Conclusion

When I first started this…I guess you could call it a project, I did it for weird reasons. I had been struggling with my other writing projects, hitting brick wall after brick wall, forcing my fingers to type out trite and uninteresting sentences that advanced boring stories with empty souls, to the point where sitting down to write was becoming an act of self-harm. My brain began its spiraling semi-regularly, and it began to adversely affect my relationships with my friends, family, and myself.

At the same time, as a means of escape, I was reading RPG manuals. I had donated multiple times to charity bundles provided by Itch.io, and in so doing have received over a thousand indie games, both video and tabletop. I run Linux, so most of the windows-based games were lost to me, but the tabletop games were not.

My brain works different, so I had to itemize and categorize my bounty, restarting several times as I’ve thought up new kinds of categorization.

I have, for the better part of my life, lived in the underground of cultural media. I didn’t get cable TV growing up, and I didn’t listen to the radio. I grew up on classic Doctor Who. I dressed up as Taran Wanderer for Halloween. When I watched Bevis and Butthead or Ren and Stimpy at other people’s houses, I didn’t get it. While my peers were watching Nickelodeon and MTV, I was watching PBS, delighting in the bizarre foreign cartoons of Long Ago and Far Away, the charm of Faerie Tale Theatre, and the intrigue of 3-2-1 Contact. The more I was introduced to “mainstream” media, whether movies, music, or comic books, the less I liked. I found my pleasures in the strange and avant-garde.

I was not unfamiliar with TTRPGs, having played dozens of different systems and campaigns that have lasted for years, but I had never been introduced to so many at once. As I read and explored my pile of games, I began to see parallels. The more I found, the more important they seemed, until I had composed half this treatise in my head before I had even decided I wanted to write it.

As a chronic introvert I never enter new spaces un-invited or -chaperoned. The truth is, with the relatively recent acceptance of RPGs as a viable hobby, the idea of “joining in” feels exhausting. Indie games, on the other hand, are small, unassuming, friendly, and grateful you’re there. They are experimental, oftentimes as far off the beaten path as someone can get. Some are years-long passion projects, others are banged out in an evening. Some exist because the creator thought it would be fun. Others exist because the creator was desperate to tell a story, and bring others into their own world.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some bad indie RPGs out there — either clumsily made or poorly thought out — but far fewer than you might expect.

Because unlike video games, books, and movies, RPGs are almost entirely about the people you experience them with. A system can be well or poorly written, but a poor RPG system can be salvaged by a good group of friends who know how to play with each other. A movie might fumble its climax or spend too much money on badly made CGI, but an awkward rule in an RPG can be hacked or waved away.

Now, I just want to say: A lot of people have very strong opinions.

Shocker, right?

It’s not just RPGs. Talk to anyone about anything they care about, whether RPG, movie, or religion, you will get an ear-full about what is “right.” Not just what is better or more important, but correct. I do it to. I probably did it in this project without realizing it.

Some people, when confronted with the flexibility of “all opinions are valid” tend to bristle. “You’re wrong,” they might say, “You can sit around and tell stories with your friends around the campfire all you like, but don’t you dare call it an RPG. RPGs have GMs, dice, and rules. That’s just what RPGs are.”

I’m not going to arm-chair psychologist this particular straw-man because I think that’s a fairly silly opinion to have, but I can respect it. Why? Because I too have very strong opinions.

I’m a bit unsatisfied with my earlier answer about what message the medium of RPGs communicates. If RPGs are a medium — and I still maintain that they are, as rich and distinct as the mediums of film, ink, and canvas — it is a medium that is far less codified than any other. It is a medium that is unavoidably underground (dungeon lol), created from individual decisions and relationships into something unique. It’s inescapably DIY, collaborative, and individualistic. It’s Punk. It’s Anarchism. It’s fundamentally personal and quintessentially cooperative. It’s Modernist, Postmodernist, and Metamodernist all at once.

All RPGs are hacks, which means that if RPGs are a medium, then all players are artists. They’re audience too, and the interplay between those two roles ebbs back and forth in the impossible dichotomy that is roleplay.

Everything that I have talked about in this whole series is but a single ingredient. Dice, tone, genre, mood, index cards, journals, safety tools, they’re all a giant salad of alchemical arcana.

If there is one thing I want you to take away from this project, it’s that RPGs aren’t yours, any more than movies or books are yours. They can’t be. There are just too many of them. A whole medium’s worth. They’re everyone’s. There’s no more “the right way to play RPGs” than there is a “right way to paint a picture.” It’s the game you play together, that’s what’s yours, to do with as you please.

Well, okay, I suppose there is one more thing to take away: Shewstone created what they call The Platinum Rule for RPGs, which is, quote: “All players share responsibility for making the game fun for everyone.”

This is, in no uncertain terms, the best rule.

No, don’t debate it with me, I don’t care. Olivia Hill’s rule is a close second, yes, but it’s self evident that the Platinum Rule is the best rule, and I’m not going to waste more words explaining why it is the best.

And there are so many kinds of fun.

It’s worth reiterating: Some people love telling stories, while some people love building a mathematical model and seeing it interact with a system. Some people love knowing the rules, some people love strange surprises. Some people love horror, some people love comedy. Some people love pretending they’re someone else, some people love being themselves but different.

Players come from all ages, pronouns, races, classes, and backstories. Some people play to escape. Some people play to grow. Some people play to fill time. Some people play to uphold tradition. Some people don’t even know why they play, only that they are compelled.

So a final request: If you are a player of RPGs, please branch out. Play a one-shot or a short campaign with a system that doesn’t particularly interest you. Just to see. Just to experience it. Play a quick game you know you’re not going to like, and give it a sincere and faithful shot. If you love OSR, play a pre-planned tactical combat game. If you love fiction-first, pick up a rules-heavy handbook. If you adore systems, look into narrative focused games. Swap to play-to-find-out. Try GM-less. Put away the dice and pull out cards. Pick up a journal. Try embracing sincerity, or hanging up the sword entirely and focusing on the garden outside the inn.

Or, you can completely ignore or disagree with everything I’ve said. I’m just one person writing about something that fascinates them. I’m no scholar: I haven’t spent years researching the “Art of RPGs.” I haven’t spoken with sociologists or historians about the volumes of study about “play” and its affect on human culture. Everything I’ve said is at best, my opinion — how I’ve come to recognize the world around me through my own imperfect senses and disordered brain.

My only hope is that if you sort through any random RPG forum you’ll be able to see quite a few assumptions worthy of questioning.

Art has a way of affecting us without us realizing it. I only hope that my idealistic eyes see the future that we are all heading towards, rather than away from.

“We are who we pretend to be.”

May we all pretend well.