I wrote two pieces for this book in class: one about unicorns which I ended up expanding into my term paper, and the other on table-top gaming tropes. I submitted the unicorn paper to a conference as well as to a magazine for publication, so we'll see how those two endeavors turn out. But for my blog, I decided to post the piece I wrote about gaming tropes - in full! Enjoy.
Left, Loot and Murder: Tabletop Gaming Tropes
According to my husband, who has played Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) for some twenty-odd plus years, our “standard dungeoning rule of: ‘Go left’” was pioneered by Marget Weis and Tracy Hickman’s Dragons of Autumn Twilight (Autumn Twilight). I was shocked to learn this after giddily gushing about the connection in the book: “‘We’ll go left,’ Tanis said—since Raistlin feels uneasy about the right’” (Weis and Hickman 357). Our friend-group has used various versions of “Go Left” for years, even butchering it for use when playing Werewolf, in which the standard rule is to “always kill Greg first”(1). Of course, I took to the internet to verify my husband’s claim about “Go Left” but came up kind of empty handed. Reddit has several posts and threads about standard dungeoneering rules, and the closest I could equate to “Go Left” was the “left hand rule”: “the idea is you place your left hand on the wall and follow it and you will eventually find the exit while never actually getting lost” (Dedjester). Sadly, what I thought was a cool inherited trope from bygone years is only a facsimile of the codified trope “When All Else Fails Go Right” which is traditional to 2D platformer games in which often there is only one direction to go (All The Tropes). Because tropes are so inherent in D&D I felt the urge to learn more about their use and became curious about ones that might be present in Autumn Twilight.
Dungeons & Dragons is considered “one of the Trope Codifiers of the modern era” because it is the source for several standard role-playing game (RPG) terms and elements that have also been influential on the video game RPG genre as well (“Dungeons & Dragons”). A “Trope Codifier” is not necessarily the “Trope Maker” or originator, but “is the template that all later uses of [the] trope follow” (“Trope Codifier”). The All The Tropes website, attributes D&D as having “single-handedly mashed swords and sorcery and epic high fantasy into the fantasy genre as we know it today”(2) which is why the tropes the game has codified from player usage over the years are so commonplace (“Dungeons & Dragons”).
Dragonlance, the overarching series that kicks off with the Dragons of Autumn Twilight novel, is a D&D game tie-in literary endeavour and so the use of tropes within the novels appears to be a given. All The Tropes states that the Dragonlance novels are “notable for taking extreme D&D influences and making them work on their own” such as the character classes of the party in Autumn Twilight and the way the writers utilize the function of turn-based combat in the novel’s action sequences (“Dragonlance” All The Tropes). The Dragonlance novels are known for using tropes from all over the popular media landscape, but I want to specifically highlight the looting and “murderhobo” tropes because they are present in the text in unique ways.
Unfortunately, not all tropes are light-hearted or used in fun ways like my opening anecdote. Tropes like looting and the murderhobo can be tied to racial injustices, glorifying evil, and colonialism. Daniel Heath Justice’s experience playing Dungeons & Dragons as a young Cherokee teen sparked significant reflections on how the combat and looting in the tabletop game are tied to colonialism’s “savagism versus civilization” ideology (Justice, “Hack the Orcs, Loot the Tomb, and Take the Land”). He draws attention to the “long and ugly settler history of grave robbing,” (Justice par. 2) recognizing that “[t]he plundering of lost tombs [in D&D] lost its excitement when [he] began to learn how many treasure hunters had robbed Indigenous graves and burial sites” (Justice par. 22). Looting is a key function of tabletop and video game RPGs and it is often the main way players gain new equipment, weapons, or items to sell for gold. Acknowledging harmful colonial practices inherent to the original D&D experience is up to the Dungeon Master and players and one possible way to subvert this is to have players gain loot in other ways than killing monsters or plundering tombs. Perhaps by completing quests that are not combat or tomb-raiding based, or by not having the game world rely on a currency at all.
When it comes to Autumn Twilight, even though it is situated in the genre, there is not really that much looting taking place. One of the only instances the party is depicted looting is when they are forced to go on the run and they take things from Tika’s house: “[Tas] ran into the kitchen and began rummaging through the shelves, stuffing loaves of bread and anything else that looked edible into his pouches. He tossed Flint a full skin of wine” (Weis and Hickman 46). Notably, there is also the quintessential scene featuring a dragon’s hoard, but the party only absconds with a couple coveted plot device items: The Disks of Mishakal and a Spellbook of Fistandantilus. The remainder of the dragon’s hoard is of no use to them; they have no homes to go back to and are being hunted through the lands for possessing several items of great power: the healing staff, the disks, and a spellbook. The party in Autumn Twilight is not actually tomb-raiding just to tomb-raid in the text. In fact, when they do enter the territory of Goldmoon and Riverwind’s people—who are supposed to be representative of Indigenous peoples—the party only enters the camp to survey the devastation and search for survivors. The novel’s representation of Indigenous peoples is shoddy at best, but the authors can be noted for not having the party ravage the remains of an already devastated peoples’ way of living. It is just glossed over instead.
