Episode: 2381
Title: HPR2381: Benefits of a tabletop
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2381/hpr2381.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 02:03:20

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This is HPR episode 2,381 entitled Benefits of a Tabletop.
It is hosted by Klaatu and in about 44 minutes long and Karimaklin flag.
The summer is Klaatu talks about the benefits of analog gaming.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
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Everyone, this is Klaatu, you're listening to HPR15, this is an entry into my mini series
on tabletop gaming and I wanted to talk a little bit about tabletop RPGs specifically
because I started to talk about tabletop RPGs a little bit in previous episodes.
I think mostly I was kind of talking about them in relation to the Pathfinder adventure
card game which because it's based on an RPG, it kind of flirts with RPG but also like
the books and the solo adventures that I was talking about, those are flat out RPGs.
But I do want to talk a little bit about multiplayer RPGs, tabletop RPGs, the traditional
ones that you might see on TV or in movies where a bunch of stereotypically geeky people
sit around and do that stereotypical thing of playing Dungeons and Dragons and of course
it's the typical media representation of niche geek culture, it doesn't quite hit the
mark all the time and it's maybe it's a little bit like what, why are they doing that?
And I mean you can argue about what they could do it that way even though no one does.
But I mean, just like when we as Geeks see silly cop shows on TV doing hacking things
and oh my gosh, unplug your computer before the virus gets in or whatever, that's kind
of the same deal with I think most representations of Dungeons and Dragons or whatever it is
on television.
So if that's your experience with Dungeons and Dragons then just kind of forget about
it because that's probably not accurate and I do want to talk about them.
But before I talk about them, I wanted to do this episode and just talk about why they're
so great, why tabletop RPGs are actually something if you're not into already, maybe you
should look into, maybe you should check them out because there are a lot of fun actually
and in fact I'm going to, I want you to give me, I don't know, 30 minutes, I probably
can't do it in 30 minutes, 45 minutes and I'm going to convince you that RPG tabletop
RPGs are superior, superior gaming experience than for instance PC gaming.
It's a tough sell, believe me, I know this because I've been there but I want to try it,
I want to give it a go anyway.
So the first point that I want to make is endless possibilities, boundless narrative.
By this I mean, in a PC game you go to a town or a village, you see 10 houses, there's
five houses that are just set pieces, you can't interact with them in any way, they're
just there for set, just for set design essentially.
And then there's three houses and you go in, you can go into all three houses, all of
these, you know, these three houses and you can go in and you see obligatory NPC, obligatory
NPC bed, obligatory NPC barrel and obligatory NPC writing desk.
You can interact with the NPC, they'll say basically, all three of them will basically
say the same thing, they'll say something about, you know, something that broadly applies
to the plot line, not too closely but it's kind of within the same neighborhood.
Maybe you can loot their desk and guess what, the desk will have a useless piece of paper
or a quill in it, 50-50 chance each desk.
You can smash a crate, maybe you'll find an apple in there or something, maybe under
the mattress, maybe you'll find up to three silver pieces.
You'll leave, go to the next house and same deal, same exact situation, bed writing desk
crate NPC who says basically the same thing.
So you do that three times and then final two houses, one house, you go in and assassin
tries to kill you, you kill the assassin, you find a note on their body, it's from some
nebulous bad guy in a faraway land that you're free to go seek revenge on.
You go into the other house, you find someone who's distressed and they have a quest for
you to go on and you could certainly take that and go in the other direction and take
that quest instead.
And to the PC gamer, this is huge, this is big, this is an immersive world, they've got
two completely separate choices so they've got like free will, it's basically like real
life, they've got three houses they can go into and rummage around and find paper or
a quill or an apple, it's again like real life.
And then you've got five set pieces, their houses, they're not important, it's a little
trade off that we make, you know, we just assume that those are houses that hold absolutely
no interest for us so we can't go in, not a problem, we can, there are lots of houses
in my neighborhood that I don't go inside, it's basically again real life.
That's a PC game, in the tabletop RPG experience, all 10 houses are open for you, seriously,
that's the difference.
You could go into, I mean, sure there are two houses that actually have plot points,
that remains the same, there's the person in distress and there's the person who tries
to kill you and has, you know, implies another quest.
And maybe that stuff is written in the book that you bought from the store, from the gaming
store, the actual book that you're DM is reading through it from and kind of planning out
the adventure in accordance with this book.
That's pretty standard.
