Sig’s “Three Tenets of the RPG Genre”

I love RPGs. Ever since six year old Me convinced my grandparents to get me Knights of the Old Republic for my Xbox, I’ve been completely in love with the genre. As I got older and experienced more from the genre (notably Morrowind and Oblivion, Dragon Age: Origins, and VtM: Bloodlines when I eventually got my first pc) I eventually found myself dabbling with TTRPGs. I’m now proudly a Forever-GM for DnD and Pathfinder, though I do prefer the former. In short I love RPGs.

But

Recently I’ve been watching my best friend play through Dragon Age: The Veilguard and oh boy I’ve learned a lot about myself. First that my best friend has terrible taste (opinion, but heads up this entire thing is, so don’t take anything I say to heart) and also I’ve been subconsciously holding every single RPG to what I’m now subbing “The Three Tenets of the RPG Genre.” It’s a mouthful but I’m not creative enough to think of anything else.

What are the Three Tenets? Long winded introduction over and here we go!

Story. Player Choice and Consequence. Lore and World-building. Yea that’s about it. Those three essential tenets are what, in my opinion, make an RPG amazing or terrible. While on the surface that seems simple, and honestly it probably is and I’m just overthinking things, but it’s actually much deeper than that.

Every single RPG I’ve played since Fallou-


Fallout: New Vegas is mt favorite game of all time. Not even RPG, I mean game in general. I’ve sunk thousands of hours into this game across Xbox 360, PC, Xbox One, and now Xbox Series S. Every single time I play it I swear on my life I encounter something new; be it a solution to a quest I didn’t know before, a hidden dialogue option I never encountered, or a build that completely changes my approach to the gameplay, every single time it’s a new gameplay experience.

And it doesn’t end there. The story is so good. Starting the game with a blank slate amnesiac character is always a great, if cliche, choice as it allows the player to create their own backstory for how their Courier ended up in that situation. This is then expanded through dialogue: there’s dozens of dialogue choices that the player can make (or not, depending on what they want to be true) that fills in the backstory for their Courier further.

Don’t even get me started on the factions and side content. Everything in this game relates to the main conflict somehow in someway. Every settlement you come across is directly or indirectly affected by the war. Every single faction is in desperate need of that winning edge, knowing the Second Battle of Hoover Dam is just around the corner.

The DLCs not only tel their own overarching narrative, but a narrative that ties into the story of the Courier and the main conflict of the main story. It is so impressive and fun to find all the links between these expansions prior to Lonesome Road and having that DLC be the final quest before the Second Battle. It is such a satisfying story told across several unique DLC and having everything tie together coherently is a marvel in my opinion.

Everything ties into the narrative or the world-building in some way. It is, to me, the perfect RPG and it has yet to ever be replicated in my book. Baldur’s Gate 3 is the closest, but still hasn’t beaten it.

Okay, New Vegas rant and context out of the way, let’s get onto Tenet I: Story.

For an RPG to be good it must first have a good story to tell. Seems simple enough. Until you realize it’s actually not. See RPGs are unique from other genres in that the player is the driving force of the narrative. In most other genres, the player character is a vehicle to experience a specific, well, experience. Whether that’s an FPS for a war experience, a horror game for a spooky one, they are usually vehicles for the player to interact and experience a world or setting they can’t in real life. The ultimate entertainment medium, in my opinion, as it’s direct interaction.

That being said, RPGs and their narratives are driven by the player. The story has to be one that allows for player expression through that narrative. After all it is “role-playing,” you want to experience a story where you are an active role in it.

Where in most games the story serves to tell a story, an RPG tells YOUR story if you existed in that world/setting. Your character is not just a character, they’re the one who is driving the narrative and is an active participant in the world. And it’s not just the overarching narrative. A good RPG has your character develop and interact with various interpersonal relationships. What your character says to them shapes how they view you. You can even romance them in most RPGs. Their stories and relationships interconnected with your own character’s personal story which in turn adds more steaks to the larger narrative.

Games I feel capture this sense of meaningful story include Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins and Inquisition, Disco Elysium, Morrowind, and Fallout: New Vegas.

This is by far the hardest of the three tenets to pull off in my opinion, Tenet II: Player Choice and Consequence.

A good RPG has to give the player choices that have meaningful consequences that impact the narrative and, to some extent, the world they are interacting with. These choices can be major or minor but they should all have some sort of impact on the player, the characters they interact with, the progression of the narrative, or the game world in some capacity.

