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Parallel vs. Performance Play
(A Thread)
Tabletop RPGs get sorted and categorized in a whole LOT of ways. Most of those schemes of categorization are only useful for a specific purpose or moment. For THIS moment, I want to talk about Parallel vs. Performance play.
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(A Thread)
Tabletop RPGs get sorted and categorized in a whole LOT of ways. Most of those schemes of categorization are only useful for a specific purpose or moment. For THIS moment, I want to talk about Parallel vs. Performance play.
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The easiest possible way to define this divide is to think outside TTRPGS, and look at Charades vs. (some) Eurogames.
Charades is performance play; while there's scoring, etc, the *draw* is that we get to be silly out loud, and act up together.
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Charades is performance play; while there's scoring, etc, the *draw* is that we get to be silly out loud, and act up together.
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In a lot of Eurogames, on the far end, while player interaction is critical, each player spends a huge chunk of their time managing their little empire of bits, optimizing, strategizing, tinkering; the players are often in parallel.
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Now, Tabletop RPGs traditionally have elements of both. Being a muddle in the middle, hybridizing everything we can grab, is one of our things.
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Which is not to say some games haven't pushed strongly one way or another.
Primetime adventures, Baron Munchausen, Puppetland, In Spaaace!, and more are all intensely performance-focused games that have been with us for a good while now.
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Primetime adventures, Baron Munchausen, Puppetland, In Spaaace!, and more are all intensely performance-focused games that have been with us for a good while now.
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For heavily parallel games, just... Mostly, we just call them "crunchy", because we have, historically, been a bit better at serving parallel play.
It hasn't been a big deal, but it's going to be, because streaming and podcasts exist.
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It hasn't been a big deal, but it's going to be, because streaming and podcasts exist.
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The needs of streaming and podcasting play overlap almost entirely with performance-based play. And since most of our games aren't really geared for that, we get a weird bit of almost-but-not-quite-dishonesty.
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That is, most popular D&D streamers are doing improv, engaging the rules little enough that it feels a bit like they're not really representing them. So when they bring in a flock of new potential players, and those players crack open the books... The hell is this?
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Drawing people to games engineered for parallel play by broadcasting perfomance-play of a reduced version of those rules is deeply weird. Not badwrong or tut-tut, just, look, that's deeply weird.
So that's why it matters right now.
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So that's why it matters right now.
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Now, if streaming is one of the primary gateways to gaming, and that's going to last a while? We are going to see more games designed for performance play, and some will get more success.
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We didn't have good gateways to the world for a long, long time. Now we have streamers, many of them amazing, but getting the ones with significant pull to pull for us is increasingly going to mean designing for their needs as we go on.
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So... What happens to strong parallel-play design, if I'm right?
Nothing much. I mean; it's not in danger, it'll always be major and ongoing. But that "nothing much happening to it" includes probably not benefiting so much from the growth I expect elsewhere.
Nothing much. I mean; it's not in danger, it'll always be major and ongoing. But that "nothing much happening to it" includes probably not benefiting so much from the growth I expect elsewhere.