Those three houses though that are open, they don't have to have NPCs that all say the
same thing, those NPCs can have completely different life stories.
They could each have a quest for you, they could give you an item that leads you to one
of the other quests for the other houses or they could give you a great weapon that could
help you later on down the line.
They might just turn into some good friends who you can come back to if you get hurt and
they can help bandage your wound.
They could have information for you if you get confused or lost along the way and need
a tip.
Anything could happen with those three NPCs, no longer are they people who just, who
try to repeat the same phrase over and over again every time you do a dialogue thing with,
they're people with personalities and they can be whatever personality your DM invents.
But that's not all.
There are still those other five houses, right?
And in the other game, in the PC game, they're just, they're literal set pieces, they're
just set decoration.
In this game, they're open for business and in fact, there aren't just five houses, there
are 50 other houses, there are as many houses as you want there to be and you can go into
any of them or at least you can try and that's where tabletop gaming becomes kind of interesting
because now you can say, okay, hey, I know that I've been into these two houses so I've
got a pretty good lead on the two quests that I feel this game is probably really about.
I've been into the three other houses and I've made some new friends and they've kind
of mentioned that they might have some quests as well and the really cool thing about that
I should say.
So for those three houses with the NPCs who might be interesting and might be friendly or
might not, well that's one thing, they might not be friendly, they might get angry at you.
You've just walked into their house, what are you doing?
Get out.
You persist, maybe they'll attack you and now you're in combat.
Maybe they'll call the city watch and now you're under arrest and you have this new quest
that suddenly got plopped into your lap which is get yourself out of jail and maybe do
something to win the trust of the townspeople back so that you can go on their quests and
actually complete the story.
But there's also this possibility of, I mean if you really wanted it, like if you really
wanted to push it, you could say, hey, look, I don't care about these two other quests.
I want to help Bob here in this house and I want to find his long lost, I want to go
on his quest for whatever he's telling me he needs.
Well if that's not in the book, your DM could or you could go download or purchase or whatever
or invent off the top of the DM's head a new adventure, a completely different adventure
for you to go on to.
It doesn't have to be the one in that particular book.
So sure you could be playing through this book but you could find a mini adventure somewhere
online and play through that on a lark because Bob the farmer has a quest that you wanted
him to give you and so he gave you something and so now it turns out he's got a long lost
uncle up in the hills who is being attacked by hill goblins and hill trolls and you need
to go and rescue him.
It has nothing to do with the main storyline but you went into his house, you asked him
what you could do for him and that's what he told you and because there are so many
books out there of pre-written adventures, plus you've got your DM who has probably
a limitless imagination that's kind of why people end up being a DM because they've
got too much imagination for one person so there anything can become a quest.
Okay so back to these five houses except there aren't only five houses, there are 50 houses
and they're all set pieces.
Once again maybe you've already played Bob the farmer's quest and then you've gone
and you've tracked down the assassin's boss, you've killed him and you've gone to this
person who was in distress and you've helped them find their life destiny and you've
conquered the entire game, you've played through the whole book, you go back to the town
and you think you know what, I've always been curious as to what is in house number 8
and so you go up to house number 8 and you say hey DM I'm going to go into this house
is the door locked and the DM doesn't know because it's not in the book and you've already
played through the book and you even he already had to pull out another adventure to send
you on Bob the farmer's quest so at this point no clue what is in house number 8.
So is the door locked?
