Collective Storytelling and Table Top Roleplaying Games
Table Top Role Playing Games, or TTRPGs, are in vogue. Ever since Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition dropped, in combination with the groundwork made by players who did podcasts of their games in previous editions/ other games, allowed for a cultural bomb to be dropped. Everybody is playing Dungeons and Dragons these days, as well as getting into new kinds of systems. Personally, that’s awesome; as the stigmas of TTRPGs are being thrown away.
But that’s not all: we can see a rise in collective storytelling thanks to TTRPGs and social media. Each one of these games and sessions has a distinct flair to them. They are the product of the interests of many and both player and game masterwork hand in hand to create an experience personalized for the group. For the uninitiated, the players interact in a world designed by the Game Master. They can take a large number of choices and engage in combat, tell thrilling tales, or get involved with shenanigans beyond their understanding.
Currently, 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons is the most accessible form of roleplay system available, as well as one of the most widely played. This allows it to be easily grasped by individuals within a few games and repetition of tasks, as well as a bit of studying the rules. However, we combine this simplicity of access with the podcasts, live streams, veteran players making online content, and memes and posts about the hobby to get an explosion of interest. Suddenly, everyone can get involved with their own story to tell. They can replicate those same shenanigans they have seen, heard or read about, or surpass them. They can get invested in stories of their own design.
I feel that this is a great route for storytelling in general. I believe that there is a general understanding that stories tend to be consumed by an audience and produced by a single individual. This might have been different in times of oral tradition and the synthesis of religion, culture, and region, but very few pieces of work are legitimately created by a collective. An anthology work feels like a set of separate stories made by different individuals and then sewn together as an afterthought. With TTRPGs, you get involvement on behalf of all the players, and what they want, believe in, and feel comfortable with exploring becomes the maxim for them. If an anthology is forcibly sewn together, then a campaign in a TTRPG is gently sewn together with time and care.
Even if you play in multiple games, the experience is never the same. I can be Sanzu Arazim, the Gilded; a dragonborn paladin that always smites first and asks questions later. I can later be Urvan Lalôn; drow bard and the most fabulous thing this side of the Aerelian Sea. I was also Kurt Moulder, “The Boulder” while I was at Chicago; slapstick loving, pun spewing, boomerang throwing barbarian and member of the Waterdeep Problem Busters. When I played Call of Cthulhu, I was Jacqueline “Jackie” Steinbeck, knife toting flapper ‘because a girl has to stand up for herself’. And when I DM I am so many characters and creatures that I lost count a long time ago. It is never the same adventure when you play a TTRPG.
As a species, we have the capacity to create narratives through cooperation and participating in similar events. We are effectively reacting and creating narratives without being limited by the contents of a single authority. This less about there being multiple authors and more about creating a new mythology. Many movies have more than one scriptwriter. Not only that, they have directors and producers influencing the work. But, how many of them truly effectively build a story? How many of them go across grand narratives and epics that last years on end? Can these stories have effects on new movies?
An observation: mainstream comic books and comic book movies seem to be the only other venue for this kind of collective storytelling. However, while various authors build on the ‘myths’ of these superheroes and supervillains, the degree of personalization and care put into each is limited by things like marketing and audience reception. With TTRPGs, the audience is also the author. And not in an ‘I write for myself’ esoteric kind of way, but in so much as they both produce and consume this media.
I don’t know if one day we will be able to produce and share media in a similar manner as TTRPGs. There are factors such as the medium itself, length, creativity and input of players and Game Masters, etc., that affect the overall story. We already know that, in sharing experiences through social media, that TTRPGs have grown in popularity over the past couple of years. Maybe the way we think about storytelling needs to be incorporated into social media. Then, we might be able to craft even more advanced media in a similar vein to TTRPGs.
Either way, I can’t wait to see what happens next. In the meantime, grab some friends and go roleplay.
