Rowan Kaiser

Rowan Kaiser is a freelance writer currently living the Bay Area, who also writes for The A.V. Club, and has been published at Salon, Gamasutra, Kotaku, and more. He still occasionally finds Ultima VI Moongate maps and mantra notes when he visits his parents' house. Follow him on Twitter @rowankaiser.

Articles by Rowan Kaiser

Time, space and Guild Wars 2
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. I suppose that people wouldn't complain about massively multiplayer RPGs all seeming the same if they didn't all have the same perspective, interface, combat system, and progression models, to name just a few things (there are many, many more). Yet I think the most important similarity is in how MMRPGs all use time and space – what you spend your time doing and where it happens. It seems that no matter the game in the genre, you spend roughly the same amount of time questing, walking, fighting, or crafting in similar places – this is part of why The Secret World's investigation quests felt so fresh.Compare the lack of variety on these terms with first-person shooters, and it's easy to see that MMRPGs (with the exception of EVE Online) lack variety in their rhythm. It doesn't have to be this way. There's no conceptual reason why many persistent worlds have to be notable only for how much it deviates from models set by game such as EverQuest and World Of Warcraft.Guild Wars 2 doesn't change the common perspective, interface, etc., making it look and play much like just about everything else in the genre. However, in terms of time and space, and how accessible (both in the literal and metaphorical sense of the word) it is. It's a dramatic shift for the genre. Guild Wars 2 makes traveling easy.%Gallery-148062%
RPG combat: Tanks, threat and aggro, oh my
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. On the surface, the last 10 years of role-playing games have not been momentous. Skyrim looks much more like Morrowind than Morrowind did Arena; Diablo 3 fits comfortably in the mold established by Diablo 2; there's a direct line from Knights Of The Old Republic to Dragon Age; and massively multiplayer role-playing games are still judged by how much they deviate from Everquest and World Of Warcraft. This is not to say that there haven't been changes. Certain narrative techniques, like moral choices for example, have been well-documented. But there's a major mechanical shift going in role-playing games that doesn't get much attention. One of the core components of RPG combat – how enemies choose to attack different characters – is being reshaped. There isn't necessarily a single term for it yet; it encompasses the concepts of "tanking," "aggro," and "threat." All of these combine for a shift in how players manage enemy attacks.
An RPG fan's guide to the Steam Sale
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. It's the most wonderful time of the year to be a PC gamer: the Steam Summer Sale! For those of us who are fans of Western/PC RPGs, this is a chance to get some of the best games available for prices that ought to make console fans jealous.This column is going up toward the end of the sale, so some of the best prices for some may have come and gone, but between the voting, the flash sales, and the fact that Steam usually uses the last day or so to repeat some of the biggest sales, it's possible to get the best prices again even if you missed the first round.
It's all too much: Why Mass Effect 3's Extended Cut ending can't possibly fix everything
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. BioWare's free response to the Mass Effect 3 ending hoopla, the "Extended Cut" add-on, was released this week. In many ways, it acts as a direct response to the most common criticisms of the ending. If your primary problems were that the ending choices weren't properly explained beforehand, or that it was unclear what happened to the universe and the specific characters after the climax, the "Extended Cut" will be a notable improvement. But it doesn't actually change the quality of the ending, it just adds more content.(Obviously, spoilers for the Mass Effect series follow.)
Best class system in RPGs belongs to Wizardry VII
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. One of the defining characteristics of the role-playing genre is its class systems. Although not every RPG has classes – Fallout or The Witcher, for example – some tend to be notable for their lack of classes. In some games, class is a single, permanent decision at the beginning of your adventure, and in others it's something that can be manipulated throughout. In most cases, though, it is the single most important aspect in determining how your characters interact with the game world. Thieves sneak and back stab, fighters charge in and absorb damage, snipers shoot from a distance. The most impressive class system I've seen in an RPG is in 1992's Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (as well as its less well-known predecessor, Bane Of The Cosmic Forge). What initially appears to be a straightforward, rigid D&D-style system is given massive depth by two things: the importance of racial base stats in determining class, and a dynamic system that allows for both massive improvement and possible disaster. It's possibly the most in-depth system I've seen in any RPG, and one that I wish was more well-known.
