A phrase commonly used in conversations about role-playing games is “genre emulation.”

One might say that Call of Cthulu emulates Lovecraftian cosmic horror or Feng Shui emulates Hong Kong martial arts action films.

Role-playing games do not emulate a genre. Role-playing games are one of many mediums that makes up a genre.

A RPG is part of a genre. The narrative content of the game will be similar to the other forms in that genre such as novels and films. A role-playing game can also be an inspiration for other expressions of a genre or create a spin off sub-genre.

What is a genre?

Genre is one way to categorize artistic creation. Every fiction genre has certain characteristics that define that genre. The main character, what they do, how they do what they do, the setting of the story, and the kinds of obstacles the protagonist faces are the primary ways fiction is categorized into genres.

A film opens with a man walking on a dirt street at dawn. He is wearing a duster, a cowboy hat, a vest with a pocket watch chain. You hear the jingle of spurs as he steps. He stops, pulls open the right side of his duster to reveal a revolver. If you know the genre, you have a set of expectations about what is going to happen in the story.

Genre serves a couple of functions. Its a convenient way for a retailer to organize products so customers can find what they want.

It is also a tool for storytellers to create the kind of story they like. It can be a way to experiment and play.

Sometimes storytellers mix very different genres. Sometimes that novelty shapes the entire genre’s future and sometimes it’s a one off that’s fun but doesn’t have legs.

Genre isn’t set in stone. It expands, contracts, and morphs.

What would it mean for a role-playing game to “emulate” a genre?

To “emulate” is to imitate, simulate, or copy a thing without being the thing itself.

If you are running a game set in the 1870’s, in the western half the United States, the characters are cowboys, ride horses, and get into gun fights with outlaws; you are part of the Western genre.

Every RPG is part of a genre just as every film, novel, short story, and video game are part of a genre.

“Emulate” is the wrong word for what game designers do in table top RPGs that are played for entertainment. There are types of role-playing games that fit the definition of imitating or simulating something they are not.

A role-playing game for military training are emulations. They are using the tool of simulation to imitate what happens in a battle. That’s not what we are doing in RPGs that are part of a fiction genre.

Vampire The Masquerade

VtM is great example of a game being part of a genre and not just emulating it.

Dracula, Nosferatu, Ann Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, folklore, and many other stories made up the vampire genre before Vampire the Masquerade. Urban decay, drug culture, anarchism, post-punk, goth fashion and music were combined with the vampire genre to create a new variation. The setting wasn’t just one of those things, it was pieces of those things combined in a way that was different from any of them but still in alignment with the emotional and thematic content of the old vampire stories.

Mark Rein-Hagen had a deep understanding of the vampire genre. He combined and altered elements of that genre. He wasn’t emulating an existing tradition. He was participating in it.

An even more clear indication that RPGs are part of genres is how much influence Vampire the Masquerade had on vampire films and stories that came after the game became popular.

Probably one of the best documentaries about role-playing games is the film World of Darkness. It tells the story of how the game came into being and the troubles of White Wolf, the company that created it.

The documentarians spent a lot of time talking about how the game influenced the movies Blade and Underworld. The concept artists and costume designers lifted the look and tone of those films straight out of the game books.

Elements of the game world were worked into the films. Underworld features a hierarchal structure of vampires with the ancients ruling over younger vampires. The vampires are in a perpetual conflict among themselves and with the werewolves, though the reason for that fight is different than White Wolf’s World of Darkness. The story in Blade is organized around a doomsday prophecy that is similar to a prophecy found in Vampire.

Vampire the Masquerade, Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulu and many other games are not just imitating the genre you are playing in. They are one medium of expression within a genre. They participate in the genre and influence it by inspiring gamers who are also storytellers, artists, and video game designers.

Why I think this is important for game designers to understand

Language shapes thought. Thought shapes behavior.

Thinking that they are “emulating” a genre puts the designer in mindset that they are trying to imitate a genre without being a participant in that genre.

A game designer with that mind set isn’t a contributor. They are copyists.

Having a mindset of contribution not imitation is a small shift in paradigm that can have a large affect on a genre.

Being aware of the genre, its traditions, its conventions and its taboos is super helpful. Understanding what genre you are working within or trying to subvert is a tool. Understanding why a genre produces the emotional experience it produces and how is far superior to merely “emulating” the genre on a superficial level.

That understanding allows the designer to play with the genre in a way that can produce interesting results far beyond what they imagined. Someone who plays the game may go on to write a story, make a video game, or a movie inspired by that new thing introduced into the genre by the RPG designer.

When a role-playing game is set within a genre it is not “emulating” that genre.

It is the genre.