There has been a lot of discussion recently on the future of tabletop/pen’n'paper gaming, with much doom and gloom involved. For example Steve Jackson’ prediction (quoted from Stargazer’s World) that pen’n'paper gaming will be ‘forgotten in ten years’.
I had some thoughts on this myself recently. The first thing I’ll say is that for tabletop/pen and paper roleplaying games to survive (and I believe they are worth keeping alive), we need to distinguish these games from other games that are essentially ‘Roleplay Simulators’, in the same way that Guitar Hero is a guitar sim, not to be confused with actually playing the guitar.
When I say tabletop/pen and paper, of course I may be talking about a game that contains a good deal of computer assistance, as others have commented on, and may eventually be played almost entirely online.
Maybe we need to find some new way of describing these games. ‘Narrative’ games would be treading on freeform/fanfic type gaming territory so that’s not going to work. I don’t know what the answer to this is but I do know that it is going to be hard-to-impossible to take the acronym ‘RPG’ back from the g@m3rZ who have misappropriated it.
We need to find a way of drawing the distinction in a way that the lay person can immediately grasp, otherwise their default assumption is that computer RPGs are an upgrade or replacement for tabletop, and that the latter is effectively obselete.
The other day, I was inspired to write a sort of ‘Introduction to the uninitiated’ in which I tried to explain the differences between tabletop roleplay and computer RPGs. Please take a read. Comments and criticisms are welcome:
http://www.covengaming.org/wordpress/?page_id=2
But there has to be a simpler way to enlighten people than getting them to read an essay. Pointing out that WoW is a ‘Roleplay Simulator’ is a concise way of doing it but also a negative one, and you’ll never get MMO advocates to let go of the RPG tag anyway.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 4:38 am and is filed under Tabletop RPG. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 7th, 2009 at 6:48 am
I think tabletop roleplay has two immediate differentiating elements. First is the face to face social component. Until holography or virtual reality or whatever it is that provides a realistic representation of other people, nothing’s going to beat tabletop gaming for a living breathing social experience. The immediacy of body language and facial expressions are, to me, key to playing a game with other people.
The second part follows on from the first: the tactile nature of tabletop. While I guess strides are being made towards tangible holograms, it’ll be a long time before something can take the place of being able to pick up and roll some dice, moving your mini across the map or pass a prop around the table.
Showing is better than telling, as the writing teachers say. We need to find a way to demonstrate tabletop’s strengths in a tangible, practical way that doesn’t necessarily alienate people who, up to now, exclusively played MMOs.
August 9th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Hi Tyler,
Some good points. But how do you get these demonstrations of tabletop ‘out there’ so that new players can be introduced to the pleasures of tactile, face-to-face gaming?
It seems that the hobby is mostly spread by word of mouth, and that method has severe bottlenecks when you consider:
1) Gamer Shame - Many tabletop gamers are reticent to talk about their hobby to others until they know that they, also, are a tabletop gamer.
2) Poor gaming groups will be an off-putting experience to newcomers.
3) Good gaming groups tend to self-isolate to preserve the group’s balance and integrity - avoiding recruitment because bringing the wrong kind of person into the group could wreck it.
So, what to do? I mean, other than just continuing doing what we are already doing, of course.