Puzzle Quest: a role-playing gem
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords is one most inspiring role-playing games of recent years. It tends to fall out of the conversation compared to more traditional, big-budget fare like Skyrim, Dragon Age, The Witcher, or Fallout. But that's to be expected – big money means big marketing and more discussion. But while the blockbuster games can be great, but so can the surprising little games.This is part of what made Puzzle Quest so exciting – there would have been no expectation that a small, (initially) handheld hybrid puzzle game would be something special. As an underdog story, it's compelling to see such a game have such success, spawning ports, sequels, and spinoffs. As a long-time PC gamer, I also enjoyed watching the world of Warlords III depicted in a surprising new fashion. And, of course, the game itself is excellent.But those aren't the main reason that Puzzle Quest is worth examining for this column. That would be its combat system, a form of Bejeweled-style, "Match Three" puzzle gameplay. This use of puzzle-based, abstract combat created a new dimension of role-playing combat. Traditional models of tactical, or hybrid real-time/turn-based, or action-style systems didn't apply to Puzzle Quest. It was both something new, and, by following Bejeweled, something already respected and comfortable.%Gallery-8259%
Playing with Diablo 3's paper dolls - and loving it
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. It's the little things that push a game from good to great. Attention to detail is a big reason why Diablo 3 sold six million-plus copies in its first week. It's part of why Blizzard has one of the best reputations of any developer in gaming.My favorite collection of "little things" in Diablo 3 are the "paper doll" effects. When your character equips new armor or weapons, they clearly show up on your avatar. New helm? Ooo, it's got a plume! New two-handed sword? Man, that sucker is big.
Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. The role-playing game structure is, in many ways, built as an adaptation. What is Dungeons & Dragons if not an attempt to simulate Lord of the Rings? Many other role-playing systems, both tabletop and electronic, are built off of the D&D model, as well. And all you need to do is look at the elves, hobbits, orcs, and trolls of early and more modern RPGs to see the Lord of the Rings influence. It may not be a stretch to say that many early RPGs were attempts at playable novels.Improvements in technology and more licensing meant that adaptations of different media, specifically film, have become more prominent over the course of game history. But adaptations can be difficult to execute successfully.There are two major, though interconnected, issues for video game adaptations: authenticity and pacing. The Game of Thrones RPG from developer Cyanide struggles to deal with both, succeeding in some respects, while failing at others, as pointed out in the Joystiq review. It keeps pace with some older, competent adaptations like last generation's Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, but it falls well short of the very best adaptations, namely, Betrayal At Krondor.%Gallery-154087%
How Mass Effect 3's roleplaying roots empower the multiplayer
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. "I just want to see how this integrates with the single-player campaign," I thought, clicking on the multiplayer option in Mass Effect 3's main menu. I had no expectations of making it a habit. Like many people, when the multiplayer component was announced, I thought it sounded completely extraneous. Once I started playing, though, I fell for it, and have been putting more time into the multiplayer than the campaign.Arguments about whether Mass Effect 3 is a role-playing game or not have existed since the first game's release. Regardless of which side you take in those, Mass Effect does include many components of role-playing games, two of which are essential to the multiplayer's success: world-building and character development mechanics. Of course, there are simple gameplay reasons to enjoy the co-operative gameplay of Mass Effect 3 online. The levels are well designed for dynamic changes within matches, and waves of enemies seem ideal for both difficulty and time. But those things aren't what make it special.
Why skills are in, attributes are out in modern role-playing games
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. It took four or five levels gained for me to realize something was different. I was playing the Diablo 3 open beta last weekend, merrily leveling my monk up, when I noticed that half the time a gained level just happened, without me needing to do anything. Sometimes I could choose new skills, yes, but I wasn't given five points to distribute to my core attributes like Strength, Vitality, etc. There's a little bit of text that notes which attributes have improved, but that's all. Diablo 3 isn't the only major recent role-playing game* to downplay the importance of its characters' core attributes. Mass Effect 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, both released within six months of Diablo 3, avoid core attributes entirely.Skyrim and Mass Effect 3 don't include attributes at all, in fact, something that would have been unthinkable for a computer role-playing game at the dawn of the genre. But the lessened importance of attributes isn't necessarily a sign of the simplification of the genre (although that's often part of it). Instead, it's part of a trend in which skills, not attributes, serve as the most important statistical measure of an RPG character.
