#RPGaDay2021 - 5 - Throne

 

Throne?

I can't believe I'm already playing catch-up on #RPGaDay this year. 

Throne is intriguing. Do you know who the rulers are in your game, or is it something that you plan to explore? If I think back to my earliest gaming days using B2 - The Keep on the Borderlands with Basic D&D, it didn't really matter who was the monarch for the setting. The reality was the local power brokers were much more important to you and your characters. The rest of the setting felt distant. 

It's a similar thing for Traveller. You lived in the Third Imperium, but it was distant and day-to-day life was rarely affected by Imperial forces or the machinations of the Emperor. It was a backdrop and the local realities of the tension with the Zhodani and the fight to make a profit on your starship to keep it running were the dominant aspects of your character’s lives. This perfectly mirrored the source fiction like Azimov's Foundation and Andre Norton's Solar Queen books.

If you fast forward to today, who rules is more important and much more in your face. The frontier feel has gone, and there are less spaces to explore as a GM and player. The D&D Starter and Essentials books are set in a very defined setting. The published Traveller material has long since abandoned points of light and adopted splatbooks for sectors that leave very little space to explore truly. The Throne has come closer and - in doing so - the feeling has changed.

Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. I loved the chance to influence King Dain with my dwarf character in The One Ring. The Duchess of Daggerford just gave me a chance to link the characters together before they entered Barovia and the Curse of Strahd. The opportunity to meet the Emperor Strephon in the MegaTraveller campaign Arrival Vengeance was an emotional experience. It's just a change of focus. In the early days of gaming - and I'm thinking RuneQuest, Traveller and D&D here - you often started as inexperienced and developed to become heroes. These days, most games see your character further down that development curve. There is clear water between the B/X D&D presented in Old-School Essentials and the meta since third edition D&D. The difference can be delicious.

5 August 2021 (belatedly)