RPGs are great. The genre has consistently been one of the most popular in gaming, and continues to evolve to this day. But sometimes, the lines get a little blurry. God of War is described as an action RPG thanks to the skill tree, but is a very linear game with little to no roleplaying or decision making. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is up for Best RPG at The Game Awards despite being criticised for its RPGness and praised for its actionness, which is another category entirely. Does the J in JRPG just mean ‘from Japan’, or does it convey something deeper?
For all the questions that are asked about the genre, it’s rare to see the disconnect between virtual RPGs and tabletop RPGs addressed much. For all Baldur’s Gate 3 made the dice rolling feel tactile and gave purpose to skill checks and bonus actions in ways few other games have, part of this disconnect remains. You could do anything in Baldur’s Gate 3, including a lot of very silly solutions programmed into the game, but it still has a seriousness at heart that lacks the true chaos of the tabletop experience.
Video Games Are Serious Or Funny. Tabletop Can Be Both.
The thing with video games is they don’t know when you’re joking around. If you do something daft in Baldur’s Gate 3, you are forever labelled as a big daft daftie from Daftville. There are infinite possibilities, sure, but they each require commitment. I consider this to be a good thing, and updates that have lessened this (like making Minthara’s recruitment path easier) weaken the game overall. I expect a level of earnestness from Baldur’s Gate 3, and understand that I have to meet it halfway. That’s not the case with tabletop games, which is why the upcoming indie RPG The Edge of Allegoria is so interesting.
As regular TG readers may be aware, I run a D&D group with editors from TheGamer, writing about their escapades semi-regularly. In a recent session, they arrived at a mountain village eager to prove their heroics. Amongst the huts, they found a woman sat on her bed, crying, holding a young boy’s shoes. The party immediately began to joke about Ernest Hemingway. Now, these people are dorks (hence the humour found in literary references), but they are not evil.
They did not inherently find the fact that a child was missing in the mountains, presumed dead, to be funny. They also did end up rescuing the boy from his fate. But because it’s just a group of friends sitting around having fun, they blew off some steam first. You get to do the silly response, have the DM ignore it so you don’t derail the adventure with an out of character joke, and then decide on how your character would actually approach the problem. This balance can’t be done in video games, which is why The Edge of Allegoria is so interesting.
The Edge Of Allegoria Is A Satire Of Nostalgia
Clearly riffing on Game Boy era Pokemon and Zelda adventures, The Edge of Allegoria is an RPG that channels the silliness of tabletop gaming while (presumably) still allowing a real story to be told. The trailer shows anachronistic references to hot sauce, pop culture inspired quests, satire on the nature of wasting away your life pretending to be a hero while you sit at home on your couch alone, and… let’s call them ‘alternative medications’. Those sorts of comedic ideas wrapped around a connected story are much closer to capturing the real tabletop experience than effectively simulated dice and an open sandbox of options.
The best way I can think to put it is if you imagine Chappel Gnome was actually a character in Baldur’s Gate 3 or a D&D module, not just an internet meme The Funny Guy at your table claims to have made up. Even the name, The Edge of Allegoria, shows a game that is not taking itself too seriously. A lack of humour (or rather, a dull flavourless humour injected via wooden dialogue inside a too-melodramatic narrative) is what can put me off some RPG adventures.
Get ready for an RPG like everything you’ve seen before – The Edge of Allegoria’s trailer
I know The Edge of Allegoria is not the first one to attempt comedy, and if it gets it right, will not be the first to do so. But the lampshaded Pokemon nostalgia, the obvious tabletop thinking on display, and mixture of RPG stylings and modern life make The Edge of Allegoria look very interesting indeed. The demo is available now, and the full game launches December 4 – just in time for you to cram it for your GOTY list.