Table Top Role-Play Games
When I was 18 or 19, I was first introduced to table top role-play games (TTRPG) by my then-best friend Balgram and her older brothers. I learned how to play with Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) 4th edition, and I played in Balgram's brother's Russia setting campaign as a rogue (whose name I no longer remember) and a paladin (whose name I will never forget, Nadezhda). I don't remember much about that campaign, except that we were playing two different parties, and Nadezhda had an experience at a ball where she was very awkward at dancing with someone she was supposed to be charming, because she was a low-charisma paladin and I rolled very low.
With this group I also very briefly tried my hands at running a game, using a Firefly tv show TTRPG book I had bought to run a one session game. The only thing I remember is feeling very awkward and not having a lot of fun. But then, I was not experienced at all at playing, and I was still a young thing when it came to story-telling and improvisation, both of which are key elements for game or dungeon masters.
I stopped playing with the group after the campaign ended, and it wouldn't be until I was 34 that I started playing again, after being invited into the gaming group of my then-boss now-friend. In the intervening years I had done a lot of growing with story-telling and improvisation1, and I'd seen a lot of TTRPG material2 that gave me a much better footing when it came to playing. Since starting again 2 1/2 years ago, I have played DnD 5th edition3 and Pathfinder 1st edition4, and I have dungeon-mastered a Pathfinder and DnD one-session game each5, and am currently dungeon-mastering a DnD game6.
Last night I had a moment during the Pathfinder game I've been a part of for the last six months that gave me a lot of joy. It's an online game, and for the entire time I've been playing my character, who has come in far later than the other players, has been off on her own, trying to survive and find someone, anyone. But now, the three mini groups have been almost all gathered together, culminating in a scary battle with horrifying deer monster creature things. My character is squishy and doesn't want to die so she's been hiding away from the battle, unable to actually see what's going on. But in the last minute or so7, she has heard human voices, something she hasn't heard in a very long time, so she has gathered her courage, pulled out the tagelharpa she found in an underground maze, and began playing music to inspire courage in whoever was out there fighting the monsters. And while she the character doesn't know it yet, I the player know that this helped immensely, allowing the other characters to finish off one of the monsters, with only one left.
And when I realized that yes, actually, my squishy bard character can help the massively superiorly powered other characters she will be traveling with. And that realization brought me a lot of joy because I had been struggling with the character and what role she would play and how she could be able to do anything for the group that is at least 10 levels above her8. But it also brought me joy because it felt like a character growth moment for her. She's done a lot of fleeing while in this scary land, and to be able to stand up and do something, it feels like a first major step towards becoming powerful like the others. And that is the kind of character moment I love to read and watch and write about. So not only am I having fun playing the game, but I am also being creatively, narratively fulfilled.
This kind of fulfillment and joy is better than any board game or card game, and even a lot of video games, movies, and TV shows, and this is why I continue playing and why I want to continue playing for as long as I can.
Most of this improvement has come from my writing. I've come a very long way in skill and knowledge about stories and the telling of them. But it's also come from teaching, where I a lesson plan but I have to improvise based on what the students do or say.↩
Dimension 20 and Critical Role are the two big ones to watch and learn from. And there's a lot to learn from the pros in those two shows.↩
2 campaigns with my current group. The Curse of Strahd and Water Deep: Dragon Heist, both of which were very different in tone and actions, and both of which were very fun.↩
A home-brewed, West March style game where each character (the player as a young adult) enters "The Great Library" and finds themself in a fantasy world. Currently playing.↩
The PF one was a home made short based on Halloween that I ran for the teenage girls I was a volunteer leader for. I had never made a one session game before, so I didn't know exactly how long it should have been, and it ran too long and they never finished it. The DnD one was a short game I had found online that looked fun and that I ran for the gaming group on an off weekend, and doing this really upped my confidence and let me know that yes, DMing was something I wanted to do.↩
A magic university setting with some story beats taken from Strixhaven but with a lot of home-brewed elements to really fill out the otherwise empty story. So far, it's been challenging but rewarding, and my players have told me that they are enjoying things and would like to continue playing.↩
When in combat situations in TTRPGs, there is a system for keeping track of time and who goes when. In DnD and Pathfinder, everyone rolls for their initiative to create an order of action, and then each round take 6 seconds of game time, while the actual playing of that round can take up to half an hour, depending on how many people are playing and how complicated the play is.↩
Also I've struggled because my favorite play style is "be strong, hit things" and that's definitely not what a bard is or does.↩