A word or two about standards, roleplaying, and generic systems

We live in a world where standardisation is a not just a lofty goal—it is desired practice. There are standards for nearly everything: railroad track width, the paper money and coinage that drives our economy, the electricity outlets that power our CD players, daylight savings time, et al. In the business world, companies across the globe tout ISO certification as evidence of their standardised methodologies. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposes, adopts, and enforces standardised policies for work environments free of risk and danger. The Internet as we know it would not exist were it not for widespread standardisation of network protocols like TCP/IP or communications media like HTML.

So what do standards have to do with role-playing? Perhaps a trip down memory lane might serve my point ...

Veteran AD&D players may recall the 1st Edition Dungeon Masters' Guide. On pages 112-114 of this now-venerable tome, there exists a series of guidelines for intermixing an AD&D campaign with that of the Boot Hill and Gamma World games. Great concept: The idea of blending disparate genres into a cohesive whole is refreshing at the least—a natural extension of the broad imaginative prowess of gamers, codified in black and white. At best, it opens up doors to near-infinite gaming possibilities; if one's AD&D campaign, with multiple continents on multiple worlds, each nestled in the space of the multiverse, weren't enough, why not add to the campaign the flavour of the American West on Terra or its post-apocalyptic future?

But the integration of this wondrous concept is flawed, as a quick perusal of pages 112-114 suggests. After all, how do AD&D characters react to being shot by a Colt revolver? For that matter, how does a defence robot deal with a fireball? What of Gamma World artefacts in the hands of your favourite cleric/thief? Would chain mail armour have saved Ike Clanton when he faced off against Wyatt Earp?

It's fairly obvious that the lack of standardisation between the three games in question caused no little confusion. In three short, two-columned pages, we witness a great concept whose potential was quashed for no reason greater than dissimilar game mechanics—a lack of standardisation.

And we've likely seen plenty of examples of how a deviation from standards can cause minor headaches in the mildest circumstances, or significant calamity in more acute situations. Remember Java-based errors with Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.x? Even as I write this, Microsoft VM errors are rife with respect to Sun's Java specifications. For that matter, Internet Explorer continues to resist stubbornly the suggested mandates of W3C. Don't even get me started on MS Outlook (anyone want to send a copy of RFC 2193 to Redmond?).

If we apply such difficulties to the industry of roleplaying, perhaps we can get a glimpse of how standards can make our hobby that much more fulfilling. The 1st Edition DMG provides a sterling example; the foibles of certain software giants simply sharpen the point:

Standards are good and helpful because they make our lives easier and broaden the application and utility of the things we create.

And creation is part and parcel of the role-playing experience. Let us not forget that any RPG is all about imagination, used to create characters, settings, plots, villains, monsters, treasure, history, magic items, and on and on. If we spend so much of our leisure time fabricating these products of the imagination, isn't it logical that we'd like these creations to be as useful and appealing as possible?

Standards amongst TSR's games might have helped Gary Gygax along, as he penned pages 112-114 of the 1st Edition DMG. With all credit due to him, I suspect the hobby as a whole was too immature at that time to envision a standardised set of rules that encompassed multiple genres. But such foresight has certainly blossomed within the industry by now, in the form of generic RPG engines.

Why? Well, generic RPG systems, by definition, have broader appeal than those games concentrating on one setting, or one time frame, or one specific mode of play. Like Java, heralded as the "write-once/run-anywhere" programming language, generic RPG engines can be developed once, but serve a host of varying genres. And the analogy isn't too far off base: I assert that, if the first generation of RPGs consisted of systems geared toward singular genres, the second generation is certainly comprised of generic engines. And the appeal of generic RPGs is clearly visible.

For example, Steve Jackson has his GURPS, there's the fledging FUDGE RPG, recently published in the form of a nice, softbound book, and the HERO System has been around for quite some time. Even TSR appears to be joining the generic fray: Wizards of the Coast's Ryan Dancey recently said in an interview that the D&D 3rd Edition was being modelled after something called the "D20 System," supposedly an engine "that could be used for any genre of role-playing game."

But I suggest that the industry is still awaiting the third generation of RPGs: generic systems done well. The longevity of GURPS certainly attests to its popularity, but I submit that this is due to its role as a pioneer within the generic "genre," if you will, and not apparently to its stellar levels of playability. FUDGE is deceptively simple, but its shortcomings are revealed as soon as one actually attempts to decipher the rules and realises, in the process, that the game's mechanics are significantly subjective and convoluted. The HERO System is in its 4th Edition, but one hears scant little about its presence in the industry. . . [In 2004, Hero Games released HERO System 5th Edition Revised; I stand corrected. - EDS]

And then there's The Chimera RPG. We at The Welsh Piper hope it pioneers what I've defined as the third generation of RPGs. Will Chimera be the flagship of a new fleet of hitherto unseen RPGs? Will it gain widespread recognition? More importantly, will people enjoy it and support it and ask for it at their local hobby shop? Or will it be relegated to obscurity, nestled within some milkcrate on the floor of your gaming retailer, gathering dust among the other titles that now sell for $3.00 apiece just to make room for more popular inventory?

We'll just have to wait and see. And play-test and tweak and tinker and refine. But we have a good start. After all, Chimera is already designed to support play in a number of genres. We think it's easy to learn and easy to play. And we think the mechanics are consistent, yet flexible enough to deal with all sorts of unknown territory.

Like Ike Clanton in chain mail.