damiller
Adventurer
heres the obstacle i see though to making TTRPGs more accessible: choices.
For a boardgame they are limited. Lets take Candyland for example. You turn comes up, You pull a card, you do exactly what the card tells you do, you deal with the outcome, then turn goes to the next player. At no point does a player NOT know WHAT they are supposed to be doing.
If you did that in an RPG, it would set right next to Candyland until your young nephews and nieces showed up and BEGGED you to play.
I know that is an extreme example, but it serves my purpose.
Because play in a board game is basically reactive and limited in choices (or if you prefer - play is directed) This is the opposite of what I think of as a TTRPG (or at least what can be done with/in a TTRPG). And while less rules can make it easier to figure out HOW to play the game, it doesn't teach players WHAT to do.
And that "invisible part" of playing an TTRPG is the part that I've never seen addressed in a game. It is there implicitly in a variety of ways: the GMs choice of genre alone limits the amount of choices a player can make. The rules can do this as well. But there are still so many choices of which none are written down. The player has to decide. I think it is why combat come to be the default - its really easy to know what you are going to do compared to the rest of the game.
For a boardgame they are limited. Lets take Candyland for example. You turn comes up, You pull a card, you do exactly what the card tells you do, you deal with the outcome, then turn goes to the next player. At no point does a player NOT know WHAT they are supposed to be doing.
If you did that in an RPG, it would set right next to Candyland until your young nephews and nieces showed up and BEGGED you to play.
I know that is an extreme example, but it serves my purpose.
Because play in a board game is basically reactive and limited in choices (or if you prefer - play is directed) This is the opposite of what I think of as a TTRPG (or at least what can be done with/in a TTRPG). And while less rules can make it easier to figure out HOW to play the game, it doesn't teach players WHAT to do.
And that "invisible part" of playing an TTRPG is the part that I've never seen addressed in a game. It is there implicitly in a variety of ways: the GMs choice of genre alone limits the amount of choices a player can make. The rules can do this as well. But there are still so many choices of which none are written down. The player has to decide. I think it is why combat come to be the default - its really easy to know what you are going to do compared to the rest of the game.