[AE.Mailbag] Obstacles & Opportunities: Select reader perspectives on tabletop RPGs.
When I came up with the idea for doing a weekly reader mailbag, it was because I'd moved to Buttondown, which doesn't have a comment section, and I noticed I was getting more email replies. I figured it would be a nice, easy way to foster a sense of community involvement and participation.
I'll be honest: part of what I liked about it was the "nice, easy" part. One newsletter a week with the topic and some of the word-stringery taken care of, and where my part of the writing can be responses to clear prompts... what could be simpler?
What I'm learning is that it does work better if I put in some effort as far as choosing topics and providing prompts on my end, which is to say that I have never gotten as many replies to a single letter as I did to this one, leaving me with a wealth of thoughtful responses that I must, with regret, pick and choose among. I've tried to represent a variety of perspectives and points here, but I couldn't get to everybody.
As a little preamble here about the point behind this exercise: obviously I'm not in a position to reorder the way Dungeons & Dragons, the world's largest and most popular TTRPG, handles approachability, accessibility, and learning curve. I'm also not particularly plugged in to larger communities of people running and playing games, where I could push for said communities to look at how they handle those things.
But I am interested in tabletop game design both as abstract theory and as practice, and one of my goals for my main TTRPG project... one of the reasons I'm spending time and labor making it when D&D already exists... is that I'd like to make a game for someone in a position like I was as a kid: deeply interested in fantasy, very intrigued by the whole deal of roleplay, but without any kind of "in" like an existing group or a local store or anything like that.
And I know that online stuff has been a literal and figurative game changer in that area, but it's still very difficult for a person who doesn't have much or any experience playing or running a TTRPG to teach themselves the ropes and rope in a few friends in similar straits and just... make their own group and start playing.
Ideally, I would like to produce a game that people are comfortable just downloading off the internet, and then messing around with on their friends and have it feel like a fun and exciting and/or cozy time rather than be demanding and stressful.
But on my own, all I really have to go on is my memories of what it was like trying to figure out RPG rule books as a kid, which isn't nothing but it's also not everything.
I don't want to turn this newsletter entry into a commercial for my game where I answer every letter with "Boy howdy, have I got just the thing for you," for multiple reasons, not the least of which is I don't have the thing for anyone yet. I'm still figuring the thing out.
And while the messages I've received, and the little back-and-forth conversations I've had with some of the senders, has been very helpful in both tighten up the theories behind my design and reassure myself that the trees which I have up-barked are at least in the right neck of the woods, so to speak... I still would not want to put my untested ideas forward as a definitive solution to anything.
Separate from how this exchange of ideas might help me achieve my personal creative goals in this area... I mean, while I'm not plugged into much of a concrete D&D/tabletop community, sometimes I write things that get attention, circulate, and do, as the youths say, the numbers on or about the social mediums...
In other words, while I don't expect the conversation we're having here to make a huge splash or even much of a ripple beyond a small, sheltered inlet in a very large lake... it is just within the realm of possibility that it could spark other conversations, elsewhere.
Anyway, onto the letters. I have not edited them -- I barely edit myself so it would seem rude to edit someone else -- in the sense of changing any wording or punctuation, though I have trimmed them some to get at the heart of the actual commentary.
I'm going to start with a short and to the point one, which is kind of thematically suiting to its content.
One and Done Could Be Fun
Vicki Wagner Solomon [she/her] writes, briefly:
I've collected enough hobbies in my long life, that I can no longer consider D&D. I loved it when I played it back in the late 70s, but now I make music instead. D&D takes a lot of time to do it right. I would consider a one-evening event.
As soon as I read that, I could immediately imagine some very well-meaning hobby boosters I've encountered in the past earnestly insisting that she was wrong to "give up" on D&D and that it doesn't take up that much time... but this is something I think the hobby as a whole needs to learn. More people would play TTRPGs if they were more often presented as finite, bounded activities, something you can play once and bring to a natural conclusion.
