The Social Game

I started roleplaying in the early days. When character sheets could fit on an index card and the only rolls you made were for combat or avoiding traps. The games were one long dungeon crawl, slowly mapping out confusing underground caves with traps around every corner. Every time the space widened up into a 10 by 10 room you had a fight.

For no reason.

I mean, every single thing we came across was an enemy.

So, every single game was combat.

Sometimes it was short combats one right after another, and sometimes they were massive long combats that took hours.

Roleplaying really wasn’t roleplaying. It was about stats on a character sheet and that cool +2 Sword for Smiting you found. If you asked someone to tell them about there character it would sound like this:

“So he is a fighter with an 18 strength and he wears half plate, with a large shield and a + 2 long sword.”

“What’s his name?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I just call him fighter right now.”

Thankfully table top roleplaying games have advanced and the games and game options today are so much better than back in the olden days. Today we have games that focus on mystery and exploration and survival and even social.

They say that roleplaying games need to have three things to be successful;

Combat (or Action), Exploration (or Investigation), and Social.

It’s that last one that people tend to skip and honestly, it’s the last one that’s my favorite.

On this episode Mike, Christina and I are going to talk about the Social Game and give you tips and tricks to help you bring out the best in your players and your game.

I know both of you love the social parts of games, it’s what our own games tend to revolve around. Mike, when did you realize you loved playing the social game?

[Kick to Mike]