Game Lore

Here is where we try to help you understand the games we play and the genre they fall into.

Genre - Board Games

Genre - Collectable/Trading Card Games

Genre - Live Action Role Playing Games (LARPs)

Genre - Miniatures, a.k.a. "Minis"

Genre - Role Playing Games

Role Playing Games, or RPGs, are generally defined as ones in which a person assumes the role of a fictitious character in a fictitious story. One person agrees to take the job of making up the story and setting of the game; he is often called the Game Master, Referee, Dungeon Master (a la D&D), Chill Master (a la Chill), Story Teller (World Of Darkness games), etc. I will use the term GM. The GM gets a few other people, typically from three to six, but it could range from one to a dozen. These people will play the main characters in the storyline. They are called the Player Characters, or PCs. The group decides what kind of game it would like to have.

Common choices in a game are how much action, investigation, role playing, weirdness, reality, humor, etc. to have. Role playing exactly refers to the interactions in which a player acts and speaks like her PC. Games tend to have varying amounts of this. Usually, a balance is struck between action/combat and role-playing based upon the group's preferences. Another common choice is reality vs. ease of play. For a game to have specific rules for the effects of weather, lack of sleep, emotional state, etc. on a character's performance, requires more rules. As a result, as a game becomes more realistic, the rules system tends to become more intricate.

There is a great variety of games to choose from. PCs can be characters in a cartoon, investigators tracking down an evil cult in Victorian England, starhopping freebooters in a space opera, cavemen in prehistoric times, comic book heroes trouncing supervillians, survivors of an apocalypse, cybernetically enhanced mercenaries risking life and limb for a heartless corporation, and the highly popularized party of warriors, wizards, rogues, and priests fighting evil in a fantasy world. If you can think of a combination of these ideas, it probably exists as its own game.

Regardless of the game chosen, the underlying tenet is generally the same. A group of people working together to overcome various obstacles to achieve a goal. The obstacles could be gun-toting goons, a riddle, treacherous lands, and many other things. The goal could be as simple as escaping alive or as haughty as saving the universe. In the process, people get a chance to try their hand at improvisation, acting, planning, coordination, team skills, and a whole slew of useful things. Oh, and it's a lot of fun too. :-)
[Submitted by Michael J. Casavant]

Examples of RPGs

BattleLords (SSDC, Inc.) - The BattleLords game is about action and adventure in a paramilitary science fiction setting. The characters are members of a mercenary team, employed by megacorporations. The game mixes equal parts covert operations, military action, and futuristic role-playing. What really makes the game fun is that it is a very well developed and fleshed out science fiction setting. There are almost twenty different alien races for players to choose from. Everything from 8-foot tall lizards to four-armed squids, not to mention races that can control energy, use empathic powers, or mend bones with simple concentration. [Submitted by Lars Ericson]

Chill (Mayfair Games) - Your mundane life is a distant memory. You have been recruited by a secret foundation to quietly deal with horrors beyond your imagination. The Unknown is out there and it is encroaching on the real world. Chill is a game in which normal everyday people are recruited to fight the horrors of the Unknown. As written, the game is expected to be run in modern times, but the rules support play in the recent past as well as the near future. Players have Luck on their side as well as some supernatural talents known as the Art, but other than that, their on their own. Note: Chill is not actively supported; the books are still available from Mayfair, but there are currently no plans for further production runs.
[Submitted by Michael J. Casavant]

Dungeons & Dragons (Wizards of the Coast) - the big one! D&D started back in the seventies. It is the proud child of a fantasy miniatures wargame called Chainmail. It has been through many incarnations. It began as a small number of ~trade-sized booklets, then was released as a larger soft bound book in a boxed set, along with a set of dice and a crayon to color in the numbers with. In this game, the choices were simple; a player chose a Dwarf, Halfling, Elf, Fighter, Magic-User, Thief, or Cleric. All Dwarves were essentially hardy warriors, all Elves were warriors and magic-users, and all Halflings were roguish woodsy fellows.

Advanced D&D showed up in the late seventies and early eighties, bringing a considerably more complex game system with a lot more choices. Race and class were chosen separately, various races could mix and match various classes, combat became more complicated, and in general, a lot of new things popped up along with a lot of new rules to argue over.

By the late eighties, AD&D 2nd edition came out and there were small changes in the system. A lot of them were aimed at cleaning up contradictions, ambiguity, and confusion in the first edition. This was a more politically correct edition and demons and devils were given fanciful names to help deflect complaints from some religious entities, and Assassins disappeared as a character class. Player races were pared back a bit to offset the abuse of special races with unbalancing benefits and magical abilities.

In the mid-nineties, 2nd ed. was reprinted and a number of "Options" books came out, perhaps to compete with more versatile game systems. The main rule books were also crafted with parallel formats to simplify rules comparison. Aside from some nice corrections and a better layout, the system did not change significantly.

