Adelaide Roleplaying Community Inc.

Whether tabletop or LARP, comedy or tragedy, there are three main things that most players want in a game.  So it’s important for Game Masters to create opportunities for these three things to happen, and for players to make character design and in-play game decisions that will help them achieve these needs.

Need 1: To Feel Meaningfully Connected To The World. 

People want to feel like their decisions matter.  They want to leave their mark on the world.  Therefore the more opportunities they have to make meaningful decisions, the better.  If I can clearly see that by doing THIS Thing I caused THAT Result, then I’m going to feel like my presence in the game mattered. 

Therefore these consequences must make sense and be somewhat predictable, even only in hindsight, otherwise it’ll feel like meaningless roulette wheel spinning. Be mindful that what is meaningful depends on the scope of the game – making an older woman’s life happier can be meaningful in one whereas delaying a world-ending tyrant so that your allies have the chance to stop him would be meaningful in another.

Need 2: To have agency in choice.

It’s one thing for my actions to matter but do I have any choices?  And what sort of choices are possible in this game? Typically the more the merrier (within reason – too many choices can lead to confusion and choice paralysis)

This is where clarity around the scope of the game and a well-defined environment of play matters. If all interactions must end in a fight, that’s okay as then players can search for meaning in their fighting-related choices.  But if they can only sit and talk, chained to a wall and doomed to execution, than players seeking meaningful combats will be frustrated as they wait for the opportunity to assault prison guards – an opportunity that may never come.

Need 3: Immersion as Flow

In this case, immersion in the game refers to players feeling so immersed in the game they are completely absorbed and engrossed in their work. Often this means they are naturally acting and doing and talking through the character’s lens without analysing it as a player though it is possible to achieve flow through a more out of character lens if one thing progresses smoothly to another.

Immersion as a form of flow can be improved where one can move smoothly through transitions, environments and decisions with a minimum of tonal shifts or sudden changes of expectations.  It’s rare that flow can be sustained for an entire session but even a short scene of 20 minutes can be a much loved part of the game if it helps a person feel fully engaged within the story.

Summary

In other words, so long as you give players scope to make meaningful choices that matter and avoid too many jarring disruptions, players are going to have a reasonably good time in your game.