Well the DM can decide well okay evens we'll say is no and odds are yes so I'll just
roll a die here I got a three so yes the door is locked okay well that's cool I happen
to be a thief maybe so I will try to pick the lock I pick the lock and I just I actually
literally just rolled a natural 20 that's actually pretty good so yes well I mean that is
as good as a 20-sided die can roll right so yes I can pick the lock and I get inside so
now now I'm inside well what's the story of this house so that again the DM has to invent
this stuff but the DM could also just rely on either a purchased book of you know something
that maybe will lead you on a a new quest or maybe they'll just roll some die and refer
to like a big master list of ideas and well yeah who lives in this house I don't know let's
let's roll a die and find out I rolled the seven I look on my DM cheat sheet seven wizard
a wizard used to live in this house he's dead now and this has been shuttered up and closed
up for years but there's a bunch of dusty potion bottles out in the off in the back room so maybe
you look through those and who knows what you find or maybe it's not a wizard maybe maybe I
rolled a two and I look at my chart and it's it's a night a night used to live here he's not
living here anymore he's dead but there's a bunch of weapons in the back room or maybe none of
those things are true maybe it's a maybe it was a front maybe a dino thieves used to camp out
there and that'll lead you to a completely new adventure to uncovering a thieves guild that
needs to be brought to justice the the what I'm trying to convey here is that the the possibilities
are literally limitless and it is only bound by the imagination of the dm it is bound by your
imagination and it is bound by the availability of extra content which believe me there's a whole
lot of so that's that's the that's the main thing I think that's the killer feature of
tabletop RPGs is that the narrative does not need to be there are no constraints placed on the
narrative they can just go on and on for as long as it wants in whatever direction it needs to
it doesn't really matter now that that kind of sounds just like a big open sloppy world and
there's no point to it right it's just kind of like well that's not a game that's just that's just
a a map where you're giving a story to everything that you point to pretty much random and so
that's on one hand that's a killer feature and then on the other hand it's kind of like
totally useless right because I mean if if that's what you're going to do then you're no longer
really playing a game you're you're you're just playing a bunch of games based on one map so
let's let's step away from that for a moment talk about something related but not the same
it's flexibility in the narrative so the narrative can be very very flexible in a tabletop RPG
because yeah sure you've bought you purchased this book or or or the DM has written an adventure
that he wants to take you down to take you on well in that adventure in that story that they've
written or I hesitate to call it a story because that does imply a certain order and sequence
of events so in this adventure there are certain plot points that that maybe need to happen in order
for you to be presented with a problem discover the steps toward the solution and then make the
solution happen that's kind of the logical progression of an adventure right that's that's the
puzzle that you have to put together so there are these these things that you need to achieve and
maybe some of them are a little bit flexible you can do it you maybe you don't do it it doesn't
really matter you could always find the same information out from some random drunkard in a in a
tavern who maybe used to run around with a with a dinner thieves and is now at the bottom of the
barrel but spills his guts and tells him tells you everything or whatever I don't know whatever
might happen it doesn't you know in other words you don't need to show up to this one place
at a certain time in order for something to be passed on to you you could you could find it out
in many other ways but related to that would be the fact that items don't I mean and that's
similar in a PC game there there's a lot of flexibility and timing and placement and stuff but
but in a tabletop RPG it's it's it's even more flexible so let's say that there's a let's say
there's a gemstone a gemstone that you absolutely have to get to in order for the the rest of the
story to logically make sense like the the story could not progress if you don't find this one
specific gemstone like that just your your your character needs to find it in order for the
DM to sort of move on to the next plot point so it's been established maybe that the gemstone
lives in a temple a temple on the high road you happen to come to a fork in the road and there's
a road that leads to the low road and there's a little road that goes along the high road
you for whatever reason decide to go on the low road I don't know why you would decide that
I mean you already know where you need to go you know that there's a temple there you know
it's on the high road for whatever reason you want to go on the low road maybe you have some
reason to suspect that something on the low road is going to be of interest to you maybe you're
just being diligent I don't know so you do that the DM decides well you know the player doesn't
know this but I know this and they really need to find this gemstone before anything interesting
can happen because it won't make sense without it so suddenly you're going down the low road
well maybe you stop and you decide I'm gonna go fishing for a little bit because my character
would be hungry by now and they're out of ration so they're gonna fish guess what you pull out
of the river a fish guess what's inside the fish when you slice it open to start cooking it up
a gemstone why is the gemstone that was supposed to be in the temple in a fish in the river I don't
know we'll invent a backstory maybe again a group of thieves stole it from the temple panic had
to throw it in the river while making their getaway or maybe you don't find it in the belly of a
fish maybe you're walking on the low road and get jumped by a bunch of brigands you defeat the
