Is there any genre or theme that the TTRPG medium does not work for?

aramis erak

Legend
Are there any TTRPGs that play around in the medium of abstraction or absurdity?
Are You Mental? ... to a certain degree. (DriveThruRPG )
Troika is definitely to the absurdist level.
So also Tales from the Floating Vagabond and Paranoia.
Different forms of absurdism.
Oh yeah I forgot: Sports the RPG.

Nobody's roleplaying the Superbowl.
But there are sseveral RPGs about martial arts as sports, including White Wolf's Streetfighter: The Storytelling Game..... and someone wrote Sumo rules for D&D back in the 80's.

Jousting is also a sport, and it's prominent in King Arthur Pendragon....

Plus, there are some about sports. Not a lot, but a few.
Let me clarify: the musical is a genre, not a medium.
Uhm, no. It's a an authorial and presentation style for drama, and operetta and opera are progressively more narrow subsets of it; Les Miserables the book is the same story, but no singing, as the musicals (technically Opera) both stage and screen delivered entirely in song and dance. In Strange New Worlds season 2, there's a musical episode, Subspace Rhapsody, it's still Star Trek and thus Space Opera, through and through... But technically not opera nor operetto as there's significant spoken dialogue.
BTVS Once More With Feeling is very much still a horror episode, and perhaps even more so than most episodes, since it's not really the typical action adventure episode. ANd it's a morality play, which is also not a genre, but a modality of plot that is often used in speculative fiction to make reflections on reality...
And Wagner's der Gotterdammerung is musical, but is mythic fantasy by genre; just shy of a literal faerie tale. Similar for Cats, which is anthropomorphic fantasia...
The various versions of Phantom of the Opera, they all basically tell the same story, in different ways. Ken Burns' staging is Operetta, so most dialogue is basically rhythmically spoken, but breaks into song repeatedly; Andrew Lloyd Webber's version is a full on opera, and the story for both is nigh on identical, but the tone and the amount of musicality change. And, of course, the original novel is utterly non-musical, but yet the same story.
Schoolhouse Rock is a musical as well, in the genre of fantasia; portions of the Muppet show also are musical, but the show itself, both runs, are by genre, behind the scenes in the same way as Glee or Hanna Montana.
Let's see... Man of La Mancha, Camelot, Robin Hood: Men in Tights: Historical fantasy, and in Camelot, also into alternate history. In the case of Man of La Mancha, it's indeed the same story as the novel, but told through song. And Sir Christopher Lee did a whole album inspired by it, including a metal cover of I, Don Quixote! Done as a duet, as it should be, with a third person sprechstimme for certain lines - dead true to the musical.

And then, there's Jesus Christ, Superstar.... for some, it's blasphemy, for others, an interesting presentation of the Passion, for others still, fuel for nightmares.

Oh, and we mustn't forget Spamalot... Monty Python & the Holy Grail redone as an operetta. Still comedic semi-medieval fantasy/alt-history.

That said, there are a pair of classic forms for movie musicals that are often considered genres of their own, the "Lets put on a show" musicals (I forget the film analysis term), and the Busby Berkley style (which is to ballet as operetta is to opera...). Busby style involves huge dance numbers viewed from afar with intricate patterns, and often, at least one number in a pool. (I'm not kidding.) The Busby style is severely unrealistic, but it's not even a majority of the 40's/50's/60's musicals.

Across those, we've got a dozen musical styles. Oh, and do note, many times, a revival of a musical will change the musical style... the same melody, the same story, but different instrumentation.
 

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Peter BOSCO'S

Adventurer
Non-alternative history.
As in players being expected to act in accordance with the historical events.
It becomes alt-history the instant someone makes a choice different from the historical path.

That's about the only one that simply cannot be done, because playing it turns it into alt-history or historical dramatization.
You might be able to make it work if the PC's have no chance to change the broader events that history has recorded, and the events are things that are not recorded in detail anyway. As long as we don't know what, say, four random levied peasants did in the War of the Roses, and as long as the GM never introduces any other characters whose fates were recorded than whatever the PC's do will remain historical fiction, and not alt-historical fiction.

However, that that is not really "expected to act in accordance with the historical events" it is more of "can't be proven to have influenced the historical events".
 

Reynard

Legend
Supporter
Non-alternative history.
As in players being expected to act in accordance with the historical events.
It becomes alt-history the instant someone makes a choice different from the historical path.

That's about the only one that simply cannot be done, because playing it turns it into alt-history or historical dramatization.
Historical fiction and alternate history are not the same genres.
 


Reynard

Legend
Supporter
No, they're not, but when one does historical fiction in an interactive medium, they're automatically what it changes into, one, the other, or both.
There's nothing automatic about it. It can happen if the group is intentionally doing so, but just because you set your game in Edwardian England doesn't suddenly means its alt history.
 



It's no longer history the moment the player has character agency.

It's alt-history if you have your players fighting in the Battle of Hastings, and they successfully aid Harold in defeating the Normans. It's historical fiction if they're a bunch of knights defending York against Norwegian excursions in early 1066 (or vise versa).

There's plenty of room for agency as long as you don't try and use a grandiose scale plot. And lots of space for wins, loses, intrigue, and drama as long as no well known events are directly affected. Almost like Dr. Who, in certain regards. But there's definitely opportunity for roll playing and/or war gaming while maintaining historical fiction.
 


MGibster

Legend
History is the one genre that cannot be played, because it ceases to be history the moment it is played.
As a genre, historical refers to a work that takes place in the past and there's no requirement the story be true. History as a genre should not be confused with history in the academic sense of the systematic study of the past. The Beguiled is a 1971 movie taking place during the Civil War starring Clint Eastwood as a wounded Union soldier hiding out at a seminary in Mississippi.. The character Eastwood plays never existed and the entire story is fiction, but it's still within the historical genre.
 

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