DB

I don’t know if you exist.

When I first started my foray into Tabletop RPGs (TTRPG) 8 years ago, I never thought that I would begin this journey. I thought that me and my friends would start the nerdy thing, say that we did it, and move on from then. I have drifted apart from those friends since then, but you? I didn’t know I’d be pursuing you, because I don’t know if you exist.

Let alone a perfect game, I didn’t even know that TTRPGs existed until high school. I think I heard about the game of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). It was one of those phrases and words, and I can’t say when I learned about its existence. But, I associated it with nerd culture. And guess what? I was a nerd. Was that enough to pursue it? No. None of my friends knew about it, none of us were playing it, and so I wouldn’t explore it for a while. We were too busy finding diamonds and stealing blue buffs for any make em ups to cross into our world.

I say “our world”, in reference to the reality of hobbies–do’s-and-do-nots that were understood between me and my friends. But for me? I had a few things that were different about my personal world that were different than “our world”.

For my world, make em ups were (and still are) very important to me. I grew up reading fantasy novels, and I got heavily invested in the Pendragon series written by D.J. MacHale. A part of that journey was finding the back of the books, where there was a fan site for the series. It had a forum section, where I first found my way into online messaging boards, fan fiction, and eventually…roleplaying. Text roleplaying.

Text roleplay (RP)! Yes, the games you know as play-by-post, and where you assume the control of one character (in most RPs) or many characters (usually between 2 person RPs) through a written medium. They were different than Multi User Dungeons (MUD), which, from my understanding, were text-based adventure games where you could play in a text-based computer game with other players. In contrast to a MUD, us RPers were artists, not gamers! We were each small authors who collaborated and created stories together, each stating, supporting, and establishing a reality that could only be found between the starting post and ending post of a text thread in an online forum.

For the RPs that I were involved with, there were few rules that governed what could be done and how in-game conflict was resolved. You created characters that would fit within the fiction of that specific RP. Sometimes you had to be approved by the creator of the RP. Sometimes it was free play–anyone could jump in. A few RPs had archetypal characters that fit within a web of messy relationships. You would have to apply to these RPs for the slot of one of the archetypes. You would have to propose your character’s concept, and at times, give a writing sample. For some RPs, you had to submit an application before you could play. (Mind boggling, right? Nobody was making money off of this.)

After the approval process? Free reign…sort of. You could only write from the perspective of your character, and you couldn’t control another person’s character. You had to suggest what may happen to them and allow the opposite player to resolve what would happen. It was a narrative give and take. (Thinking back now, it was a lot like improv.) We would do scenes with our characters…and that’s all that I can recall ever doing.

We didn’t have rules. We subsisted on a spirit of creating and supporting each other. If your character was punched in the face, it was because you were offered that by someone else and chose for that to happen. RP was the vast freedom to become anyone, do anything, and create whatever stories we wanted to. It filled long hours, and I spent hundreds of hours composing posts for multiple RPs.

It could have been as simple as that, but I didn’t want it to be that simple. I started to gain interest in RPs where the posts were longer. Evocative. Filled with narration, beautiful landscapes, heart wrenching thoughts, and conflicting feelings. Length wasn’t everything (I say, as I ramble with this first post), but darn it I wanted to write longer make em ups. If I could get in an RP like that, then I would have so much fun. That’s all that it was.

I became a better writer because of that. And over the years time would pass and I would stop RPing as much. Going through the public schooling system in Hawaii, I can’t say that I learned about what made a good scene. Our English classes were about analyzing theme and messages. Basic plot structure? We learned to read; we didn’t learn how to write–not in a way that mattered to me. We learned how to write for tests. We didn’t learn how to live in a story, how to give a character life, or how…how a story was told.

Despite not having concrete ideas of how a story worked, we each read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies. We did our best. And you know what? It was fun. It still is fun.

But man, it was nothing like a TTRPG.

I don’t know what made me watch my first D&D game. Knowing what I know now, it was surely a hidden eldritch machination of the old gods. I know that I looked it up on YouTube. The very first sample of actual play that I watched was Acquisition Incorporated. It was glorious. It was chaotic, fun, and man did it have some of the bones of text RP. I knew that I immediately wanted to try it.

I convinced my high school friends to try it with me, which wasn’t much trouble. “Hey, we’re already nerds, so we may as well do the nerdiest thing that there is, right?”

We tried it. It was fun. But, it wasn’t exactly that I wanted. Bothered by that itch of finding what I want, I explored the web to find it. I watched more actual plays. I watched Critical Role. I saw what Matthew Mercer’s table was and I chased it for my own table. It wasn’t right. I watched Dungeon Mastering tips. I wasn’t right. I learned about other games. I tried them. They weren’t quite right. (In the spirit of Whiplash, not quite my tempo, but with the flavor of…what tempo do I even want?)

I’m sure that a lot of this journey is because of my struggle with perfectionism. I would like to think that a greater part of this journey and struggle was because I just wanted to pull my friends into the worlds that I knew, and to show them the joy that make em ups bring.

I just wanted more make em ups.

To that end, will I ever find the perfect game?

Will I ever find you, Perfect Game?

I don’t think I will. And that’s okay. That’s art, and that’s what it means to be human. We will be imperfect, we will chase you anyway, and when we finally find a broken piece of you, Perfect Game, we will celebrate.

And even when we haven’t, we will celebrate anyway.

Because your cousin, the Last Game I Played?

It wasn’t you.

But it was pretty damn good.