Traditionally, as explained, loot is obtained in RPGs by exploring ruins and killing monsters, but in my personal experience this is where things can degenerate into chaos. The implied covenant of the tabletop RPG is the “role-playing” aspect of it, but when your table of friends, like mine, consists of a bunch of players that are not super comfortable with outward theatrical expression—well, suffice to say the cast of Critical Role we are not. Unfortunately, when there is a lack of interest to participate in the role-play, it inevitably devolves into the party becoming a bunch of “murderhobos.”(3) This type of player character is defined as a one “that is focused entirely around combat effectiveness and appears to exist only to enter dungeons, kill things, loot their treasure and increase combat effectiveness thereby” (“Murderhobo”). The definition goes on to highlight the often “boilerplate background” and “rootless drifter” lifestyle that requires no “apparent connection to family, society or place” of this type of character (“Murderhobo”). The original edition of D&D was embroiled in the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 90s and Joseph P. Laycock points out that it was “presented [to the public] as a component of a morally bankrupt culture that was producing a generation of remorseless killers” (pg. 21). Thankfully, the ruthless killing the panic expected never happened and remained only in the game as a frustrating trope. I wonder, is it the vulnerability and self-reflection that comes from role-playing that deters players from engaging fully in the RPG genre, instead allowing themselves to succumb to an annoyingly basic trope of the “murderhobo”? Clearly gamers love to watch the masters of Critical Role at work, yet are not themselves willing too or are too scared to participate in the fun these such games can afford.
Autumn Twilight contains numerous battles with the bad-guy forces, but none is as poignant as the goblin encounter at Tika’s house when the party is trying to escape Solace. It is this encounter when Tanis refers to the party as murderers. After Caramon accidentally smashes the goblins’ heads together too hard and kills them, Tanis exclaims: “‘Well that’s torn it […] We’ve murdered two more of the Theocrat’s guards. He’ll have the town up in arms’” (Weis and Hickman 45). Tanis is seemingly not a huge fan of the willy-nilly killing that is taking place and Caramon rebuffs the accusation of being a murderer later: “‘I don’t consider myself a murderer.’ Caramon snorted. ‘Goblins don’t count’” (50). Goblins and hobgoblins are subspecies that are considered less-than in the D&D setting and in Autumn Twilight they are disproportionately pitted against a large party of all humans—except Flint and Tasslehoff, who are a dwarf and kender respectively. Justice notes that “full human status” in the original editions of D&D appears to be “determined by proximity to unsullied whiteness and Euro-Western culture” and therefore “whiteness determined both dignity in life and grievability in death” (par. 15). Most of the party in Autumn Twilight do not give the “monsters” they kill a second thought, focused solely on their survival and mission throughout the novel. “[T]he function of monsters,” Justice points out, “[is] to die, and thereby give certainty of purpose to the civilized” (par. 17).
The novel’s gully dwarves are another example of a less-than species; depicted as “primitive, degenerate, filthy, and simpleminded” (Justice par. 24). Flint rages about how much the dwarven people despise them and that he was held prisoner for three years: “‘I swore I’d get revenge. I’ll kill every living gully dwarf I come across’” (Weis and Hickman 190). Justice correlates the treatment of these less-than species with the colonialist treatment of Indigenous peoples: “Indigenous peoples were rendered monstrous and therefore killable, neither one worthy of mourning or compassion; the savage dies so that the civilized may flourish, no matter how bloody the cost” (par. 18). Sadly, goblins and gully dwarves alike are destined to be battle fodder at the hands of the hero party not only on the page, but also at the gaming table.
Justice acknowledges that the “basic [D&D] template has remained troublesome, making it extremely hard to shift these deeply rooted and widely held cultural biases” that are associated with the tabletop game’s origins (par. 24). Additionally, the use of various common and troublesome tropes can get tiring, but thankfully modern players are challenging those trope stereotypes to make Dungeons & Dragons more accessible by including Indigenous and Queer player characters with complex backgrounds and motives (Justice par. 30, 34). Tropes like the “left hand rule” can be helpful as standard practice, especially for new players, and looting continues to be a necessary function of the game play, but being a murderhobo for the sake of making things easy and not allowing yourself the vulnerability as a player to role-play is just downright annoying. Further research on the numerous tropes present in Autumn Twilight and if they are linked to troublesome practices would be an entertaining rabbit hole, but that is a paper for another time. It is funny how one off-hand conversation with one’s spouse can turn into a research adventure on its own. I was somewhat familiar with tropes and their usage before, but now I am more cognizant of their beginnings, their impact, and the way harmful ones can be subverted and made anew for a more inclusive tabletop gaming experience.
(Disclaimer: No D&D monsters were harmed in the writing of this essay.)
(1) Werewolf is a party game in which two players are secret werewolves that pick off villagers one by one at night and the group has to decide by voting who the werewolves are and kill them off. If wrongly accused you could off villagers by mistake and the werewolves could win. Full game rules here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game).
(2) One could argue Tolkien has done this as well.
(3) “Murderhobos” will also resort to killing anything, including non-player characters there to help them, in order to gain experience to level up and acquire more and more loot. Full definition here: http://arcana.wikidot.com/murderhobo.
“Dragonlance.” All The Tropes, 26 Oct. 2024, https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Dragonlance.
“Dungeons & Dragons.” All The Tropes, 1 Nov. 2024, https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Dungeons_%
Justice, Daniel Heath. “Hack the Orcs, Loot the Tomb, and Take the Land.” Rascal, 10 May
Laycock, Joseph P.. “Introduction. Fantasy and Reality.” Dangerous Games: What the Moral
University of California Press, 2015, pp. 15-47. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://
ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uregina/detail.action?docID=1775219.
“Murderhobo.” The Arcana Wiki, 20 Aug. 2024, http://arcana.wikidot.com/murderhobo.
“Trope Codifier.” All The Tropes, 6 May 2024, https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Trope_Codifier.
Accessed 20 Nov. 2024.
Weis, Margaret, and Tracy Hickman. Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Wizards of the Coast, 1984.
“When All Else Fails Go Right.” All The Tropes, 10 Apr. 2017, https://allthetropes.org/wiki/
