I have a strong belief that the rise of so much actual play streaming of tabletop RPGs is not only good for awareness and building audiences for the games, but also for the actually quality of TTRPG design as a whole. (Thread!)
— Rodney Thompson (@AntarianRanger) June 3, 2018
So many people who didn’t have access to regular gaming would stay involved in the hobby by reading supplements and spending time mentally theorycrafting. Divorced from actual play, though, this theorycrafting lacked reality checks and grounding.
— Rodney Thompson (@AntarianRanger) June 3, 2018
Now, if you don’t have time or a group, you can stay involved by watching people actually play the games, and see what real play at tables is like. It’s like having a silent seat at the table.
— Rodney Thompson (@AntarianRanger) June 3, 2018
I think this has shifted conversations away from theoretical, platonic ideals of what happens at the game table, and focuses more on what really matters: how people actually play the games, and what enhances, or gets in the way of, fun.
— Rodney Thompson (@AntarianRanger) June 3, 2018
To put it another way: I think streaming helps us keep from getting so far up our own asses that we lose sight of the experience that a game’s design actually produces at the table.
— Rodney Thompson (@AntarianRanger) June 3, 2018
I honestly wish streaming had been a bigger deal at the time 5E was in playtesting, would have been a valuable source of data points in addition to internal playtesting and surveys.
— Rodney Thompson (@AntarianRanger) June 3, 2018