GAMES
Tabletop RPGs
Aleksey Pilipenko
Lyceum BSPU,
Blagoveshchensk (Russia)
Everyone has played tabletop games at
least once. Usually when we hear “tabletop
game” the first thing that comes to our minds
is a group of people sitting at the table,
throwing a six-sided die and then moving their
figures from tile to tile on a flat board surface
one by one. Fascinating. This can be extremely
fun however it can be boring as well in case you
play it too much. If you learned every word of
the explanatory dictionary playing “Scrabble”,
and “Monopoly” there is nothing more than a
reason to yell at your friends meanwhile I would
like to invite you to the amazing world of
tabletop RPGs (role- playing game).
They have origins in wargaming that has
roots in ancient strategy games, particularly
Chess, which originated from the ancient
Indian game. According to RPG designer John
Wick, Chess can be turned into a role-playing
game if chess pieces such as the king, queen,
rooks, knights or pawns are given names, and
decisions are made based on their
motivations. According to Wick, Dungeons &
Dragons was a "sophisticated, intricate and
complicated combat simulation board game
that people were turning into a roleplaying
game" just "like giving your rook a motive" in
Chess.
Generally speaking, tabletop RPGs is a
genre of tabletop games where the whole
game happens in your head. Your fantasy is
the engine which helps you and other players
to make up a story and it is not as easy as it
might seem. So let me start with the basics.
RPG stands for Role-Playing Game. “What
does it mean?” you may ask. Well, by this I
mean that you are going to create a
character that will take a special role in the
story. The most popular setting for this kind of
games is a middle-age fantasy (like the world
of Middle-earth from J. R. R. Tolkien's books
Hobbit and Lord of the Rings), so if you ever
would like to be in the shoes of a stern dwarf
warrior or a cunning elf mage go on. In
tabletop RPGs you can take any role you want.
The most interesting part of tabletop
RPG is that you don't know how it will end. You
see, the gameplay is unfolding by the
interactions of the game master (GM) and
players. The latters have to make decisions to
move their character through the story but
GM rules the process and tells how the
situation changes after the decision the
players make. There`re no invisible walls to
block exploration, no limits to what your
c h a r a c te r l o o ks l i ke a n d t h e r e ' r e n o
programmed restrictions on your character's
behavior. The setting of the game can be
familiar, like a favorite TV show, or something
entirely alien and new. The only limitations are
the rules of the game and the collective
creativity of the people playing it.
To make the game more unpredictable
the rules engage to throw dices. It is the
easiest way to tell if a character can
successfully do something when he is
performing a high jump or hitting an apple with
a crossbow bolt in a distance of 60 meters
with closed eyes.
Unfortunately, only a few ones know
about tabletop RPGs. Although the
community is very friendly and newcomers are
always welcome.
Among other things, this kind of board
games also develops imagination as good as
reading books does because of the way the
players' fantasy is engaged. To be honest, this
is exactly what I love about tabletop RPGs.
Follow Aleksey on Instagram: @lekksha
54
SUNRISE
February 2019 №2