Dear L,
Recently I found an activity that I seem to enjoy quite a lot; making my dinner at a grocery store salad bar. It's a habit that I can't seem to shake, something that I was doing quite regularly during my long trip through Scandinavia. But back then, it was more about stuffing as much nutrition as possible as cheaply as possible. But now I have made a game out of it. Almost every time I visit my local grocery store, there are different salad items at the salad bar. Some days it's pasta, some days it's rice, some day's it's both. There are some mainstays, like meatballs or tuna, but the majority of items change every day. Initially, after I found out about the salad bar I was trying to create a balanced meal. Some protein, some carbs, some greens; but at some point I threw that framework away. One day I took three eggs and one meatball. Some days I take only rice and tuna. Some days I take pasta and rice. Some days I take only pasta. Some days I get a satisfying meal, some days not so much. But I can't seem to stop playing the salad-building game. The fun is in probing the possibility space where you usually don't think of going; by being a person with slightly unhinged food habits who knows how boiled eggs, penne and mozzarella mixed together tastes like (not particularly good).
Building a game which invites players to explore possibilities is a daunting task, but salad bars seem to nail it. It's a world of flavours and textures inviting one to try things differently every time they come and play. Granted, grocery store salad is not particularly appealing, neither are they tasty, but the fun factor is undeniable; very similar to table-top role playing games, or TTRPGs.
TTRPGs are only a game in the sense that it's play, and not work, for the lack of a better word. The core idea is essentially gambling with stories, like me gambling with a salad mix. The players never really know what the combination of their choices will lead to, because there is dice involved. But it's tremendously fun to gamble with stories in a completely imaginary world; the only limit of what one can gamble with is tied to how well their imaginations are expressed in words. TTRPGs are salad bars of imagination.
I remember when I was quite young, I had a magic colouring book. A wet paintbrush would colour a blank painting. It was fascinating, because I didn't know what colour the parrots were until I put my wet brush on it. Another time, my Father encouraged me to create a story, by asking people I met to contribute to the story. They would contribute by writing a little paragraph or two; he contributed first! I don't remember how much of the story was my writing in the end, or if it was any good, but I loved reading it. TTRPGs are a little bit like a combination of both; painting with expectations, on a blank painting, with a bunch of people you love!
It is common to describe TTRPGs as collaborative storytelling, and I would like to disagree. It's only collaborative storytelling if there is a listener, someone to tell the stories to; otherwise it's really a few people (or one) exploring a world that is completely dreamt up. It's the closest we can come to shared dreaming like they showed in the movie Inception. I don't think there is any story-telling involved, not in the traditional sense, at least. I can imagine these games became extremely popular in the 1970s because a lot of the hard work was already done by the creators of these games, the players (and the GM) just coloured the rest of it by filling the world with a little bit of life and a little bit of theatrical flair. Before the internet, if one wasn't outside, I can't imagine there was much to do inside that provided endless reciprocating entertaining moments. But I digress, I don't know how life was growing up in the 70s!
All I know that is that I found a genre of games, that comes in the form of books, requires nothing but a notebook, doesn’t even require a “table” and can be played just with imagination and friends. There's nothing else quite like it!
Best, A