Let’s start with tabletop role-playing games, specifically Dungeons & Dragons. There are many different websites offering services with the most popular clearly being Roll20, a platform even I have employed from time to time.
Don’t get me wrong, I love writing for the system, and as a canvas on which to paint a narrative work, it is fantastically liberating, which is why I have been a GM for 27 of the 30 years I’ve been gaming. But as a player controlling a character, I am still shocked at how utterly boring and unfair the game can be when played to the letter of the rules.
Even a morose and gloomy game like This War of Mine tried its best to induce responses of guilt and sadness, only for the game’s muddled and irritating mechanics to sap any possible emotional investment out of a moment.
The bankrupt ethics of my players notwithstanding, I came to realize that most players, regardless if it’s in a tabletop role-playing game or a narrative, campaign-driven board game, would never accept personal responsibility for anything their characters ever did, even if they had a hand in the creation of their characters and their personality.
Many of these titles still reflect nostalgia for the original 80's retro cyberpunk. Seeing these throwbacks finding their way back to the frontline has me concerned, mostly from their anachronistic nature.
I don't understand this fanatical desire to dump every form of fantastic or weird fiction into a "punk" moniker. A simple Google search will find other variations, including spacepunk, weirdpunk—why don't we just create a term, omnipunk, that covers them all (checked...already taken).
The last trophy locked in plier-like kung-fu grip by paper gaming was the adaptive story—a game players can affect and alter, even to the extent of changing the entire world by the end of it.
Alas, that does leave a bunch remaining, the games limited in player count with no included rules for solitaire play. Ones with deception and subterfuge like Sheriff of Nottingham or straight-up party games are basically out, but even looking at my own collection, that still leaves dozens I could play.
Most solitaire games are available as even ones stating a minimum of two players can often still be played by assuming two characters. Even games limited to two players often force them to play two characters each.
I spent most of my youth playing tabletop games. My all-time favorites came from a company called R. Talsorian Games, which included titles like Me...