There are a whole host of "micro RPGs" out there like Honey Heist and Jason Statham's Big Vacation that have very simple rules governing largely improvisational actions, and are generally built around a single scenario taking place in a limited time and place, meant to be played in an afternoon or evening, or maybe a whole day if you're on a roll.
In contrast to that, fantasy adventure games in the mold of D&D... and games of any type that inherit too many of its assumptions without thinking about it... well, what we might call the D&Default assumption is that making an RPG character is committing to multiple sessions even for just an initial scenario, and that if you can keep this going as a recurring commitment for years on end then that's essentially how you win at the game.
And the thing is... I do love that. That's the dream, for me: having the friends and the time and the friends who have time that we can tell stories together for years to come.
But sometimes I'd like to tell other stories. And sometimes I'd like to tell them with friends who don't have that kind of time. And I'd like people to be able to enjoy this hobby that I love so much even if they can't or don't want to... for whatever reason, including no reason... make it a huge ongoing part of their lives.
Like, just at a basic level, "You can't do this unless you're willing to give up your Saturday nights potentially playing until early Sunday morning, indefinitely." is not an enticing proposition.
One thing I like about these more bounded games, apart from the lower minimum investment, is that the stakes in them feel more real.
A D&D game doesn't have to end even if all the heroes die. You can roll up a new party and keep it going forever. Which means that whenever the players decide the game is over-over, whether it's because of logistics or a lac of fun, it can feel more like the activity fell apart than the game reached a natural conclusion.
But with one-shot micro RPGs, there's generally some kind of losing state built into the game and the story, which means that your characters can fail completely and permanently within the confines of the story and not have it be a real-life failure.
My smaller testbed project, Ghosts With Goals, is more in the micro RPG vein, meant to be played as a one-shot with a single haunting incident stretched across five nights, each of which can be done in less than an hour... potentially far less than an hour; it's very oriented around storytelling and each night can be ended when the players want to move on to the next one.
My other, larger project... currently unnamed... is designed for more of an ongoing play style, but with more definite divisions than D&D... like a show with a premise that could be sustained for multiple seasons but which has a way of wrapping things up at the end of each one, just in case it should be the last.
Vicki's message has reminded me that this game will have greater reach if I make sure it's something that can be picked up and started quickly, and played to a satisfying conclusion in a single session if that's what people have time for and interest in.
And on a side note... and honestly, this observation could be applied to most of the points raised by most of the people who contacted me... but I think part of the problem that D&D has with approachability and newbie-friendliness is that the game is written and designed with very definite, very specific ideas about how the game is meant to be expeienced and enjoyed... but few of these assumptions are highlighted or explained or even mentioned in the text.
What To Expect When You're Exploring
Repeat a-friender Sumana Harihareswara [she/her] related a pair of anecdotes about her experiences with the hobby, both of which I would say were affected by that point.
The first one:
A college boyfriend tried to get me into tabletop role-playing gaming by developing and running a one-shot where he DM'd and I played. I found it really frustrating -- I think I kept wanting to understand and investigate all the stuff in my initial environment whereas he'd meant for me to only spend enough time there to see and get on the rails to the next step, and I don't remember whether we even ever got to that next step.
On its surface, this is a thing that could happen to any game runner and player with the right combination of inexperience (including the runner not having enough experience with an inexperienced player), so I'm not inclined to judge the guy too harshly or assume he didn't generally know what he's doing.
But I do think it also speaks to the narrative structure of the roleplaying game, and in particular how little attention the people developing games and creating scenarios give to them.
This is something I've tweeted about before: how bad TTRPGs typically are at conveying information to the people playing them.
Every person who runs TTRPGs enough times is likely to collect stories about the time that players missed what we thought was a clear red flag or green light or stage cue in the narration we gave, and walked into a trap or in the opposite direction of the goal, or otherwise missed the point for a solid three and a half hours of a two hour session.
But the thing is... well, we have to be willing to either tell players not just what they see in the room but what we mean by it, or let them set the pace and even shape the story through the stuff they decide to investigate and pay attention to.
