Introduction to TTRPGs

A Tabletop Role-Playing Game (“TTRPG”) is a collaborative storytelling game. TTRPGs are a type of game genre similar to video games and board games. They combine a board game’s structured rules, a video game’s control of an individual character, and the unlimited possibilities of an improv class. There are thousands upon thousands of individual TTRPGs that have been published, with many more being released every day.

TTRPGs involve one or more people (the "Players") "role-playing" as individual fictional characters, and usually another person (the "Game Master") "role-playing" as the world, allies, and adversaries that the players interact with. The Players and Game Master (“GM”) work together to tell a collaborative story.

TTRPGs can be thought of as a structured form of playing pretend. They involve everyone imagining a shared set of events that they then decide how to respond to. It’s similar to two kids in a playground, with one saying, "There's a giant robot in the sky!", and the other replying, "I swing my hammer at it!".

Where TTRPGs differ from how (most) kids play pretend, is the inclusion of the GM and of the rules and dice. Rather than having one kid say "I shoot a fireball at you!" and the other arbitrarily says "No! My shield blocked it." TTRPGs include ways to impartially determine how to resolve events when there is an unknown chance of success or failure. As an example: if the Player says "I cast fireball!", the GM responds by telling them to roll a dice. Based on the number that the Player rolls, the GM determines if their fireball successfully hits their intended target or not.

Disclaimer: There is as much variety in TTRPGs as there are in the types of games that exist. This article will attempt to describe the broadest overview of what can be said about most TTRPGs. With everything written here, assume there are at least a handful of games that are the exception to the rule.

For the majority of TTRPGs, the goal of both the Players and the GM is to have fun together while telling a collaborative story.

Unlike board games, where everyone playing has a clear goal to work towards that ends with them either “winning” or “losing”, TTRPGs do NOT have a clearly defined way of measuring if someone has “won” or “lost”. However, this does NOT mean that there isn’t any risk, or that Players will always succeed or “save the day”. On the contrary, some TTRPGs emphasize placing the Players’ characters in extremely dangerous situations that will likely lead to those characters' deaths. 

To be more specific, although no one “wins” or “loses” while playing a TTRPG, most TTRPGs include ways of determining if Players "succeed" or “fail” at what they’re trying to accomplish. The goal then, of almost all TTRPGs, is to have fun while telling a collaborative story, regardless of whether the fictional characters are succeeding or failing.