Why TTRPGs?
Goal: To understand why some people enjoy TTRPGs, why others do not, and how LIS10 can be applied to your own personal creative passion distinct from TTRPGs..
Last time we discussed preconceptions, primarily from the perspective of someone already familiar with TTRPGs.
Today we're re-approaching TTRPGs from the opposite perspective, the stranger, someone who has no knowledge of TTRPGs, and is innocently coming into LIS10 without any understanding of what Live Interactive Storytelling actually involves.
What do TTRPGs do?
How do they actually work?
What are you really doing?
What's the point?
If you're completely fresh to LIS10, this is the article to understand the appeal of this TTRPG thing.
However, if you already know it well, this is still an important topic for you to work through to improve your communication and empathy when trying to welcome someone less experienced into your favourite creative hobby!
What do TTRPGs do? The Pragmatics
When pressed, it boils down to a group of friends spending a few hours together each week, telling an ongoing story, with each person puppeting a character they call their own, deciding their actions, their choices, and it's all performed through words, existing only in the shared imagination of those at the table.
Don't worry if what you've already been told, or even this condensed overview, is already confusing you and raising more questions.
You don't need a full understanding immediately, let's build up to that!
Regularly Spending Time Together Ongoing Story Character Input Spoken Interaction Shared Imagination
This concept may sound too bizarre, that even though you are understanding it correctly, you trick yourself into thinking you must be wrong.
“There's no way it's just sitting at a table with nothing?”
“What are you actually doing?”
“How is it all in the imagination?”
“Are you literally just sitting there talking?”
It doesn't make too much sense, and try as they might, the answers fans try to give to illuminate their view just fuels the confusion.
Which can lead to frustration on both sides, too often a fan will say something like:
“No no, you don't get it, it's not just sitting, like you're all IN that world... living it!”
And, to those fans, let me just briefly say - you're missing where they're coming from - that's okay, we'll work through it, but they've probably understood the concept and it just doesn't sound that interesting.
Why can't fans answer these questions well?
Because the truth behind these questions, this recoiled reaction of strangers first learning of TTRPGs - is absolutely the correct view to have.
Honestly, why would this experience we've pitched sound appealing? So far, as described above, those words appears pretty empty to fresh eyes.
However...
Through the eyes of those already at the table, the fans, there's a unique appeal they struggle to describe, despite their obsessive investment and enjoyment when experiencing it.
It's something that can't be pointed to in other media forms, and doesn't have a clear example anywhere else to point to.
Defining the Magic
Live Interactive Storytelling is the term I settled on, and it's exactly what it says, having real meaningful creative input into a narrative in realtime.
For films, or books, the audience has no input at all, and for videogames a player can steer their character but only within the limits of what someone else has designed.
With LIS10 you have complete creative control, with your friends, from setting to genre to characters to tone... everything is customised and responsive.
“But what is custom? What is the actual thing you're doing?”
...sitting around a table... ...imagining things...
And this is where the appeal dies, and everything falls apart.
The Problem With Imagination
We don't live in an utopia where our imaginations take physical form to be viewed and experienced by others, nor are you leaving each TTRPG session having earned something with real demonstrable permanence that can be acknowledge and shared with the people living outside of... what amounts to a lucid daydream sitting around a table.
In all honesty, this concept is without any measurable value, material or social, to anyone who is not sharing, not personally partaking in the experience.
I'm not going to defend that, because it IS a problem, and not where anyone wants to be wasting their limited time. But on the bright side, we've defined the problem, we can find our own path to a solution.
The Reality Beyond Imagination
Although this infinite dream space reality is what fans often hype up and speak of as the thing that makes their hobby so special, it's not where they actually find themselves. People buy products.
You don't typically start in a place devoid of all but imagination and infinite possibility.
You start on a platform, a compromise somewhere between that void of nothing and the more restrictive (but easy to grasp) finalised media forms. Probably not a movie, but maybe a board game, a video game, and telling stories built upon, built into what already exists in those products.
Tangent: This is very similar to the concept of Grey-Boxing in Video Game Design.
Before fully committing to creating all the art, and effects, developers will create a bland world of basic shapes and minimal rules. They then explore and experiment, by applying a layer of imagination over, on top of what they're actually seeing in the game.
They're starting with some restrictions already applied in, they can't literally do anything anymore like they would in their imagination. It's giving them something real to use as a foundation, and to reference collaboratively when imagining how to make their game more interesting and enjoyable.
This is perspective hopefully illuminates TTRPGs with a whole new level of clarity.
They're boardgames with a layer of LIS10.
They're boardgames where the board will come and go, but the portfolio of experiences, the items obtained by each character, will remain and be added to each week with each new boardgame. These experiences and items exist not only in their shared imagination, but also in sketches, notes, papers, and journals that each player maintains themself.
