How to Play a TTRPG

How to Play

The game is played through conversation. First, the Game Master (GM) describes the scene, setting, or situation. Second, either in turns or free form, the players describe what their characters do or say, and how. Third, the GM determines and describes what happens. Repeat until a scene is resolved, then the GM establishes a new scene.

How to Personify Your Character

You the player personify your character based on how you conceive them (with respect to the tone and setting of the game). Game mechanics and character statistics are just numbers. A low intelligence statistic does not mean you have to portray your character like an idiot, and nor should you portray your character as too dumb for self-preservation or as self-sabotaging. A low personality statistic does not mean you can't be effective in a conversation. It is OK to ask what you would do if you were in your character's place and do that.

How to Use Descriptions

Everyone should use deceptions like a narrator in a story. Avoid using game terminology. Use as much natural language as possible. For example, instead of saying "I use 30 ft of movement to move to the front of the troll and I use my action to attack him", say "I run across the room and swing my sword at the troll's head." Try to say everything you're doing on your turn in a single fluid sentence like reading a line from a novel.

How to Use Dice

Dice do not tell the story, we do. The setting determines the limitations of the fiction (of fantastic elements like magic). Once those limitations are established, the rest of the fictional world is assumed to default to realism as this is our common frame of reference. The difficulty of actions should therefore default to our expectations of believable reality and should not be arbitrary for the sake of game design or balance. In effect, if an action can reasonably succeed, it does. You don't need game rules, mechanics, or dice to tell you what happens. Just apply logic of a believable make-believe world. Dice are for combat and sometimes for traps.

Would my character know anything about the monster? A wizard might a few things, a ranger might now a few things, a county bumpkin might know a few things. You don't need a line item on your character sheet for this, it's all in how you can justify having the knowledge within the logic of the setting and the story. You may argue "my character is a ranger of this frontier, this monster is a common threat here, so I would know a little bit about their behavior and weaknesses." A wizard might know something about their history or lore. A country bumpkin might know a few local scary stories.

Interactions with non-player characters (NPCs) are resolved similarly, but through roleplay. Players should never say "I try to persuade him" or "insight check." Treat NPCs like real people. Say hi. Tell them about yourself. Ask about their troubles or services. Treat them as resources for news and rumors. Offer them something that will make them happy in exchange for what you want or find something that gives you leverage over them and threaten them with it. If you tell a lie, it should be a plausible one to avoid suspicion. You WILL earn a reputation that will follow you around.

There is no die roll to search a room. The GM describes the room, and additional information is revealed to the players as they describe how their characters interact with it. 

Danger Should Be Obvious

There should be no sneaky tricks by the GM. No gotchas. Danger should be obvious. If player characters get hurt, it should be due to their own decisions. Listen to GM descriptions. Ask questions.  You are entitled to any information that would be obvious to your character. Rely on your creativity and critical thinking.

Metagaming

Here's how I define metagaming at my table: Metagaming means thinking about the game like a game. Instead, approach the game like a roleplay exercise rather than a tactical exercise. Your character doesn't have a concept of game rules like "Sword skill +5" or "luck dice". Assuming game balance and making decisions based on that is also metagaming. Embody your character. Put yourself in their place.

"You pass through a heavy wooden door that wants to slam shut behind you and you enter a cold, cramped, stone room. The torch in your hand is your only source of light. You hold your breath and listen but hear nothing. To your left is an old dusty bookshelf with only a few dilapidated books. To your right is a small, worn looking table connected to the corner walls by cobwebs. Across the room is a messy desk with a few crooked drawers. The floor in front of the desk has new and old footprints in the dust. What do you do?"

You don't know if there are any traps or hidden dangers, and your character does not have a concept of saving throws to automatically avoid harm. Your character does not have a concept of random encounter checks either; Whatever you do, time is passing, and the longer you're in a dungeon, the more likely you are to encounter danger. Your torches are limited. They limit how far you can go. As they burn away, they give off light like a beacon and smell of smoke. So far, you think you've avoided detection by enemies, but they've left signs of their presence with their footprints in the dust on the floor. Consider that you don't know if they're already tracking you. Don't think about how many hit points you have and how much damage dice something might do. Think about the potential wounds or injuries your character wants to avoid. Getting ambushed does not mean the GM rolls a bunch of damage while you do nothing, it means you're getting shot and stabbed in the back and for a moment you're helpless. Combat might be fun for you, but for your character, it's deadly. It's not about winning or losing, it's about surviving and staying safe. Combat rounds represent a few seconds of time; Your character has to think fast and act fast to survive! Once you're in a fight, it's too late to talk strategy. Prepare first!

Rules Talk

Absolutely no rule books or rules discussion during the game. If you don't know how a spell or weapon or etc. works, the GM will tell you how it works this time. Game time is for playing. Learn or work out the rules outside of game time. All that being said, the GM is mortal and cannot guarantee rules mastery, and should use the honor code when in doubt. If a player declares and attack with a long sword and rolls a d8 for damage, we can trust they're being honest and we don't need to question that midgame. Do you have 30 feet of movement or 35 feet? Do you have a +1 or a +2? Does a torch burn for 6 exploration turns or does it burn for 1d6+2 exploration rounds? Who cares. Make a ruling and play.

No Do-Overs, No Ret-Cons

Once you declare your action, you can't change it. As they say in golf, play the ball where it lies. I know that your character would ordinarily have known to do something or not to do something, but this time, for some reason, they didn't. If you forgot something, maybe you'll remember it next time.

