Why I Love TTRPGs

Sometimes I think about what I like so much about tabletop roleplaying games, and recently I've thought of maybe using a blog post to sort those thoughts out a bit. So, this is that.

The Background

Shortly after finishing college and getting married, I moved to a new town where I knew nobody, and managed to meet a group who got me into playing Magic: the Gathering (on which I was instantly hooked). As it turns out, one of those players was also in an RPG group, and offered to have their GM introduce our Magic playgroup to D&D 3.5 (probably; it was three-point-something and houseruled to hell and back, so I'm speculating). Then 4E dropped and my new group tried it (though the veteran GM bounced off due to the sheer scale of unfamiliarity), and then I promptly moved again.

But I was already hooked.

I found ways to dabble in 4E in my new (new) town a bit, then discovered Pathfinder 1E. It grabbed me in a way that D&D 4E hadn't, and I dove in fully. I got deeply involved in the game, the forums, the organized play campaign, everything. However deeply involved you're imagining, I was more involved than that (unless you were imagining "actually hired by Paizo," in which case it's just one degree below that). However, after several years, I began straining against the defects of both the game itself and its player base (or more like, its GM base). So when D&D 5E came out, I left for what I thought would be greener pastures. Its apparent smoothness was appealing, and I even published some splatbooks for it, but it soon revealed itself to be an extremely small game, in a sense.

During my (comparatively brief) 5E phase, I also found myself exploring other experiences in the TTRPG space—everything from Blades in the Dark to Magical Kitties Save the Day. My D&D bubble had popped, so to speak, as I discovered that not everything had to work the same way. This is also around the time I got onto Twitter and started connecting with other TTRPG folks. My horizons expanded rapidly, and I became enamored with everything the medium could do outside of adventure fantasy. I started reading and internalizing all the thoughts I could find from indie players & creators, and even served my time in the fishknife mines, publishing emotional and narrative-focused titles that stretched my understanding of the medium.

However, for all my zeal for indie TTRPG values, I found myself with less and less drive to actually play. I didn't even like my own published titles enough to play them. The magic was gone, and I didn't know why. I was too busy trying to "build my brand" or some bullshit like that to really think too hard about not liking TTRPGs anymore, but that changed abruptly when someone targeted me with a harassment campaign that ultimately led to me taking down all my work and deleting my online presence. (That's why I don't use my real name online, and why I didn't tell you what I published.) Suddenly I had plenty of time to think about it.  

Since then, I've been on the slow (and often painful) journey of re-learning why I ever fell in love with TTRPGs in the first place, and moving toward that source of joy. Here's what I've come up with.

The Thoughts

For starters, it turns out I just really fuckin love fantasy. Favorite genre. It's a bit of a hop down from there to the runners-up of spaceships and superheroes, and then my interest really drops off. But fantasy? I was born for that shit. It's kinda wild how I just happened to start in my favorite genre and then wandered off, and that's probably because of cultures and counter-cultures. Like, D&D has a problematically-large footprint in the TTRPG space, leading to a weird phenomenon where there's lots of people who are only playing it because they've never tried anything else. But then you get a culture of opposition which assumes that this is the only reason anyone is ever playing any fantasy game. So when I got deep into online indie TTRPG spaces, I internalized the idea that there are no "real" fantasy enjoyers, just immature D&D sheep, and it took a while to unpack that. I could probably write a Whole Thing™ about indie culture's defects on that point, but that's out-of-scope so let's just say "do better, jackasses" and move on.

Another thing that I originally fell in love with was customization (this is probably why that first 3.X game hooked me, and why PF1 so easily yanked me away from 4E). With most types of games, every player role is predefined: every Monopoly player has the same available game actions, for example. This means that players are sort of... interchangeable, I guess? Like, yeah, for non-game-related socialization it matters who's in the chair next to you, but in terms of the actual gameplay, two people of similar skill levels are going to engage similarly, to some degree. But when I got to make my own character to bring, suddenly I had a way of putting my own unique fingerprint on the whole group's play experience (and they got to put theirs on mine). For various reasons, including childhood trauma that I won't go into detail about, it blew my mind to suddenly be able to be more than just a disposable seat-filler. It mattered that it was me who showed up, instead of anyone else who could have been there instead. A game whose play is impacted by pre-game customization lets the players "meet" each other in a really unique and special way. This is probably one of the main reasons that I bounce off of low-customization, rules-light TTRPGs outside of the occasional low-investment one-off.

