Over the past couple of months, I have seen a lot of live streams and prerecorded videos mentioning the concepts of Story, Role-playing, and Immersion in relationship to tabletop role-playing games. Much of the discussion centers on whether one can or should include elements of story and character development in casual gaming. There also seems to be a lot of people advocating for players to strive for constant immersion while playing TTRPGs, by committing to staying in-character at all times while participating in a gaming session. For the most part, I didn't think the advice was wrong, so much as it all seemed to define writing stories and acting characters too narrowly; it also seemed to put too much stock in the value of total immersion.
In many cases these comments were coming from content creators whose work I very much enjoyed and thought of as giving generally useful advice; however, at the other extreme, there were many content creators saying very disparaging things about people who want to enjoy TTRPGs more casually, or simply have more flexibility about what will be counted as "legitimate" ways to play. At first I didn't really mind the "too narrow" definitions, as the underlying advice on the channels that I actually liked was still solid; unfortunately, I came to believe that, on the whole, it is so demeaning that it is likely to put newcomers to the hobby completely off asking for advice. This leaves them with only the option of finding a few creators that more or less are describing the style of play they want to pursue, and just watching them.
When I went to make this video I realized that the reason I was seeing the terms used so frequently was because they are all rated as being in "high" demand by KZitem's research tools. So, I decided to make this very long video. I do understand that the video and audio could be better. Also, I seem to be particularly :squirmy" throughout the video; I usually have much more room to move and gesticulate when I'm doing public education stuff, and don't bounce around in-place quite so much. On the other hand, I am known to be a bit of a Tigger; and, as everyone knows, the wonderful thing about Tiggers is that we are "bouncy, trouncy" creatures. I've been trying to add more movement to my videos because I understand that helps with viewer retention; I'll try to tone that down in the future.
Anyway, I know watching me bounce around in-place for half and hour is probably a bit much for anyone; so, here's a table of contents:
5:00 - Story as a Process
13:20 - Building a Character using Stanislavski's Method
22:30 - Suspension of Disbelief by Group Fiat
30:48 - Some Concluding Remarks
I do think these are important topics in the TTRPG hobby space; and, I am just one voice, with only my own opinions to discuss. I do hope the ideas discussed herein will be useful to someone. If you have any questions or comments, then please do feel free to leave them in the Comments section below.
#ttrpg, #osr, #dnd
Негізгі бет Story, Roleplaying & Immersion in Old School TTRPGs
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