This is a story about my greatest user research journey so far, or depending who you ask, the time I lied to the internet.

SITUATION: TIME TO SLAY THE DRAGON?

Popular tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons released a new edition in Fall 2024. But it was hardly a big success -- releasing to boredom and rehashed discourse about mechanics unchanged from previous editions. With its lack of innovation and the rise of well-funded competition, the community agrees: the time to strike is now.

But on closer inspection, the community agrees on little else. Discussion about the problems with the game, and the promoted alternatives, are wildly contradicting. Why?

Dungeons & Dragons isn't actually one game. In fact, it's nine. By their own published research in the Dungeon Master's Guide (2024), it's designed to appeal to nine separate player archetypes. This broad audience reach is smart business sense, but the generalist approach is a delicate game at this scale, and the unsatisfied audience is beginning to fray.

I do not have the time or money or expertise to rival a AAA corporate title like Dungeons and Dragons (believe me, many have tried). But I could make a smaller game for a smaller audience. I don't have to be better than D&D at all things. Maybe I could be better at one thing.

Despite the monopolized landscape, could I prove the demand for tabletop roleplaying games that cater to storytellers?

TASK: DEFINING THE IDEAL STORYTELLER GAME

Using the Dungeon Master's Guide (2024)'s already professionally-researched descriptions as a guide, I found five users who fit the Storyteller archetype. I interviewed them about the games they played and why, making a user persona.

My biggest finding was this: these players don't necessarily hate mechanical, number-heavy rules. Some even enjoy them. The preference wasn't aversion to rules. The pain point was rules getting in the way of telling a story. If they know a course of action or outcome that would be narratively satisfying, mechanics like dice or pre-determined outcomes felt like rude interruptions. Storytellers like rules, but want rules that empower control.

Phrases like "story-rich" and "rules-lite" came up a lot. But they weren't well-defined. So, I defined them. First, I found several successful independent tabletop roleplaying games from the past 15 years praised for its narrativism and light rules. I broke each category down into specific capabilities. I returned to my users to help me rate and verify each one. Now, I could graph each game by its story-rich and rules-lite scores!

I know what my audience values, and I know what games best enact these values. I have a handle on the kinds of games I should make. But it's time to verify the pitch with a real, live audience.

ACTION: MARKETING THE GAME THAT ISN'T

First, I'd need a big audience. Good news: I had one! For the past year, I've been vlogging about design and tabletop roleplaying games on TikTok. I've grown an audience of 19k followers in this niche, and a backlog of content with analytics I can compare against. Perfect.

I made a book cover and advertisement for my game. I chose brand archetypes to complement the perspective of my players: the Innocent (valuing safety) and the Creator (valuing innovation). My game is targeted at new and casual players who want to tell their story. I want a low barrier to entry, and free room to play.

I went for a handdrawn notebook look and happy sunny yellow, evoking childhood daydreaming and how-to books. Your own jotted notes and doodles should seem just as authoritative as the official rules and guidance in the book itself.

I made a webpage for the game on my website at the time, borrowing the game's "official" brand identity, voice, and selling points. This adds legitimacy if people come looking. And just in case the advertisement was too unlike my other content to control for performance, I made a second, normal video post talking about the game in the same terms.

RESULTS: FOLLOWING THE ENGAGEMENT

My typical social media content gets about 5% engagement (likes/views). But marketing content is a different beast. According to my research, successful engagement for social media marketing posts is approximately 2.1%. For on-site "deep" engagement (say, signing up for a fake newsletter), successful engagement would be 5%. We have our thresholds!

After one week, my results were as follows:

Advertisement: 41 likes / 763 views. 5.37% interest rate. SUCCESS!

Video: 158 likes / 1263 views. 12.5% interest rate. SUCCESS!

Webpage: 4 sign-ups / 67 visitors. 5.97% interest rate. SUCCESS!

While overall views were down compared to my typical content (which is to be expected), the engagement was even higher.

As a designer in the tabletop gaming space, I can say with informed certainty this is a safe business move. And I'm not the only one! Big industry players are investing along the same lines I've discovered here.

When I conducted my market research on competitor games, I found Wanderhome was leading the pack for this untapped audience niche. The next week, in a complete industry curveball, Steve Jackson Games announced the acquisition of Possom Creek Games (creators of Wanderhome) as an imprint. The move confused most of the industry, but I may have happened upon the logic just before the announcement. This old giant is looking to make big plays, and one to keep an eye on.

Already, I've used my research to design several small games in this niche, like Sevens and Imagine. LOOM proper will release later this year.

Consent tools, or safety tools, are a mix of tips and tricks to make sure everyone playing a tabletop RPG is comfortable with the game they create together. This is a wonderful idea. If a movie is too upsetting, it's easy to turn off or leave. Games with friends or strangers, not so much. Consent tools are necessary and worthwhile. You should use them.

But consent tools are not perfect. Now, 5-10 years after their introduction, we should give them another look. It's a hard topic to breach, and my intent is certainly not to do away with them. Rather, for the sake of doing the best we can for ourselves and our players, we should be critical of the options we have -- and consider if there's a better way.

