Here's a question from the AMA form: "Do you feel like small creators like yourself suffer from the current state of tabletop games?"
To answer this, first I have to articulate what I see to be the 'current state of tabletop games.' There are a lot of ways to look at this, but I think the thing that seems most clear to me is that TTRPGs have a glut of all sorts of content -- of systems and settings, of Actual-Play style content, and of peripheral content like dice, modules, designed documents, etc.
A big part of the reason for this is that TTRPGs are an idiosyncratic space where a very, very high percentage of the consumers are also creators. To play a TTRPG obligated you to create something, usually -- at minimum a character, and beyond that, you can create everything up to an including a custom game system of your own to play. People very reasonably look at the vast majority of TTRPG (particularly D&D) content out there and say to themselves "I can do better than this," and then there's very little stopping them from going out and doing it.
As a result, there are a ton of creators vying for the attention of an audience who are largely creators themselves, so it's hard to distinguish one's self enough to attract an audience at scale -- whatever scale looks like for you. I get the sense from looking at TTRPG Twitter that other small creators like me feel this squeeze -- they work very hard, and produce some very good work, and don't tend to get the rewards, either social or financial, that they feel the major producers in the space are getting.
Personally, though, I do not feel this squeeze. It would be fun to have an audience 100x the size of PTFO's current audience, but it would not be 100x more fun, and it would certainly come with a lot of headaches, so I could take it or leave it. To have critical mass, I think this project needs about 10-20 people responding to the polls, and we have that. Everything else is gravy.
I think my mission statement is to create tabletop-style stories with an audience that's bigger than can fit at my tabletop. 'Tabletop-style' to me means a lot of different things, but probably the most important thing is that no single person knows exactly how things are going to unfold -- the dice and the readers (who, in PTFO, have a blended co-player/co-GM role) can have big influence in how things unfold.
Right now, PTFO has 78 subscribers, with about 15-20 regularly participating at the polls. In the context of the above mission statement, that's ~5-25x the number of people I could reasonably game with at a traditional tabletop game, so I feel like I'm winning. :)
I think you're at the forefront of a new gaming niche here, a fusion of fiction and solo gaming: an asymmetrical actual play play by post if you will! (Oooh, fancy talk.)
We all know getting a group together regularly can be challenging, which must be linked to the growth of solo gaming recently. Even conventional PbP's regularly falter. But this is something different that solves a lot of the logistical issues of all of them, while maintaining a unified voice. I can see more people doing what you're doing here, but I very much doubt they'll be doing so at anywhere the same quality!
Thanks man! You've been reading since almost the beginning and I always love seeing your name pop up in the comments. :)
I'm definitely seeing a bumper crop of these types of projects, both with and without reader input. For me, it's the polls that really make it a game, but it's also just a really fun and interesting way to structure fiction, even without the decision points.
Play by Post came to mind for me too. Another interesting lens might be “what CYOA always wanted to be”. We get to the end of a page, vote for the next page to turn to, and voilà, the page appears.
The point about the length is interesting and highlights how different this form is from a novel. Vahid's attachment to the staff would probably seem like it's happening too late, and the initial part with the crinwin and Blodwen might well not survive the editing process as a result. But in this serialized form, the crinwin threat could reassert at any moment, and the mystery of Blodwen's green eyes might move back to center stage. (There's also a scenario where Blodwen plays a key role in the current plotline - a pivotal, unknown source of power against the Hillfolk sorcerer.)
I've found it interesting that, despite the fact that we haven't mentioned the crinwin much at all in the fiction itself, it still *feels* like they're out there (at least to me), thanks to their presence on a few different poll options -- which is probably how the people of Stonetop feel too, since the terrifying nighttime raid by the crinwin is less than a year past.
I think that's why we like serials more right? It gives us the option of taking our time. We need not follow the tried and true formula of "only the interesting bits and only what moves the story forward."
Definitely. I've scrapped a number of ideas and scenes based on the results of reader polls -- usually, when I'm imagining the future of the story, I'll have a couple of directional ideas for scenes, set-pieces, events, NPCs, etc., and I'll create the story polls with those ideas in mind, using the voting to focus on just a few directions, with the other ideas getting dropped, with the potential of being re-used later.
There've also been a few moments where I discarded certain courses of actions for the individual PCs because they would throw off the balance of the ensemble and make the story primarily about a single character, which I want to avoid, as I would in the context of a traditional TTRPG, since in most cases you want the story to be about all the PCs and not just one of them.
Here's a question from the AMA form: "Do you feel like small creators like yourself suffer from the current state of tabletop games?"
