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View Full Version : End of this Universe - what RPG-related things do you save?



Quertus
2020-11-18, 10:00 AM
Many of you are likely just going to read this as "suggest me a cool fanfic to read" or "what is the best RPG". And that's close (because, yes, looking for a fanfic to read is what gave me the idea for this thread)... but that's not exactly what I'm asking.

So, suppose that this universe were ending. And suppose that scientists had found a way to leave a time capsule / beam information about our universe and civilization to future and/or extradimensional beings.

Now, sure, there's lots of other things that we might want to save.

But suppose it was decided that a small sampling of RPGs were going to be preserved. What RPG(s) do you think should be on that list? Why?

If, among various other literary works, it was decided that several fanfics should survive the destruction of the universe, which one(s) would you vote for? Why?

For example, I would vote D&D (probably a fix of 2e into 3e parlance) should survive, simply because D&D is the grandfather of RPGs (and 2e was the most fun, IMO/IME).

Despite the fact that I love it as a story, I would vote that "Harry Potter and the Natural 20" should not be saved (unless). I think it's a well-written story, but it suffers from 2 problems. The first is that it is incomplete. That, of course, is a fixable problem - the author (or a ghost author) could simply complete it. But the second problem is, I don't think it would be nearly as good in a vacuum as it is in a world where both Harry Potter and 3e exist. So, in order for me to vote for it to be saved, *both* of its source materials would need to be saved (and there would need to be a high likelyhood of success that the transmission / time capsule of both would survive).

OK, HPatN20 had 3 problems. The third is a seeming bit of a consistency problem... but given that it wasn't until my 4th or 5th read through (did I mention that I really like this story?) that I noticed it, I'll give a pass to this normally show-stopper level of defect.

What I would vote for to survive the end of the universe is The All Guardsman Party. I think that it would make sense and be enjoyable even to a civilization not blessed with pre-knowledge of the 40k universe.

I might also consider "Cattle-Driving Necromancers" and "The Open Door" as stories that are enjoyable and could survive without the source materials (actually, given that they both break the rules, they might be better if you don't know some of the sources).

So, what do y'all think? Which RPGs and fanfics would you vote to survive the end of the universe, and why?

Is there anything else related to RPGs - besides the RPGs and fanfics - that you feel is important to "RPG culture", and should be saved as well?

OK, fine, I'll spell out webcomics, and assume there'll be a lot of votes for OotS, but let's not gush too hard about how awesome it is - we don't want to make Rich blush. :smallwink:

Anything else that should survive the end of the universe?

OldTrees1
2020-11-18, 03:27 PM
If it were the end of the universe, there is very little that makes the cut.


The general concept of an RPG

That is all. All other space should be reserved for other things. From that one mote of information we can recreate RPGs, unlike most things.

Quertus
2020-11-18, 03:45 PM
If it were the end of the universe, there is very little that makes the cut.


The general concept of an RPG

That is all. All other space should be reserved for other things. From that one mote of information we can recreate RPGs, unlike most things.

While I applaud your answer from many perspectives, there are potential issues with that train of thought. For one, there is no guarantee that this information will be encountered by human-like intelligences. For example, what if the species (like WoD Lucifer laments about WoD Angels, or like Earthdawn Demons) lacks the ability to innovate? What if, like "Tomak and jalad at tungnath", they communicate exclusively through example?

So while yes, the question seems poorly thought out, I am using it as a vehicle to look at a particular angle of "Zen and the art of motorcycle repair" of "what does it mean (for an RPG) to be good?".

JeenLeen
2020-11-18, 03:45 PM
The Voynitch Manuscript? (https://xkcd.com/593/)
Joking aside... this is a hard question to contemplate given its somewhat absurd basis, but if we assume that X data slots have been proportioned for RPG-related information...

I could see a version of Dungeons of Dragons. But probably better would be some book that summarizes the history of RPGs while citing and comparing rules and styles. So enough to give a general idea of how a d20 system works, with example of a few classes, spells, and feats from D&D 3.5 and 5e, and from that the rest could be generalized. If there's room, a few books that are examples of different styles: say, D&D 3.5 Player's Handbook, FATE core rulebook, some new- or old-World of Darkness book, etc.

