I wrote entirely too much about this and probably could have broken it up into two posts, but I gotta get it off my proverbial desk and move onto something else.
I’ve been playing RPGs for a bit over two decades now – well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say I’ve been playing an RPG. Aside from a handful of one-shots in Call of Cthulhu and other games, I’ve specifically been playing Dungeons & Dragons off and on for about two decades while mostly only reading the rulebooks for other RPGs over that same timespan.
The first time I became aware of the concept of sitting around a table with a bunch of fellow nerds while pretending to be wizards, warriors, and so on was when I saw the Dexter’s Laboratory episode “D & DD.” While the “Monsters & Mazes” game that Dexter and his friends played wasn’t something I had a specific frame of reference for at the time, I was old enough to realize that this was a sendup of something real, something that actually existed but I hadn’t actually encountered yet. And whatever this was, it was something that seemed fun to me.
I couldn’t tell you exactly when D&D went from “that thing I’ve seen parodied in Dexter’s Laboratory and some other shows that seems kind of neat” to something specific I was aware of and wanted to get into, but at some point in the early aughts my parents gave me the 3rd Edition starter set (“The Adventure Begins Here!”). I got some of the other kids in my neighborhood to play through most of the scenarios with me and they had a fun enough time, though it wasn’t the kind of thing most of them wanted to particularly get into. Not long afterward I picked up the 3rd edition Player’s Handbook and gradually accumulated a small collection of other D&D-related books. I wanted to play D&D again, and while I enjoyed video games such as Neverwinter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic (“Star Wars D&D” to me at the time). they weren’t a perfect substitute.
It wasn’t until high school that I actually had a number of friends that were interested in playing, but even then my attempts at would-be campaigns all fizzled out after a session or two. While I didn’t realize this at the time, a major reason for this was that D&D 3.5 (we’d gone up half an edition at this point) was simply way too complicated for most high schoolers, even “nerdy” ones, to want to bother with. There’s not much to say about the crunchiness of 3.5 and its progeny that hasn’t been said before, but the same wealth of options and granularity that I found so appealing when flipping through the various splatbooks (some of which I had even obtained legitimately!) was exactly what kept me from running the game smoothly and keeping my friends interested. I played 3.5 a couple more times in college, as a player rather than a DM, and read a lot of other game books in that time, but for the most part I was simply reading about games rather than playing them until shortly after college.
By far the most hours I’ve spent playing and prepping for any one RPG system is D&D 5E. After two (?) false starts putting together groups online, I wrangled together some friends in person and kept a group going for about three years. We started, like many people, with Lost Mines of Phandelver, and continued with more or less the same group into Storm King’s Thunder. Some players left, some new players joined, and some players changed characters, but for the most part we managed to get through a lengthy campaign with a fairly consistent core group (one of the original players who had moved away even managed to “return” via Skype for our final session).
I do think we had a lot of fun over the course of those few years, but I struggled a bit with the system. I was originally very enthusiastic about 5th edition, as it somewhat resembled the 3rd edition that got me into the game and pen and paper RPGs in general (and that I still have a place for in my heart despite its many faults), but with a lot less modifiers. Less modifiers, I figured, meant less fiddly bits all around, which meant smoother gameplay – and, compared to the clunky beast called D&D 3.5, this was true to a certain extent. Still, I found it to be a bit unwieldy and spent a lot of time over those three years googling suggestions for making certain parts of the game run easier. I also think some of the players didn’t exactly love or take to the system either, but the in-person element went a long way in getting us to enjoy the game anyway (and perhaps made me not realize I wasn’t actually enjoying 5E as a system very much).
The next campaign was less successful. When we finished up Storm King’s Thunder most of my in-person group had other obligations and couldn’t commit to another campaign. I instead decided to spend a few months prepping for a new attempt at an online campaign with some of the previous group’s members and some other friends who had expressed interest. My hope was to do something somewhat more player-driven and open-ended – perhaps not a true sandbox, but closer to that than the more linear material I had done before. After threeish years of running 5E I thought I had a good enough grip on the system to handle this. I wasn’t completely improvising – the campaign was set in Eberron, so I had a few sourcebooks I was mining ideas and locations from – but I was trying to stay only a session or two ahead rather than plan out some grand overarching narrative. Within three or four sessions, though, I was beginning to lose my patience.
Looking back, I don’t think I was actually having much difficulty with the improvisation and prep aspect of my not-quite-sandbox, I just wasn’t enjoying the underlying game, which then made me dread playing. The online nature of it exacerbated many of the problems I had with 5E that I hitherto had been glossing over because of the in-person social aspect, but I had bought into the Product so much that I had convinced myself my problems were with the style of game I was running rather than the system itself. I attempted to course correct by switching back a premade adventure – one of the best of 5E, supposedly, Curse of Strahd – but after another couple sessions I just couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm for it anymore.
