(Hint: It’s not Backgammon!)
By Janet Price, Regional Director of Community Education and Transition, CLE Rockville
CLE Rockville students, Justin and Zed, are tabletop gaming enthusiasts. I recently sat down with them and asked them to explain the concept…and the attraction!
So, what exactly is tabletop gaming?
Justin: It’s a role-playing game, on a table with dice and paper, unless you’re playing Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) which has a board and set rules. You need a story, and characters in it for the players to fight – but not characters they could beat easily. They should feel like bada**es!
Zed: In general, it’s a broader category that includes board games and card games, but tabletop role playing games (RPGs) at its most basic is a bunch of people sitting around a table and doing things in character as someone else. There are a lot of different rule sets you can play with, the most famous being D&D, but there’s a lot more than that. There are basically two types of structures. The more common one is where you have one person who controls the world and the characters in it, and then each person plays a character. The controller is called something different in each game, like Dungeon Master in D&D, or Game Master in GURPS, short for Generic Universal Role-Playing System. The other type, which is rarer, is where everyone shares the responsibility of the world and creates it together. These include Fall of Magic and Dream Askew.
How long have you been playing?
Justin: Three years.
Zed: About two years.
Want to hear more about Tabletop Gaming?
CLE Student Michael Ryan gives the scoop on Warhammer 40K in this audio interview.
How many players are in a typical tabletop game? How long does it take to play?
Justin: It could be any amount of players. Quests could take any amount of time – an hour, two or four. It’s open-ended.
Zed: You can play for as long or as short as you want, but typically 3-4 hours or sometimes longer. It depends on how much the Game Master has prepared and how long the players are willing to sit down for. Some games accommodate more players better than others. Few games can handle 7 or more players. Typically, a good size is around five people, including the Game Master.
Why do you like tabletop gaming?
Justin: It’s more fun than a board game. It has more imagination and more stuff in it than a board game.
Zed: There are video game RPGs that follow a similar principal of you controlling a character in the world, but instead of a human controlling the world, [like in a tabletop RPG] it’s programmed into the game itself. Even in games where you can take multiple paths through the story, there are the same assets every time. With a Game Master, you can have an adventure that no one has ever had before or since!
