What I Did and What I Learned: My 2020 in RPGs retrospective

I don’t think I’m the only one that spent more time playing RPGs in 2020 than I did in any other year in recent memory. The cessation of meetings with my real life groups was more than made up for by the massive uptick in online play, as people looked to virtual tabletops to get their gaming fix. Not only did the sheer number of hours I spent on RPGs increase, so too did the variety of games I played, and the people I played with. Instead of the one or two campaigns I usually play through in the average year, I got involved in plenty of one shots or short series, while still finding time and opportunity for ten or so sessions of a couple of other games. 

Some of the time I was the one in the GM seat, but more often than not I jumped into someone else’s game. Prior to 2020 I’d usually been the one running the game when there was roleplaying in my life, so it was a real pleasure to have someone else take the helm. I often put a lot of pressure on myself when I run games, I think it's good to respect the time and commitment of your players, and to look to make the most of both by making your game the best it can be. All the playing I’ve done this year has taught me some useful lessons that have changed the way I think about RPGs, and about running them. Each main takeaway I’ve gained has primarily been linked to an experience playing a particular game, so I’m going to mention each of these games and what they taught me. This will also function as something of a retrospective for my 2020 in RPGs. 

The Sprawl taught me to look to geeky non-RPG communities when looking for new players or experiences. The online subculture that’s the biggest part of my life is the Android: Netrunner community. While I don’t spend as many hours of my life playing the game on jinteki.net or at in person ‘meatspace’ tournaments, I still spend a lot of time in the Netrunner slack channel, sometimes discussing the game itself but more often simply socialising with the community that I’ve grown close to in my time playing. When the first COVID lockdown hit the UK in March 2020 and opportunities for playing board, card or role playing games had to be taken online, myself and some other Netrunner friends decided to start a group-within-a-group for Netrunner players that wanted to play tabletop RPGs. As one might expect, the games that garnered the most interest were those set in the Android: Netrunner setting, in our case played using Cyberpunk Powered by the Apocalypse RPG The Sprawl. 

Dedicated Netrunner fans were excited to play a roleplaying game set in a universe they knew so well, and had already spent countless hours experiencing and considering through art, flavour text and story write ups. We had a lot of people play their very first RPG in one of these Sprawl games. Incentive to play in a setting they already knew, and the lower barrier to entry from not having to learn about a whole new fictional universe while getting to grips with the hobby made for a potent combination. My lesson here pertains not to improving RPG sessions themselves, or understanding what makes rulesets good, but rather to getting more people into roleplaying games. If you’re already a member of a fandom or community for a non RPG game with its own setting, getting a game going in that setting will probably be easier than you think. The permanence of D&D has led to a much greater awareness of the hobby, so combining that with the investment in a setting that people already have should make finding new, enthusiastic players easy. There’s probably also something to be said for new players finding an inline into RPGs that isn’t D&D, but I suspect that that’s another blog post.

Lancer taught me that crunchy RPGs have hidden fun that exists between sessions. I’ve never really been one for very crunchy RPG rulesets with lots of tactical combat, but in 2020 when some of my friends were looking to give newly released mech game Lancer a try, I decided to get involved. I’d already enjoyed jumping into games that I wouldn’t usually run, and I was interested enough by Lancer’s setting to give it a go. While I don’t think I have a mathsy enough brain to successfully GM the game for others, I’ve had a blast playing, crunchy tactics and all. I like board games and turned based tactical videogames enough that I always expected to enjoy the combat of Lancer, but once we got some sessions under our belt I discovered that I was also getting a lot out of the time spent between sessions. Along with the other players in our game I’d discuss loadout options, builds and what we were thinking about adding to our characters when we levelled up, often coordinating to ensure we made characters that would compliment each other. The crunch was partly a pleasing intellectual exercise, but more than that it was enabling conversations that weren’t taking place at our table. If RPGs about having interesting conversations, crunchy games with lots of character build options enable this in a way that might not be obvious to everyone. 

Agon taught me that I should be trusting players to describe what happens when their characters fail. My most surprising RPG experience this year was getting involved in an AGON campaign, many sessions of which made it into an actual play that you can listen to here. When GM Gaz put up a twitter post looking for players, I was intrigued enough to get involved, despite Greek heroes perhaps not being my RPG premise of choice. I might write a dedicated blog post about the AGON ruleset, because I think it's one of the best rulesets I’ve played in a long time  (although I did also have the good fortune of playing it with an excellent group). I want to focus on one aspect of the rules that particularly impressed me, and one I’m going to look into taking into future games that I GM. In Agon, when it's time to roll dice to make a character accomplish something, you’re meant to describe in simple terms what you’re doing to justify the abilities and stats you’re going to use, roll, and then lavishly narrate what your character does and how the world reacts based on your result. 

It's not uncommon for players in any game to describe what cool things they do when they succeed at something, but a lot of the time when an action fails, it falls to the GM to describe the consequences. In AGON the resolution system puts more power into a players hands, and they describe what made them fail and what the consequences might look like. Of course the GM will then fold that into what comes next, but the agency of the player characters stops later after a failed roll than it might in other RPGs. As a GM I’ve often struggled with narrating failed dice rolls without making the player character in question look incompetent or foolish, particularly in games where being cool and competent is a core part of a game’s premise. Narrating the circumstances outside of a PCs control that conspire against them is one way to address the issue, but the AGON style is another. Even when I rolled badly in AGON and attributed it to my character’s failings, I was engaged with the game and excited to keep them pushing forward, looking for that next success. I didn’t feel like I was trying to contribute to our ongoing story and getting pushed back by bad luck, which is sometimes what failed dice rolls feel like. Of course not all games will suit this “tell me how you fail” approach to task resolution. Powered by the Apocalypse for example, is explicit in wanting a bad roll to result in the GM making a move. This approach is also one to be cautious about using with new players, who might be unsure about what they’re allowed to say in such a situation, or feel pressured to be creative in a way they aren’t comfortable with. However, if I’ve got more experienced or confident players around my table, it's something I’m going to look to do more often.

Unknown Armies taught me a cautionary lesson about loving your setting too much. Towards the end of 2020 I was overjoyed to finally get the 3rd edition of Unknown Armies to the (virtual) table with me as GM, with the aforementioned AGON group deciding to give it a go after our odyssey ended. We’ve had enough fun to keep playing the game into 2021, but I did recognise a potential problem with the way I was running it that I’m going to look to account for in future. Unknown Armies is probably my all time favourite RPG setting, and for the most part this has been a boon for our game. My knowledge of the setting makes improvising easier, and prep is always a joy because it's more time spent reading and thinking about a world I enjoy so much. My affection for our particular Unknown Armies setting only increased after the game’s excellent Session 0 process, in which we sketched out a conspiracy board full of strange places and intriguing characters. So far so good. The issue arose when I was reflecting on the first ‘proper’ session of the game, in which the player characters investigated some mysterious disappearances in the strange tourist town they called home. I realised that I’d have been happy to have a game about characters poking around the Unknown Armies setting forever, and I got to excitedly describe the world and lore I’d spent so much time reading about. This is likely to result in great fun for exactly one person at the table. When running other games in settings that I’m perhaps less passionate about, I’m ready to leap into exciting action and happenings that disrupt the status quo, and let the player characters exercise agency over their world. In future when I’m sitting down to GM, I need to remember to be a fan of Unknown Armies The RPG by Greg Stolze second, and a fan of our Unknown Armies game first.