I did have a Twitter thread about this kind of thing last fall, relevant part starting about here:
Overall I think that tabletop design should learn a lot from computer game design, less in terms of trying to duplicate mechanics than in terms of player engagement and flow.
— Alexandra Erin (she/her) (@AlexandraErin) October 22, 2021
The solution as I'm putting into my current project... I've moved on from calling it "scene ingredients" as described in the thread, as I came to find that a bit twee, but the idea of telling players straight-up what a given scene has to offer and letting them know when they've exhausted is still something I believe in, both as a formal part of my project and for future games I run in other systems.
And in addition to that... I think game runners should embrace the idea that if the player characters are the main characters of the story, then the story can happen wherever they are. This requires more flexibility in planning, and letting go of the idea that the game/story world has any kind of reality outside of what is narrated at the table... i.e., if the players don't want to go to the mountain, you can always decide that whatever was going to be at the mountain is somewhere else, if it doesn't make sense for the thing to come to them.
Sumana's second experience:
A few years later, I played D&D for the first time with friends I met through a local comic book store. I rolled a fairly mediocre character with substantial weaknesses, and the DM gave me the option to re-roll, and I declined -- assuming, I think, that everyone's character would have a range of strengths and weaknesses. It turns out that my character was, by far, the weakest member of the party, and in retrospect I wish the DM had perhaps helped me understand the norms (basically, all the player characters were superheroic-level in their stats) instead of deferring to my misunderstanding-based decision. Playing the weakest character probably contributed to me feeling weak and unable.
I got thoughts and feelings about this one. I think some of it is generational/culture clash stuff, as the pop culture vision of D&D lagged behind developments in the game as far as what it means "to roll up a character".
The original model was way more chance than choice: roll dice for all your character's stats, and then choose a character class your completely random d00d completely randomly qualifies for.
Even back in the bad old days there was a lot of "That sucks, you want to re-roll?" and fudging of numbers and deciding there's no rule that says you have to use the first character you make.
Later iterations of the game have offered progressively more choice and more ways to hedge against random suckitude, until the last few editions made rolling to see how strong, tough, charismatic, etc., your character is an optional throwback, alongside the options of spending a set number of points to buy your abilities or just arranging a set of six standardized numbers as you see fit.
Even the current standard for rolling is designed to produce above-average characters, on average, because the game is balanced with the assumption that characters are of heroic stature.
Characters created using the preset numbers do have strengths and weaknesses, in the sense that if you divide all the stuff they might do into six things, they'll be basically kind of okay at two of them, above average at two of them, and very exceptional at the other two... above average in more areas than not, well above average over all, but not uniformly or universally above average.
And I do think this is something that modern D&D does right, but as Sumana notes, the DM would have served her (and the rest of the table, who were her playing as her teammates) better by explaining how that part of the game works... and how it would impact her experience if she could not contribute as much to the adventure as the adventure expected her to be able to.
You know, one pattern I'm noticing here is that while I have ideas for putting in guardrails and guidelines and mechanical features to avoid some of these pitfalls... a lot of it does come down to the person running the game being both willing and able to explain things.
Which is something a game can encourage, both through its presentation and its rules. But a person writing instructions for playing a game can't make sure the person who runs it is following whatever the writer considers to be best practices.
Learning By Watching
Next, we hear from Owen [he/him]:
I played some Pathfinder a decade ago (and stopped because of logistics). Since then, I started listening to actual play (specifically, Friends at the Table), and it's helped me realize how much I narrowed the experience for myself, even if I was willing to show up at the table. Seeing people model an activity is how I learn best, and I've listened to other players embrace failures, treat potential enemies as compelling allies, and actually role-play instead of showing up as "me, but magical and great at archery."
Consuming actual play is absolutely made me want to play TTRPGs again, but treat it as "making a story together" instead of "winning a puzzle."
I don't have as much to say in reply here, except to say that I found it very heartening and relatable. I cannot tell you how much Actual Play shows has helped me evolve and refine my positions on this stuff, and occasionally change them completely... more from the point of view of somebody who creates scenarios and runs games than as a player.