In 2000, after being taken over by Wizards of the Coast, who were subsequently taken over by Hasbro, TSR put out a 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons, dropping the "Advanced" much to the delight of those that were tired of the confusion it created for people. It is a distinctly different system with what appear to be a number of great improvements aimed at making the game more versatile, interesting, and easier to play. The Dungeon Master's Guide includes excellent advice for how to run a game and both rule books have remarkable aesthetic value. This should be the best D&D yet!

So what do you do? In D&D the typical party gathers in a tavern, learns of a deed that needs doing, and they gear up and head out to do it. Commonly, they head off to rescue people; retrieve magic items, vanquish evil wizards, monsters, spells, etc.; clear out dungeons, temples, etc. (a *very* common scenario); and just about any plot you can imagine from a fantasy movie or book. The game system is a good system to learn about gaming with. The character archetypes help simplify the character generation process, allowing novices to get started gaming more quickly. The combat and magic eventually becomes very fantastic/heroic through an abstract combat and magic system. This is not the best game for a gritty, realistic medieval campaign. It is an excellent campaign if you want to play Gandalf, St. George, King Arthur, and other larger than life characters doing fantastic deeds.
[Submitted by Michael J. Casavant]

Rifts (Palladium) - 2300. North America. The US is no more. Mexico is crawling with vampires. Canada's still pretty much the same as before the cataclysm, a barren wasteland. No one really cares about anywhere else right now since staying alive is priority number one. The world of Rifts is a strange, threatening place populated by high tech futuristic weaponry and wizards, psionic powers and enchanted swords. You, the PC, play as any number of different characters, from a dragon hatchling to a chemically enhanced Juicer, in an environment populated by oppressive new governments, alien forces, corrupt wizards, psychotic warlords, criminal cyborgs and nearly any other threat you can imagine, or choose not to. Gone are the days of the near invincibility of wizards who could raze cities from the surface of the Earth while filing tax returns and eating peanut butter cups. No more "happy go lucky" rogues with back-stab damage abilities high enough to shatter mountain ranges. Have a problem with a certain magic user? Become a psionic, take over his mind, then expose him to what a vinegar and baking soda enema feels like. More of a "hands on" kind-of-person? Become a juicer with the 10 times the natural strength and speed of a regular human and teach the filthy spell caster about the innumerable benefits of a second rectal orifice. More into the brimstone and hellfire aspect of life? Make it explicitly clear to well muscled warriors that big guns are useless if you're a pile of ashes in the corner of washroom stall. This is not a game for the weak of heart or the friends of PBS. This is a game for people who like to kick ass, wield large plasma weaponry and have a negative views of the home shopping network. Rifts, it's an attitude choice.
[Submitted by Ed Bruera]

Shadowrun (FASA until 2001, then Wizkids) - The year is 2061. Magic has reawakened, bringing new races and powers into the technologically-charged world. Advances in cybernetics, medicine, and computers have revolutionized the way we view ourselves and technology in general. In the center of all of this are the megacorporations with their billion-nuyen international resources and personal agendas. It's a different world and it just keeps getting more dangerous and more exciting. Sounds like it's time for a shadowrun. Amidst this cutthroat setting emerges a new profession -- shadowrunners. Shadowrunners do the dirty work of corporations, organized crime, and sometimes the common man.
[Submitted by Lars Ericson]

Genre - Wargames

Wargames are probably technically just a type of board game, but they represent a very large and distinct class of board game. There are many gamers who play nothing but wargames. Generally, a war game is played with a detailed map, often labeled with some form of coordinate system. The playing pieces consist of "chits", squares of heavy card stock with various symbols and numbers printed on them to indicate the capability of the unit for offense, movement, defense, and other abilities. Each player will have a number of chits, with each chit representing a certain size unit, e.g. a squad, a vehicle, a platoon, a squadron of vehicles, etc. Generally, the scale of the wargame determines the unit sizes. Resolving an assault on a small farming town is far different than resolving the Normandy invasion.

Wargaming usually requires a strong knowledge of typically complicated rules. Wargames strive for realism. Often times, wargames are historical recreations of past battles, and real life battles are impacted by numerous factors which wargames strive to account for. For example, in a typical military boardgame like Risk, the player advances some pieces into an enemy country. Each person rolls one die for each piece and the battle is resolved with one toss of the dice by each person. A similar situation in a wargame would take longer because the game system would account for line of sight between the units, the weapon types of the different units, cover, concealment, ammunition types, malfunctions, morale of the troops, and various other factors. Between these two extremes lies the miniatures genre , which often attracts military history buffs with their beautiful, detailed miniatures painted with remarkable attention to uniforms, insignia, etc. Some examples of wargames follow:
[Submitted by Michael J. Casavant]

Squad Leader - A very well known wargame with a very devoted following. This game concerns squad level operations of units in World War II. Chits represent individual squad support weapons, leaders, and fireteams (?). You may have grand plans to take that farmhouse and neutralize the German half track, but the real challenge comes when your men are pinned down by machine gun fire and a quarter of them are running for their dear lives. This game has been released and built upon repeatedly. If you play wargames, it's definitely worth checking out.
[Submitted by Michael J. Casavant]