As promised!

So I think this is perhaps a flawed premise, and would like to put forth the following instead: the hardest part about RPG design is designing for players who have an expectation of what a TTRPG is like. And we can use group dynamics to look at the problem. (1/22) https://twitter.com/BabblegumSam/status/1348230942813421571

I don't think it's accurate to say that it's inherently easier to say "okay kill this monster" than it is to say "use your feels to tell a compelling story freeform." Honestly, "kill this monster" is infinitely more complex in D&D mechanically. (2/22)

Speaking from experience, I've seen so many folks who are good at telling stories and narrating characters when they sit down at a D&D table, and then have to frantically find their dice and figure out where the requisite numbers and abilities are on their sheet. (3/22)

What D&D currently has that very few other games do is widespread, accessible, and plentiful modeling. For better or for worse, their media has focused on showing people the game being played (often with very competent talent). (4/22)

What's more, they create that media by cultivating a "DnD in your kitchen or your living room!" vibe. Anyone can do it just like they do! Pay no attention to the talented actors and crew and editors and marketers and merchandise and sponsors! Tell YOUR story, uwu. (5/22)

So everyone who watches something like CR and has never played (and there are so many folks who have become players only after consuming this content - which, I am not judging, you are all welcome) has a preconceived notion of what TTRPGs are when they sit down to play. (6/22)

And this preconceived notion will vary from media to media - it's "you never forget your first Doctor," but for TTRPGs. @/CriticalRole even has wildly different modeling - the M9 campaign & UnDeadwood, for example, are two varyingmodels of what gaming looks like. (7/22)

In addition, as D&D is a game that notoriously tells you to ignore it, much of the accessibility is grafted on by folks who have already suffered through 30-foot movement & spell components & multi-class requirements & bad firearm design and fucking MONKS- (8/22)

The list goes on. But D&D is accessible in spite of itself, because the folks that run it know that the written game is a clunky nightmare that does its best with the baggage of its predecessors - improved in some ways, but yet to step out from their shadows in others. (9/22)

But imagine, if you will a world where the folks at CR started out by playing literally any other game. I can - I watched Titansgrave, Ashes of Valkana, which came out the same year. It was tightly edited, had overlays for dice rolls and artistic TotM maps. (10/22)

I hooked people by pointing at this 40-ish minute, tightly edited show and saying "for the time investment of a prime-time TV slot sans commercials, you can check this out." I got one of my best friends from theater hooked that way - she has since ventured into GMing. (11/22)

Imagine if there was a rippling media franchise, with snappy tutorials by beloved geek icons, and a plethora of content to see the game played, for something like Masks or Monsterhearts. (12/22)

Imagine if Twitch had integrated overlays so you could see a blinking STUNT announcement every time someone rolled doubles in the AGE system. Imagine @/DnDBeyond, but for your favorite system (I haven't gotten to play with Cortex yet). (13/22)

But you might wonder "this doesn't really address the point!" But it does, I promise - modeling is a thing we use in group dynamics as facilitators to help decrease the anxiety around gaming. We demonstrate the behavior we're aiming to help folks develop. (14/22)

In drama therapy specifically, we show that we're willing to make fools of ourselves, to play wild and free and uncaring of what our clients think, so that they can learn to do the same. To increase spontaneity while reducing anxiety.

Kinda like silly NPC voices, eh? (15/22)

It kinda goes without saying that folks learn easier with adequate scaffolding - with adequate support for their learning. And personally, I don't think that the D&D Player's Handbook is, in and of itself, particularly better written than any other RPG system handbook. (16/22)

But what WotC has cultivated is a media empire dedicated to lowering the barrier to engagement (while ALSO raising it in ways I don't know if its particularly conscious of, but I digress), as well as tools to support that image of "how the game should be played." (17/22)

That, more than anything else, is the takeaway. Games like D&D are not necessarily accessible because they are straightforward, but in part because of the player perception that they are since they've seen it modeled over and over. (18/22)

For other games to do the same, they need to be better represented in the media landscape of TTRPGs. Pasión de las Pasiones is easier to invest in if you're like me and spent hours watching Telemundo even if you couldn't undertand what people were saying. (19/22)

Masks is much easier to play if you've seen ANY Teen Titans. Urban Shadows is trope-heavy if you like True Blood or Shadowhunters or Constantine or-

You see what I mean?

Base D&D is just Lord of the Rings writ for your kitchen table if you boil it down. (20/22)

For games to be accessible, more people need to be exposed to the underlying premises of the fiction - a game like Balikbayan is powerful because it touches on stories that haven't often been told, especially in the Western hemisphere - as well as what play looks like. (21/22)

If you see enough of it, it becomes easier to know what to expect. If you know what to expect, it's easier to feel less anxious. If you're less anxious, it's easier to have fun.

And that's the whole point.

Fin. (22/22)