The surprising accessibility of older RPGs
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. One major problem with loving role-playing games is that old titles can be hard to accept due to difficulty. RPGs are particularly vulnerable to this because their focus on plot and core mechanics over technology mean that they age well. Fans and critics view games in the genre over a historical continuum of relative equality, instead of simply making the assumption that better technology makes for better games.While mechanics and storylines may be roughly comparable, interfaces have definitely improved, and this is the problem. It's one thing to say that Wizardry VI has the best and most complex class system in gaming, but quite another to try to play it without knowing that you need to draw or find maps of its dungeon. Alternately, I can't count the number of people who I convince to try the original Fallout, only to see them getting frustrated at its difficulty spikes, lack of effective auto-save, and occasionally obtuse item manipulations. It happens to me to sometimes, especially with games that I didn't play when I was younger, which is why I was surprised recently to fall in love with Might & Magic III: Isles Of Terra.
(Don't) Give me that old time RPG combat
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. The Kickstarter success of Wasteland 2 may be one of the most important developments in Western role-playing games in years. It could re-open the doors to bringing back party-based, less cinematic role-playing games of the sort that have been largely gone since the mid-1990s. The trick, however, will be in using a style of combat that assures both quality and popularity for Wasteland 2. Because if it simply follows in the footsteps of the original Wasteland, it may have problems on both of those fronts.The original Wasteland was released in 1988, towards the start of a transitional era for role-playing games, both technologically and creatively. The core mechanic of role-playing games of the era -- combat -- started to shift, and lose some of its importance.
Diablo's Descendants
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. With Diablo 3's release date set, I decided to take a look back as the series' legacy --and play some of the better Western-style action/role-playing games around. Last week I talked about how Fallout, not Diablo, became the model for a generation of blockbuster role-playing games.But Diablo did wield some influence. The first initial wave of clones didn't make much of a splash, but around the time Diablo II came out in 2000, the action/RPG style began to grab more attention. In 2002, Dungeon Siege and Divine Divinity were both released to some acclaim, but they never really fit the model of a Diablo clone. Dungeon Siege was as much Ultima VII and Baldur's Gate as it was Diablo, while Divine Divinity merged many concepts from Fallout and similar games with a real-time core. Missing from both? The constant clicking that, to me, defined Diablo.
Fallout: The first modern role-playing game
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. It wasn't supposed to be Fallout. After the role-playing game genre crashed in 1995, new models for the style began to appear. Smart money would have been on the wildly popular Diablo to become the trendsetter, where Fallout was an underdog from the start. At the 2012 Game Developers Conference, Fallout's lead producer, Tim Cain, described its creation: he was the only Interplay employee assigned to the game for months, it was almost canceled twice, and when it shipped Cain was told it was a "risk" despite the low level of company investment. Despite all that, the original Fallout has become widely known as one of the greatest and most influential games of all time, and the model for the biggest RPGs of recent years. Several weeks ago I argued that Ultima was the most important game series of all time, but Ultima's influence through new games was almost gone in 1997. Fallout was its replacement; it was the first modern role-playing game.
The year role-playing games broke
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. The most important year in western role-playing history was also its worst. The late 1980s and early 1990s were an obvious Golden Age, as RPGs were the drivers of innovations in graphics, interface, complexity, and narrative in Wizardry, Ultima, and the Gold Box series. That came to a screeching halt in 1995, when the once wildly popular genre suddenly became devoid of games.The genre was rebuilt after 1995, but it looked very different. The companies and franchises which had dominated withered away, replaced by the ones we know now: Fallout, BioWare, and Blizzard. All these started shortly after 1995, and the only residual series from before, The Elder Scrolls, squeaks in with its first installment in 1994. So what changed, and why did it change?The chief contributing factor was the rise of the compact disc for storage. Games comprised of a dozen ungainly 1.5 megabyte floppies were growing more and more common, so the CD, with 500 megabytes, was a godsend (or so it seemed). All the other technological advances: better sound and music, voice-over, 3-D polygonal graphics, full-motion video, etc, could be used with CDs. This made games bigger -- but it also made budgets bigger, teams bigger, and development times much longer. Role-playing games and their developers struggled to adapt.
No Violence Necessary: The case for The Sims as a role-playing game
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. Is combat a necessary component of a role-playing game? It doesn't seem to be, by any number of common definitions. Yet if you look at how the genre is interpreted, combat seems to be essential. RPGs are built around swords clashing and guns blazing, with occasional conversations. Sure, there are a few games like Fallout and Deus Ex which offer non-violent, alternative pathways, but the bulk of the game is still oriented towards players who want to fight.There's a wildly popular, but under-discussed role-playing game that only includes a tiny amount of violence. It's The Sims, a game that shares almost every trait with role-playing games ... except combat. Don't believe me? Well, what do you actually do in The Sims?
