I’m suffering from a bit of a mental burnout for a few reasons, so this post is gonna be a bit shorter than usual.
But, we just wrapped up a game of Monster of the Week in a group I’ve been playing with for about 6 months and I just wanted to reiterate my absolute delight at playing Tabletop RPGs.
I’ve no doubt talked about this before, but I just love story-driven games. Whether it’s decided by dice or a video game, I love stories that are gamified in some way. I am one of those people who enjoys running a game as much as they enjoy playing in other people’s games! I think that RPGs give storytellers a lot of very powerful tools.
You want to get better at worldbuilding? Give your players a set space and they’ll push up against the glass asking “What’s that out there?” and then you have to come up with something. I’ve encountered this scenario a few times in various games and it’s led to some fantastic adventures all from one player seeing something and wanting to poke it. You can build an entire continent of adventure and then have to shift all your adventures to a different location because those pesky players keep finding something more interesting elsewhere. And they ask questions that you need to come up with answers to–usually on the spot. It makes you a more flexible storyteller and makes you more aware of the places your readers are going to look to poke holes in.
Want to get experience with tone and mood? You quickly realize how different the words you use when describing an evil dragon’s lair shifts to the comfortable inn where everyone hangs their hat. I’ve been at tables where everyone collectively holds their breath, just waiting for the next words out of the DMs mouth. That’s tension. Seeing a player care about characters in a moment of crisis can be so heartbreaking you’d swear they were worried about real people.
Speaking of characters, running a tabletop game will have you thinking of characters on the fly that you want to explore more because you keep peeling back layers. One guard could very quickly turn into a group favorite (sometimes even going along for the ride) by the few characterizations you give them. You learn how to quickly make people enjoy (or despise) the characters you want them to, not by telling them, but by showing them. It can be so rewarding to see characters learn to trust NPCs or see a PC’s relationship with another PC change as they adventure together. You learn what really makes people tick, especially when you ask your players what their characters feel in the moment.
Story is such a powerful tool for games. It gives your players a mission, a goal, a reason to get out of their sleepy hamlets and go fight a dragon. But for someone who is obsessed with story, it is a lesson in committing to the moment and resisting the urge to make it perfect. An NPC’s name will never change–especially if it makes everyone burst out laughing. You learn to let go and have fun. You learn that it doesn’t need to be perfect on the first draft. It just has to be there.
Editing is a different beast, of course, but we all have our dragons to slay.