Do RPGs need intro prose?

It's something you don't really question after you handle enough roleplaying game books. In many RPG publications, preceding the often clunky "What is a Roleplaying Game?" section, you're greeted with a few pages of prose fiction. Sometimes it's a single page, sometimes it drags on interminably. The idea is obvious enough: giving players a taste of the game, its setting, its tone, and the kinds of stories it "should" tell.

But is that opening barrage of prose fiction really necessary? Is it even counterintuitive?

For a start, it's hard to generalize. The Call of Cthulhu 6th edition core book reprints the titular H.P. Lovecraft story before delving into mechanics for the author's stable of otherworldly creatures and how players interact with them.

I wouldn't call that common, as most tend to be on the much shorter side. Regardless of length, I often find myself skipping past them on my first skim through of a book, especially if it's only a page. I'll get to it eventually but introductory prose is not the first thing I look into about a system.

Short attention span on my part? Perhaps. But in my defense, RPGs might share some storytelling fundamentals with prose fiction but they exist in distinct spaces. Reading through most of these introductions, it's immediately apparent that a good RPG writer doesn't automatically translate to a good prose writer. 

I assume the opposite is true too but I've yet to read a novel that's opened with one page roleplaying rules to get readers "in the mood."

A common complaint in RPG spaces is the breed of game master that clearly has a novel in mind and has taken a table of roleplayers hostage to act out their very specific vision. With plenty of "railroading," that approach paves over the collaborative, spontaneous aspects of RPGs, a core part of the medium. Could prose intros play into that perception that a table is playing out a novel or script instead of playing an a more free-form, collaborative story?

That's assuming intro prose even has an impact though. Most of it feels disposable and that goes beyond clunky writing. Plenty of games include examples of play but that lends a better sense of the mechanics at work and how game masters should present the story, as well as how players should interact with the system and its world. 

While introductory prose in RPGs can do the same for the less mechanical and broader aspects of a game - namely it's setting and atmosphere - I often find most fall short of the mark. Easy to chalk up to poor writing, except the rest of an RPG book, especially its background sections tend to do a better job than those prose intros.

The Genesys based Star Wars RPGs spring to mind, where the meat of those books translates the feel of the franchise into an RPG and explains the process to the players. Meanwhile, I'd say the prose introductions for those books don't even place in the mid tier of Star Wars' licensed fiction.

I don't blame the writers for that. I took a few classes specifically on writing short stories and they're hardly easy. In fact, every teacher made a point of establishing that short fiction is harder to pull off, mainly because you have less room to tell your story.

That's not to say it's all bad. I'm very partial to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition's prose introduction, which emphasizes the humanity of the player characters, something easily lost in the "grim world of perilous adventure" it nightmarishly renders. Of course, being penned by Dan Abnett, the upper echelon of Warhammer fiction writers, makes a difference there.

The letter from Dracula at the start of Vampire the Masquerade 2nd edition is perhaps a better example. Instead of feeling trite, it explains many of the setting's concepts and dynamics in a digestible, engaging way. I think it does a better job laying out certain aspects than the some of the background sections of the book. Even if many groups fell into running Vampire as "superheroes with fangs," Dracula's letter goes a long way to ease players into such a dense setting and specific interpretation of the classic horror icon.

Even with those examples of good introductory prose, I still wonder how necessary it is. Plenty of modern RPGs eschew it entirely, especially in the indie scene. In some ways I prefer that approach, with the mechanics and background left to speak for themselves. 

Feel free to offer your own perspectives on introductory prose in RPGs and any personal favorites. For a niche hobby, it's a diverse medium, and there are plenty of different views on any matter.