The human brain is a strange and wondrous thing. It can shift things to the foreground and background, deciding that some things are background routines, not worthy of our attention. When this happens, it has strange effects on both the perception of the thing itself and time.
The simplest example was the commute to work, back when we did these things. If no unique events occurred, you’d often get to work with little memory of the drive itself or an exact perception of the time, because the tools, techniques and experience of that commute were so familiar that it was relegated to the background.
Has this happened to the role-playing experience?
The usual internet caveats apply about this being a facet of everyone at the table and should not be taken as a criticism of the GM role. This article was updated on 8th November 2025 and upgraded from a blog post to an article.
It’s no coming-of-age story.
It’s speculated that one reason we perceive time as going faster as we get older is that it becomes a mass of routines. This contrasts with when we’re young and going through coming-of-age cycles, which means everything is new and different; as such, our brains assign less to the background. This causes us to focus, and, like a bullet-time effect, time is perceived to move more slowly.
This can also be why the weeks at work can fly by, but when you insert the new and the novel —let’s say travel —time goes slower, as it’s a rolling series of new experiences. I could also use the familiar analogy of sex with a familiar partner at this point – but you get the idea.
I’d argue it’s somewhat similar to that with the role-playing experience? It’s ceased to be a coming-of-age story or a glorious journey of self-discovery, and has become something routine, in which the same tools and techniques are applied in the same places, like a familiar recipe.
The familiar practice.
I argue that role-playing games are a practice. Now, with other practices, such as project management or business analysis, to name two, the whole point is to ensure they are as repeatable as possible. The purpose is to provide a mix of skills, tools, techniques and shared ways of doing things that are known, repeatable and routinised as much as possible.
This is great in a professional work experience, but I’m not sure the end stage of this is what we want to experience in our creative endeavours. Why? Because it’s like the Wizard of Oz, and we can all see behind the curtain.
This will be a skill montage here, and we make the ‘exciting’ but ever-so-familiar things up ourselves. This is the point where we conduct an investigation to uncover Schrödinger’s facts, things that might not have even existed until we rolled the dice. You have several factions to persuade, and you approach each one in turn to reach some abstract measure. The experience of navigating a complex amalgamation of tools and techniques that are found in a similar number of role-playing games.
The practice is being ruthlessly applied.
Similarly, the whole structure of the experience may start to get routine – opening combat, quest giver, montage to a location, etc, also born out of the ‘play as structure’ found in some role-playing games, over familiarity, or the slow, insidious infiltration of the one-shot template into regular sessions to the extent a campaign can feel like a series of highly efficient one-shot experiences rather than the unique, organic experience of the ‘longer’ form.
The result is that you can see it all coming; the expectation is no longer one of surprise, but of going through the structure and applying the tools, both of which have ceased to involve any sense of wonder or discovery. It’s at this point that the sex analogy I avoided probably starts to become more on target.
In that sense, the journey surrounding these things is complete, and you’re at ‘end-stage practice.’ I’d argue that no one is fully rewarded at the end stage of anything.
The spark isn’t in the tools.
The wonder isn’t in the practice itself, I hear you cry. This is true, as with all practices, the wonder is not supposed to be in the tools, techniques, and shared experiences of the practice, but in what they are applied to. The project has exciting and unique aspects, and the problem to which business analysis is being used is unique, engaging, and has fascinating stakeholders.
True, but that’s not always the case, and since role-playing games are a creative endeavour, the wonder isn’t just unique variables to be found in the ‘problem domain’ but something that has to be actively added.
The unique nature of role-playing games means the ruthless application of ‘end-stage practice’ in turn impacts the creative domain to which they are applied and actively influences the creative aspect of the experience.
Let’s use an example: the structure in Blades in the Dark may be exciting at first, but does there come a point where the structure becomes too much of the creative domain rather than the framing for it? Let’s go even further, does the Blades in the Dark structure start to get used in other games to the extent that you play a campaign in a completely different system with a completely different campaign pitch, but it all ends up just feeling the same? The answer is yes. This means you can enjoy playing Blades in the Dark and then see it spread like a dispiriting virus.
This doesn’t have to happen, but it can happen.
