Quirkworthy

Is DS a roleplaying game? It’s a question I’ve heard a few times now. The answer is very simple: no… and yes.

No, DS is not designed to be an RPG, and never was. It lacks any specific guidance or suggestions for a DM and differs from a pure RPG in the structure of what it includes and how this is presented. It was always intended to be a board game, and that’s what it remains.

However…

What is a roleplaying game anyway? Having designed DS as a board game and without thinking about how you’d use it as an RPG, I started thinking about what made it not. And, having thought, I don’t think there’s much, if anything, to stop you.

It’s been many years since I did any roleplaying, so I may be (= am) out of touch with what is considered normal these days, but the principle can’t have changed all that much. It’s about playing a role and telling a collective story, and a competent GM and players should have no trouble at all in using Dungeon Saga as a springboard for adventuring in the fantasy world of Mantica. In fact, thinking back to the early days of RPGs, what’s included in the box (and especially the Adventurer’s Companion) is a far greater source of plot hooks and guides than many early systems started with. Try playing T&T, for example. Even D&D was very spartan when it started.

You will have to use your imagination, and you won’t get spoon-fed with pre-written adventures. However, you should remember that pre-written adventures aren’t generally aids for good roleplaying, they’re useful crutches for the time-poor DM, and products to keep companies solvent. Having played many systems and more adventures than I can recall, I can happily say that none of my personal top 5 moments in RPGs were pre-written. To be honest, I’m not sure I can think of any really good moments that were. The whole style of gaming is about imagination, and DS provides all the hooks, hints, plot ideas and springboards for adventure that you need. It’s really down to the GM to make a game from that, and that’s more about his skill than anything I’ve written or not.

What don’t you already know about DS?

I’ve been trying to write something interesting about DS and failing. Not because there’s nothing to say, just that I think I’ve already said it all already. A combination of articles here, Mantic blogs, interviews, seminars, podcasts and many, many individual conversations at events leave me feeling like it’s ground we’ve covered before. Obviously there are lots of details we’ve glossed over, but you want something left to discover when you get your shiny box(es) of goodies, right?

Given that there have been a number of events, seminars and interviews since I last asked this question, and given that I’ve entirely lost track of what you do and don’t know at this point (you may have seen all of my burblings or none of them), what do you want to know? What is there left for me to cover?

Over on their blog, Mantic are doing a week’s worth of spilling the beans on all manner of upcoming goodies. Some of these are DS related, so until the dust has settled on this I’ll hold of on DS topics of my own. I know that there is (supposedly) a daily schedule of what these reveals might be, but you never know when they’ll pull a surprise out of the hat. Plus Ronnie is on Beasts of War this week, and he’s the expert bean spiller 🙂