What Kind of Folk Activity are RPGs?

A recent Questing Beast video has drawn a line in sand with respect to WOTC’s One Game Licence. A colloquial folk conception of D&D is contrasted with a corporately controlled singular vision of the hobby. When viewed as a folk activity, Ben Milton places RPGs in the same box as pass times such as knitting or painting.

Luka’s Wizard Thief Fighter blog has taken this thought further, considering the type of folk activity RPGs most resemble. Their answer is one I’d agree with, identifying RPGs as a type of folk performance art:

Some uncanny cross between improv theater, campfire ghost stories, literary jazz, and—in its heroic tropes—epic poetry and fairy tales

In this post, I wanted to flesh this out a bit more, and look at some parallels between RPGs and folk theatre. What I hadn’t expected was quite how close the connection between these forms can be in some instances.

Folk Theatre

Folk theatre is a very broad category. It can be frequently bawdy, crude and naïve, with a good number of fart jokes – qualities shared with some of the best RPG sessions.  Further superficial similarities with D&D are evident in this video, which could easily be mistaken for a LARP game.

The Worst Jobs in the Weird

I’ve been catching up online with the early 2000s UK TV series The Worst Jobs in History. It’s been useful inspiration for coming up with a character’s former job in a fantasy RPG setting. The presenter Tony Robinson tries out the jobs, showing that many had revolting or dangerous aspects that aren’t always obvious. 

I imagine many RPG creators use this or similar sources in compiling lists of background careers for character creation. This is judging by the regularity with which gong farmer turns up anyway. Most lists are rooted in factual examples from history, which inevitably leads to a quite vanilla flavour. Lists often only provide a job’s title, offering little opportunity to embellish on this.