If there's a secondary question of if such should be saved, I think the answer is no. On the other hand, if there's no human survivors, I don't see much incentive to save much, as it'd probably just be a historical point of interest to some future/alien society. I guess it would make some interesting graduate papers for an alien in the future, so maybe that's a benefit enough :smalltongue:

Mastikator
2020-11-18, 04:15 PM
Hmm, maybe every episode of Critical Roll? I think future universes can be inspired by it.

Anymage
2020-11-18, 04:56 PM
Hijacking this to twist it slightly, since "end of the universe" implies much bigger issues than any edition of any game can really play into.

You're boarding a generation ship setting out to colonize a new world. You're allowed to fill up a decently sized tablet with data, but once you set off you can't expect any further meaningful contact with Earth. You know that entertainment/recreation will be essential to keeping everybody sane, that games are much more effective for entertainment hour per bit than more fixed mediums like books or movies, and ideally you'd want things that could inspire future generations even if there's some loss of data along the way. What are some of the things you put on your tablet to help keep you sane during your trip?

OldTrees1
2020-11-18, 05:49 PM
While I applaud your answer from many perspectives, there are potential issues with that train of thought. For one, there is no guarantee that this information will be encountered by human-like intelligences. For example, what if the species (like WoD Lucifer laments about WoD Angels, or like Earthdawn Demons) lacks the ability to innovate? What if, like "Tomak and jalad at tungnath", they communicate exclusively through example?

So while yes, the question seems poorly thought out, I am using it as a vehicle to look at a particular angle of "Zen and the art of motorcycle repair" of "what does it mean (for an RPG) to be good?".

Hmm, okay on a second serious thought:

Intelligences to carry thoughts (humans or whatever people are around at the time)
The general concept of an rpg


The ἀρετή (arete) of RPGs is essentially entirely subjective. When an RPG is good, it is good based on the subjective values of the audience. Some of those values are common among a community (including the human species) but that does not mean they will be the values of the new intelligences. As such I would want to bring across the form of RPGs with as little baggage as possible.


Now if there is room to spare (how many people got left behind?) then I would bring mechanics and stories. I would bring the concept of an "exploding die", or of "take 10". I would bring, hmm picking a story is hard, really hard, I think I would pick one of their stories (that has not been written yet). Oh and I would bring things to make new content. Things that can record & map (modern forms of paper, pencil, graph paper).

After a decent library of stories, I would bring 2 PHB (any 2 RPGs and any edition), 2 character sheets, and a collection of dice (at most 24). Then it is time for educational manuals on every useful subject. Science, Math, Philosophy are quite relevant in many ways.

Basically I would save RPGs by primarily saving what RPGs are built on rather than the RPGs themselves.

Edit: To be clear the question is not "poorly thought out" or "poorly worded". I just have a slightly shifted focus for archiving.

Cluedrew
2020-11-18, 07:26 PM
I'm going to agree with OldTrees1 on this. My particular thought is: why bring D&D when you could bring an essay on the impart D&D had on cultures of the earth. Sure maybe the general description of a Beholder might come up in that but I think a different universe would get a lot out of its stat block.

Mechalich
2020-11-18, 11:31 PM
Hijacking this to twist it slightly, since "end of the universe" implies much bigger issues than any edition of any game can really play into.

You're boarding a generation ship setting out to colonize a new world. You're allowed to fill up a decently sized tablet with data, but once you set off you can't expect any further meaningful contact with Earth. You know that entertainment/recreation will be essential to keeping everybody sane, that games are much more effective for entertainment hour per bit than more fixed mediums like books or movies, and ideally you'd want things that could inspire future generations even if there's some loss of data along the way. What are some of the things you put on your tablet to help keep you sane during your trip?

In terms of maximizing data space you probably just want system mechanics, tables and references containing how-to-play information, and adventure and worldbuilding prompts to allow for the assembly of stories and the translation of stories that emerge in the generation ship's society into topically relevant RPGs. Text and tables are in fact very compact in terms of information per bit. The SRD is a fraction of the file size of pdfs of the PHB, DMG, and MM, and the same is true for the PFSRD and other games that have been converted to barebones rule sets or wikis. Art - while extremely useful for inspiration - also takes up a lot of space, so you want to utilize as many low-res diagrams and sketches as you can rather than any sort of highly detailed representations. And you can forget about video.

Palanan
2020-11-19, 12:03 AM
Originally Posted by Anymage
You're boarding a generation ship setting out to colonize a new world. You're allowed to fill up a decently sized tablet with data, but once you set off you can't expect any further meaningful contact with Earth.