brigands and find when you're looting they're horribly mangled in dead bodies a gemstone wait
why did they have the gemstone that was living in the temple well they took it from the gemstone
maybe you find it in the hollow of a tree why is it there because some apprentice from the temple
was walking down the road and absent mindedly took the gemstone with them and then absent mind
of the stuck it in the hollow of a tree for safe keeping and and then forgot that it was there I
don't know point being you can invent all kinds of reasons and and rationale for plot points
to move around within the game within the game world super super flexible you people don't
necessarily need to follow a prescribed story in order to follow a prescribed sequence of plot
points and I've never seen a PC game that can do that I've seen PC games that are pretty darn
flexible I've I've definitely seen some that that can work could work in plot points in a lot
of different settings but I've never seen something that could could just change everything that
that about about a plot point you know who gives it to you who delivers it to you why that
plot point was even in the place that you found it or or that you encountered it everything can
be different in a in an RPG a tabletop RPG and that leads me to my third point about tabletop
RPGs which is replayability the replayability of an RPG module or an adventurer campaign whatever
is I would say unparalleled it's just completely mind blowing PC games there's some PC games I've
really liked in the past and and I have replayed them not so much for the variety and story I
mean some of the games that I've replayed the most have absolutely zero variation in story and I
just played them because I like being in that world it's a fun it's a fun world it's got a lot
of character maybe it's it's got a really good soundtrack like not a great setting you know
that the world itself is nice so I've I've played through games that that don't have narrative
flexibility or or variety at all but I've also played games that that do have a lot of sort of
variation in in in in their story but even in those games that that that tend to be very very
flexible there there's a certain point at which you you start seeing you know how how even these
different paths have to converge at some point and in a in a tabletop RPG you'll be amazed you
would just be absolutely amazed at how the stories can be so completely different from one another
I mean there there have been I have played and then I've sat in on some parts of an adventure
for Dungeons and Dragons that that was I mean it was the same adventure right I mean it was the same
book the both gaming groups purchased the same physical book and you would never have known it
I mean other than the fact that location names and character names are the same completely
different stories it was it was just amazing I mean people people who who you thought you know if
you play it for the first time you're you're thinking well this this character in the story is
clearly kind of a a fixed point in the story right they they can't change they can't that the
story depends upon them ultimately and and then next thing you know they they die in the neck
you know when your friend in your friends game in your friends version of this story that that
all important character it just gets slaughtered by by some evil force and and you think well
now the story's broken like it can't continue and yet it does it keeps going because it's that
flexible there's that much flexibility in something where a human brain can make adjustments
and that I've never seen that kind of replayability in a PC game and I just don't see how it would
really work I mean sure you could have an open sandbox type of thing where players are just
supposed to sort of create their own adventure out of being in the world but that's not the same
thing like the replayability of of literally the exact same story over over the course of
several different gaming groups over this you know over just repeating the same book it's just
it's astonishing how different it can be in the hands of of either a DM with an unlimited
imagination or players who just decide to play it in a different in a different style like this
time I'm I'm gonna be a tank instead of a rogue and that's just how I'm gonna play it and we'll
see what happens and that's what it is it's just completely it's just you can just see what happens
and learn learn about you know kind of like how the world reacts to your input and that my friends
is point number four I think is what I'm on right now the reality and the realization that
a tabletop RPG is basically a simulation that's what it is this it's a world with a set of rules
and that's pretty much static right that there there's a set of rules and that's that's your
basis for for all of your data and then you give you give numbers to sets of input and you just
start throwing stuff into this simulation like you give a certain set of numbers to this player
and that's their stats and it's it's how well there's it's a bonus on how well they they can do
certain tasks like picking a lock and then when someone wants to actually pick a lock they have
to roll a die and if that die today comes up with a one even with their bonus that's pretty bad
and if it tomorrow if it comes up 20 that's really really good how does the world react to those
two situations it's amazing to find out it's really really fun to see how to just poke and prod
this little simulated environment and to throw random stuff at it and the random stuff is as I've
said it's limitless there's no end to what you can try to poke and prod because everything in
this environment will be assigned some kind of threshold and if your character between a random
dice roll and whatever kind of fancy bonuses you have assigned to yourself and maybe whatever
fancy items that you have found that maybe give you additional bonuses like the sum of all that
combined with whatever simulation has been set up it's completely unexpected and and all kinds of
things can happen I mean like my example with trying to get into a house with a locked door
like do you get in yeah maybe you do and then there's this possible there's this whole possible
