Discovering What you Truly Want in RPGs
While it’s true that our survival depends on us getting the bare minimum of our nutritional needs met, that’s not where we set the bar regarding food. Early in life we come to know which foods we really love (and hate). We hunger for specific dishes, from ribeye cooked medium-rare, swimming in onions & butter to fish-n-chips drowned in vinegar and tartar sauce, or chili so hot that it clears clogged sinuses.
Five decades of RPGs have resulted in scores of different “gaming dishes” to choose from. Thanks to documentaries like The Secrets of Blackmoor (Morgan & Graves), we get a glimpse into the kinds of experiences the pioneers of RPGs enjoyed fifty years ago. And thanks to books like The Elusive Shift (Peterson), we are also able to see how RPG appetites evolved & (quite quickly, in fact) diverged.
Specific stylistic & subgenre recipes mix to generate very different RPG experiences, and they can end up feeling alien from each other. Just compare the Adam West Batman with the Christian Bale version. They’re both called ‘Batman’ but the substantial similarities stop there.
But many people, regardless of how long they have played, settle for what they inherited by chance, and do not consider what precise experience they actually want (and don’t want). The chances that what RPG elements fell into your lap matches exactly what you most deeply desire are abysmally low.
Why People Settle
People learn to settle for many reasons. For some role players the RPG activity, itself, is (to different degrees) irrelevant. Like having “movie night” where the group doesn’t care about which movie someone picked, the main drive here is to get together with their friends, eat carbs, drink beer, & ignore the weight of adulthood for a while. Socializing with friends irrespective of the activity is, of course, a fine motivator. If you’re sure that is your real drive, then good for you, & you need read no further.
But I believe that most role players do care quite a bit about the exact gaming experience they have, but have not stopped to consider their specific RPG desires. Perhaps people view their role playing as a mostly static thing. “This is what it means to role play.” Or maybe we assume that we will be “rocking the boat” and annoying our groups by ‘complaining’ or trying to change things. It’s hard to find a single answer. But we are creatures of habit, and we accept that something is just “good enough” too easily.
For gamers who do care about the game itself, I encourage you to ask yourself, “Do I know precisely what I want out of it?” (Note, that this is not the same question as, “Am I having fun?” What generates ‘fun’ is random, relative, and difficult to track to its source. I.e., it’s possible to have a terrible RPG session, and still have fun for a host of non-RPG reasons.)
The question here concerns your appetites & fulfillment (or lack thereof) in your role playing games. Returning to our movie night analogue, are you watching the movies you really want, or are you settling for whatever someone (even yourself) randomly picked? How close to the mark are you getting? Do you even know what your mark is?
Again, if you don’t care about the activity, itself (the movie for movie night or how the RPG is played for your gaming night), then settling makes sense. But if you do care, then settling is robbing yourself of (perhaps a great deal of) more enjoyment.
Adequately facing this question requires that we highlight the many elements within RPGs to discover what we want. Much like food-preparation, everything is on a spectrum. The proportions and types of vegetables, spices, breads, meats, etc., going into a dish generate the exact food you put into your mouth. What you drink with your meal has an effect, as does the order in which you consume parts of the meal. We have innumerable RPG methods, mechanics & settings, and those specific mixtures affect the exact experience in gameplay.
The Problem of Labels
It’s at this stage that many attempt to help clarify appetites by employing different paradigmatic tools, like the holy trinity of RPG pillars: The “Gamism, Narrativism, & Simulationism” (aka, the ‘GNS’) model developed by Ron Edwards c.2000. Others point to global playstyles and even systems themselves. What we convey with such categorical statements depends heavily upon the listeners' understanding of such terms. Using such labels may have some value, but also notoriously generates confusion & conflict. As is always the case, labels are double-edged swords, a problem exacerbated by social media impatience & contentiousness.
Instead of labels, I think it’s far more useful to discover the precise experiences you most want (& don’t want) when you play. A great starting practice is to reflect on your sessions to identify what you most strongly ruminate on, positively and negatively. These ruminations are telling you something important: “I really love it when…” or “I really wish we could skip over…” or “I get so annoyed/bored when…” Listing these insights will be illuminating.
Asking a multitude of questions will get your inner-dialogue going as you investigate. Broadly, these kinds of question will get the ball rolling:
Do you want a heavily battle-centric game (where everything else in the game is largely an excuse to hack & slash)?
Do you enjoy theatrically/dramatically playing your character, and interacting with your group as they do the same?
Do you want to be in a very specific world/setting, or just a vague mishmash of eras & places?
Do you expect your GM to let you succeed through one means or another?
Do you want your situations to be lite? Silly? Serious? Dark?
Do you want your sessions to mainly be a series of challenges: Puzzles, riddles, combat, etc.?
Do you want the feeling of free exploration in the world, or do you prefer following a story that your GM has created?
Do you want the possibility of character death from any reasonable source, or only when it serves some “dramatic purpose”?
Do you love crunching numbers, figuring out how to use the game’s mechanics to your benefit?
Do you love the ‘craps’ element, where dice rolls are the deciding factor in many events?
Do you want a strong sense of legitimate cause/effect in the world, or do you prefer an endless series of Deus Ex Machina trapdoors to open to maximize drama or tell a specific story?
Do you want to feel like you are truly inhabiting another world?
This kind of internal-interrogation is the beginning of finding your true appetites. Many answers will be, upon reflection, nuanced & contingent on other elements. Finding online RPG surveys help as well, for they ask the dozens of questions we need to answer.
This is where the journey starts: Asking yourself specific questions about what you love the most/least when you play. It may take months of rumination, but remember the goal: Knowing exactly what you want (regarding all areas of life) is absolutely necessary for getting it.
Daniel