Here There Be Dragons
I read the “White Out” comic today, a four-issue murder mystery set in Antarctica. It was excellent. More to the point, it confirmed a point I was already considering writing about. Flush with vindication, I will now.
A large majority of RPG adventures take place in the frontier. For fantasy games, that’s tombs and ruins and temples to evil gods set in the wilderness, a short trip from border towns beset by goblin hordes; as the heroes tame the wilderness, action moves to the outer planes where even natural law no longer holds. For space opera games, the action lies in the outer rims of galactic empires, where Starfleet is spread too thin to patrol effectively. For historical games, players stave off barbarians at the edges of civilization, or carve nations and empires from the hinterlands. Even among contemporary games, in our own safe, predictable world, the usual practice is to place the characters in some kind of dangerous subculture – the criminal underworld, the secret wars fought between vampires, black op missions – where civilized law does not apply.
There are city adventures, of course, and landings on the capital planet, and invitations to the French ambassador’s ball, all intended to spice up a campaign before returning to the frontier. Nor do all campaigns lie beyond civilization; campaigns set entirely within cultured society exist. Taking adventure to the frontier is the norm, however.
This has several causes. Partly, it’s easier to justify weird and wondrous stories where the map reads, “Here there be dragons;” dragons appearing in Mrs. Winscott’s parlor stretch the suspension of disbelief, so GMs who want dragons need to point players in that direction. Partly, the frontier is ingrained in the American psyche, so US games, at least, may head for the frontier subconsciously. Partly, it’s Joseph Campbell’s thesis of the hero pattern; if the players want to perform vicarious heroic acts, they need to take the hero’s path beyond the familiar.
But more important than all these causes put together is the need to maintain the players as protagonists. Drama – and RPG adventures seek to create drama – demands conflict. When something goes wrong in comfortably civilized societies, the authorities take care of things; police catch murderers, the army fights off invaders, and hospitals isolate and cure disease. If a handful of concerned citizens, like the player characters, face a significant chance of failing to meet the challenge, they call on the authorities, and rightly so. If the player characters are representative authorities and face a significant chance of failure, they send a request for further assistance. The problem is whisked out of the players’ hands and fixed by trained professionals.
That’s boring. So how do you prevent the responsible authorities from producing anticlimax? The obvious answer is: remove the authorities. Maybe the state marshal could round up Black Bart’s gang, but if he won’t get here within a week, the players will have to face up to Bart on their own. Maybe an imperial frigate could carry emergency medicines to Epsilon Eridani before a plague gets out of hand, but if the players’ jury-rigged trade vessel is the only ship in starport, then they have to make the twelve-parsec flight and save the day. Maybe the National Guard could destroy the tentacular monstrosity from beyond time, but if the local commander won’t believe the creature exists, players will need to gather their resources from the occult underground themselves. Much more interesting.
Playing in the frontier offers another huge advantage: players gain some leeway in how responsibly they respond to the threat. Charging in with swords and lasers drawn, snatching the princess from certain doom, and taunting the enemy is considerably more fun than a measured, civic-minded response to danger. And the frontier will forgive risky behavior, as long as it saves the day, far more readily than civilization, with its reckless endangerment lawsuits, will.
So the protagonists must be cut off from the civilized world. Single-episode stories, like movies, can get away with stranding the hero for a few hours by putting him in a terrorist-filled building, or dumping him in a desert town without a working phone. Serial adventures, like an RPG campaign, need to maintain this isolation far longer, without straining credulity, so off they go to where there be dragons.