What Exactly is a Tabletop Game?

When I set out to write my Master's thesis (which included Dungeons and Dragons and Don't Rest Your Head, both tabletop games), I had a lot of explaining to do. It turned out that people who had been cloistered in academia for decades didn't necessarily have a strong understanding of the finer points of tabletop roleplaying games, and so in order to justify my work, I would have to explain, what is a tabletop game? How does one play it? Who writes it? Is it a computer game? This took place even in the era of Stranger Things, so I expected at least a base understanding of roleplaying. But this was not so. In today's world, with D&D and to a lesser extent other tabletop games becoming more popular, this still happens sometimes, and I'm sure that gamers, especially longtime gamers, have had to explain what you actually do when you play. That doesn't happen to people who play first person shooters or board games or duck-duck-goose. 

I think there's value in the question, though, from an artistic perspective. That's largely how I approached it when I wrote about it. The thing is, any creative work is art. A crude child's drawing, an uneven crocheted scarf, and a lopsided coffee mug were all made with intention and purpose and have form in the real world, channeling the creator's vision into reality--that's art, even if you don't think it's good art. And certainly, tabletop games as produced and sold are art, as are the experiences had and stories told by players of tabletop games. So, reading tabletop games and the experiences of playing them as art, what is a tabletop game? 

In higher education, creative endeavors have pretty clear-cut creators. A novel is written by an author (often with the help of an editor or team of editors); a song is written and composed by a musician or group of musicians (often with the help of a producer); a film has a writer and director and editor and performers and literally hundreds of creditable people so that any specific role can be attributed. But who is the author of a tabletop game session? 

I've explored this idea more fully before, but briefly, I would argue that there are a whole mess of different creators we need to worry about. Firstly, if the GM is using a module or other prepared material they've not written themselves, there is that module writer to consider (not to mention the many supporting writers, editors, illustrators, and more who make large-market modules). Then of course there is the GM, whose foundation of the setting and the basics of the plot are also something that needs meaningful credit in the experience of a tabletop game session. Perhaps most importantly, we have the players, whose choices actually form the story itself, and that is in itself a collaboration unless there's only one player. So in considering even the most basic unit of tabletop gaming--the session--there are so many voices to consider that it becomes mindboggling rather quickly. 

Let's conclude then, that whatever tabletop games are, they are collaborative in nature. Every statement and action is a reaction to another from someone else, usually inspired by someone else, and this means a great amount of what actually happens in tabletop games is not a singular effort. 

Next, let's consider how actions take place. Players state their actions, either verbally in most sessions or via text in asynchronous campaigns, and then the GM determines with the help of dice rolls what the outcome is in the reality of the game. This is to say that players say what they want to happen, and then the dice (if the game uses dice) generally decide how effectively that intention is channeled into the game's reality, and then the GM decides given context, story, fudging, and other details how to provide an end result. It's a mediating process from a game design perspective--the player provides a direction, the dice factor in luck and skill, and the GM refines it for the larger experience. It's quite beautiful--simple enough, but infinite in terms of possibilities. 

So then what's the point of taking actions? This is a game, so there must be an objective. Certainly, some campaigns have clear-cut goals such as "slay this monster" or "retrieve this relic," where success is easily quantifiable. But months or years of gaming can take place before even meeting the monster or getting close to the relic, and what is the intervening gaming if not also the game? I don't think we can say that it's so simple as "you complete the main quest and you win", especially since a lot of original gamers have classically run multiple campaigns all strung together into one epic adventure. We can't just set an endpoint and declare that reaching it is the point of the game. 

I'd argue for something a bit more poetic. Perhaps it's just that the destination isn't the point so much as the journey, because the stories I've heard told about tabletop games are almost never about a campaign's final moments--they're about the crazy things that happened on the way there. And it's more than some cliché about enjoying how you get there; to me, a campaign is like a book, not a video game. I enjoy the twists and turns on the way, getting to know the characters, seeing the plot unfold--I'm not training my skills to overcome some mythical challenge. There's a way to play tabletop games that way, but I think if we're honest with ourselves, campaigns are more than the finale. 

So what is a tabletop game according to all this? It's a story. It begins with the first sessions in the campaign, it follows the player characters on their journeys, it features colorful moments along the way, and it has a grand finale at the end. The players tell the stories of their characters (or at least, what their characters want), and the dice and GM interpret those individual stories into a larger story about everyone. Sometimes that story is a battle epic. Sometimes it's a bawdy tale. Sometimes it's a heartbreaking drama. Sometimes it's a thousand different kinds of story all mixed together in one dazzling tapestry. But even if it's just "Grog killed a gnoll with an axe," that's a story (by the same logic that any creative work is art). 

So far, we have that tabletop games are collaborative and story-based. Is there more to the equation? Have we overlooked something? Many would take issue with the fact that I don't have "game" anywhere in the core definition, perhaps arguing I'm understating the role of the dice. Others might say that the word "game" is directly in the name "tabletop games" and should be present. I disagree. 

