This week’s #newbieTuesday blog post is all flexibility. Specifically, the flexibility in the type of stories you’re empowered to play.
New and/or prospective tabletop RPG players most oftentimes associate TTRPGs with fantasy stories, like the ones born out of Dungeons and Dragons. Or perhaps they have a friend who loves Warhammer and think we’re all playing epic sci-fi stories. But no matter the previous association with tabletop stories you have just know that you can play any type of story.
Adventure, romance, drama…any and every type of story out there can be played as a tabletop RPG. What’s important, especially as a new or first time player, is to understand just how flexible playing stories can be from a genre perspective. And the main way that’s possible is through the many different systems out there.
Systems, Dungeons and Dragons being the most popular example, are the set of rules which define how a story is played. And many systems, like D&D, are associated with a particular genre, high fantasy in their case. In fact, many even come with expansive lore, worlds, and rich characters who make up the fabric of that particular universe. Those systems are in effect an advanced sandbox that empowers its GM/DM and players to play stories within its framework. So we could play a story set in the Forgotten Realms, using its lore, and Dungeons and Dragons as the corresponding tabletop RPG system.
Similarly though, if high fantasy stories weren’t what you were looking for – or even if they were! – all new and prospective players would need to do is select the right system that suited their needs. Systems like StoryTogether’s own StoryNite aims to empower all genres and all tabletop experience levels as an example. Our recommendation for new and prospective players when they’re looking for their first – or one of the first – stories to play is to start with the tabletop RPG system itself. Because there, you’re going to get genre, complexity, lore, pacing…all you’ll need in order to align with the type of story you’re looking to play.
And for those new & prospective players who don’t really know where to begin, there’s always StoryNite. We roll out the red carpet for new players to make it easy for them to get started playing stories/tabletop RPGs. Internally at StoryTogether, we think of StoryNite as the “gateway” to tabletop – so if there’s anything we can do to help you get started playing, just let us know!
