character?” or “Is that other character just like me?”

Character vs. Self - In this struggle the character is struggling with their own weaknesses and strengths. Examples could be an alcoholic struggling to abstain from liquor. An introvert deciding to stand up and make their mind known. A jilted lover trying to move on after being betrayed. A slave deciding to stand up for themselves and demand to be treated as an equal.

Types of Impacts

As mentioned before war-games tend to focus on the physical impacts of their decisions. Sometimes the mental impacts of conflict get modeled as well. However each of these are not the only impacts of our human experience. If we look at the conflicts from above we can start to see a couple aspects of impact we need to address.

Physical

Physical impacts are par for the course in Role Playing Games and in War-Games. HitPoints are the typical example. Damage Dice are another example.

Mental

Mental impacts are not as common for Role Playing Games. Generally mental fatigue is tracked using various models. It’s easier to see games that model this with ability scores for Intelligence and Wisdom, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy place to go to understand how much more mental stress a character can have.

Social

Social impacts are only seen in some Role Playing Games. Generally we are all familiar with ability scores like Charisma, but what is modeled by this? Beauty? Etiquette? Social Standing? All these sorts of conflicts generally get compressed into one impact.

Spiritual

Spiritual impacts are seen in many computer games with a number that is tracked called ‘Mana’ or ‘Spell Points.’ One important thing to take into account as you look at spiritual impacts is that you need to insure that you

Notes: The [http://ajs-wargaming.blogspot.com/2017/01/hanibal-at-gates-campaign-game.html]photo above is by Allan Wright and depicts players re-enacting the Battle of Thebes, using a homebrew ruleset called ‘‘Hannibal at the Gates’’ taken in January 2017. This file is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.