This is the first in a series of articles exploring different safety tools, what they do right, where they fall short; a case study about their most infamous failure; and finally, my proposal for new ones.

Note: This series is only possible due to the bravery and brilliance of designer Jay Dragon of Possum Creek Games first broaching this topic from a place of caring. She's opened a safe, good-faith door to talk about this topic for the sake of better player experiences. Thank you. And if you have not played Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast, you absolutely should.

Consent Checklists

A consent checklist is the most practical, widespread, pre-session problem-focused, GM-aiming tool in the space. The Monte Cook version is a gold standard. Before play, reach consensus on a list of on-screen, off-screen, and banned topics from play. While it should apply to all players' actions at all times, its biggest use is typically for the GM to plan content-appropriate sessions for the table.

As a session zero, collaborative campaign designing tool, it is the best idea we have. Myself and every GM I know use it every time. It's becoming as core to RPGs as rolling dice, and that's great! But "the best idea we have" is not to say it's perfect, and its age is starting to show. Standard PDF templates can be a time sink for topics never on the table. Custom ones take time to make, while the biggest themes are usually already present in a campaign pitch.

Fearing the Zero

Recently, I've noticed session zeros have started to feel bad to me. I've started to notice an unintended consequence. It feels related to the good intent but underwhelming results of trigger warnings, that similarly made navigating Tumblr feel emotionally taxing for a time. As checklists get more thorough, I often find myself morally and socially required to consider more horrors in rapid succession than any GM or player has ever asked of me over a whole campaign.

Starting a new campaign, with a new group of people, by meeting over an exhaustive gauntlet of creatively upsetting topics, feels bad. It feels like work. If you're a survivor of trauma like me, it can even feel triggering. But bringing that hesitation and stress to session zero goes against the whole point. Movies don't make you mentally engage with every upsetting topic that isn't in it first, and I think we know that would be a bad way to do things. I know we have to tell TTRPG stories ourselves, but this can't be the only way. So how can we protect the value while mitigating the harm?

Less is More?

To address this problem, I've started to put in the effort for custom-made checklists of the darker topics that will be in my campaigns, that players can narrow down based on their limits, alongside a general movie-style rating. If there's an upsetting topic fully outside the reasonable scope of our game, and someone goes out of their way to bring it up, there's probably bigger problems with that player that we would need to address right away anyway. But we realistically wouldn't need to make everyone think about that topic as a general rule at the top of every new game.

I also make the checklist available before the session zero, so players can pace themselves in a judgment-free zone. In session zero, we simply review what we already established so everyone's on the same page. This also improves player anonymity and makes those decisions firmly settled before we even start.

I think the reduced psychic damage of this method is worth it, but it does have a cost. A less-extensive process does open your table to more risks if unchecked content emerges in play. So, make sure you introduce something like the X-Card to supplement in-session play should anything come up. We'll talk about the X-Card and more next time. Stay safe, and good luck.

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As I come to the end of many projects and prepare to start another, I want to share one of biggest regrets. Scope is hard to manage. I've grown enough to make sure projects are finished, but I'm still working on making them good. How do you budget for delays, mistakes, and polish?

With some wonderful advice from Write, Publish, Repeat (affiliate link) I am moving to a three draft system. I quite like it so far. Maybe you will, too. Budget time to make your project three times, instead of once. This may mean a smaller scope, but you will get a better result.

Draft 1: Make It Real

It's easy to have ideas. If you've ever been called "creative", you're full of them. A few might even be good! But ideas aren't a useful form to anyone else. We have to convert them into something physical. This is the hardest part.

Whether it's written, typed, coded, or recorded, you have one job: get it on paper, as much and as fast as you can, by any means necessary. It's okay if it's terrible. If it helps, require it. This overcomes the static friction of getting started. Any material form is enough to start getting feedback, from others and yourself!

Draft 2: Make it Finished

Now it's time to make it complete. Your first draft is riddled with obvious broad-stroke errors and blanks for details. Your job now is to pave it over. Make a complete, full-detail pass written to an acceptable "finished" quality. Make changes where they need to be made. Your prose should be readable. Your art should be rendered. Your code should be complete and functional.

Your work does not, however, have to be perfect. If you find yourself freezing from perfectionism, set that part of your project aside. Settle on a quick solution: not leaving it blank, but a quick and bad answer. Your work does not need to meet your own wonderful standards. It just needs to reach a lowest-common denominator level that someone might publish.

Draft 3: Make it Good

Now it's time to shine. Sand and polish. Now is the time to fuss over word choice, or lighting, or optimization. Now, you get to play for style points. Play to your strengths. Make your work enough to make you proud.

Keep in mind, however, this phase is also a sprint: this is a test of your current skill ceiling, your instincts. Be aware of what your best is, for now. If you do not know how to improve something, that is okay. Make a note of it. You can always take some time practicing on other projects and make an updated version of this one later. Fans of your original will be happy to see it.

Thank you for reading. If you'd like to support my work and get exclusive shop discounts, please consider joining as a member.