Oh, my friends there are as many answers to this question as
there are people to answer it. Some of
us just want to win, and that’s okay.
Some of us want an activity to spend time with our friends and that’s
okay. Some of us want to build worlds to
share with people and that’s okay. Some
of have our very own, very personal reasons for playing games, and that’s okay
too.
Now this is not a dig at the people who are spectators to
games. You’re all gamers too, but this
is about the people who play games and the reasons and rationales behind them.
Those of you who watch the streams and follow the lives are just as awesome a
bunch of gamers as the ones playing, you just consume the hobby differently.
Ultimately, my friends, fellow gamers and other assorted
gentle people, this is a question that you have to decide the answer to
yourself. I’m going to spend a little
bit of today talking about some of the reasons I enjoy playing games (and these
have changed over time), and some of the motivations some of the people I have
played with over the years have espoused.
Something I learned the stupid hard
way is that not all of these are compatible, and that’s okay. There are some friends I don’t play specific
games with because they have a marked tendency to make the game astonishingly
less fun. I find other things to do with
those friends.
So, let’s take a look at some of the things that motivate
people into playing games, shall we?
1. Escapism
Life is a hard thing for a lot of
people, and being able to assume the role of a character that is the center of
its own adventures and stories is a mighty powerful lure. If for four hours a week you could stop being
Dave the account rep and turn into Hrothgar the mighty, champion of the north,
would you? Getting away from the
struggles going on around you can be a powerful stress management/coping
mechanism and it’s one I believe in.
2.
Winning
Sometimes you just want to win at
something. Now a tabletop roleplaying
game may not have as clear-cut rules for winning as say chess, but there are
very definite examples of success and failure to motivate a person to jump into
them. Achieving successes (or avoiding
catastrophic failure) in a game can be just as rewarding for some of these
players as the ability to escape into a different reality for the players we
talked about above.
3.
Socialization
Some folks look at a Tabletop RPG
as a means to interact with other people, which makes a certain amount of sense
doesn’t it? Realistically, it’s an
activity for five to sevenish people who get together and interact socially
with one another to create a vivid story where everyone gets a chance to
interact with each other. For some folks
this is their primary social interaction engine and it’s a powerful motivator
4.
Exploration
Not necessarily the typical idea of finding
a new place, but tabletop RPGs give us an opportunity to step outside our experiences and try something completely different. Creating an RPG character is an excellent opportunity
to try being someone new, experience some new things in a mostly safe environment. Being able to as I call it,
“let your hair down” can be an exhilarating experience that can be a powerful driving force to get someone into the game.
Some concepts and ideas may not work with every group, so if you are
going to try this kind of exploration, I would strongly suggest you talk about
it with the rest of your group before you dive too far into an exploratory
character.
5.
Ingenuity
Some folks enjoy opportunities to show off
how clever or smart they are and this can drive them into a tabletop RPG. These people can be a lot of fun in a group,
but I have had to remind the ones I have had in groups that RPGs are a “team sport.” This usually reminds them that everyone is there for their own brand of
fun and has brought the table back together.
6.
Misanthropy
A reasonably okay movie once added the line
“Some men just want to watch the world burn” to my life experiences and these people exist in the tabletop RPG community.
Some of them are contrarians who just love to argue with other
people. Some of them enjoy sabotaging
the works of other players. Some of them
just want an excuse to be a dick to the universe at large. In any of these cases, these people need to
managed so that their motivation doesn’t kill the game by ruining the motivations of the other players at the table.
7.
Creation
At heart, some of us want to make something
new, something that we have never experienced before. These players (usually a Game Master, but
players controlling their own characters can surprise you) construct elaborate
worlds, characters and challenges for their characters and the other players to experience.
These are some of the motivations that are broadly
attributable to players in tabletop RPGs, but I am sure that if we surveyed a hundred
people we would get a hundred different answers that might fit into one or more
of these broad categories. These are not
what I would suggest for identifiers, because people are more complicated than
that, but it can give you a basic idea of the type of game they might be
looking for.
Personally, I have probably been motivated by all of these
at one time or another (6 is still iffy, but I am sure that younger me was an
asshole who played games just to annoy other people, so there’s that…). Currently I find myself leaning more towards
Creation and Exploration. I find
something thrilling about stepping outside my comfort zone to try something
new. I also love to build new
things. I recognize the things that I find
motivating and I look for games that scratch those itches.
I have said before that not every game is right for every
table. What I mean is, there are some combinations
of players that are incompatible for telling certain stories in a tabletop
RPG. That means you may not be able to
play the game you want to try with that group.
That’s okay. You may need to
stretch your group out a little and either add or reduce players for the game
you want to try to play. That’s okay
too. Finding the right combination of
interests and motivations is something we all fiddle with when we explore
playing a new game.
For example, Drewbacca and I have an associate we will refer
to as “the Cave Troll.” No it’s not a
particularly nice nickname, but for the purposes of the internet, it is as
effective a name as I am going to use.
When we look at a new RPG (Or hell, a board game or a minis game for
that matter), we always have the discussion is this a game we can play with “the
Cave Troll?” (If you’ve read any of my “Just
Dumb Things” articles, this is the same feature individual). This player consistently seems driven by a
misanthropy angle and seems to revel in destroying the fun and or happiness of
other people.
Fortunately, in my opinion, most of the games we’ve looked
at in the past several years are things we can’t play with “the Cave Troll.” His motivations are just too far outside the
alignments our motivations seem to run in (Drewbacca is more of an
escapist/socialization player). Every
once in a while I find something I think we could play together, but time seems
to slip away and keep us from getting in a game of something. The last time we spoke, he mentioned how
stupid he thought the new edition of Warhammer 40,000 was and I don’t think we’ve
talked since.
In closing, we all have very different reasons for playing
games, and that is perfectly okay. Find
people to game with that have intersecting motivations, and you should be able
to have a lot of fun playing games. You
may not fit at every table, but you will most certainly find a table you do fit
at, and make some friends along the way.
Game On, Game Fans
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