Genetics of TTRPGs

Trying to Identify the Building Blocks of Genres for TTRPGs

TTRPGs need genres. I want to do something about that, somehow. What I am not going to do is propose shiny new genre labels for TTRPGs and argue about their applicability. TTRPGs finding secure genre labels will need to involve waves and waves of agreement, and I’m not up to arguing, but I do think I have a good starting point.

As a perhaps not wholly necessary preamble, see the earlier blog post dealing with why I passionately feel TTRPGs need genres, but this isn’t the theory article, this is one step into the practical.

Since we can’t jump straight to the genres of the future that we don’t know today, the most reasonable starting point I could find is this: What kind of questions do I ask a TTRPG publisher at their booth at a con? I want to figure out what the TTRPG I’m holding will be like at the table. That’s like trying to find out the genre of something based on its tiniest building blocks, so let’s go searching for those tiny building blocks.

Perhaps this will not lead directly into a useful equivalent to genre for TTRPGs, but I’m starting with where I mentally separate games, with marketing terms entirely set aside, trying to get to the brass tax of what is the experience like? Below I’ve broken down, as succinctly as I could, all the moving parts in the imagination engine that I can identify. You may find my scope for TTRPGs is a little broad here, but I'd rather be too broad than too narrow. Yes, this is a lot like identifying a car by starting with its nuts and bolts, or trying to guess a soup based on the ingredients, or hoping you can figure out the animal based on the genetic code, but I think this approach has merit, so bear with me.

1. Who are the Players?

I want to know who I am playing with, and what it means to be a player in this game.

• Numbers of Players. Solo, duet, four to six, groups of ten, how is this game played in terms of its compliment?

• Player Scope. Is a player expected to take on the role of a single character, of a whole family, of an entire alien race? What is the scope of what constitutes a character for each player of this game? Basically, what makes a “player character”? As a second part to this, is a player only in charge of acting and reacting in the role of their character, or do they have authority over setting elements, specific NPCs, an area of NPCs, or a particular theme within the game? Basically, are there things to do beyond holding a single identity? As a third and final part to this, is there a game master (GM) among these, or none, or are there multiple GMs, dividing the roles’ responsibility around the table contextually? 

2. What is the Tone?

Maybe this is the most important thing. I want to know what we’re aiming for in the play experience of this game.

• Agreed Play Feel. Are we all sitting down trying to achieve the feel of a movie, of a story, or just accepting the ebbs and flows of the play experience as it comes? This is more than just tone—what are we reaching for in play? 

• Standard Behaviour. Are we supposed to be funny, here, or is this grim and dark? Obviously this might drift in play, but it’s important to know what the game is trying for and where I, as Forever GM, should be steering my players.

• Inherent Social Contact. Are PCs (or whatever equivalent scope of control given to one player) “working together”? Or is this "PvP"? Or, is this one of those, “the game doesn’t work otherwise” games, where the unwritten rule is don’t split the party or stab your friend in the back? A mixture of these is also possible.

• Success Expectations: Are we heroes? Are we idiots? Are we feeble sickly gnumpties hunting rats in a sewer with rusty daggers? Or, are we heroic no-fail perfect legends of song, ultimately thwarted by our fatal flaws? Is this play-to-fail, or will the PC be forever advancing up the ladder of growth from zero-loser to godhood?

• Teamwork or Personal Silo: This one often goes unspoken, but, how much is a player expected to interact, mechanically, with other players and their characters? Is this effectively a one-player game one turn at a time, or do we need to interact, overlapping mechanical behaviours, in order to achieve anything meaningful? (At least in terms of engagement with the mechanics.)

3. How to Sell this to My Players

Although I wouldn't put the question to a publisher like this, I want to roughly map out the expected play activity and know how the game is framed, in an attempt to get all the ammunition I can to then convince my play group that this is the next thing we should play. As a Forever GM I need to know how hard that sales pitch will be, and if it will be worth my time. If I don’t believe in the game, my players won’t either. This is the most basic information I would need.

• Longevity: Is this game good for a one-off, or is this a campaign game, or just good for a couple of sessions?

• Level of Physical Participation. Proposed attention buy-in. Do I get to stand up and do things like a LARP, or am I able to sit there and be chill? For all I know we’re playing by mail, or over Discord, or in little chunks of time throughout the week. Heck, does this game even assume a “game session”?