world that you can explore inside that house and who knows what's going to be there half the time
the DM doesn't even know because they're just going to roll some dice against against a table of
of of items that you might find in a house you know I mean that's that simple
and then even then you would have to choose which table it is based on what kind of character
would live in a house but what if you didn't get in what if you rolled a one and you broke your
lock pick off in the lock of the door and then the city guard comes by now what now you have to
fight the city guard or maybe you submit and you just you're under arrest and now you have to get
out of prison you know and there's everything leads to some kind of half the time unexpected result
and so if you like simulations there's there's really almost nothing better than simulation
through imagination it is completely wacky and unexpected you're you're you're you're you're never
know what you're going to run into especially when the look when you get like a quirky idea of
well let's do this right now let's just try this one thing that we would have never thought to do
like it could be even something minuscule like throwing a copper piece into all wishing well
who knows what's going to happen there I mean and it's all going to get determined by either the
DM or maybe a dice roll or another player or the world itself if there's something written in
the book that says oh by the way this is a magical wishing well and these things might happen if
someone interacts with it there's that possibility too but what good is it if it's a simulation
if you don't get to see the the working parts right so this is my fifth point about about
tabletop RPGs and it's it's I guess probably the nerdiest thing but I mean it's it's fully transparent
it's a fully exposed probability process so so unlike in most PC games and early early RPGs
like Baldur's Gate or something like that they did a little bit better at this but but more
recent ones kind of just kind of kind of throw that out and even Baldur's Gate I would argue
didn't do this a hundred percent like it didn't quite achieve this goal because I don't know if
it really translates all that well to the computer anyway but here's what I'm trying to get to
is that in a in a tabletop simulation or I mean RPG game you get to see all of the all of the
inputs and outputs like you can see it all working together I mean you don't always see
the stuff in the in the book like if your DM is reading from a purchased or a pre-written
you know adventure and even if not I mean like presumably there's some there's there's a rule book
right some there's something defining the the setting the simulation the the the base world for
the simulation so you're you're someone's reading out of a book to figure out well how powerful
is this monster what kind of resistance do they have what kind of armor do they have like is
their skin especially thick and cannot be hurt by by normal blades are they a skeleton and
they have no blade so poking at them or there's no no flesh so poking at them doesn't really do a
whole lot maybe you need to bludgeon them with something big and heavy instead so there's
something defining that amount you know that that side of the of the of the equation and maybe
you don't see that right away although maybe you've been playing a long time and you kind of know
this stuff already you're you think to yourself oh that's a that's an animated skeleton so me
poking at it with a rapier is not really going to do a whole lot of good and I I can figure this out
so so there's some sense of of there being the world that you're living in but then your input
you get to see so because you're rolling the diet and you know exactly what you got so if you
just rolled a tin and you know that you are a big barbarian type of person and you've got
lots of attack bonuses on on things that are are heavy and and and blood journey you know like a
warhammer you've got a warhammer that would be perfect for an animated skeleton and you know
this you know that you're a barbarian you can wield a big warhammer you know that you've got
about five bonus points for one reason or another with a hammer so you know that your role was
10 but you you you within this in this situation those five bonus points for being a big barbarian
brute who can swing heavy things is perfect because now you're you're you're hitting the skeleton
with 15 points and it looks like a pretty standard skeleton so you're guessing it's it's probably
susceptible to that kind of damage at that level and sure enough it is and then you get to
roll how much damage you you've dealt and you rolled at 19 literally I just rolled a 19 so you've
just dealt like 19 points of damage this skeleton in other words you probably crushed it so
that's in fact that might even be a critical depending on the hammer so and you could know that
you would know that information because you would look in your book and you'd look up the which
hammer it was that you had or or whatever supplementary supplementary material you have about this
and you might see yes it crits at 19 and 20 so then you might roll again to see if you would
have hit again and maybe you rolled a 13 and yeah that would have hit the skeleton let's say so
then you get to roll or then the damage that you've just dealt is it happens twice it's twice
the amount of damage so you know that you've just clobbered this thing to just bits and pieces
but you know how all of that works because you see all of the tables you see all of the numbers
and you see the roles happen and you see your bonuses being applied and in a PC game I just
don't see all of that happening you know you like you might if you turn on all the verbosity on
again let's go with Baldur's Gate because that's the one that's coming to my mind and I can kind of
see that little panel down at the bottom where it kind of tells you oh you've just rolled for
you know checking for traps and you found nothing okay but and that's great and you kind of know
well I know that I took an extra skill in trap detection so that's probably giving me two bonus
points to my role but you're not making that role so you're not really sure what that role was
you know that it was affected by two so you know that you've got to you know you're doing
