A Worthy Waste

TTRPGs are a waste of time.

TTRPGs tell stories with rules that give us instructions on how to talk and roll dice, which is an inherently inefficient process. Relying on conversation as a medium means that TTRPGs often take much longer to tell a story than the other mediums they borrow from and lean on. You could tell an RPG story in 4-6 hours or you could watch the movie in 2 hours. Dwelling inside those folds of those inefficiencies is a unique experience that the movie could never offer; we can connect, we can express, we can interrogate the story in ways no other medium allows us to.

That time we “waste” in TTRPGs also is what makes them worth playing.

What got me thinking about this was the number of Kickstarters and YouTube thumbnails I’ve seen exhorting how “fast” they play, particularly for combat. Setting aside the fact that many so-called efficiency gains offset themselves by adding further cognitive load in extra options and decisions, I’ve felt that the need for “speed” and productivity within TTRPGs misses the point of why we play them. TTRPGs are conversations at their core.

Should we be rushing our conversations? I don’t think I’ve had a conversation I consider great where someone was looking repeatedly down at their watch.

What I’m not advocating is systems that burden users with lots of processes and cognitive load for no reason.

But too often I see people trying to speed up something like combat in a game with a detailed language for it: “Combat is taking too long!” And the answer seems to be: speed it up! Start a timer when a person has a turn, or move to the next person if they hesitate too much. Digitize everything. Let’s hurry it up, people!

Again, this is a horrible way to have a productive conversation about anything. What I’ve learned is that there are two ways to approach this illusory speed problem: avoid the conversation or embrace the conversation.

A conversation that you don’t want to be having is too long, by definition. If you want the “highlights-only” view of a fight, that’s perfectly valid! It's OK to not really care about it, but support that desire by using a system that abstracts it or de-emphasize its role in your games.

But if you want to have a conversation, why not enjoy what is there? My experience and observation about the “too long combat” problem is that actually people aren’t having solid conversations about it. For many, combat is the part of the game where the conversation dries up, becoming prosaic as the table focuses on the tactical. You must wait your turn while others process out their tactical orders. I’ve played in and heard about games where there isn’t even a description of the events of the combat.

What I’ve found works is to lean into the parts of a TTRPG that it excels at; Describe the round by round, the blow by blow. Create a high-level picture of the fight, but attend to details. Pause in the combat and ask: what does that spell look like when you cast it? How does your fighting stance contrast with your opponent’s?

Tell the story, find the flow. Take the time you need to take.

Waste time, but make it the most worthy waste you can.