In an effort to avoid constantly bringing up New Vegas, I’ll instead use Dragon Age as my primary example for this tenet, specifically Origins through to Inquisition as to avoid any potential spoilers for Veilguard.

Spoiler warning for Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age Inquisition.

All you have to do is look at Dragon Age Keep to see the point I’m trying to make here. The sheer volume of choices players can make across these three games is astounding. Now I won’t lie it isn’t perfect but where it works it really works.

Whether it is a minor cameo, a brief mention, or a direct reference, these games somehow manage to incorporate nearly every choice players make. Some create incredible character narratives, such as Loghain who can go from antagonist to hero willing to sacrifice his own life to save Hawke and the Inquisitor.

And it isn’t just the grand choices that matter. Interpersonal relationships are a staple of the franchise. Companions have their own views and goals, some willing to kill the player over if they feel those goals are threatened. In two of the games you can romance the secret villain of their respective games, Anders in 2 and Solas in Inquisition.

Dragon Age, and in many of the same regards the original Mass Effect Trilogy, is a prime example of character choice and consequence done correctly.

Finally we arrive at the final of the three, Tenet III: Lore and World-building.

This one is short because I mean come on. A good RPG of course has to have a world that’s engaging and worth interacting with. After all if you’re the driving force in that narrative it should at least take place in a setting you can invest yourself in.

More so it’s important that the world feels organic and natural. While I don’t hold it in any high standards as a RPG, Skyrim is the prime example of this tenet.

No game is like it. Anywhere. There are other open world RPGs. But they aren’t Skyrim. Honestly every Bethesda game, sans Starfield, has been imbued with this incredible sense of wonder and each presents a world that’s just so easy to get lost in. I don’t play Skyrim for the story. I play it to get lost in Skyrim.

Other great examples, in my opinion, include Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Disco Elysium, and Wasteland 3.

Naturally as I started drafting this I began to wonder how, if at all, these tenets could be applied to SWRP. Obviously this isn’t a traditional RPG. This isn’t even like traditional TTRPGs. This is a place where individual characters exist with their own narratives that may or may not also tie into either other character’s narratives or the faction they are a member of. It could even tie into a site-wide event where there is an overarching story, but how it unfolds is completely up to the characters and the writer’s that write them.

It is a unique blend of social interaction and personal imagination that is rare to come across. Personally I’ve never found a site quite like this and I’m glad I haven’t, especially cause I love Star Wars.

But can these tenets apply here? Yes and no. I believe to an extent all three can be applied to post-by-post roleplay.

Story is the easiest to implement. By simply posting you’re a participant in the narrative and are a driving favorite within in. Whether you’re starting a thread or responding; everything you do advances the story, be it your character’s story or whatever overarching narrative the original author is trying to tell.

Lore and World-building is also easy to practice. Star Wars is an established setting but SWRP is neerly 1000 years after the movies. This means enough time has past for new lore and world-building to occur. That happens organically same as the story, with each post having the potential to expand upon the lore already established.

Choice and Consequnce is tricky, however. Every writer is different and every writer, whether they admit it or not, generally views their character as the main character. After all it is THEIR character and THEIR character’s story. It’s only natural to want that story to progress in a way that fits your view of that character.

But personal bias can be blinding. Main character syndrome doesn’t matter in a single player RPG, but it does in one with other players and characters involved. Anyone who’s encountered That Player at a DnD table knows exactly how bad main character syndrome can damage the narrative. Post-by-post RP seems to suffer this the most.

In-character actions should have consequences. If, for example, an important NPC isn't being properly guarded, it should make logical sense that a skilled killer could get to them without anyone being able to stop them in time. Yet doing this can and likely will create drama with other writer’s who feel it isn’t fair such an NPC would be so easily eliminated, conveniently ignoring the fact that narratively they were vulnerable to such an attack.

Meta-gaming is lame in any context but in RPGs it’s doubly frustrating. I’m unsure if player choice and consequence can exist completely in a space where everyone is technically the main character.

I love RPGs. No matter if it’s an action RPG like Mass Effect, something more old school like Baldur’s Gate II, or the greatest RPG ever (in my opinion) New Vegas, I will likely always consider the RPG genre to be my favorite.

I think discovering these three core tenets I’m able to look back at the RPGs I’ve played over the years and more accurately pinpoint what I loved, liked, disliked, and hated about each of them. It also allows me to better understand my own writing as an RPer here and as a Forever-GM at the table. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed my geek ramblings about things that everyone probably already knew but hey, I’m slow what can I say.

Thanks for reading and see you next time!