The third aspect is that TTRPGs let me scratch the "What if?" itch in a really special way. You see, I'm the sort of person who, after watching a movie or something, likes to ponder other possibilities. Sometimes it's about obvious plot holes ("Why didn't that character do this obvious thing?"), and other times it's just curiosity ("How would that event have panned out if that character did this instead?"). Either way, the answer is that the actions were selected by the author, from outside the fictional universe, to create a compelling story. But I always wonder, from an in-universe perspective, what would happen if things were different and events played out according to cause and effect. How does Avatar change if Toph hadn't been conveniently written out of the fight at the end of season two, for example? TTRPGs gave me an opportunity to explore these possibilities: I could enter an imaginary world and interact with it authentically, without the constraints of storytelling. Instead of wondering "Why didn't they just do X?" I could just say "I do X" and see what happens—not what an author thinks should happen for a compelling narrative, but what actually happens. No other medium lets me do that like TTRPGs do. (Unfortunately, much like with the fantasy thing I discussed earlier, the TTRPG community taught me to abandon this and instead reduce TTRPGs to just another storytelling medium, costing me years of my life trying to get back to my joy. Once again: do better, jackasses.) 

Finally, it seems I really like adventure-oriented games, with lots of physicality to the way characters interact with the world: exploring, fighting, messing with stuff, that kind of thing. I love encountering a situation, looking at the characteristics of my environment, and coming up with ways to use my character's capabilities to interface with that environment to produce outcomes. This probably aligns a bit with OSR play, though I've never tried it so I can't speak with certainty there. By comparison, I tend to bounce off of games where your stats/rolls are based on what kind of approach you use instead of the actual parameters of your character or your actions. ("Oh, nice idea using the [noun] to [verb]. Roll plus Clever, exactly as you would have with any other idea.") I likewise get little satisfaction from games where rolling to perform a given action can generate unrelated complications. I don't want this whole world of imagination reduced to set dressing and flavor text, you know?

The End

So yeah, that's what I'm into. Bye.

This Is Not a Daggerheart Review

First of all, like most people at the time of this writing, I haven't actually played Daggerheart, just read portions of it.

Second, I mean it when I say this isn't a review, but I know how you are, so I'll tell you this: based on first impressions from reading, I think Daggerheart is pretty well designed for its intended experience, and also I have zero interest in ever playing it. Do with that what you will.

But I do want to talk about Daggerheart. There are basically two things I want to talk about. Maybe they should be separate posts, but they're not going to be.

Daggerheart Gold

Let's start with how Daggerheart handles cash. The Daggerheart SRD says that its gold is "an abstract measurement" of wealth, which is reflected in the units presented: handfuls, bags, and chests, rather than units of currency. It goes on to explain that 10 handfuls add up to one bag, and 10 bags add up to one chest. This "replaces" the traditional mechanic of having your wealth measured in pieces of copper, silver, and gold, with 10 coppers adding up to one silver, and 10 silvers adding up to one gold.

Yeah, it's literally the same mechanic, they just changed the names on the denominations. Nothing's actually different. This is fascinating when you consider how many people are praising the "new system" for making things "less fiddly." Hell, traditional fantasy games had already moved on from triple-denomination currency to the much simpler decimal gold, so Daggerheart is actually a step backwards toward detailed tracking of each denomination. Yet here we are.

There's so much about the TTRPG community that we can unpack from this. I've often noted that people have been critiquing bookkeeping (whether of gold, arrows, rations, etc) for decades while their alternatives added wrinkles instead of smoothing anything out. Now with Daggerheart Gold, where it's literally the same thing under a different name, we have an especially concrete—and, importantly, highly visible—example of this. It is revelatory that so many people will complain about a mechanic being too fiddly but then praise alternatives that are even more fiddly. Obviously, it means it was (for these people, at least) never really about a process being fiddly, but that in turn means a couple of other things that are more interesting. 