And we're not alone there. I know for a fact that the proliferation of Actual Play influenced the entire direction of 5th Edition D&D, by giving rise to a vocal and visible community of RPG fans online who are more concerned with storytelling than with theorycrafting a more optimal way to kill spherical goblins in a vacuum on game forums. Players who were really into figuring out the "right" build and "right" battle strategy used to be the visible community, so their input had a disproportionate impact on the design of games.
Also, the idea of TTRPGs as "telling a story together" instead of "winning a puzzle" (or "beating a series of tactical combat minigames", as the case may be)... that's exactly what I'm trying to do with my projects, so I'm grateful to hear from people who are or have been into D&D or any of its Descendants & Derivatives such as Pathfinder and who are interested in exploring that approach.
First, Get It Wrong
Next, we have Kara [she/her]:
I have wanted to learn D&D since I learned it existed, sometime in middle school in the 80s. The only group I knew of was a bunch of guys who told me I couldn't join because girls are too stupid to play. Wouldn't even let me watch to try and learn.
Fast forward to a few years ago and my husband and I were wandering our local game store. I asked if he'd play with me. Would the kids like it? I'm an adult and can do what I want now! I read the book that comes in the box and we tried to work through the entry story, but were still very confused about what we were supposed to be doing and everyone died and got discouraged. I thought the entry stuff would teach us but it really didn't. Now we just play very occasionally and change rules - half to fit what we want to do, and half because we don't really get what the rules mean anyway. I know there are other tutorials out there but they are long, and intimidating too and I don't have time to make learning another part-time job and my sole hobby.
Yeah, the lack of an actual on-ramp that is really geared towards completely new players who don't have anybody to "initiate" them and who don't have time to watch hours of Actual Plays and YouTube videos and read "For Dummies" books is a huge and ongoing problem in D&D. I've often opined that if they want to put out starte kits... and they do... they should write an honest-to-goodness tutorial adventure that takes the group through all the parts of a character sheet and how it works with the dice.
I'd make the first sections work like a read-aloud multiplayer choose-your-own-adventure book, with specific limited choices available and spelled out for the players (and DM) at each decision point, and after repeating the process for using skills and spells and attacks a few times, it begins opening up by giving room for improvised answers (and some guidance on how to handle that).
And like a lot of video game tutorial levels, it would be impossible to die, lose, or completely fail in the tutorial adventure. Some veteran players would complain that this wouldn't teach you what the game is really like, but it's impossible to learn everything about the game at one, and easier to learn anything if you're not, you know, dying.
On a related note but sort of in the opposite direction... one thing I think entry-level game teaching stuff should mention and emphasize is that you're almost guaranteed to get a lot of stuff wrong when you're first figuring things out, and that this is okay, and that it's fine to keep moving even if you've realized that everything that has happened in the game so far was technically impossible, if you had understood the rules.
There is a saying in online D&D communities that goes something ilke, "D&D is more like sex than like pizza, because bad pizza can be better than no pizza, but no sex is preferable to bad sex." But "bad D&D" in this case refers to people or groups that are incompatible, not D&D that is being played poorly on a technical level. That latter kind of "bad D&D" is how people learn to have good D&D.
Bark Like A Druid
Lani [she/her] writes:
I have actually been part of two D&D campaigns with the same group. While I enjoyed being around my beloved friends, I often did not really enjoy the... role-playing aspect of the game. It took me a while to realize that I wasn't quiet because my character had nothing to say, I was quiet because I couldn't think of how my character would react to any given event. So I felt like I spent a lot of the game paces behind my party, and I rarely initiated something (e.g. "I explore the weird noise in the well"). That sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of being too in my head really affected my ability to enjoy my time gaming with pals; I occasionally found myself feeling more "in it" with an adults-only substance, but even that wasn't foolproof. My second character had the ability to transmogrify into "known animals", and I found it easier to explore as a lizard or bird than this human-esque character, which I found surprising but was a late game delight.
...and continues...