East Is West: How Two Classic RPGs Prove the Stereotypes False
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. "Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," - Rudyard KiplingConventional wisdom holds that role-playing games are easily divided into two categories: Japanese and Western, or, before the technical lines got blurred a decade ago, console and computer games. We can name the stereotypes easily. JRPGs are story-based, WRPGs are system-based. JRPGs are action-based, fast, and simple, whereas WRPGs are strategic, slow, and complex. JRPGs have bright, cartoonish graphics and catchy music, WRPGs have realistic graphics and darker music. JRPGs linear, WRPGs open. In JRPGs, your characters are given to you, in WRPGS you create your characters. And so on.It's not true, though. What's more, it never was.
Dark Side 'Cause It Looks Cool: The Failings of Moral Choice in Games
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. Morality systems have become role-playing. Or at least, a significant amount of people have come to believe this. To take one example, this review of The Old Republic is premised on the concept that BioWare's style of moral choices are effective character-building mechanics. It's a fine review, but it's one that I can't agree with because I find the model of game morality used in The Old Republic and many other role-playing games ineffective at creating a moral system.In order for a moral choice to have weight, it needs to have two components. First, meaningful choices have to cause the player to lose something in order to gain power. Something has to change, or be expected to change, within the game in order for the decision to matter. In Mass Effect, at one point in the game, you have to choose which of two party members to rescue – the other dies. Or, in Fallout: New Vegas, working with Caesar's Legion turns the New California Republic into an enemy, and vice versa.Second, a moral choice has to be a difficult choice. The old adage "If doing the right thing were easy, everyone would do it" applies here. This is where games usually fail. They can do it with little choices, like with stealing even when you won't get caught in New Vegas. Take the owned items and you'll lose karma, which might be a small hit compared to the benefits of a new weapon. Alternately, in some games, honorable characters will simply refuse payment for quests, forcing money to be acquired by other means.
The Rhythm Of The Quest in Fallout 3 and New Vegas
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. Have you ever been horribly frustrated by one part of a game, only to think of it as the best and most memorable section of that game in retrospect? It's the ruins of D.C. for me. I played Fallout 3 on the PC a year or so after release, so the first thing I did was load up on mods, introducing different play balance, graphics, more weapons, and most motivating of all, more music for Galaxy News Radio. But at the start of the game, GNR is in trouble and the station's signal is weak. So I went to fix it as soon as I could. When I went into the ruins of D.C., I wasn't ready. By heading in that direction almost immediately, I skipped doing smaller-scale quests, which would have provided more experience and better equipment. D.C. was a slog. I scrambled for ammo, for health. I explored nooks and crannies that I didn't need to, because I hadn't even really figured out the game's compass yet. It was nail-bitingly tense, it was fresh, it was new, it took me hours. It was a pain, too. I died multiple times, but oh was it magnificent.
Ultima: Most. Important. Game Series. Ever.
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. Hey there. Whatcha playing? No, actually, don't tell me. You're playing Ultima. You don't know you're playing Ultima, but you are. If you're playing an open-world game, you're dealing with Ultima. If you're playing a massively-multiplayer game, you're dealing with Ultima. If you're playing a game with a morality system, Ultima. Even something as simple as three-dimensional graphics – either in perspective or overall representation – have ties to Ultima. How?Open-world gaming: From the beginning, the Ultima games took place in worlds which were as big as possible given the tech constraints. You traveled across swamps, oceans, and hills, discovering what the world had to offer. The world was rarely "gated", letting exploration proceed in a non-linear fashion. What's more, the developments of open-world gameplay throughout the course of the series presaged the open-world games to come.Ultima VI (1990) may be the most important open-world game of all time. Previous games in the series had switched perspective based on your context – dungeons were first-person, combat was top-down, and exploration on the world map had a completely different scale than exploration of towns. In Ultima VI, perspective was consistent. Your party walked into a town in the same way that it walks through a dungeon. It was a seamless, consistent world, that felt lived-in, and that open-world games from Grand Theft Auto to Skyrim owe a huge debt to.The deeper into the series you go, the more complex the world. Want to quit adventuring for a while and bake bread? You could do that. Want to explore dungeons that are totally irrelevant to the plot? That was an option. Grab a cannon and start slaughtering guards so you can steal everything in the town? Well, you could do that, but there were consequences.