Cliched

I played a Buffy The Vampire Slayer RPG one-shot. It sounded like fun, everyone in the group was a fan, but when we began I was wondering. Won’t this be a bit awkward, aping the show? Or just lame, aping the show badly? At least shallow, not having our own ideas?

An empathic “no” is the outcome. We replaced the series cast with our own Slayer, Watcher (in the making) and white hat teenagers in high school and essentially played through a short, by the numbers episode, supposedly the first episode of a Buffy-like show. Vampire in school, dead janitor, hopping vampires in the cemetery. Laughs, stakes, mausoleums, parents Not Getting It.

The purpose of the night was to introduce a newbie player to tabletop RPGs. It turned out everyone shared a love for Buffy, so it was a natural choice to go with a familiar setting. Nothing in the characters, powers or the world required explaining. I realized the value in this approach, but what I didn’t realize was how it helped a new group really gel super quickly. Because everyone knew the Buffy tropes and archetypes, characters were established in the first shot in a very effective way. On some level I guess everyone knew what was going to or should happen next, and just pulled it together. Instead of being shallow, it was very satisfying.

I usually find funny characters in RPGS tiring and super hard to play, personally. I ended up playing a cross between Oz and Xander from the series, very much the brave, inept clown, and much to my surprise, comedy came naturally. We laughed a lot, which I don’t often see in brand new groups. I think it’s because everyone was so familiar with how Buffy is told, we knew what would be funny – what certain actions would look like, how lines would be delivered, even if we aren’t quite professional actors ourselves.

I think it also helped the new roleplayer considerably, because instead of a carte blanche “well, what do you want to do now?” she had a vast repertoire of “appropriate” actions in mind.

The cliche elevated the game to something I feel exceeded its ingredients. I haven’t seen this happen with too many games before, perhaps with the exception of Star Wars, and even there I’ve found the cliches something I must fight, not embrace. Perhaps I’ve been wrong, or perhaps it requires that the entire group (not some, not most) is on the same page, card-carrying members of whatever it is we’re fans of. I know I’m now looking at licensed roleplaying games in a very different light.