u/Chupaia

Some years ago I was looking for podcasts and shows where they would address other tabletop roleplaying games (ttrpg) beyond Dungeons & Dragons (DnD). I know there are plenty of options but many do not align at all with the perspective I have on rpgs, or we differ in theme interest.

But a thing that stuck with me was a podcast episode where the person reviewing it talked about World/Chronicles of Darkness (WoD) and said something in the likes of: "The game seems interesting but I will put it low on my ranking because you need a different book for each class/race you want to play, like if you want to be a vampire, or a werewolf, or a mage..."

The take was such a miss that it made me physically facepalm. But it brought to the surface a type of problem that people might miss when discussing diverting from DnD to other ttrpgs, which it's the rigid mindset that DnD culture has created. Of course this is a fringe case and what I am laying out might be obvious to many, but I thought I'd put it here cos I have not seen it discussed from this perspective.

Less obvious examples include the notion of what people consider difficulty and the determination of where excitement comes from. For DnD, it seems like conflict and progress both emerge from violence and the risk of death, which makes it so that people unconciously looks for life-risking tropes in the game when trying to interpret the story premise a narrator puts forward. It makes it also hard to treat those moments of physical conflict in any way other than "goal is beat opponent", closing the walls around any other possible outcome of an altercation that has a physical component to it. This culture of narrator challenging players and threatening their character's lives is, I believe, one of the aspects that might contribute to isolating the narrator from the players, and ends up creating an unspoken rivalry between them as seen in shows like Dimension20, where the point is to "ruin some master plan" that the narrator might have, cheating the challenge, "winning" the game, outsmarting the other player (in my opinion, the narrator is a player too).

Another one is the case of applying videogame's materialistic, individualistic mindset to any story as the logical one. This include the culture of looting, raiding, individual increase of wealth, or the idea of calling characters heroes for performing feats (violent or not) that do not involve selfless risks and sacrifice. You might say "but players put themselves at risk of death constantly" but this form of risk emanates from the hustle attitude that is more akin to gambling than heroism. This even makes it so that literary tools and tropes like "a dragon hoard" become a wealth-earning prospect more than the the fable-filled notion of greed that the stories that inspired the tropes sometimes might have meant to convey. These specific aspect (which might actually be many merged into one) also might contribute to the "narrator is the simulator and emulator of the game" expectation, making players reactive espectators of a show put up for them that is even smaller of a role than what an actor would actually have on an improvised show.

Things like loot, combat, and character development follow the videogame recipe and can become the predetermined mindset for all ttrpgs, which might contribute to the difficulty of many on seeing the appeal of non-DnD ttrpgs. Players expect their skills to grow instead of declining with age or staying the same, they expect that every item put in their way is a gift to them to acquire to increase in power, and the expectation that every game is meant to tell a rags-to-riches story of personal capital growth and power.

Just to clarify again, I am not saying it should not be this way or that this is bad. These are fun aspects that have all the right to be present in any ttrpg, DnD or not. I am just trying to develop an idea about other forms of struggles that people might face when jumping from DnD to other ttrpgs that can contribute to a narrower understanding of them, while also limiting the way people can play ttrpgs, that are all about the complete freedom of creating a story and navigating it.

There was a poll a while ago that asked "ttrpg Game Masters" questions about how they organise encounters, how they challenge players, if they sandbox or railroad, etc. But none of these apply that well if you look at a game like the Witch is Dead or Everyone is John. And also shows how this mindset serves as a wall that limits the space in which ttrpgs can be played.

It seems to me, that this mindset puts characters as the players' pets, and the game as "taking your pet out for a walk", where they are brushed, dressed, given treats, taught tricks, pee on constructions, and let out to chase local wildlife. The narrator is there to make sure they do all that.

I think I had other ideas but right now cannot remember them. I would love to read some of the many things I have missed that form inherent part of DnD culture and mindset, that also can become a culture clash when learning other games. Again, I am not against any of it, just stating that these very fun aspects of DnD can be detrimental to imagining ttrpg outside this space, and that addressing them directly or with awareness might make the jump easier.

TLDR: DnD has a bunch of invisible rules and expectations that also make the culture around it harder to open a different approach to stories an ttrpgs when making a leap to other games. What are some you have found and what are your ways to un-learn them?