To answer this, first I have to articulate what I see to be the 'current state of tabletop games.' There are a lot of ways to look at this, but I think the thing that seems most clear to me is that TTRPGs have a glut of all sorts of content -- of systems and settings, of Actual-Play style content, and of peripheral content like dice, modules, designed documents, etc.
A big part of the reason for this is that TTRPGs are an idiosyncratic space where a very, very high percentage of the consumers are also creators. To play a TTRPG obligated you to create something, usually -- at minimum a character, and beyond that, you can create everything up to an including a custom game system of your own to play. People very reasonably look at the vast majority of TTRPG (particularly D&D) content out there and say to themselves "I can do better than this," and then there's very little stopping them from going out and doing it.
As a result, there are a ton of creators vying for the attention of an audience who are largely creators themselves, so it's hard to distinguish one's self enough to attract an audience at scale -- whatever scale looks like for you. I get the sense from looking at TTRPG Twitter that other small creators like me feel this squeeze -- they work very hard, and produce some very good work, and don't tend to get the rewards, either social or financial, that they feel the major producers in the space are getting.
Personally, though, I do not feel this squeeze. It would be fun to have an audience 100x the size of PTFO's current audience, but it would not be 100x more fun, and it would certainly come with a lot of headaches, so I could take it or leave it. To have critical mass, I think this project needs about 10-20 people responding to the polls, and we have that. Everything else is gravy.
I'm really curious as to what you feel overall as a writer in this specific niche. What would you say your purpose or mission statement is?
I think my mission statement is to create tabletop-style stories with an audience that's bigger than can fit at my tabletop. 'Tabletop-style' to me means a lot of different things, but probably the most important thing is that no single person knows exactly how things are going to unfold -- the dice and the readers (who, in PTFO, have a blended co-player/co-GM role) can have big influence in how things unfold.
Right now, PTFO has 78 subscribers, with about 15-20 regularly participating at the polls. In the context of the above mission statement, that's ~5-25x the number of people I could reasonably game with at a traditional tabletop game, so I feel like I'm winning. :)
I think you're at the forefront of a new gaming niche here, a fusion of fiction and solo gaming: an asymmetrical actual play play by post if you will! (Oooh, fancy talk.)
We all know getting a group together regularly can be challenging, which must be linked to the growth of solo gaming recently. Even conventional PbP's regularly falter. But this is something different that solves a lot of the logistical issues of all of them, while maintaining a unified voice. I can see more people doing what you're doing here, but I very much doubt they'll be doing so at anywhere the same quality!
Thanks man! You've been reading since almost the beginning and I always love seeing your name pop up in the comments. :)
I'm definitely seeing a bumper crop of these types of projects, both with and without reader input. For me, it's the polls that really make it a game, but it's also just a really fun and interesting way to structure fiction, even without the decision points.
Play by Post came to mind for me too. Another interesting lens might be “what CYOA always wanted to be”. We get to the end of a page, vote for the next page to turn to, and voilà, the page appears.
I love that take. A sort of west marches style of game if you will. A fascinating take I hadn't considered myself.
The point about the length is interesting and highlights how different this form is from a novel. Vahid's attachment to the staff would probably seem like it's happening too late, and the initial part with the crinwin and Blodwen might well not survive the editing process as a result. But in this serialized form, the crinwin threat could reassert at any moment, and the mystery of Blodwen's green eyes might move back to center stage. (There's also a scenario where Blodwen plays a key role in the current plotline - a pivotal, unknown source of power against the Hillfolk sorcerer.)
I've found it interesting that, despite the fact that we haven't mentioned the crinwin much at all in the fiction itself, it still *feels* like they're out there (at least to me), thanks to their presence on a few different poll options -- which is probably how the people of Stonetop feel too, since the terrifying nighttime raid by the crinwin is less than a year past.
I think that's why we like serials more right? It gives us the option of taking our time. We need not follow the tried and true formula of "only the interesting bits and only what moves the story forward."
This is what makes tabletop far different.
Do you ever think screw it that plot point isn't worth it and drop an idea all together?
Definitely. I've scrapped a number of ideas and scenes based on the results of reader polls -- usually, when I'm imagining the future of the story, I'll have a couple of directional ideas for scenes, set-pieces, events, NPCs, etc., and I'll create the story polls with those ideas in mind, using the voting to focus on just a few directions, with the other ideas getting dropped, with the potential of being re-used later.
There've also been a few moments where I discarded certain courses of actions for the individual PCs because they would throw off the balance of the ensemble and make the story primarily about a single character, which I want to avoid, as I would in the context of a traditional TTRPG, since in most cases you want the story to be about all the PCs and not just one of them.