One is that if it's not about being fiddly, it must be about something else. What could that be? I can only speculate, but my best guess is that it's about identity. Some folks in the TTRPG community mentally associate "knowing how many coins and arrows you have" with a certain type of person, experience, or play culture that they don't want to engage or be associated with. Give them an alternative with a different "feel," like a vague-sounding name change or a step-down supply die, and now they feel sufficiently separate from that out-group. Again, this is speculation on my part, but it tracks with the kinds of in/out group dynamics (like deeming every fantasy adventure TTRPG to be guilty of all of D&D's crimes) that are rampant in the space.

The other thing is the lack of perspective. I think people really honestly believe that they're seeking (and finding) simpler, less-fiddly alternatives to the "change a number" mechanic. This suggests a mixture of two things: a lack of game literacy (to recognize the similarities and differences between mechanics) and a lack of self-awareness (to recognize one's own reasons for gravitating toward one mechanic over another). If we're being honest, the TTRPG community has room for growth in both areas, so this tracks as well.

Clarity of Intent

What I've observed of people's reactions to Daggerheart is that they're very polarized. Some people are looking at it and saying "what the hell is this" while others are singing for joy. I think there's a good reason for this split, and it has to with the difference between the definitional nature of RPGs, and what Critical Role actually does with RPGs. They're not the same thing, and that's where this fork in the road comes from.

You see, roleplay-gaming—that is, the act of playing a roleplaying game in the straightforward sense—is about stepping into the shoes of a person in a real-to-them world, and using their authentic interactions with that world as the conduit through which gameplay (the literal playing of a game) occurs. By contrast, what Critical Role has been doing all this time is to repurpose an RPG into a sort of scaffold for improv theater, something to be performed. To put it another way, roleplay-gaming is about gamifying your proxy experience as an inhabitant of a world, while Critical Role is about performing unscripted theater while some game elements are sprinkled in for spice.

The two are fundamentally different, and you could see the tension all the time. There was a constant give-and-take between the nature of games, rules, and roleplay on one hand; and the interest in having enough control to craft a compelling and performable narrative on the other. So when the CR team decided to publish something of their own, which direction do you think they'll go? Will they make an RPG and continue to strain against it, or will they create something that's designed to do exactly what they've been trying to do all along? (It's the latter. Please tell me you understand it's the latter.)

As I briefly mentioned at the top of the post, Daggerheart seems (from an initial reading) like it knows what it wants to do and isn't shy about doing exactly that. And what it wants to do is to give a little structure and support to folks who are trying to collaboratively create fantasy adventure narratives to be performed as improv theater. You know, like Critical Role does.

And that's where the community reaction split comes in. If you're like Critical Role, if you too are a Theater Kid™ who's been trying to master the art of making an RPG get out of the way of your improv theater, then Daggerheart is extremely exciting to you! Instead of needing to fight against the rules of a game and the internal consistency of roleplay, Daggerheart platforms your creativity and invites you to wield it. However, if you're more used to roleplay-gaming, if you want a playable game and a tangible world, then Daggerheart likely feels like a big nothing-burger, as there's not enough connective tissue to do anything with it if you're not filling large amounts of space with your own improv.

Done Talking Now

Bye.

Human To Do

Humans do things.

Humans do things for lots of different reasons.

We eat, drink, and sleep because our survival requires it. We go to work as part of a transaction to get things we need or want. We fix things that break so that we can keep using them. We rest so that we can continue to do things later.

But there are some things we do that don't have such practical, productive, or transactional value, but they still have worth, and that worth is inherent. There are things we simply do because we are human. It's human nature to do them, therefore they have worth. They don't derive their worth from productivity or practicality, they have "human worth." Social bonding is human to do. Learning and exploring is human to do. Telling stories is human to do. Making art is human to do. The list goes on. Doing these things requires no justification, because simply being human means these are the things you do.

