17 August 2008

Schools of RPGs, follow-up

I’m not sure about The Fantasy Trip, Chivarly & Sorcery, or Runequest. Which probably has to do with the fact that I never played them.

Trying to be uncharacteristically inclusive, I’d put computer RPGs into the engineer school, as an extreme example of it. LARP? I don’t know.

2 comments:

Will Douglas said...

I played The Fantasy Trip a bit.

It started as a wargame, Melee, which was followed up by another wargame, Wizard.

I.e.; rules for Combat and Magic.

Then the "world book" or "GM's guide" came out. The world included was described by one reviewer as "not so much a world as an excuse".

There are two things that make me feel it wasn't completely old school:

* The Advanced rules for Melee and Wizard. Added too many fiddly things that didn't really matter.

* It was taken from board wargames, instead of miniatures. There's a whole different vibe there. Miniatures say "Hey, here are my rules, use them however you like!" whereas board games just say "here are the rules."

Andrew said...

I've never larped but based on what I've heard about it, I think it falls mostly in the freeform school.