two better than a normal role but but what was that role and and what are you even checking
against like you're just checking the area like maybe I want to check a specific thing for a trap
and I don't know it's just it's very sort of ambiguous and kind of hidden and it's kind of hidden
away in the background it's a background process I guess and I mean for a computer game you kind
of want it to be a background process you don't really want to have to do everything like you
would at a tabletop but in the tabletop setting it's a lot different because there's focus you
know you're not seeing like in a computer game you see the entire set or at least the entire room
it depends on whether they've got like that whole fog of war thing going on where you can only see
you know within a reasonable amount of distance but in an RPG game you're generally focusing on
a set number of things which is weird because I've one of the great things about RPGs is that
they're limitless there's no there's no end to the things that you have to deal with but but
because it's a narrative and it's being told by the DM there is a certain amount of things that
you know are sort of within your scope right now this is what I'm seeing right now this is what
concerns me at this moment so I'm going to roll against this thing and we're going to play the
we're going to see what the probability is and we're going to see how this simulation resolves
this interaction and it's it's so vivid in an RPG tabletop RPG you really get the sense like if
you're into statistics or maths or probability or or again simulation you're going to love
tabletop RPGs because it's all about that sort of thing so that was the fifth point sixth and
final point is somewhat related to what I was just talking about how I said oh you have this
magical you're a barbarian you have this magical hammer that gives you five bonus points and so
maybe you look in the book and you see well that's the thing right because it's a simulation that
we've set up and we've got all these known values we know that that this substance has this
amount of strength to it and and if someone tries to break this substance or something made out
of this substance and does not achieve that that amount of strength or of power then it fails
that's going to fail so it has this DC amount this difficulty class amount of of of what someone
must overcome in order to accomplish some action for some thing and I mean not obviously not
literally everything is listed in the book right it doesn't list every single mineral and every
single alloy and every single tree type and every single you know it doesn't do that but there
is a certain amount of there is some of that defined and then there's the DM who is acting
as the arbiter for that sort of thing like well I've just established that there's this structure
in this room and it's made out of it looks like it's made out of some some known material so I can
reasonably assume that it's that it would it would have a resistance to being crushed or whatever
or being locked picked or whatever to this amount of numbers and so that DM knows that simulation
number and they they may have had to invent it out of something but it's not invented out of the
blue it's invented out of sort of knowing the world and kind of knowing the level of of difficulty
within this world and also possibly from the the necessity of the story because yes maybe you
need to get into this structure to get some plot item and so even though traditionally it would
take 19 things to get this thing open we need to nurse it a little tiny bit and make it more like
16 because there's just no way you're doing this otherwise but you never know I mean that's up to
the DM so my point being we know this I just went off this huge tangent about simulation again I
just finished that one so there's this known set of data that we have to kind of go up against
and there's a known set of data that we have to input into the simulation because there are books
that are published by your the whoever's whoever made the game right that's that's their job they
made the game they came up with the numbers and so you've got though that in a book but the
cool cool thing is that because this is a known data set and because it's open game license as well
I mean that certainly helps people can look up all this data and then figure out okay well what
we're going to do is we're going to come up with a whole bunch of other of other things that
that the original publisher never came up with or we're going to take stuff that they came up with
and we're going to make weird little tweaks to them and little adjustments and stylize them a
little bit and give them new numbers and throw that at the simulation and see what happens so you
don't you know when you buy like a dungeon and dragon book or or or a one of the one of the modules
that they have you know where they're like oh it's a thousand and one or you know the monster manual
here's like a thousand monsters that you might encounter in this world with all of their stats
and all their strengths and all of their weaknesses and that's what you get and that's this is all
part of like this big simulation now but you don't have to just settle for that there are other
people who can make their own monsters you can make your own your DM might have made some of their
own you they people can make new spells new plants new weapons everything gets a number and
everything core all those numbers correspond with you know sort of a relative to this known
data set the world that they are going to exist in so you may find this this powerful weapon that
gives you some kind of really cool bonus on on certain kinds of roles and you think this is going
to be amazing I can take this thing and I'm going to be invincible and then you go out into the open
world and you attack some monster that oh happens to have a resistance to that and suddenly
the tables are turned and simulation is is messing with your head again and it's it's a beautiful
beautiful experience so what I'm trying to say is that there's an extensibility to RPG table tops
that again PC games even with their their modding communities they just they just it just doesn't
