A Critical History of Role-playing Games
"Role-playing game" is a broad term which has been applied to a wide variety of activities, including interactive computer programs, locally-organized live-action events, online play-by-post or play-by-email forums, and more. Role-playing games are most certainly creative and artistic. However, they present a challenge for artistic criticism, because the creativity is scattered among many different pieces by different authors. Whereas a feature film is more-or-less the same every time it is projected, no two role-playing games are alike in play.
Yet it is exactly this same widespread creativity which makes them extremely important as artistic works, and worthy of critical attention. It is all too easy for criticism to be used to stifle individual creativity, by tearing apart amateur works for not living up to world-class standards. Such simplistic criticism suggests that everyone in the world should consume only the creativity of a handful of people judged as best, produced in massive quantities. Yet there is impeccable logic to this approach as well. As a critic, why should I recommend a random local amateur work compared to a polished masterpiece?
Tabletop role-playing games offer a type of compromise on this. There are professionally-written books for the game, but the action of the game as well as a fair amount of background are invented by the players. This is similar to the compromise found in fan fiction, which is based a central creative source but scattered authors create many new characters and plots. A key distinction is the role-playing games are designed with this individual creativity in mind, whereas fan fiction is a largely incidental byproduct of professional works.
