// PC GAMER — GAMING
RPGs are simply better when you're an idiot
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Welcome to Dungeon Master, PC Gamer's regular RPG column, where Online Editor Fraser Brown delves into PC gaming's most beloved and enduring genre. Grab a seat in our badly-lit tavern and please ignore the goblin puke.
Most videogame RPGs are selling a power fantasy—the idea that you are competent, clever and regardless of the odds will still manage to save the day. Fate has made you a hero, and nothing is going to stop you from achieving your goals. And this holds a lot of appeal. It's sometimes nice to be able to take a holiday from my own incompetence.
Over the last few days I've managed to drop my dinner, get trapped on a bus going in the wrong direction, get peed on by a dog, get almost run over by a car and, to top it all off, actually get knocked over by an electric scooter. I am a walking disaster.
Geralt never gets peed on. Shepard never lands on their arse after colliding with a teen. These are not heroic moments. When these protagonists face adversity, it only serves as an excuse for more badass adventures.
It turns out, though, that constantly winning becomes a little dull. I want more friction. More fuck ups. But games, by and large, want you to succeed, even when they throw obstacles in your way. Last month, I wrote about how The Blood of Dawnwalker sets up all these possible ways for you to fail, only to then make it almost impossible to screw up unless you're really trying. But it's hardly alone in this regard.
But this problem is not inherent to all RPGs—it's certainly not present in TTRPGs, which tend to embrace misfortune. Many of them actually thrive on it, like Mothership and Call of Cthulhu. And it was only when I started to play TTRPGs that I really began to appreciate how much fun it is to not be the Chosen One, to just be some guy who, either through cursed rolls or bad calls, keeps messing up.
Being asked to do a thing, doing the thing, and then getting congratulated for it—that's not a particularly good anecdote. If, in the process of completing your quest, you get outsmarted by some children, throw up all over yourself, break your foot and end up disappointing everyone around you, well, then you've got a great story.
Thankfully, more and more RPGs are celebrating idiots. Not that it's a new concept. I vividly recall the shock I got when, after a series of questionable decisions in Baldur's Gate 2, my stoic pal Jaheira decided that I was so rotten, so beyond hope, that the only solution was to kill me.
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