Quick, what’s your favorite tabletop RPG and why? What led you to deciding that was your favorite? Is it the first game you ever played, and if so, how have your opinions about it developed since your first experience? If not, what was the sequence of events between playing your first and playing your favorite? We may not be thinking of it when we’re playing or planning the games we choose to put time into, but there have been a myriad of decisions and experiences going all the way back to our first exposure to TTRPGs. Last week, we talked about using a quick, generic pitch to introduce potential new players to the concept of roleplaying. This time, let’s discuss how to get more specific in teasing apart your gaming lives and loves, and how you can take what you’ve found on your own journey to help someone who’s just starting theirs. - B
B: With the way that games model a person’s entire life, or at least a significant part of it, it’s a wonder we don’t get metaphysical with it all the time. At the table, we know when we’re making a decision, whether we’re playing in a game or running one. We consciously weigh out the options, frequently using that game’s mechanics, and choose what we’re going to do. Outside the game, it’s a little trickier - we’re often a lot less aware that we’re making choices, and they’re going to be influenced by all our out-of-game concerns like time, available attention span, familiarity with systems and concepts, even how we’re feeling on the day of a particular session. But aware or not, these decisions do add up, as do our experiences. And as we learn new ideas and put them into practice, it opens up possibilities for future experiences. If, for instance, we started with a simpler game, we may then go on to more and more complex titles, depending on what we liked from that initial play. But if the complexity we find in subsequent titles feels tedious, we may shift our focus into different kinds of games that emphasize narrative and characterization. Not to mention the uniqueness of a given experience - were you enjoying the game at its base level or just that particular session? Was it the settings and systems that grabbed you, or was it the way that GM ran it and the way the other players approached it? It can seem a lot to break down, especially if you’ve been gaming for a while, but being able to share what you’ve learned with newcomers might be the thing that brings them more deeply into the hobby, or helps them through some rough patches that might otherwise have made them quit.
A: Bugsy brings up a good point when it comes to complexity: a game's complexity or “crunch” is often what drives us from or brings us to a game. This is also likely why some systems gain a fair amount of popularity - they've found a decent balance between storytelling and crunch. While there are some who will focus more intently on storytelling, and, just as significant, those that prefer to focus on the complexities of the rules, math, and strategy of a game, mostly will are probably going to fall somewhere in between on the bell curve. This is also one reason people try to shoehorn various genres or established media properties into their favorite D&D system. Not only are they already familiar with the rules as they exist, but they're also comfortable with the balance the system strikes between storytelling and crunch. When you see long term fans of a system gravitating away, you’ll probably uncover that they’re missing something from D&D or other supremely popular systems like Call of Cthulhu... they’re either missing the freedom to tell the story they're interested in or the crunch they're craving.
The desire for both extremes, or even a pendulum between them, grows along with the popularity of the pastime as a whole. Tabletop gaming becoming more accessible to everyone has brought out a resurgence of interest in games of both kinds, along with a wealth of new creators. Finding those that share an interest in the hobby has never been easier, but finding those who want to play what you’re interested in only gets more complicated. Digging down into the freedoms and complexities of what people really like can guide you to the kind of play you have in common. You don’t even have to stick to just one system. Alternating between a few, making the rounds as it were, can be a great regular change of pace to any player or GM. Of course, you can also bring elements of different systems together to form your group’s own play style. Enjoy the “advantage/disadvantage” rolls of D&D, the wound system in Call of Cthulhu, and the leveling system of the D6 family? You can take all of that together into any other system... as long as your table is in agreement and you’re open to adjusting things as you go. The question to ask yourself (and others) is: what do you like about this system?
B: Of course, we don't always know what we like or why we like it, especially when we're starting out. And once we've gotten a better understanding of what works for us, we can take for granted the journey that led us there. This is a pretty natural aspect of the way our brains work - since Andy's already brought up Call of Cthulhu, I'll paraphrase the original story's opening and say that one of the most merciful things in the world is the human mind's resistance to constantly collating all its contents... lest every single moment of analysis, decision, or reflection unspool into an unending Grandpa Simpson ramble. (Pretty sure I read somewhere that Lovecraft was a big Simpsons fan.)
But teasing all that out can be both personally illuminating and inform the way you talk about games with people who are experiencing them for the first time. It can be especially helpful to write out your experiences as a sort of family tree, whether you're starting from your favorite(s) and working backwards to how you got there, or you're chronicling your own gaming journey from its beginning. Note not only the games that you've played and who you played them with, but how they felt, what you wanted out of them at the time, how much of that the game provided, and what you might do differently. There are lots of free "mind mapping" tools online that can help you with this. You can also use the old standby of bullet-pointed lists, of course, but there's something to be said about the glorious chaos that visual representation provides... not to mention the potential connections you might not see otherwise. The goal here is not simple reminiscence or the cataloguing of great deeds (or most nefarious crimes, whichever fits) - this is about determining the lessons you've learned about the hobby in the time you've spent with it, how you got to where you are now, and where you might want to go in the future. Throughout all of it, imagine what things you would tell your younger self if you had the opportunity - would you be able to spare them pain and heartbreak, or at least understand what they might be able to get out of even negative experiences?
When it comes time to share your findings with that new prospective participant, bear in mind that there's a risk of centering yourself and your own experiences... it's all too easy for the seasoned veteran to overwhelm and minimize the newcomer. Here we can approach it with a similar process to the way we express all the worldbuilding effort that's gone into our games and stories: we share the details as they're relevant, and keep everything else in mind when we do so, both to better inform what we're initially sharing, and to be better able to answer questions or dig deeper.
Gaming is a unique experience, because it's something both of it's moment (this game, these players, those sessions) and ongoing (all games, all players, all sessions). It's both personal and universal. There's always something to learn, and that means there's always something to teach.
Send questions, comments, and epic ballads of your gaming group lineage to neversaydice20@gmail.com or tweet us @neversaydice2.