A Matter of Style

Over on my main blog I've recently posted about a revelation concerned with "Style" in writing. This revelation has made me think about stylistic issues with RPG writing, and especially adventure writing.

The truth is, RPGs have actually lost something of style over the years. When D&D was first published, and especially in AD&D 1st Edition, one of the hallmarks was Gary Gygax's very idiosyncratic writing style. He had both an extremely extensive vocabulary and a penchant for obscurity over elucidation. He liked a big word.

Similarly, the early RPG "Warhammer Fantasy Battles" took many of the same tropes, respun them with a distinctly British madness, and produced an extremely stylish game. And then "Vampire: the Masquerade" took things in yet another direction, being infused with a style all their own.

But VtM and the other "World of Darkness" games are the last 'stylish' games that spring to my mind. And as time went on, both D&D and WFRP (and others) gradually lost a lot of the initial style that made them stand out. This was largely a conscious decision - the focus was shifted to creating RPGs that were approachable and easily understandable.

This was almost certainly the right decision. High Gygaxian is certainly interesting, but the price of favouring obscurity over elucidation is that, well, you lose out on elucidation. There are sections in the AD&D DMG that you can read carefully and repeatedly, and still end up none the wiser. Far better for rulebooks to be well structured, well organised, and to explain the rules in clear, unambiguous language. They're effectively technical manuals, and should be presented as such.

That latter does not apply to settings or adventures, however. Here, maintaining a strong and distinctive style has a very distinct benefit. "Planescape" certainly wasn't for everyone, but the distinct flavour of the setting is what made it what it was. Likewise "Dark Sun", "Spelljammer", and "Ravenloft". That's also why having "Forgotten Realms" and "Birthright" and "Dragonlance" is redundant - they're just too similar.

I rather suspect there's little hope of seeing nicely stylistic adventures in published works in future - Wizards of the Coast and Paizo both have a style that mitigates against it, and the various authors on the DM's Guild will inevitably follow WotC's lead to a very large extent.

What this does give rise to, though, is yet another consideration for the Ultimates version of Terafa, and also "The Quest for Memory" campaign. Rather than just following the lead and aping what's there, and therefore suffering the inevitable redundancy that follows, I now find myself questioning whether I need to focus on building up a different style.

Though that remains tricky - the overwhelming bulk of the writing I do is aimed at a technical audience, which means needing to be able to context switch between two mindsets. Still, it's a fairly fascinating line of thought...