Essentially, the practice becomes the creative domain to which it’s applied, and the divide between the two ceases to exist. Why? Because they provide a common language, a shortcut and a form of efficiency. When this happens, the structure stops becoming an ‘enhancing effect’ and instead becomes all there is. At this point, it feels a bit like the emperor has no clothes. The creative domain IS the elements of the practice.
Where did the discovery go?
Role-playing campaigns used to be fascinating because you didn’t honestly know where they would go. Would a session turn into a two-part affair? You didn’t know how long the campaign would be because you didn’t know exactly how it would turn out. The sessions wouldn’t feel all the same because they demanded different approaches to explore what they contained.
We all talk about play to find out these days, but is that truly what we are doing? Even when there is stuff to find out, create or discover, it feels like it’s being found and delivered within the same structures and routines. It’s not discovery and exploration at that point; it feels more like you’re working the system.
Let me ask a question: what makes a role-playing experience feel like a video game? Many would start waxing on about characters focused on tactical combat, minaitures and battlemats. I think you can argue that games without these things have become so structured and routine that it’s like playing a video game; the ‘coded rule structure’ has become too much of the experience.
What do you do?
I am sure it differs for different styles of play, but for me it comes down to the below:-
- Have something to say by ensuring your creative domain is layered with intent, emotion, and why
- Break the structure as you’re in a campaign so you’re not constraine by time
I think that as the gaming table gets busier, older and more familiar, I’d say even glib, with the practice, these two things are in danger of not happening, thus increasing the risk of the outcomes we’ve speculated on earlier in this post.
Have something to say
While the role-playing ‘medium’ differs, we can compare it to scripted media. If what you’re creating doesn’t have anything to say, you’re just going through the ‘practice of writing’ and the structures and tools become more present, or even all that’s present, rather than what truly matters.
I want an experience that focuses on what’s truly important, less on the practice of how and more on why the players at the table are there and why the characters are in the events at all. In the chain of the meaningful why, who are the protagonists, what questions are they seeking answers to, and what change does it drive? What are the people, ideas, and institutions that shape that space? Based on all that is there, is there anything we are trying to say and explore? You can then apply any structure you feel is helpful in ‘enhancing that foundation,’ but the foundation is essential.
I also want nothing to exist in isolation. Physical conflict should rarely occur without something else in play. A skill montage seldom happens without something key being affected, either immediately or later, by its outcome. The situations in the game, outside the characters, should reflect what issues the characters are exploring.
Basically, the tools and techniques are not only applied to a distinctly separate creative domain, but the creative domain hopefully also has another layer.
Break the structure
I’m going to say it. I don’t want to turn up to a gaming session and know before it starts how it’s going to play out structurally. The truth is that this trap is so easy to fall into these days. It’s like you’re ticking them off a list. You can accept that in a one-shot that has to meet a specific time objective or deliver on certain experiences, but in a campaign, the whole point is you don’t have that restriction.
You have time to let things breathe.
You can structure sessions completely differently. You can give the ideas space and span them across an additional session. You can realise the ideas in play aren’t going to be conclude as quickly as you thought and allow the campaign to run longer. The advantage of a campaign is that you can explore and be excited by all these things!
This is probably why I like games like Fate and Cortex as they have structures that deal with pushing the narrative but feel less constraining in terms of actual structure. They’re sort of a meta-structure that supports the structure you’ve decided best serves the ideas the table has brought into play, rather than prescriptively giving a structure to proceedings.
I run exceedingly sparingly, like ludicrously little so it’s both easy for me to say, and it also means when I do run it’s a focus in my life rather than just a side order among other events – but it was one thing I liked about the Werewolf: Accelerated campaign – the sessions didn’t feel the same in structure they got the structure they deserved. The campaign’s length also expanded to accommodate the table’s story without overstaying its welcome.
And, Finally…
At this point, I’d usually summarise the conclusions, but I think that’s been done well enough. I’ll finish by saying I’m at a crossroads with my involvement in the role-playing hobby. I feel I am at the point where it’s going to go in interesting and new directions, or it’s going to wither on the vine.
A part of that is the sense of discovery and exploration in how the ideas in a session are explored has been lost. It’s all too easy for efficient structures and practices to become all there is, and for everything to become predictable.
Everything feels more predictable.