#RPGaDay2025 - 29 Connect

(I’ll knock out the last of these today, then get back to my other observations and musing. Maybe even get back to some other design work… we’ll see)

I’ve always found TTRPGs to be a fun way to connect with other people, to connect with story and to connect with an imagined world that simply doesn’t work in most other mediums. The SNAFU SRD is specifically designed to reflect this concept. Everything in the game is connected, it’s all about the connections, the interactions between parts in a network…the way ripples pass along the web of those connections, and the way they may magnify when multiple wave ripples combine in unexpected ways.

Even though this system does everything I think it needs to, the trick to a good TTRPG system isn’t just the ability to simulate elements, or drive a story. The trick is to form meaningful connections to the players, because that’s what the game is, yet that’s only a part of it. A TTRPG is a tool to facilitate the connection of the players to an imagined world and to share an experience exploring it. That exploration may come in the form of conquest, which should send it’s own ripples through the web of connections that formulate the environment within…it may come in the form of a two-way understanding where players use their characters to paradoxically explore their own psyche…it may come in the form of guiding a collective subconscious toward a satisfying narrative. Regardless, the connections are there.     


 

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