approach it it cannot approach it you've got all these little third party publishers some of
whom are you know just one dude in a in his apartment in in Wellington New Zealand just you know
typing stuff at random and they're they're putting it out there on the internet and you can download
it and you can look at it and you can think and you can think well that just it may not even make
all that much sense but it just it just feels cool and I'm I'm going to take that war hammer or
that battle axe or that sword or or that that plant I'm going to take it into the world and I'm
going to start using it and I'm going to see what happens with it and sometimes it works sometimes
it works really well sometimes it fails miserably but then works well later on or maybe sometimes
it'll work well and then against something else it fails miserably and sometimes it should have
worked perfectly but you fumble a dice roll and it just it goes horribly wrong it's just it's perfect
it is perfection that's that's I guess my seventh point about tabletop RPG that I had not even planned
it just came to my head right now it is perfect that's it tabletop RPG perfect so if you have not
played a tabletop RPG I I encourage you to do so I encourage you to hunt down a gaming group
there are several actually there are there are some that just kind of they're kind of out there
sort of playing in the world like you can I mean there are obviously lots but I'm talking very
specifically about dungeons and dragons adventure league and also pathfinder pathfinder society
is what it's called so basically I mean there's no if you hear dungeons and dragons and you hear
pathfinder you can basically think oh same thing because pathfinder is a fork of dungeons and dragons
so they've diverged but they're they're still basically the same thing so if you go to their
respective websites dnd dot wizards dot com for dungeons and dragons or piezo dot com for pathfinder
and look up either adventure league for dungeon dragons or pathfinder society for pathfinder you
will very likely not necessarily you you may very likely find in your local area a regular uh
meetup of these adventures and they're specifically designed for for players to be able to kind
of drop in and drop out of just whenever you can go play so they're not big long drawn out campaigns
that last you well they are long drawn out campaigns but interestingly you don't have to um you
you don't have to stay with them you know you could just play for one session and then never go back
hopefully you you wouldn't do that maybe you would like it and go back but um they're really really
fun and they're sort of they're they're very much top down like they're they're they're sort of
official adventures published by their respective um owners like either by wizards or the coast
or or piezo for pathfinder and and and they're kind of distributed and the the people running them
are somewhat vetted i mean there's you know they're not just anybody it's someone who who has
communicated with with the company and said yes i would why would like to be the person in my area
to run these these sessions um so i mean obviously it's it's the real world so it's going to be mixed
bag of of success but but generally speaking these are really high quality games that are being run
and and that they do encourage new new players and um and they encourage a low commitment you
don't necessarily have to sign up for this you know i'm going to be part of your gaming group
for the rest of my life uh it's just like hey i'm going to come here today and i'm going to play
and i'm going to see how i like it and it's it's super fun and it's a lot lower threat it's a
less threatening than you might imagine if if you imagine that it's threatening um some people get
a little bit intimidated by it you know they think oh no i don't want to have to dress up like
an elf and go and and talk in elvish and and that's just that that doesn't that doesn't happen
like in real life that that might happen on tv it might happen even on some some things online
but but in real life it's just people who sit around a table and they're presented with a problem
and they talk about it that problem with each other to figure out the best way for for it to be
solved and then they present that idea to the the dungeon master who compares it to the
the you know the inputs it into the simulation and you see what happens and that's really kind of
that's the for me at least that's the best summary of that process as as there is really it's it's
not like a lot of people do get sort of oh it's role-playing i'm playing a character and blah blah
blah i don't care about any of that stuff i'm just in it for the simulation honestly and so it's
you know i'll i'll drum up a character and i'll i'll love the process of building a character
and coming up with this this sort of set of numbers to feed into the simulation and and and
and i and i don't mean to be too harsh about it i mean it is fun it is a fun process and it is
imaginative and it is creative but you don't have to necessarily if you don't want to you don't
have to approach it as if though you are expected to be an actor with with motivation and feelings
and stuff you you can just approach it as like this is my character and this is what my character
is going to do they're going to approach this thing and they're going to hit it with a hammer
and see what happens and then i'm going to roll my die and then the DM is going to roll a die or
tell me something and we'll just see what happens it's it's all about kind of like this process of
give me an imaginary puzzle let me discuss it with some people we'll figure out what our
character sheets what our little characters that we're supposed to be playing what they would do
about this situation and what they can do about this situation effectively and then we'll we'll
we'll go in we'll send everything in and see what happens and maybe it'll fail maybe one of us
will die not in real life the character um it who cares we'll just we'll we'll we'll try again
from a different angle it's a lot of fun it really is it's a lot of fun so if you haven't tried it
and you are curious about it do try and next time i'll be talking about pc games and why they're
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