TTRPGs build upon the physical closeness, the social charm of a board game, and elevate it into something more permanent.
A collective story, a deeper connection with their friends, that gives them a sense of ownership, and more reason to spend time together than a regular boardgame night might.
Boardgames? et al?
LIS10 doesn't have to be applied to boardgames, it's a layer than can be painted atopon any medium.
Quite a few Americans apply it to live sporting events, as with Fantasy Football.
Which is a great example because watching sporting events is a medium you have no real input over as a fan. But through Fantasy Football fans are able to apply a layer of imagination that gives them control, ownership, storytelling, and enters them into a social community to share their passion.
Humans are social creatures, we crave community, and LIS10 is a natural solution to adapt typically non-social pursuits into a collaborative socially engaging format. If we want to be technical we can intellectualise and abstract this into the concept of Augmented Reality, we're just applying extra importance, extra details, on top of something that really does exist.
But What's The Point?
This is quite a pointed confronting question that can ruffle the feathers of fans. But it's fair question, so let's take it seriously.
However you're using LIS10, whatever you're imagining, does not matter to anyone outside your circle. And if that's a TTRPG for a few hours every week, that's a huge time commitment for... what?
Here's the brutal answer: If boardgames are not your thing, TTRPGs are probably not for you.
But that doesn't exclude you from finding a very real appeal in something else, from enjoying LSI10 in one of its other forms.
If you're here because someone is trying to get you into trying TTRPGs, your friend probably wants to play a really cool boardgame with you and more importantly just wants to spend more time hanging out, enjoying your company, and being creative together.
But before writing off that idea, keep in mind that just because LIS10 is typically trapped only being enjoyed within a circle, a closed community, unknowable and without meaning to the greater world...
Doesn't mean that yours must be too...
Actionable Advice
1. Draw Your Circle
If your LIS10 will only have meaning to a closed group of participants, then embrace that, and draw a circle that includes the people you do care about, and do want to explore a deeper, custom, creative experience with.
It could be casual Uni friends or colleagues, you all like videogames and pick one as a starting point.
It could be your really young kids, instead of reading a different book each night you decide to start spinning those into an ongoing adventure, letting them choose what to say to the characters, giving them agency!
It could be your elderly relatives, those homebound or without much agency in the real world anymore. You can use LIS10 to provide some escapism, restore that feeling of agency with an honest grounding in the knowledge they're spending time not just wandering around in Minecraft, but forging memories with the people they care for.
2. Use Invisible Ink
If a closed circle doesn't sit well with you, let's ensure whatever you're creating reaches out and has an undeniable meaning to those who aren't participating.
This doesn't mean start streaming your boardgames, though that's an option, it can be anything that's easily communicated in a sentence as a good productive use of your time (it doesn't need to be for-profit).
Maybe your LIS10 will lay the foundation for a book series you want to write, maybe you're based in a visual tool like Milanote and fleshing out ideas and looks for films.
This doesn't need to be in the pursuit of creating a final product with a wider release, perhaps you're just building a skill, akin to going to the gym to work out a specific creative muscle that can be flexed even when you're outside of LIS10.
3. Embrace Your Creative Goals
Consider laying LIS10 into a creative endeavour you've got in the back of your mind that seems disconnected from narrative or storytelling at first glance.
Woodcarving seems a world away, but maybe LIS10 is just the motivation and inspiration you need to focus your thinking and come up with a whole series of characters and concepts that give you somewhere to go, and the passion to see it through!
Even Baking, Fashion Design, Painting, all creative projects can be elevated by weaving in storytelling. And harnessing LIS10 towards that goal is a sure fire way to keep yourself creatively accountable and consistent.
For while LIS10 is most obviously seen satisfying cravings of community, challenge, and creativity, it also comes with an inherent unerring momentum.
LIS10 is always pushing you forward, the story keeps going, and it doesn't merely follow the path of least resistance, it tracks towards the creative fulfilment of everyone involved.
To me, LIS10 can not only evoke optimism, but also demand completion, unceasingly eliciting progress and manifesting ideas that otherwise might have just sat around for decades in the "could-a, should-a, would-a" space in your mind.
Worksheet
The purpose of the worksheets accompanying each Lesson is to provide another pathway of reflection and creative discovery.
This is not homework, it's not a quiz, and it shouldn't be seen as a hassle.
I've always found that I learnt more from something I could approach, and interface with, in multiple ways. If you just read through a LIS10 lesson, or watch one of the videos, maybe that speaks to you, or maybe you find it confusing or even that that particular one irrelevant to you.
The worksheets are simply an alternative way of prompting you to find something meaningful, something worthwhile, from a lesson that you can use to grow from.
Maybe that's something completely disconnected from the lesson itself, there are no right answers here, this is your journey.