In the two years of rolling lockdowns, lots of things in life changed. Things we thought would be temporary have become permanent. Things that might have changed eventually accelerated and became the norm substantially faster.
One such change is the fundamental shift in my tabletop role-playing experience.
The tabletop gaming landscape
I didn’t really think much about how the two years of COVID-19 would impact my tabletop role-playing hobby. Like a lot of us back when it all started I thought it would be a temporary period of disruption, involve some shift to online play for a period and then things would return to our regular-ish schedule of face-to-face gaming every other Sunday.
Basically, everything would reset to the old normal. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the case. I think my personal landscape of tabletop gaming has changed fundamentally.
The online gaming zeitgeist
The COVID-19 lockdowns, restrictions and coping mechanisms have caused a number of societal shifts. Increasing the trajectory to a more cash-less society. The more fluid nature of working in the office and working from home. There are probably numerous others being researched as I write this.
One change within TTRPGs is the move to online games as a permanent feature in many gamers’ experiences.
I still find it challenging to consider online gaming as something I want to serially invest a lot of time in, but it is undoubtedly the case people have found a way to engage with their TTRPG hobby anew, play games they wouldn’t normally, play at a higher frequency or with a more varied pool of people or all three due to the new ease of online gaming.
This is all a great and good thing, but I do think it can erode the face-to-face experience.
Whenever anything becomes easier and more accessible one way, it often has a detrimental impact on formats that are more challenging. Literally, as I am writing this, it occurred to me it’s potentially similar to how some research and opinion pieces describe online dating. You can play with lots of people, in a way that is more convenient to organise, more accepting of disruption and at a higher frequency than you can face-to-face gaming.
The amount of sessions in a week and games people are getting through in a year with the rise of online gaming is crazy. Great if it’s your thing, but pretty crazy.
When faced with that I think we have to accept the challenges around face-to-face gaming are going to be accepted with significantly less relish. The value in the face-to-face game would need to be truly unique and valued by all those involved or you’re just going to take that online gaming option.
It doesn’t even have to be conscious. It’s just an outcome due to a day-to-day choice.
The lack of commitment
While this may be related to the ease of online gaming, it’s probably a correlating factor rather than one of complete causation, peoples’ willingness to commit to things certainly seems to have dropped. I can’t moan about this too much as while it hasn’t impacted my personal desires around TTRPGs I can see how my commitment decisions are different in other areas.
It may be very different for other social groups but trying to get anyone to commit to a bi-weekly game (at best) just doesn’t happen post-lockdowns. It did before that. While the bi-weekly schedule was occasionally disrupted and had some challenges during the summer, the Sunday gaming group was a pretty solid staple.
Now, it’s a complete and utter commitment vacuum.
The closest we can get to face-to-face is a new assembly who seem to be willing to commit to every month or so for an all-day experience. I’d rather people not commit when they truly don’t intend to, so the honesty of it is all correct, but it is a bit, well, a shocking truth of my current gaming landscape.
Accepting the new normal
From a certain perspective, this could be perceived as a complete disaster. You’re regular face-to-face gaming is being ruined by the ease of online gaming and post-Covid commitment psychology? There is some truth to that, but the balance is offset when you look at some of the advantages of the monthly model.
First, the monthly model is more likely to happen. It feels less of a commitment. Even does to me. Since it’s once a month it’s more flexible. I can see the monthly model being subject to less summer disruption. So, it has the advantage that it may actually happen.
The true power though is the all-day model.
A campaign in three days. We play campaigns that run 8-12 sessions long. As was pointed out in the second all-day Blades in the Dark game we’ve got through six sessions. When we play on the third day, which we’ve decided to do, we’ll be sitting comfortably in our typical campaign session length. Let’s say those nine sessions take place across March, April and we get the third one in during May. That’s twelve weeks. It would have taken 18-weeks with no cancellations to fit that number of sessions through the bi-weekly model.
The monthly model of 3-sessions in a day may get more gaming in and more campaigns in. If we hit every month, which is aspirational, that’s a campaign per quarter! Even if we don’t achieve that it’s very likely we’ll get more than the one campaign per year in.
A structural advantage. The all-day experiences have a weird structural advantage. If you run something over three all-day experiences the brain naturally thinks of each day as the beginning, middle and the end. This is certainly proving to be the case with the Blades in the Dark game. Not only that, despite only three sessions having taken place per day, and that’s short even by our standards, it feels like a season. We’ve even been calling each day seasons one to three. There is something about the day-long experience that makes the three sessions count more than they would if distributed across a shorter play time across many weeks.
It’s more social. Since it lasts a whole day it’s more of an event and becomes much more social. There is more talk generally because of the length of the experiences and we have three meals to talk over as well. This also adds more weight to the experience than the bit of talk, game and leave experience that the bi-weekly sessions can sometimes feel like. It shifts the experience in some small way to being more like a CottageCon day than a role-playing session.
And, Finally…
The hope is the monthly, day-long experiences have legs. That’s from a playing perspective. When it comes to running a game I take a bit longer to adjust to changes. I have done an all-day experience similar to what we are doing now as we have experimented with it before, so I’m not averse to it. It just takes my brain a bit longer to adjust. There are also some implications for prep. While I don’t crazy prep, you are dealing with three sessions in rapid succession so it does change the panning horizon a bit unless you can do the literally go in with nothing and make it all up thing.
I’m sure my gaming experience will continue to evolve post-COVID. I may even do something online. You never know, it may happen.