As of September 2021, I’ve been creative writing for two decades, and of those twenty years, I’ve been a freeform roleplayer for a decade and a half. I’ve more or less dabbled in tabletop RPGs in all of that time, too, but never with the consistency of my freeform roleplay.

It’s not that I dislike tabletop RPGs, either. It’s just that I don’t vibe with a lot of them. What I like out of roleplay, really, is shared creative writing- getting to interact with people you like, basically as an actor, and together coming up with a story that can surprise everyone involved. Basically, I like cooperative discovery writing. Which is unsurprising, as I am a discovery writer in general, preferring minimal, fluid plot outlines where bullet points may be shifted to-and-fro as they await eventual expansion into a thousand words, or two. It keeps my adrenaline going, my interest ensnared as I build this world in a way that’s close to the eyes of a reader.

When I look for RPGs, what’s most important to me is how they address my five big most common problems with the genre:

Problem 1. I’m big on the “time to events” ratio. Lopsided “time to events” is a problem you can blunder into in both freeform RP and tabletop RPG: spending too long zoomed in on one scene. If freeform roleplayers don’t know when to cut, or try and drag out repetitive things (ahem) for a few too many paragraphs of describing more or less the same thing, it can bloat the activity by an hour or two longer than it needed and lose excitement. This is one of my big problems with RPGs, too- if you can imagine a game where a turn of combat feels like it takes an hour, where a weekly session could be consumed by one encounter, that’s what I’m talking about. I don’t like roll-to-hit.

Problem 2. I find one of my problems with a lot of RPGs is that the RP and G aspects are at odds with each other. This, of course, is no surprise from a hobby derived from wargaming. And it’s not that great fiction can’t come from these kinds of games, or more simulationist games in general. However… as a discovery writer who concedes to a bit of plotting, I don’t like it. Since I’m after more or less the same thing as creative writing, this means the typical tabletop games don’t cut it for me; I seek the drama of characters, not of plot and world. If a character dies, then it best be for the good of the fiction. Random deaths to traps or encounters usually do not good fiction make.

Problem 3. I don’t like the separation of players and game masters. Again, I know incredible things have come out of this- but hailing from the world of freeform roleplay, I’m too attached to participants sharing the roles of adventurer and worldbuilder.

Problem 4. Sadly, for me, most pre-baked settings are boring. As a creative writer, I’m not looking for a world, I’ll make my own, thank you very much. And you best fucking believe there will not be generic goblins and fantasy races anywhere in sight unless I am doing something universe brain with them… or, uh, making them really hot.

Problem 5. I love huge rulebooks as coffee-table books. They can really capture my imagination. However, I don’t like the games that huge rulebooks run. C’est la vie. If the thickness of the tome or complexity of a character sheet make me groan, I probably won’t ever play it. So I prefer my game to be as lean as possible- rules-lite.

So if I have so many grievances with popular TTRPGs, why do I even bother with this kind of game? Because as much as I complain, there’s a lot about them I love, still!

What I love about tabletop RPGs is the element of surprise. I love just enough structure to feel like there’s a reasonable balance of things out of your hands and within their grasp. That you can commandeer the course of the ship, especially together as a group, even if no one has charted it out, and still reach a metaphorical island filled with treasure. That emergently, you have big surprises and small surprises along the way, and ones that aren’t “the players are going off the rails and causing stress to the GM” or “someone died because they didn’t tell the GM they tapped their ten foot pole on a wall.” (I’m generalizing for comedy! For comedy!)

I love just enough structure to make it feel like there’s a logic to the universe, that we are all achieving success in the confines of a system that’s not necessarily going to give it to us, in a way that’s conducive to good storytelling. To bring childhood make-believe to the next level by going into options and setting Difficulty from “NONE” to “SOME.” By giving some weight to the world with some light systems and rules without falling down a rabbit hole into simulationism nor rotely playing out, in slow-motion, computations that are best left to video games. For make-believe to become some damned good structured improv, a really surprising and interesting activity of collaborative discovery writing or storytelling.

So, of course, what I’m looking for would be referred to as a storygame, one that’s as rules-lite as possible and agnostic to the setting of its world. I’m quite familiar with many storygames, already, and love to catch sight of a new one in the wild. I accumulate games that come anywhere close to this criteria as my personal dragon’s hoard of tabletop paraphernalia.

But I’ve yet to find a game that I feel hits my platonic ideal. I’ve found many games I love and adore! But somewhere out there- whether it’s waiting for me to find it, or I have it and it’s waiting for me to look at it from the right angle, or it’s currently outside this physical plane just waiting for me to snatch it from the ether and give it form…

…is the Ultimate Storygame for Bun.

I want to find it, or make it, and share the journey and ultimate result with you. In my mind, I have called this quest ISOTIR, an acronym of “In Search of the Ideal (Improv) RPG.” Maybe it’ll be a good name, if it happens I have to make the game myself!

I will be looking over RPGs for ISOTIR, sharing my observations and opinions. It’s my personal research and development project after more than a decade of dabbling with the TTRPG hobby. One day, I’ll figure out just what the ultimate storygame for me is, and when I do, I will share that exciting narrative paradise with you, too!

Bun