Roleplaying Games are Wargames

Preface

    The title is a simplification and shortening of the real statement. What I will explain below is how (Tabletop) Roleplaying Games are one subset of the broad and expansive design space of wargaming. This does not mean that RPGs are the same, or even similar to, say, board game wargames. Or miniatures wargames. Or matrix games (though they are to those ones!). Or any of other numerous game design practices that encompass wargaming.

Secondly, this is not about [scarequotes]TaXonOMy[scarequotes]. This is about history and game design.

Key Elements of a Roleplaying Game

    While I am sure there are much more well read game designers than myself out there who can elaborate further on this stuff, to me the two of the defining features of RPGs that set them aside from, say, board games or video games are


1. Tactical Infinity. In this case “tactical infinity” means that participants in the game are expected to freely offer any course of action they want to take, without having to pick from a predetermined list of choices or actions. In a boardgame the rulebook explicitly lists out all of the things the game actions that you can take when playing. A Knight in a game of chess can’t simply just wander off the board, then perform a flank charge on the enemy’s Bishop. A knight only moves the way the rules say it moves and that is it.

In order for this tactical infinity to actually have some kind of constraints and sense to it (After all, if you are free to take any action you can simply declare “I win the game.”) roleplaying games employ a participant whose job is to adjudicate the actions of the other players. That person is the referee.

2. The Referee. Or GameMaster, Dungeon Master, Judge, Royal Highness or whatever other title you prefer. The referee’s role in a roleplaying game is, first and foremost, to adjudicate the actions proposed by the other players, and in turn tell them how their actions and choices impact the simulated world of the game, and how things in that simulated world react. This is what keeps the ability to attempt anything in check so you can actually have a reasonable game.

3(ish). Campaigns. While one-off games of TTPRGs are possible and doable and, in some cases, the main way people participate in the hobby, from the very start the goal at least of a Roleplaying Game is the campaign - a continuous and connected setting and characters simulated, explored and changed through multiple game sessions, often with recurring characters. This one I don’t consider as key as the above two, but I figured bears mentioning.

History and Design Lineage

Where do RPGs then get those two above game design elements from? Were they fully formed and birthed from the forehead of Saint Gygax as he used his Galaxy-brain genius to give us mortals Dungeons & Dragons?


No. No they weren’t. Duh.


    Gygax wrote D&D (from what I’ve read second-hand, it is debatable just how much actual writing Arneson contributed to the finished product) as a way to formalize, recreate and allow others to recreate, the experience of Dave Arneson running his Blackmoor game for him and Rob Kuntz. So while the actual writing and product might originate primarily from Gygax, who himself has plenty of game design experience, the broader “idea” of what “a D&D” is, I would argue, came to Gygax through Arneson and Blackmoor.

    Blackmoor, in turn, is a variant of Braunstein, with fantasy, sci-fi, horror and other things thrown into it for good measure. Arneson explicitly started and advertised his Blackmoor campaign to his gaming circle as a fantasy Braunstein. So that leads us to the next step back in history.

    Braunstein is the name that Dave Wesley gave to a type of game he created and ran (and to my knowledge still occasionally runs at conventions) over the years. It is a wargame in which each player controls only a singular individual, usually with predetermined goals and abilities, while a referee helps adjudicate the interactions between the players. Wesley’s very first Braunstein game, and the most famous one, was set during the Napoleonic Wars, a favorite period of his gaming circle at the time. A big inspiration for making and running this type of game was his research into the late 19th century american wargame Strategos, of which Wesley created a variant he called Strategos N (the N is for Napoleonic, in case anyone didn’t get that).

    Strategos is a military wargame (meaning a wargame not meant for hobby enjoyment, but used in actual military training) developed by Charles Totten for the US army and published in the tail end of the 19th century. Strategos has the same key elements as above - a referee who adjudicates and mediates between the players that are participating in the game, because Strategos was a variant of the Prussian Kriegsspiel, though inherited through the British variants of that game from a decade prior.

    And finally, we get to the origin of it all. The literal Wargame (or Kriegsspiel in German), developed as a training tool for the Prussian military by George Leopold von Reisswitz and based on prior attempts at developing wargames in Prussia. And while Kriegsspiel has numerous variants, modifications and changes to it over the decades it was used, “Free” Kriegsspiel variant which Strategos above is based on, relied less on strict and codified rules about what actions can or can’t be taken by players, but instead of an arbiter (usually a more veteran officer) who would use their own military experience and knowledge, combined with potential mechanics to introduce randomness and uncertainness in actions (such as, say, a fog of war) in order to help the players get used to making decisions that would, hopefully, prepare them for leading troops on actual battlefield.

    As you can see, the connection to D&D, and from it all Tabletop RPGs (as RPGs are all, in one way or another, direct or indirect responses to Dungeons and Dragons) leads directly back through a century or so of games back into the Wargame. Not just in simple reference, but in what all of those game designers I listed above have repeatedly taken and reiterated upon from that first Kriegsspiel.

And those very same principles - the ability to attempt any action that a player can think of, and the referee’s job to then moderate those actions, are still very much present in mos RPGs.

    Now, as I said in the preface, this does not mean RPGs are the same as other forms of wargaming like Matrix Games or Miniatures Games or Board game Wargames, or Map Games or the numerous other design iterations. Hell, a good amount of wargames nowadays don’t even use a referee and instead rely on somewhat restricted actions that players can take.

However those all are still wargames, or at least an aspect and interpretation of wargaming as a practice.

What Does It All Mean?

    Nothing. I do not tell people that RPGs are wargames as a hot take to make them somehow change the way they play. I say it because too many people, influenced by company marketing talking points around “originality” or “uniqueness” or “new and better game design” seem to think that RPGs are somehow this utterly self-encompassed thing, and that wargames design can’t offer anything to their games, as wargames are also only about fighting. A statement which itself also shows ignorance about the scope of topic, theme and practice in wargaming.

    Wargames are more about conflict and conflict resolution. That conflict need not be violence though. The conflict in how to allocate resources in a civilian infrastructure is still a viable thing to wargame (and has been done). Yes, a game which utterly lacks any conflict or the need to resolve it is probably truly outside the scope of Wargaming, and some people’s RPG games probably do attempt to be about that, but I would argue those are outliers which simply reinforce the majority rule.

In conclusion - wargames and their offspring tabletop roleplaying games are much more complex, nuanced and usable for a broad and more expansive activity than simple entertainment. And that’s a good thing.

Recommended Reading

The Wargame Developments Handbook - https://wargamedevelopments.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/WD-Handbook-Third-Edition-October-2022.pdf
Jon Peterson's Blog - http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/
Playing at the World - https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262548779/playing-at-the-world-2e/
The Elusive Shift - https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544900/the-elusive-shift/
The Connections UK Wargames Conference - https://www.professionalwargaming.co.uk/2024.html