To put it another way, suppose that through some hard-fought victories we managed to end scarcity and exploitation within your lifetime. Your food, shelter, health, and safety are all guaranteed with minimal daily effort. Nothing else requires your attention. What would you do with yourself all day? The things you would find worth doing after the world was fixed, the things you do when you don't need to justify what you do—these are the things that have human worth. These are the things that are human to do.

And if it's worthwhile enough to do when the world has been fixed, isn't it also worth doing now, if you have the opportunity? If we say that our goal is a world where people are free to do these things, but we demand justification when someone carves out time for these things right now, then we are hypocrites. Fundamentally human activities require no justification.

It is with all of this in mind that I want to talk about games, and how we relate to them.

To be clear, I am not talking about the broader concept of "play." Play is indeed very natural; humans aren't even the only creatures to do it. It's a very broad umbrella, covering pretty much anything done recreationally—one might even argue that it's not so much a thing to do as it is a way of doing things. By contrast, game-play is a specific activity. Play doesn't become game-play until you've opted into the constraints of a game: a set of rules that puts made-up obstacles between you and a made-up goal for no other purpose than to structure your play around them.

The playing of games has "human worth." Games need no justification, because playing games is simply human to do. It is therefore tragic that so many people try to demand that justification, and it is further tragic that the usual response is to try and offer such a justification (which in turn wrongly validates the demand).

Sometimes I see people demand that games be leveraged as a communicative art to send a message, that games must Have Something To Say. Others will respond that games should be allowed to not Send A Message, because they offer "escapism," a vital respite from a weary world. They will argue with each other about this or that game and whether it is sufficiently justified by Message or Escape. However, the argument of "which justification is enough" is itself invalid, because games have human worth and do not need justification.

Certainly it is possible for a game to send a message, or offer an escape to another world, or tell a compelling story, or provide beautiful imagery, or any number of other lovely things. Many games do! But they don't need to in order to be worth making and worth playing, because playing games is simply human to do. Games have human worth all on their own.

We see evidence of the denigration of games in other ways, as well. For example, a decades-old problem in the video game scene is that many people think of video games as needing to feel like movies in order to be good. We have culturally acknowledged cinema as a valid artform (but not animation, hence all the bad live-action remakes of good cartoons, but I digress), and thus video games must aspire to emulate movies—this is part of where the graphical fidelity arms race comes from. Although there's nothing wrong with a given game emulating movies, it's wrong to think games as a category need to do so. No artform's peak lies in the emulation of a different one, and games are no exception. Games have human value on their own.

Speaking of movies, our cultural disrespect toward games also manifests in a version of the "talking over a movie" problem. You see, even among innately human activities, nobody likes all of them in equal measure. This means that sometimes, for example, someone might join friends on movie night but care less about seeing the movie than about hanging out with their friends. The movie is effectively just a backdrop for social conversation, rather than an object of interest on its own. That's how you get people talking over movies. Thankfully, we have largely normalized the idea that such people have a responsibility to consider that others in the room might be interested in the movie itself: if someone talks over a movie (without making sure everyone else is cool with it first), it's widely accepted that it's the talker who's the jerk. We don't blame the movie-enjoyers for having weird hangups and getting worked up over nothing.

Unfortunately, we have yet to fully establish the same norms for games. In physical games—meaning games where there's no computer to automatically enforce the rules—the people who don't like games as much often feel culturally empowered to narcissistically assume their priorities are the norm and disrupt the game in pursuit of their other priorities. Those who were interested enough in the game to resist that disruption are often treated as "picky" or "obsessed" or "missing the point." That we can have the same behavioral dynamic but with opposite conclusions about Who's The Asshole is illustrative of how far we have to go in terms of culturally acknowledging the human value of games.

I hope someday this changes. I hope we can start seeing the humanity in games enough to stop demanding their justification, to stop seeing them as emulations of "better" mediums, and to stop treating interest in them as a character defect.

Maybe someday.