...the gist of my main experiences has been "it was easier for me to pretend to be an animal than a speaking creature" and "doing something to lower my inhibitions helped actually play a role". I hope that is helpful for your game creation, and can't wait to see the mailbag!
Thank you! That is actually very helpful for my purposes in particular, Lani, as I'm always a fan of the option to let players be a horse or a (non-verbal, non-humanoid) dragon or a raven or an animated sword or whatever in a game, but ironically it's something I get self-conscious and in my head about including. In a game modeled after D&D, I think it's a particularly cool thing to explore because so many character archetypes have a powerful bond with an animal (paladin's steed, ranger or druid's companion, wizard's familiar, etc.) or spirit or magical object, and finding ways to create bonds between player characters storywise and cool teamwork/synergy between them mechanically can add so much to the experience.
I also think that in addition to the fact that removing the pressure to speak in character can make it easier to figure out what to do in character, there might be a positive benefit for prompting roleplay and lowering inhibitions (without chemical enhancement) to taking on a role so distinctly different from oneself.
In my real life, I have found it's easier to get around my in-person hangups if I am wearing something... even just an accessory... that is bold and unconventional, like heart-shaped glasses or a very large and loud hat.
When I'm not used to wearing it, it helps me get outside of myself. And if I do grow accustomed to it, it helps me see myself as someone who isn't timid or uncertain, because how would such a person pull off such a look?
And on a similar note, I have previously alluded in this space to the relationship I see between a child's imaginative play with physical toys (or idly daydreaming while paging through a catalogue of such) and roleplay.
In my current theory of roleplay, an ability like animal shapeshifting... something that excites a player's imagination with the possibilities it presents... can serve a very similar purpose in roleplay that a particularly interesting toy can play in childhood imaginative play. It can get the player to stop thinking about themself and their life and the real world, and engage with the imaginary world in a real way instead.
One of the reasons I never give up completely on D&D for long, despite its flaws, is that it presents an absolutely fantastic toy chest.
Quite often when I make a new D&D character... whether it's for an actual game or just as a fun creative exercise for myself... it starts with an idea that comes from something like a druid's animal shapeshifting or a ranger's pet, or a particular spell or feat (optional special ability), or combination of such features.
Like when I realized that a kobold (in modern D&D, kobolds are a draconic people who mostly stand under three feet tall) is small enough to use a Pteranodon as a mount, and Pteranodons fit the requirements listed for a ranger's beast companion... what else could I do but make a kobold ranger who rides a Pteranodon?
It doesn't have to be anything big or character-defining. It could be a weapon or a tool, or a cantrip... which in D&D terms are a sort of "level 0" spell that is so simple and undemanding the caster can do it all day long without ever running out. A lot of them take the form of basic wizardly attacks, like a bolt of fire or an electrified touch.
But then there's the bard's attack cantrip, Vicious Mockery, which lets you insult a foe until they die from it.
Vicious Mockery is not markedly powerful. It does basically the least damage of any attack in the game, albeit that it's exceptionally good for getting a foe that is hard to hit but lacking in willpower, and it has a side benefit of potentially throwing off their aim.
But... you can defeat your foes with witty quips or insults. Some people interpret it as painful puns and deadly dad jokes that inflict psychic damage on the target with their sheer awfulness.
It's easy for me to get excited about a concept like that. It's hard for me to imagine caring more about plus or minus a couple of points of average damage per round than caring about a concept like that.
And at the end of the day, I guess that's what my current game design is about: playing with concepts, because "concepts" (in this sense) are to TTRPG as "toys" are to childhood play.
Anyway, this has been an amazingly rewarding experience, even as I wind up once again putting the finishing touches on a newsletter a bit before midnight. That's not just because of the size of the newsletter (thought his one did wind up quite substantial)... I had an "off" day yesterday and a lot of stuff happening in the household today, logistics-wise.
But I am excited and I can see a lot of forward movement on my untitled TTRPG project in the near future, as well as further discussion on these topics here and on Twitter.
That's it for our Friday opinion mail bucket. Thank you for playing along with me!