The Monsters Want to Win

Do not think that any fight or dangerous situation you find yourself in will be balanced and fair. That would be metagaming by the way. Assume the bad guys will fight dirty. Assume they will cheat and use every advantage. Assume no mercy. The bad guys want to survive, and they want to win with the least cost (wounds, injuries, and casualties). Fighting is deadly, and fighting fair is deadlier.

The Internet Accent

A while back I saw a Youtube short from an internet personality (link). She is a resident of Britain, but she has an American accent. One frequent question she gets is why. Her answer was that she grew up gaming online, and when you game online, you're gaming with Americans. Now, she just talks like an American when she is around Americans or when she puts on a headset. To me, it sounds like she's saying it's involuntary and she can't help it. 

I have encountered this phenomenon of involuntary accents before with a friend from South Africa who speaks with a perfectly American accent. One day he answered a phone call from his mom and his accent changed to his Afrikaans accent. He later explained to me that he can't help it; when he talks to his parents, he speaks in that accent.

Even more recently, I discovered Asmongold and I couldn't tell he was Texan at all until he started talking about something that was cozy and familiar to him in a relaxed mood. That means that even Americans with regional accents are subject to this phenomenon!

My mom is New England. My dad is from the American mid-west. I spent my youth in Florida. One day at work in a California-based call center about ten years ago, I took a call from a career military person who said she moves around a lot and is familiar with different accents. She said I had a very interesting accent, and she guessed that it was a mix of New England, mid-western, and Floridian. Now, here's an odd thing, I watch Canadian Youtubers enough and I now pronounce about as aboot. Not all the time, but enough.

One of the odd phenomena that I and other people in the call center discussed was that we start to involuntary imitate the accents of the person on the other line while we're on the phone with them. I can't do these accents on purpose, and I'm not doing it on purpose, but I've caught myself doing that. It stuns you for a couple of seconds the first time you catch yourself doing it, and then you have to choose to consciously reign it in.

Where is this going? Human beings are social animals, and part of that means were adaptable. Sometimes we change to fit in whether we realize it or not. The internet is accelerating this, and I think we're all converging on an Internet Accent. What's an internet accent? I think it's the average of all our collective accents from mutual conversation in one global forum, and I'm happy to announce that it sounds American! I'm calling it now, in 500 years, an American accent will be universal. Everyone get used to saying your R's like a pirate ("arrrrh!"). Can you imagine if one day there are different subsects of Internet Accents that give away what your internet interests are? I'm not going to begin to speculate on that.

I'm not even interested in the social sciences, but I'm very interested in learning more about this Internet Accent idea. There's a wikipedia page dedicated to Internet Linguistics that needs a new section. That's it. Thank you for reading.

Why TTRPG Combat Feels Slow (How to Fix!)

The reason why your TTRPG combat feels slow is because I'm waiting for my curse word turn!

Playing TTRPG combat is like watching a documentary about one action scene from an action movie. It takes one hour or more to show a 1-minute fight scene, and it chops up that action scene and scatters its pieces throughout the documentary. If you are watching the documentary just to see the action scene, it's going to feel like you're doing fifty-nine minutes of waiting.

To solve this, first you need a game system with rules that allow for short turns with faster action resolution. If turns are short, that means less waiting for your turn. Pathfinder 2e for example gives players the option to do up to three things on your turn. Three actions on a turn means longer turns and more waiting. D&D 5e is a game where I hear the Dungeon Master asking the players "is that it for your turn?" a lot because it's not clear in 5e when someone's turn is done (absolutely a flaw, not a feature!). Worse yet, this question often prompts the player to stop and think about what else they can do (aw crap, you still have bonus actions!). Any game rule that lets the GM or the Player spend a reaction or similar action to interrupt (or disrupt) the flow of turn order is a momentum killer and should be purged from the game!

Second, you need to cut down on the "documentary" parts of your game. The documentary parts are the parts of a TTRPG where players count squares, ask for rules clarification, ask what they see, hear, etc., ask about lore, ask "would my character know this?", request do-overs or retcons, suggest or discuss strategy, ask for a recap because they weren't paying attention, aren't ready on their turn because they were on their phone or making side conversation, and so on. All of these things are examples of either breaking character or being a bad player. Breaking character absolutely leads to slowing the game down. To solve the second problem, implement a no breaking character rule. Implement other rules and incentives to pay attention and be ready on their turn. Courtesy unfortunately sometimes needs to be enforced by the GM. 

Third fix: Everyone (yes, players too!) needs to narrate their movement and actions better. Where are you at the start of your turn, how do you move, where do you end up. What are you doing, how are you doing it, what is your intended outcome or effect? Use natural language instead of game terminology. For example, don't say "I do a sneak attack to monster A", instead say "I sneak up to monster A and stab them in the back with my short sword". It's not for the sake of having pretty sounding game descriptions. There's a function to it. Game terminology is abstract, and so it feels abstract. It's vague. It's hard to visualize and remember. Natural language is clear and describes something in a precise, literal way we can visualize and remember. This will save us from asking for clarification about what you're doing in the moment, and it will save us from any discussion after the fact about what you stated and what your left out of your action. You didn't say you jumped over the puddle of acid, and you didn't say you ran around it, so you ran through it. I know your character isn't ordinarily stupid enough to make that mistake, but for some reason he did. No do-overs or retcons because this slows the game down. Next time, pay more attention to the scene and describe your action better.