Gameplay 2

Gameplay tends to be about what you do in a computer game at any given moment. A game might involve stealth, shooting, driving, jumping, crafting, trading, or social gameplay elements. A game that is all about driving might have competition, maintenance, upgrading, repair, and design gameplay elements. A strategy game might have base building and resource management as gameplay elements while another might not, but have research and development among its gameplay elements.

So what kind of gameplay elements do TTRPGs have? What kind of things do you find yourself doing for periods of time within a session? There’s combat, fighting, violent conflict, different to this is warfare, when characters are involved in large scale combat, there’s stealth and evasion, also there’s conversation, negotiation, deception, persuasion, seduction, there’s management and planning, and you could have research, learning, investigation, exploration and discovery, as well as choice and argument.

Games that have character progression like levelling up often have a reward system of some sort, and the types of gameplay that are rewarded are likely to seem attractive to players who want to get on. If a gameplay element isn’t mentioned at all, or no rewards are linked to it, then players may simply ignore it. On the other hand a given group can determine their own preferred types of gameplay, and can then modify the rules accordingly. If a game has no built in system for rewarding gameplay, then a player will probably just do what they enjoy moment to moment, or do what seems to progress their character’s story in a way that they like.

A problem would arise when a player enjoys a type of gameplay, and the rest of the players don’t enjoy it, or don’t care about it and see it as a waste of time. The obvious solution is to play a game that specifically includes this type of gameplay, so all the players will be on the same page. Another solution is for the players to modify whatever games they play to accommodate the gameplay they each prefer. By building your own game, you should all be able to enjoy it. If not, then the group itself needs to be modified, so each player can find themselves in a group they can have fun with.

So I think it’s essential for players to look back over the games and sessions they’ve been a part of, and identify the types of gameplay they like. They need to tell new players they meet what they like and don’t like, and then come up with a game they can all enjoy.

I need to do this for myself, and hopefully I’ll be better able to enjoy games in the future by doing so.