• Expectation of In-game Activity: What are we expected to do as characters? Are we running around killing things, is this a talky-talky game where every NPC becomes its own soap opera, or is this a gritty economic simulator of planetary rule? Maybe this is very similar to tone, above, and maybe this point better belongs there, but I’m including this here because I’m thinking of it in terms of trying to sell a game to my players—this is the 10,000 foot view, I think. What’s the pitch of “Yes, but what do you actually DO in this game?” Some games are pro-active on the player side, some games are (in some cases entirely!) re-active, and you can run afoul of play expectations if you don’t know what the game is trying to be.

• Work-load. Is this game hard to play? Some great games are. I need to know if this will alienate some of my players who have a light touch on attention. If it’s a lot of work, I need to be able to sell the game to my players as worth it.

4. What are the Barriers to Play?

In other words, what stands in the way of me running and/or playing this game? These are all the ways you could lose players before play begins, and lose players once you start, even if the system is amazing. There’s still an ask to every system. This is so connected with the above series of questions I'm not sure it should be its own section, but this is all very rough and we must accept overlap.

• Expected Info Dump & Reference Work. I want to know the ease of pickup, how hard it will be to teach my players (both mechanically and socially), how massive the setting info-dump is, how long it takes to make a character, and generally anything else that might be a roadblock to getting it to the table. How much does the book have to be referenced? If we're online, what will fooling around with the pdf look like? This is a big question and should probably be broken down more.

• Level of Familiarity. Lots of potential players are very concerned with, “How far away is this game from my current very narrow play expectation?” and, fye on them, that question runs contrary to my entire artistic publishing milieu, but it’s still a good point, because it’s a barrier to play. 

• How Deep to Dive to Get to the Good Stuff? How long does it take to gain required system mastery to derive optimal or at least reasonable enjoyment? Some games you have to get a few sessions in to get to their “sweet spot” of play. I don’t want to deal with, “Oh, but you didn’t really play this game because you didn’t get to Level XXX”. Maybe this belongs up in Longevity as a point, but I feel like it's significant enough to include here as a barrier.

Note on Publisher Ignorance

I will point out that most publishers can’t answer these questions about their own games. TTRPGs, even by very big and experienced companies, are written on a hotbed of assumptions. But, these are still the questions that get answered at the table by the act of play whether you intend to or not, and so in very practical terms these are the questions that any genre label should answer, or at least approximate an answer.

Notice I Don’t Care About

Notice it does not matter to the above what the answers are, just in terms of trying to identify the answers. There is no judgement call. Personal preference comes later. It's significant, though, what I left out. Here’s a few questions I would not ask to a TTRPG publisher about their game. They may seem like obvious exclusions from the above, but I don't think are ultimately important to identifying the game.

• Setting. Anything can be fun, whether you’re space pirates or samurai or boy scouts lost in the woods—it’s tone that matters. I can sell my players on any stupid setting so long as there’s an appealing tone hook. The cover art or one-line pitch will tell me the setting, so it's not worth asking.

• Marketing. Powered by what-whats be damned, that’s not actually useful. Buzzwords are just for hype, and every game wants their hype to be as hype as possible, so there is no meaningful variation between a game's ability to promise.

• Randomizer. Dice, or lack of dice, or what the randomizer is, if there is one, really does not matter much to this identification. They’re all just different methods to arrive at an answer. It can influence tone, it can be fun to click math rocks, some people have a fetish for dice pools, some nerds like me like to design in a diceless space because there has been less work done there, but this is not actually a necessary component to identify for these purposes.

• Mechanical Trigger. Is this one of those games where you try to avoid the dice (or, more generally, play activating behaviour) at all costs, or is this one where you’re manufacturing excuses to participate? Certainly, those games feel very different in play, but I can’t imagine one direction or another actually irking a player. I think this would all come out in the wash, so to speak. The mechanical tendency would come out in play, and I don't imagine it as a pivotal identifying component.

Where to Go From Here

These are the lowest-level of definitions I could think to start to name the unnamable, trying to suss out the “genetics” of a TTRPG. These questions are trying to get at what the driving assumptions are for the game, in terms of how it affects the experience of play. This won’t tell us what the “genre” of the game is any more than asking a fiction author if their story adheres to the Joseph Campbell hero’s journey or a Homeric formula to try and guess at its genre, but at least it's a starting point. At least this gives us building blocks for making relevant, useful categories, someday...someday.

Hopefully someone smarter than I am will take up the cause.

James Kerr

Radio James Games