Often the conversation around role playing games is dominated by digital games, with names like Bethesda, CD Projekt Red and BioWare coming up again and again, however not all gaming needs to be done on consoles and PCs. With tabletop role playing games you can play with simply a pencil, paper, some dice, and some friends.
What is a tabletop role playing game?
Similar to RPGs such as Fallout, The Witcher, and Dragon Age, tabletop RPGs have you assuming the role of a character in a fictional world, but instead of this world being made by a team of developers, a tabletop RPG is in a world of you and your friends’ creation. In a mix between creative writing, improv, and a board game, you and your friends control different characters and work together to tell one story. To add an element of randomness, whenever the outcome of an action is up to chance, you’ll roll dice to see what happens. One player takes up the role of the Games Master (GM) who is responsible for controlling the world and any character that isn’t a player’s character (PC). Any monsters that the PCs have to fight, or conflicts that need to be resolved, will be moderated by the GM. Most games last between 3 and 4 hours and oftentimes the GM will string several of these sessions together to tell one continuous story. These stories that you build together can take place over weeks or years, depending on the scale of the story you want to tell!
Different Stories, Different Systems
Stranger Things and The Big Bang Theory has introduced most of us to Dungeons and Dragons, an RPG system based off of the high fantasy world of J.R.R. Tolkien, however, swords and sorcery fantasy is far from the be all and end all of RPGs. There are a multitude of RPG systems, each lending themselves to different kinds of stories.
Call of Cthulhu, currently in its seventh edition, is perfect for anyone wanting to run a mystery game with a heavy dashing of cosmic horror. Based off of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, this system allows for you and your group to take up the roles of intrepid investigators battling against the horrors of the unknown in a 1920s adventure. With the right GM this game can be a truly horrific and unsettling experience, or equally it can be a fun pulpy mystery with only smatterings of horror. Wherever you fall on this spectrum, Call of Cthulhu is one to try.
Maybe horror and fantasy are less interesting to you and you’d prefer to play something with a bit more of a personal slant. If you watched Twilight or other supernatural romances when you were younger, Buried Without Ceremony’s MonsterHearts could be for you. MonsterHearts gives the opportunity to tell intimate stories of growing up and coming of age. Here you take control of a teenage monsters (think a werewolf, vampire, or ghost) as they maneuver the double challenge of being a teenager in highschool along with being a supernatural creature with powers oftentimes beyond your control. With the right playgroup MonsterHearts will make you laugh and cry, and I can guarantee it will be unlike anything you’ve ever played before.
If none of these systems are sparking your interest, or you want to run something far outside any of the pre-existing game genres, fear not! Generic RPG systems help you. Perhaps the simplest one to understand that offers the most opportunity for depth is the FATE system. Available for pay-what-you-want online, this is one of the easiest systems to run and learn, needing only four six-sided-dice. I’ve seen FATE used to run a Harry Potter fan game, where one of the stats was switched out for a magic stat and the system accommodated for it with ease.
Get Rolling!
Hopefully now you’re at least a little bit interested in rolling some dice and starting your RPG adventure! So why not gather some friends around the sitting room one evening, order a pizza, have a few drinks, and make your own adventure!
