Role Playing Games: A modern-day folklore tradition?

Somewhere along the passage of time, folktales around the fire transformed into experiences on our handheld screens, and we almost didn't notice. Folktales once served as a primary way of passing down knowledge about the world and its many dangers, along with new and interesting storytelling traditions designed especially to keep the little ones listening.

Fast-forward to today, the campfire stories may have become rare, but there's a much more personalised, interactive storytelling tradition that took over the world not so long ago: RPGs (Role-Playing Games).

The Art of Storytelling

Early storytelling experiments show the importance of not just the story but also the delivery medium. The primitive oral traditions soon began to be accompanied by modulated voices, gestures, props such as masks and puppets, and special, sometimes intricately painted, screens for backgrounds. Thus, allowing these timeless tales to seep not just into words, but into every possible art form to magnify their impact and beauty.

The Kavadiya Bhats from Rajasthan have been carrying their tales in the form of portable shrine boxes (kavad) for hundreds of years, with the boxes opening into a sequence of colourful painted storyboards. Kathakali is another well-known storytelling tradition for those who see and feel more than what words can convey. This art form has effortlessly carried ancient tales to modern times through highly stylised makeup and costumes, accompanied by intentionally exaggerated gestures and expressions. "Kathputli" puppetry from Rajasthan has been used to share tales of bravery and other local legends through wooden dolls, a bamboo reed (to speak dialogues in a shrill voice), and a dholak for background music.

With many more such interesting storytelling traditions evolving across the world, the way people engaged with stories began to shift. Storytelling was no longer a simple speaker-to-listener exchange. It became something that came alive only when the audience actively imagined themselves within it. And soon came something that allowed audiences to do exactly that: shape their own stories by stepping in as the heroes they once admired!

The Rise of Role-Playing Games

Dungeons and Dragons, one of the earliest table-top RPGs, was released in 1974, transforming the way youngsters engaged with stories. Players gather around a table, each taking on the role of a character with distinct abilities, while a game master guides the story. Together, they navigate imagined worlds, face challenges, and make decisions that shape the outcome.

My favourite part of the game is how you can choose to be any character, from a centuries-old mage to an immortal elf to fairies, pirates, or even a knight, letting any and every character from the classics around the world come alive on the table-top.

"The game mimics life, giving the characters enough free will to make independent choices, but then the dice rolls, reminding the players that control is never absolute."

There is something tempting about trading your mundane life for that in the game sometimes. And digitisation may have taken us closer to this trade, making RPGs more personalised and realistic, allowing players to compete and collaborate on adventures online. Strategising delivered at the press of a few buttons became the main appeal of the online RPGs. Choosing and customising your character. Completing quests, fighting against villains, getting rewards, and growing your power and resources. Unlike traditional folktales that offered clear moral conclusions, modern RPGs allow players to navigate ambiguity, making choices without a single "correct" outcome.

What connects campfires to consoles

But what makes me connect these games so strongly to the folklore storytelling traditions is the stories surrounding the characters we choose. In the game, most of us skip the autogenerated dialogue that flashes across our screens, treating it as background noise. But hidden within it are the same cautions, moral tensions, and lessons that once echoed through folktales around a fire. Even the characters we play feel strangely familiar, as if they've stepped out of the same old stories we've been told for generations. And lastly, the thoughtful, aesthetically pleasing world-building in these RPGs is similar to the efforts of theatre artists in painting backgrounds for various scenes, creating colourful wooden dolls, and even painting boxes to reveal intricate story panels. It's beautiful to think that humans have always been exploring new ways to tell stories creatively, and art has always answered their call.

In many ways, this instinct hasn't changed. We still look for ways to hold on to stories beyond the moment we experience them. That's where spaces like Lore come in. Through art prints, journals, and everyday objects, the idea is to simply capture stories in forms that stay with us a little longer. Not grand myths or epic quests necessarily, but the quieter, everyday narratives that shape who we are.

In the end, maybe the difference isn't that stories have changed, but that our place within them has. We're no longer just listeners, we're participants. And in that shift, folklore hasn't faded, it has simply learned to have a little fun with it!