Some Thoughts On: Story Telling, the Novel and the Epic, Oral Traditions, and their Roles in TTRPGs

A Brief History of the Novel and Storytelling

Novels are a relatively modern form of storytelling. Since the inception of language stories had been told orally, then suddenly the story became fixed in written word by an author with a very small audience who was assumed to be reading it individually or listening to it being read. This presupposed audiences that could read, means of producing copies of a text, and the cultural onus to create them. The novel appears in a few different places and times: in 17th century Europe with the publishing of Don Quixote, in 11th century Japan with the writing of The Tale of Genji, and even some Greek and Roman prose narratives being called precursors to novels.

Don Quixote, by Scott Gustafson

This contrasts with the oral traditions that is inherently mutable from Teller to Listener, and between tellings from the same Teller. It was this tradition that gave us the Poetic and Prose Eddas, to the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (though each of these works are of course know through the written incarnations, not an intact oral history). Works of similar tone or content or form where also composed as a piece of written narrative poetry, a good example is Dante's Divine Comedy (perhaps the first great trilogy). Many of these classic epics come in the form of verse, with the Prose Edda being the glaring exception.

Illustrations to The Elder Edda by Boris Zaborikhin

I listen to a podcast, Myths and Legends, and the host Jason Weiser made an interesting point in a recent episode about Paul Bunyan. He retells myths and legends (duh), but in his retelling he edits for clarity and elaborates as he sees fit. He asserts, rightly so I think, that this is very much a part of the traditions that these stories were forged in. The epics listed above would be very strange to the audience they were originally told to, sometimes written hundreds of years after they where being told and often with heavily editorializing by the transcriber to make them a cohesive narrative (for example the Iliad) or to sanitize and Christianize them ( for example the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda). These are bizarre static stories of a time and place far removed at the time of writing, not composed works like a novel.

Aren't we as roleplayers participating in a modern oral tradition through roleplaying? Right now I am running a two groups in the same setting with no over lap in players, and in the retelling of the aspects there is drift/editorial adjustment between the groups as the encounter similar situations/locations/challenges. These are exactly the kind of adjustments that a story teller would make to improve each retelling and to tailor it to their audiences.

Roleplaying Games as Story Telling

When describing D&D to people I usually fall back onto the analogy of a novel. The players are the main characters in the story, the DM/GM/Referee is everyone and everything else. "You get to play Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring!" I tell them.  Yes there are dice. Yes, some people use a board and little figurines. But those things aren't the point (not necessarily, there are beautiful and deep sub-hobbies around the crafting and enjoyment of gaming artifacts; just look at all of the gaming table or dice tower designs on the web, miniature painting, or novelty chocolate dice). The point is to get together with your friends and collaboratively tell a story.

***Thats at least what I tell people. I have seen mummers of contention about this explanation, though only second hand, that we can't play out stories, its only a story if we tell people about it after! I've never seen a convincing argument for this, so if you have some counter points I'd love to see see them.***

It seems to me that pretty damn near EVERY TTRPG game I have played or that I can think of the essential elements of the story. So I'll use some classic examples of D&D modules and other games to demonstrate:

• Characters: Duh, we literally call them that most of the time. Whether they are Player Characters or Non-Player Characters, they are still characters. No example needed really, characters are ubiquitous
• Setting: The place where the events of the game happen. People produce setting documents for their players to orient them to how weird their version of fantasy medieval Europe is. This can be exhaustive (I'm looking at you Greyhawk) or sparse (I'm looking at you Keep on the Borderlands). 
• Plot: This is the arc of the narrative, with the beginning (Adventuring around the small hamlet of Hommlet) the middle (Delving into the Temple of Elemental Evil) and end (Visiting the Elemental Nodes to get the key to defeating Zuggtmoy). There is progression and escalating tensions
• Conflict: The reason the characters are involved at all, the tension to be resolved (Delving into the Tomb of Horrors to destroy the demi-lich Acererak) (to stop the horde of Hobgoblins bearing the Red Hand of Doom). 
• Resolution: Through playing resolution is achieved, even if that results in character death or unexpected outcomes, at least the game went somewhere.

