The funny thing about Table-Top Role-Playing Games (TTRPGs) is that different people at the same table may enjoy TTRPGs in wildly different ways.
Occasionally, this can be a challenge, when two players’ ideas of what constitutes fun are completely out of sync. But in general it’s a source of delight and wonder that people playing the same game can enjoy it so differently.
Having played together for years, here are some favourites from the team here at Dice Company:
Creative problem solving: There’s something delightful about the way the rules and often the setups of TTRPGs give you a set of parameters to work within and exercise your creativity. For example, you want to perform a daring rescue mission. Well, you have a combination of details the GM gives you, and whatever mechanics the system provides to go with your own unique way of looking at things. You don’t have that blank-page fear of endless possibilities but you’re not being railroaded either. Have at it.
Example from Dice Company: The Steamrunner heist
Shared worldbuilding: When you first start playing TTRPGs, you might assume that the GM creates the world and you play within it. But that’s just not the case. Indeed, some games – for example Daggerheart – actively encourage and reward players who create their own details of the world. The GM, it turns out, has created a sketch, and together you are going to fill in the details. It’s one of my favourite things to do – create a location, an institution or a custom within the world and watch other players reference it and build on it.
Example from Dice Company: Petren and the GM create lore around the Runethala on the fly.
Watching characters change and grow in ways you couldn’t have expected: This can happen in all games, but especially in long campaigns like Small Embers, where characters have time to develop, and encounter situations that will inevitably change them and how they see the world. Thinking about how the events of the story you’ve played through, that you could never have predicted, impact your character and playing that out can be fascinating.
Example from Dice Company: Petren experiences rage.
Turning a minor side plot point into something bigger: Playing TTRPGs is a hobby, but sometimes you have to have a hobby within your hobby. In Small Embers, there’s a clear main plot, but at times, when other characters have been spotlighted, we’ve all worried away at something that could otherwise have been allowed to fall by the wayside, and by doing so, made it important to the main story – and it’s really fun to do, and adds a bit of richness. You don’t want to be laser focused on a single goal.
Example from Dice Company: Seeksorrow strives to gain the title Lord of Misery.
Role-play bickering: Improvising can be a small or a big part of how we enjoy TTRPGs. It really depends how much your group enjoys this aspect. Apparently, what our group really enjoys is in-character bickering about trivialities, which, it turns out, we can do endlessly, with no prep or prompting from the GM. This may say something about us people, but we choose not to consider this too extensively.
Example from Dice Company: Everyone is very mean about Bennie’s webbed toes.
Using the rules to surprise the GM: For some, rules are a necessary evil, providing structure, sure, but with potential to get in the way of the fun. For others, engaging deeply with the rules, thinking about how they apply to the situation and how they can be used to best advantage is what really interests them. And then if you can apply those rules in a way that has the GM scrambling for a response? That’s the stuff right there.
Example from Dice Company: Tock obliterates the enemy flagship in a single attack.
Creating chaos: Sometimes the combination the GM setting up an intriguing situation, players taking different (sometimes contradictory) angles, the random nature of dice rolling and a bit of magic come together to create glorious, glorious chaos.
Example from Dice Company: Shark Vander.
Spending time with your friends: As our GM says: “The part I enjoy the most is spending time with my friends and making memories which transcend the game or the stories we tell.”
Example from Dice Company: All of it!