PnP RPG Confession: I have a lot of theory, not much experience

All of the art in today's post is by the insanely talented Jason Chan

I love to write about Pen-and-Paper Roleplaying Games, but there is something you may want to keep in mind when you're reading what I write: I may be full of ideas and opinions about PnP RPGs, but when it comes down to it, the majority of the campaigns I have played in have fizzled out after only a handful of meetings. This has led me to a couple of realizations: first, PnP RPGs have a lot of amazing qualities, but not every player is interested in the same qualities; and, perhaps more importantly, it is very difficult to put together and continue a campaign over the weeks and months that it takes to tell a satisfying story.

My brothers and I were in junior high when we first got into Dungeons and Dragons. We were deeply enthralled with the sword-and-sorcery genre at the time. We loved movies like Willow, video games like Might and Magic, and had valiantly read through the Lord of the Rings. Dungeons and Dragons offered us the opportunity to play as knights and wizards, thieves and barbarians, and to come up with limitless stories. So we read (some of) the rules, rolled up some characters, drew out some maps, and gave it a shot.

Of course, there was a problem: while I was lucky that I had two brothers my age to play with, that still only left us with two players and a GM. It was difficult to create a satisfying RPG campaign with so few players. Add to that the short attention span of a junior high kid, and what you end up with is a few half-started, half-hearted campaigns. We would play perhaps a game or two, usually revolving around killing some goblins, orcs, and a small dragon. Then we would wander off to other fantasy games that were better suited to our small number, like HeroQuest or a computer game.


When we made it to high school, we found a few other players to game with, and suddenly the opportunity lay before us to put together a real gaming group and get a campaign going. As it turned out, we all got to be pretty good at creating characters but not as good at the rest of the rules. We would get people together, play maybe a game or two, and then people would get bored, we would decide to meet back again eventually, and then the game would quietly wither on the vine.

Looking back, this is when I began to learn a valuable lesson about PnP RPGs: each system gives opportunities to create memorable characters, to tell epic stories, to have climactic fights, and to have a great time with your friends, but not every player is interested in all of those elements equally. Some people (especially teenagers) just want to eat snacks, quote TV shows and movies, and hang out with their buddies. An RPG gives them a good opportunity to do that. Others want to engage their friends in shared storytelling, joining together to craft intricate plots on a grand scale, and an RPG can be a good opportunity for that, too. So both types of players may want to play the same RPG, but their reasons for playing are not only different, but are often at cross-purposes, and they may not even realize it!

I remember most of my high school campaigns going like this: the party arrives at a town and learns that goblins and/or wolves are threatening it. They are hired to either attack the goblin lair or defend a wagon as it goes to the next town. At least one character spends an inordinate amount of time haggling with the quest-giver, trying to get more money for the mission, and a little up front as well. Then the group sets off and travels until evening. That night, the party's thief tries to rob his companions. A little later, the person sitting sentry either succeeds or fails to detect that there are goblins and/or wolves sneaking up on the party. A fight ensues. Then, if I am lucky, we meet again in a week or two to play through the attack on the enemy lair... but probably not.

A large part of the blame lies with me. I was so eager to play that I would jump on every friend who admitted to having familiarity with D&D: "Oh, you play D&D, too? What version do you play? Do you want to try to set up a game next Saturday? I've been thinking about playing a druid..." With the benefit of hindsight, I realize that I was putting my friends in a difficult position. They could tell that I was enthusiastic about the game, and they wanted to play too, but their level of enthusiasm did not match mine. They were good enough sports to go through a session or two, but then they would want to play some Nintendo 64 or some Risk. And who can blame them?

So far, I have only played one campaign to completion: the Star Wars campaign my brother ran a few years ago. Our characters grew and developed over a series of sessions, and the GM was able to tell a story and bring it to a satisfying resolution. I had recently graduated from college and was truly living on my own for the first time, giving me the free time to play on any evening I wanted. It also helped that all of the players were already fans of the Star Wars universe, and the GM did a good job of telling a story that engaged the players. As this post is about confessing, I should admit that I did not even get to sit around a table and roll dice with a gaming group: most of the players were in another state, and we were playing over Skype.

That leads me to the second reason I have only had one successful RPG campaign: it can be extremely difficult to gather four or five people together a few times a month for several hours at a time. People have schoolwork, jobs, significant others, family obligations, community obligations, and perhaps most tellingly of all, excellent video games they could be playing. I now believe that time and enthusiasm are the two most important ingredients for a successful PnP RPG campaign, because these are the two elements that seem to have been missing the most often from my campaigns.

As my brothers and I are considering a sort of sequel to our Star Wars campaign, we are trying to avoid some of the pitfalls our other campaigns have fallen into. There are several questions I think we should ask ourselves and the other players before we decide to proceed with the game. Is the story going to be elaborate or classically straightforward? Do the players have time to create backstories for their characters? Will the players engage with the game between play sessions? The hardest question of all is: even if the players really want to play, do they have the time and energy for it?

If not, there's always video games.