I like this premise much better than the original. It allows the following:

1. Build a fleet of StarChip-like solar sails, each three meters across and massing less than a gram. Accelerate them to 0.2 c with a laser array, which will allow them to reach the target star decades before the generation ship arrives.

2. While the microsails are en route, assemble them into a receiving array.

3. From Earth, beam all your PDFs to the microsail array and compensate for any Doppler shift.

4. Once the microsail array reaches the target star, use the star’s light pressure for initial deceleration, then swing around the star and allow its gravity to pull the array back into a stable orbit.

5. Once the generation ship arrives, beam your saved PDFs from the microsail array to your new homestead.

Vahnavoi
2020-11-19, 07:43 AM
End of the universe? None. I assume any entity capable of interpreting niche hobby artifacts from a prior universe to be capable of generating its own niche hobby artifacts, damn it. :smalltongue:

Intergenerational spaceship? Presuming you mean a tablet computer, I could fit my entire tabletop game collection in PDF format on one, and that's enough game to last a stupidly long time. Seriously, modern electronic devices can hold stupid amount of data.

farothel
2020-11-19, 08:09 AM
Hmm, okay on a second serious thought:

Intelligences to carry thoughts (humans or whatever people are around at the time)
The general concept of an rpg



Sounds good, but I would add one example, preferably a general system, like GURPS for instance. Clearly marked as general example of note above.

Anonymouswizard
2020-11-19, 09:24 AM
A brief explanation of how freeform roleplay works, followed by putting the rest of the storage space to use backing up mathematics and computing theory. I've got no idea how long this time capsule will have to last, I might as well make it more likely that important stuff survives. Particularly because I just don't want to have to find a way to make [insert human language here] translatable for whoever finds this thing without know even the slightest bit about how they communicate.

As for the colony ship, I'd probably throw a thousand novels* and an explanation of every major cress variation on there before getting to RPGs. Actually an explanation of draughts and maybe backgammon as well, plus a few other simpler board and card games. If I have any space leftover I'd upload the free version of Fudge, followed by Fate, followed by the most recent (at time of departure) SRD for D&D, followed by as many one to four page games as I could dig out of the internet and fit on the thing.

* Okay, my first thought for entertainment on a colony ship is every public domain novel that still exists. I think it's probably the most space-efficient method of jump starting the new colony's autistic development. Plays, films, TV series, and maybe even radio dramas would all be rediscovered as the colonists begin to adapt the stories to other mediums, and everything else will follow if the colonists actually want it.

Quertus
2020-11-27, 02:20 PM
Suppose - like the various "winds" / colors of magic in Warhammer Fantasy, that bandwidth is non-transferable. There is a certain amount of bandwidth to transmit information on RPGs, that cannot be used for anything else.

Or perhaps it's a "Contact Other Plane" / alien research project scenario, where that particular question was asked.

Or maybe it's a set of Holodeck parameters, where (thanks to social distancing) nobody is ever in the same room with an actual living human being any more.

Or maybe, while looking for things that might survive the heat death of the universe, we discover thought-form-based life. But each is only designed to hold a particular "flavor" of idea.

And, yes, the *concept* of an RPG is going to be of the most value (*especially* to an alien intelligence), but maybe the medium / Holodeck design only allows us to transmit/store *examples*, not *concepts*.

Would any of that make people more likely to respond with specific instances of RPGs / fanfic that they would want saved, and why?

OldTrees1
2020-11-28, 12:40 AM
Yes, those situations would affect the answer. In each case I would try to bend the answer back into the general concept + literature + science, but there are limitations.

If any fanfictions were allowed under the limitations, then I would be able to cheat and include literature instead, so I will not include fanfictions.

As for example RPGs, I would want a broad sample in as few RPGs as possible. Breadth rather than depth would be the goal. I have not had a diverse enough exposure to know what that would be, but I would start with:

D&D, Gurps, & Dread

Vahnavoi
2020-11-28, 04:26 AM
Quertus, Quertus, Quertus...

If you want people to give you game recommendations or a definition of roleplaying games, just ask for those.

The goofy-ass hypothetical scenarios are doing no lifting for you.

Quertus
2020-11-28, 10:43 AM
Quertus, Quertus, Quertus...

If you want people to give you game recommendations or a definition of roleplaying games, just ask for those.

The goofy-ass hypothetical scenarios are doing no lifting for you.

Well, what I'm after... it's complicated.

