DB

If you’ve been keeping up with this blog in any amount of way, it is not a secret that I am both an improviser, but that I am also a fan of jazz. I am a fan of the music, the culture, and the magical things that can happen when you share a language–albeit a nonverbal one–with another person.

In the jazz community and in music in many places, people organize jam sessions. These are events where you can get up and play with other musicians and see what it’s like to play with people that you don’t normally play with. It can be a good way to practice, socialize, and to form new groups that appreciate one another.

The same goes for the improv world. The improv world stole the idea of a musician jam and many improv theaters will have improv jams. These are events where you can get up and play with all sorts of improvisers. You get to try practice, socialize, and form new groups.

This idea is stolen and taken and borrowed from all over. When I was trying Lindy Hop, a type of swing dance, there were social dances. You could come with a dance partner, or you could come alone, and you could ask anyone to dance. It was a way to practice, socialize, and form new groups.

The same is in video game jams. It’s a way to practice, socialize, and form new groups.

If forming teams and socializing with people is the norm in these other social mixers in other places, why isn’t it the norm in the tabletop role playing game (TTRPG) world?

I have a few thoughts on that.

A very brief survey

I asked a few people if team forming was or was not a normal thing in the TTRPG game jam space, who mentioned a few points as to why team forming does not seem to be the norm. One, is that in video game jams, is that they are typically for a shorter, time-limited jam, so it guarantees that each person on the team will be dedicating a similar amount of time to the development of the project. Because it is a shorter commitment in a video game jam, it is easy to form teams without the expectation or burden of a large game.

Itch.io jams typically run for longer period of times, which make it a little more difficult to commit to a project for a longer period of time, and to organize a time for that long.

Besides the potential issue in getting people to commit to a team or a group, which exists in all sorts of spaces, there is the greater issue of a lack of initiative in facilitating team forming by organizers of Itch.io jams. In video game jams, there are discussion threads for organizing teams and advertising your skills, which are clear invitations for collaboration. This is not the norm for every Itch.io jam from my brief survey of the available jams in the past few months, as I have checked any linked Discord servers and discussion threads within the Community tabs of the jams themselves.

We can place blame on the organizers, or longer jam periods, but maybe it’s not just the platform. It’s the people–the writers.

NaNoWriMo and writers

I have participated in more than my fair share of National Novel Writing Month events, where the goal is for writers to hit 50k words in a written work within the month of November. The goal is to just get any amount of words written down every day, or periodically enough that something as intimidating as 50k words can be reached by the end of the month.

Writers from all over organize themselves in their local NaNoWriMo branches, organizing write-in events and whatnot. Similar to the TTRPG jams, there is a similar “together but separate” culture. Everyone is all writing their own stories, prose, and whatnot. They may gather in a physical location or plan a time to write at the same time, or encourage each other to write more and more and more…

But it is rare to find writers that are actively collaborating in my local NaNoWriMo. Co-authors are rare on bookshelves when it comes to novels. It’s much more common for a writing group to provide partnership in different ways–feedback and critique.

This is the same in a TTRPG. Most TTRPGs, zines or whatnot, are written forms of communication, so it would make sense that it would share a lot of spirit with that of writers. Each person will do their own thing, chipping away at their ideal of a project, and sometimes they will seek critique from others to improve themselves. Sometimes, these novels will stay hidden for years, unread to anyone. Sometimes, they get pushed out to an editor, or without an editor, or self published somewhere.

Sound familiar?

There was another perspective from the people that I surveyed–it was that it was an uneven workload. Creating a TTRPG is an uneven workload in that one person writes all the material, and they typically hire other folks to do other things–art and layout. Until the book/TTRPG is finished, the cover art can’t be done.

The inspiration loop

There is a bit of a portion of Matt Colville video where he talked about his experience at Turtle Rock Studios, and how he was a writer there. One of the stories that fascinated me was one where he talked about getting a portrait for a character, and then he wrote a story of that character inspired by their design, which inspired other parts of the games.

The inspiration loop is the idea that other facets and aspects of a project can inspire creation of other things. From an improv set and premise, you can create a comedy skit. From a war game, you can create Dungeons and Dragons. From jumping, you can create Super Mario.

From art, you can create gameplay, and can create art creates gameplay creates art creates–

But, it’s not that easy.

Everyone has to pay rent

At the end of the day, everyone has to make a living and has to pay bills to live in the world. If we could freely live without the burden of needing to be useful, because we had automated and created a post-scarcity society, then we could freely create and consume what we enjoyed.

Because we have to pay the bills, it can be hard to do other things for fun or without pay. It’s a sad part of many peoples lives, who cannot spare enough time for themselves.

But hey, maybe you do have the time, and maybe a capacity to reach out to others. Maybe you have a desire to create.

Maybe you could create with someone else.

A conversation–

Our stories are made that way…shouldn’t our games follow that?