To the Matter at Hand

So my question is this: do the stories generated through table top role playing games really most closely resemble novels? Can we play out other forms of narrative, like an epic poem? I've seen some very good arguments that the OSR school of thought encourages a more picaresque style of narrative with roguish motivations, so other genres and scales of narrative interest are obviously viable.

I suppose what I want to get at is this: can we explore wider genres with broader scopes of ambition than the novel? Can we play the heroes and gods of Myth and not just characters of Mythic Fantasy? Can we use these games as a vehicle for a modern oral tradition? Is D&D and its many children the system we want? Or is a more narrative focused system like Hillfolk or Skulduggery (both of which are well described here) better suited?

I don't know, but I sure think we should try. Let us set our sites on the horizons and venture into realms that we haven't been to yet. Let is push the limits. Let us engage in an ancient tradition and tell our own epics. D&D may not be the vehicle, though this does seem the realm of epic level play (something I have never seen done well). Let us look for an alternative because old stories deserve to be told, not just read and new stories deserve to be explored, not just dreamed.

Saturn by Peter Paul Rubens; don't you want to play in a game where you can eat your divine spawn to keep them from over throwing you?

Source, lets play more games with the Morrigan as a character!

Source, or Morgoth!

How Important is an Actual Grasp of Medieval Warfare to D&D?

I recently (oh shit, this was like six months ago now) went to a music festival/renaissance fair in the town over and I was struck at the reenactors' commitment to authenticity. As someone who plays a lot of make believe informed by the folkloric traditions of Europe and elsewhere should I have a better grasp on how war was actually waged?

I am torn. So listen to this internal conversation:
ConBon: I think it's important that we understand the conditions and reality of combat in the Middle Ages. We want our games to reflect life, even when there are dragons and baby-wizard-clones.

CWilly: I disagree, an attack in D&D is an abstracted way of simulating the action of swinging a sword. We have precluded the need to understand the swing of the sword by having game designers and dungeon masters assign attributes to weapons.

CB: So? If one of our players wanted to use the pommel of his sword to bludgeon a skeleton I would probably let him do that with no penalty, though for less damage than a sword swing. The players understanding of how a sword was built and used improves their ability to use it in game.

CW: Fair point, but the player that doesn't know that may be at a disadvantage.

CB: Good! That will encourage them to learn about their weapons and skills and really immerse themselves in the setting!

CW: No, I think it introduces a layer of complexity and inaccessibility to the game that detracts from its enjoyment. We should absolutely want to encourage immersion and creativity, but never at the cost of penalizing players with less "Player Skill".

CB: Touché my dear fellow. But I still hold that the DM have at least some idea of the means of combat in the setting/era that the game is taking place in. They don't always have to use/include this deeper knowledge, but the ability to answer the PCs probing questions with logical and thoughtful answers is valuable.

CW: Oh absolutely, but the same could be said about having a coherent idea of how magic works in the world. As long as you have a good idea about how you want it to work you can kind of make it up as you go along. Magic laser tanks don't exist, but if a PC asks if their is a self destruct button in one then the answer will vary on what role you want magic laser tanks to play in your Campaign.

And they walk hand in hand into the sunset still arguing...

Some of this may also help make a setting feel more sparse and "gritty" (though I am hesitant to use the phrase). For example, swords were incredibly expensive to make and not very versatile in their uses. Should a fist level warrior-type just starting out on their adventure be able to even have access to a sword? Or perhaps you can have a sword if your daddy was rich, but you get a wood cutting axe or a sickle or a spear otherwise.

I saw something come out of the D&D 5e Homebrew Tumblr a few months back that had stats for Dark Age weapons like seaxes and such. While I like the commitment to the setting and creating usable tools/analogs for DMs to run games in Dark Age Europe, I don't think that it is important to stat a heavy seaxe any differently than a greatsword. Its the same problem I have with the near-fetish like attention D20Modern pays to different gun stats. I don't really care what model Glock I have, I just wanna shoot stuff.

Now when I think of D&D 5e players I think of a lot of young professionals (~20s and 30s) just trying out D&D for the first time. I assume I have a better grasp of medieval combat than they do. But does that mean that my games are more fun? Or does it even mean that my games are a more accurate simulation of what combat would be like if medieval folks where fighting horrible magical monsters? Are those desirable goals? I dunno. What do you think?