For one, what I am after is practice discussing concepts like "D&D was Gary Gygax's fever dream, transmitted through the Warp from a previous reality". So, I chose this "goofy" scenario for a reason. :smallwink:

My train of thought went something like, "I want a new fanfic to read. What are my criteria? ... Huh, those look not entirely unlike my criteria for 'how things would be transmitted to alternate civilizations through dreams'. Oh, right, I never did make a thread about that concept... hey, I wonder what other people's criteria for 'ideas to try to save' would look like".

But what I'm after is... well, it's still complicated.

I'm trying to see how people process the question. So explaining it... kinda kills the point of it.

Do we try to save RPGs by genre? By light vs heavy? By style? For cool rules (like "stunting" in Marvel FACERIP, or exploding dice)? Do we choose them for how much fun we had, how popular they were, how much they say about our culture? By what stories they produced?

My question was, what thought process do other people go through, and what criteria do they ultimately choose, when deciding what RPGs and what Fanfics to save?

My initial criteria were simple: the Original RPG, and Fanfics that would make sense regardless of what movies / RPGs / etc were sent over / survived. Personally, I would expand RPGs to include one that is point-buy. Sending 2e D&D and GURPS would pretty well run the spectrum of how much I enjoyed an RPG, so there's that.

And the point of that... was a way to ask (something close to) a different question, but trying to remove the biases usually associated with that question: "If someone didn't know anything about RPGs, and you were to try to explain the whole breadth of what RPGs were and could be through just a few examples, what examples would you pick?"

Sort of like how, some stories / movies are actually allegories, sure, you could view this question as an allegory for that one. But, IMO, the allegory fails if it cannot be enjoyed when taken at face value. In point of fact, this question fails when you try to look past face value, not just because they aren't quite the same question, but because, to the extent that they are similar, the point is to detach your mind from the baggage of the old question.

Also, they're distinctly different questions, in that this question is more asking "what RPGs (and fanfics) could survive the test of time and culture?", or "what RPGs (and fanfics) could be understood by someone with absolutely no frame of reference beyond the RPG (or fanfic) in question?".

So, yeah, just like explaining the joke ruins it, I suspect that this will sully the responses, as the point was to get a fresh perspective on RPGs.

But... what would you save?

Satinavian
2020-11-28, 11:26 AM
And the point of that... was a way to ask (something close to) a different question, but trying to remove the biases usually associated with that question: "If someone didn't know anything about RPGs, and you were to try to explain the whole breadth of what RPGs were and could be through just a few examples, what examples would you pick?"I would make sure, i had different settings and different playstyles. Also i would not include anything i really think is bad quality though i would nclude stuff i would not play.

So, for example the collection of Splittermond (classical contemporary fantasy RPG without all the baggage from decades of earlier versions), Engel Arcana (setting is strange, resolution mechanics are basically toincoss + improvisation prompt) ,SR 3 (to have some SF and a lot of gonzo rules) and FATE (mostly for contrast) would give a good overview.

I would certainly not use any version of D&D. Yes, early D&D was first but not particularly good and full of stuff people learned later to do better. Late D&D is only average quality and pretty difficult to get into without knowing all the baggage from early D&D that fills the various settings and has traces all over the rules.


Also, they're distinctly different questions, in that this question is more asking "what RPGs (and fanfics) could survive the test of time and culture?", or "what RPGs (and fanfics) could be understood by someone with absolutely no frame of reference beyond the RPG (or fanfic) in question?".Now "survive test of time" is a different question. Now we are talking about sharing the RPGs with people we don't have a common culture with. I don't think that would work all that well. When people have different stories and different kinds of popular protagonists, if they love different fiction, they will surely want different things out of an RPG. At best they might use some core mechanics and build everything around it themself.

None of out RPGs will survive the test of time and culture. Future cultures will build their own RPGs and like them far more. If the hobby doesn't die out.

OldTrees1
2020-11-28, 02:20 PM
Well, what I'm after... it's complicated.

But... what would you save?

I think I return to my initial answer then.

1) Send the general concept of an RPG, via whatever means is required.
2) Send background resources like literature (Journey to the West? 1001 Arabian Nights?) and understanding of a world (science).
3) Send useful innovations (some mechanical like "take 10" or exploding dice, but others conceptual like "no GM")

Concrete RPGs would only be sent if required as a means to transmit one of these 3 priorities. Even then, I might only send part of the PHB of that RPG rather than the whole RPG.