To be clear, none of this is on the players, who were great: they were very accommodating to my request to put the campaign on hold while I reworked things and fully understanding when I called it quits. I know there are some horror stories about the 5E play culture, particularly when it comes to players, but that wasn’t an issue I ran into. I was just tired of 5E, and not long after I was tired of Wizard of the Coast as a company due to the Open Gaming License shenanigans, the bleak future of Dungeons & Dragons™ as a Product (entirely directed toward its attempted pivot toward a form of GaaS, and nothing to do with “wokeness” or any such chuddy reasons), and the mismanagement of Magic: The Gathering, another game I used to enjoy from time to time.
For a while I was convinced that I was done with tabletop RPGs entirely, or at least done with running them as a DM/GM/Keeper/whatever proprietary name the underlying system uses. Within less than a year or so I was, predictably, thinking “what if I tried again?” I’ve been once again reading a variety of systems, adventures, supplements, blogposts, and so on, and been trying to put more thought toward what exactly it is I want out of playing – and particularly running – a tabletop game.
So: what am I aiming for now? Well, first of all, I have a newborn son, so it will still be another year or two until things have settled into enough of a routine that I am comfortable enough with being able to have a semi-regularly scheduled game at all. The positive is that this gives me time to read, write, and prep so I’m ready to hit the ground running once it’s finally time. I’d also like to run a few one-shots in the meantime so I can try out a few different systems.
My experience running a game online has soured me on attempting to do so again. Again, this is entirely a me thing; nothing against my previous group, I just think it was something I struggled with. Perhaps the experience would have been better if I had used a proper virtual tabletop (a separate skill I’d have to learn and am not really interested in), or maybe all that would have made the difference was requiring the use of cameras. Whatever the case, I’d simply prefer to have my next game be in-person. Note that this is only my preference as a GM – I’m starving for more experience as a player in pretty much any game, and would be willing to play online to do so, though the aforementioned newborn means I probably couldn’t commit to anything other than some one-shots and maybe open table style games (more on that in a paragraph).
If the game is to be in-person, scheduling becomes even more of an issue. Most of my friends who would perhaps be interested in playing an RPG might not necessarily be able to commit to playing, say, every other week. However, in my experience, any less frequent than that and you quickly end up in situations where a month or more can pass in between sessions due to scheduling conflicts – a less than desirable outcome. The best way to address this, I believe, would be to have an open table hexcrawl: reach out to as many people I know who might be interested in playing, then set a semi-regular day and time that a certain maximum number of people can RSVP for, and those players decide what specifically they want to explore each game. I’d probably keep a Discord server or something similar so the disparate players can fill each other in on what happened during their sessions – hopefully further encouraging player engagement with the game.
Furthermore, since a lot of my friends who might be interested in playing aren’t extremely experienced RPG players, I want to run something that is relatively lightweight, at least on the player-facing side. This also fits with the open table idea: if it’s been a month and a half or so since someone’s last game, I don’t want them to feel too “left behind” when it comes to the learning curve of the game. It also aids me in reducing the amount/complexity of rules-related prep and improvisation.
Finally, I probably want to stick with something that hews somewhat close to the broad “default” genre of D&D, or at least what that is to me. There’s tons of great RPGs out there covering a lot of different genres, and that’s great – but I like dungeons and I like dragons, so that’s what I want to play (I just no longer care for Dungeons & Dragons the Product). Also, I picked up Skerple’s incredible Monster Overhaul and am dying to use it.
Thankfully when it comes to systems there’s an embarrassment of riches that fit what I’m looking for. I’m eyeing BX clones like OSE, various takes on OD&D from Swords and Wizardry to FMC Basic, and lighter-weight OSR games such as The Black Hack and its ilk. Gavin Norman’s upcoming full release of Dolmenwood seems like it could be a good fit for the style of play I’m hoping to cultivate, though it’s slightly further afield of the D&D genre I like (though still very cool). Maybe I’ll even consider a more lightweight 5E hack like Into the Unknown since it’s built on something I (and likely some of the players) are already familiar with, but I’m not fully sold on “O5R” as a concept. The most important thing is to not waste too much time hemming and hawing over systems, as over time it will likely be warped to suit the group anyway.
The nice thing is that, especially with a lighter and/or more “old school” system (putting aside that OSR is a retronym), there’s nothing really stopping me from getting started on writing up some setting, adventures, dungeons, and what-have-you and fitting it to a system when needed. In fact, I think I’ll start some of that this weekend.
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