Firstly, there are tabletop games that are diceless. These are straightforward storytelling games that do not factor luck or skill into the outcome of player character actions (or, in more abstract games, forces besides people). We use the term "tabletop game" for these, and that carries with it questions of how luck and skill factor into the "game" and whether it can be truly won, so to me, the question of what a game is seems to be a whole other equation beyond what tabletop games are. I personally use a rough definition: a system of rules that govern play, the end result of which is to win, whether that be against a roughly equal foe or against an abstraction (setting high scores and record times, adding a meta-condition of success on top of winning). And to be, I am unconvinced that tabletop games are necessarily games by that definition. Plenty don't care about winning, which composes a large portion of my definition. Fudging means that skill and luck can be limited or eliminated. Homebrew changes the rules themselves, sometimes in considerable ways or dropping rules altogether. Tabletop games may be games, but not in a clean way that can't be debated. 

In undergrad, I took a creative writing course. My only assignment beyond reading and commenting on my classmates' work was to write and share two short stories. My first was not great. Had my professor been a less gentle man, I think he would have called it "uninspired." I had struggled with the possibilities. I couldn't choose a topic to write about, and what came out was forced and clumsy. I asked my professor for advice with this problem before writing the second story. He said that when possibilities are infinite, creativity withers. When restrictions are placed, our creativity grows against the constraints. We have a challenge to work against, a secret game we're playing to keep things interesting. I threw a few restraints on my writing (every proper noun needed to be time-related and my main character had to be depicted through actions rather than words), and my classmates and professor loved it. It was the best work I had ever done up to that point. 

I mention this because I think that tabletop game rules are like these writing restraints. A class tells a player what their character can and can't easily do, which is a restraint on the actions they're theoretically capable of. Mechanical rules restrain possible outcomes to a few or only one outcome by nature. The players and GM working in tandem and against each other is a check on each other's power and a restraint on how much either can lead the story. I think of tabletop games' rules less as game rules and more as the unique restrictions each story places on how we tell the stories of each game. 

Let's explore this with some examples to clarify that last point. In the mother of tabletop games' case--Dungeons & Dragons--the rules exist to simulate essentially anything in a high magic fantasy setting by restricting how combat work, what spells exist, and what types of fantasy adventures fit within the canon. A game like Call of Cthulhu creates rules that define magic and general simulation as well in other to restrict the setting to Lovecraftian horror, to make characters incredibly vulnerable (which shifts how players play the game), and to restrict how much depravity a character can witness. Don't Rest Your Head offers no rules on how to simulate the world itself and give players only two abilities in order to not restrict story opportunities (instead offering lore to adapt and use) but also what players are capable of (leading to a lot of lateral thinking about what the limits of their powers are). The addition that games make in the tabletop game community when released is not about what the rules are or what the lore is so much as how it restricts storytelling in order to empower GMs and players to create their best stories. 

So ultimately, since I reject the notion that tabletop games are game-like enough to classify as game, I have decided that tabletop games are collaborative storytelling guides. In fact, let's turn an eye to the term tabletop roleplaying games--is that even accurate? Tabletop is the origin of the gaming tradition, but many if not most games are played in other arrangements. Roleplaying? Sometimes--but just as I, a roleplaying, storytelling player and GM eschew a lot of excessive silliness and non-plot-essential combat, many players who focus on other styles don't really include roleplaying as part of their experience. And I've already contested "game," so we can move on. I know that "collaborative storytelling guide" is not very catchy, but it does feel more accurate to the medium as a whole. 

And this brings me back to many years ago when tabletop games--even D&D--were basically unknown to almost all people. I would pitch it to potential players and to new friends, but nothing ever felt totally right. What ended up clicking was when I was lobbying to start a D&D radio show and podcast at the radio station where I worked. In order to secure a long enough slot for a real session at a time when people could actually listen, I had to convince the station owner to give a "D&D radio show" a chance. We talked for a while--a long while--and eventually, I knew what to say to him. He was a lifelong radio man, and so I said, "It's like improvised radio theater. If someone gets into a fight, we make it a little random. We're just doing a serialized story on air." And it suddenly made sense to him. The resistance went away. Here I was, trying to revive something he'd appreciated growing up and that had made him go into the business. He agreed and supported our show through its entire run. 

I think that the lesson here is that for most people who don't play tabletop games, they see the dice and character sheets and the miniatures, and they hear the rule citations and in-jokes and game lore, and they realize two things. 1. This is all very complicated. 2. I am out of place for not knowing how any of this works. And they're wrong on both counts! Tabletop games are not complicated. They are actually collaborative (doing it with your friends--very relaxed) storytelling (just pick what your character wants to do--very relaxed) guide (there's going to be help from the game and GM and other players to tell this story--very relaxed). And is the impression I try to give new players now. Everyone picks up the rules eventually, and giving someone a gentle introduction is a great way to make a lifelong tabletop game fan. And of course, tabletop game fans want someone to play with, not send people packing. Presenting tabletop games as a collaborative storytelling space can ease a lot of potential players' minds. 

So, what is a tabletop game really? The way I run my games, and the parties I play in, it is not the fighting simulation it was when tabletop games were first born. It is a unique interpretation of how to tell stories, created so that players could pick up the game and tell a story that lives in that world. To me, tabletop games are an excuse, an opportunity to spend time with people you care about making up a story just for you. It's truly beautiful, and I think they transcend being just games.

That's all for now. Coming soon: a pirate D&D one-shot, a guide to the planes, and what perfect GMing looks like. Until next time, happy gaming!

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