RPG Resolutions
It has been a source of joy for me over the last year to really delve into the world of tabletop RPGs. From the start of 2025 I was running awesome games like Slugblaster, Agon, and Eat the Reich, getting to promote the weird and wonderful through my work with Tabletop Gaming Magazine, and lifting up the hobby where I could on social media.
Through this work I have come up against a few issues that I feel are barriers to getting RPGs to the table. I feel a lot of these are fairly easy to address by designers and publishers without a huge amount of effort.
What I like
It seems only fair to start this piece by laying out the sort of thing I like in RPGs so you can get an idea of where I am coming from. The best way to do that is to read some of my work on RPGs, but a little summary here is going to put us all on the same page. I think I can summarise it with these two principles
- System matters, but it isn’t the only thing that does. I want the mechanisms of a game to reinforce its themes and settings. These should be supported by good advice for players on how to make this game tick. Some of my favourite games are Agon, Blades in the Dark, and Slugblaster.
- The designers’ intent is really important to me and I want to feel it through the whole book. To me an RPG should have a strong purpose and focus. What sort of experience is this game meant to produce and how does the book help me do that? To that end I don’t really get on with ‘genre-free’ systems.
With these in mind let me highlight some ways I think RPGs can ‘do better’ in breaking down the barriers to play.
Index
Outside of one page RPGs and very thin zines, your book should have an index. I’ve been really enjoying running the Triangle Agency, a game of supernaturally powered individuals working for a shadowy organisation that controls 25% of reality. The book is a blast to read, positioning itself as an in-universe object and a rulebook. That does make it a bit tricky to find rules and an index would have been a big help.
I do realise in an age where a lot of RPGs are being consumed electronically, the need for an index might be a bit “old man shouting at clouds”. However, a lot of RPGs, including the big players in the scene, still have a physical release and if your book is of a reasonable length then please include an index.
Examples
It doesn’t matter how well you think you’ve explained your rules, showing your working is absolutely invaluable. Be generous with examples. Give examples of mechanisms, show a fully worked example of character creation, and for the absolute gold standard include an example of play. These examples can only reinforce your intent as a designer. It tells the reader ‘here is what this does and why’.
The best example I have seen of this lately is in Mythic Bastionland by Chris McDowall. At the back of this book is an Oddpocrypha. Not only are there worked examples of every aspect of his ruleset, but Chris also shows how the mechanisms he has designed could be interpreted differently by players and GM and then says how he would approach the same situation. This is going above and beyond, but a great example of how to provide useful advice.
Player Aids
I’ve banged on about player aids for board games before. Your game is more likely to see folks’ tables more often with a good player aid. Even board games I have played a lot I find it useful to have a player aid to jog everyone’s memory, especially when that game hasn’t seen my table for a few months.
RPGs can, and should, do this as well. Agon, a personal favourite, from John Harper has an excellent character sheet that contains prompts to remind you what each part of that sheet brings to play. It also has general summaries available of all the procedures for GM and players to reference. Deathmatch Island, an Agon powered game, has similar excellent character sheets and references. There are numerous ways to provide guidance while the game is being played, and I would urge you to consider what you can do to help get your game to the table.
Maybe all the groups playing your RPG are coming to it weekly with mechanisms fresh in heads. We all know that isn’t the case though. Life gets in the way. Sometimes it will be weeks between sessions. A little reminder of how things work can really smooth that bumpy road of time.
Pre-gens
With the caveat of this likely doesn’t apply to very small RPGs. I want you, the publisher/designer, to provide pre-generated characters and a scenario. Not just in the book but in an easily downloadable form on your website. The reasons for doing so are two-fold.
Firstly you are providing more examples of play by doing this. Showing what a full party of characters looks like is a great way to demonstrate what your game is designed to do. By also giving the reader an introductory session to run you cement those ideas, and also increase the likelihood that your game will hit their table at least once.
This is probably my biggest gripe with the majority of RPGs and I’ve seen it in everything from huge productions to small indie projects. I love reading all these games, and yes I will likely work through some character creation myself just to see how it works. However I also want to get your game to the table as easily as possible to try it out, to get a feel for how the mechanisms you’ve designed work in play. You can help me do this by providing pre-gens. Bonus points if you also provide an online character keeper, or similar, for your game that can be used for VTTs.
Worth mentioning that the absolute gold standard of this is to provide a full quickstart. This would contain all the basic mechanisms that make your game work, alongside pre-generated characters and a scenario. These can be used to build interest in your project, but I understand that is a lot more work.
Over to you
I know that not everyone thinks about or even plays RPGs the way I do. It is one of the joys of these games that they are open to interpretation. However I think all the points I’ve made can apply to any RPG no matter the scope. I really feel like some RPG products make it as hard as possible to get them to the table. Such books feel like they are meant to be read and not produce play. Is that what you want? Don’t you want folk to play your game? If we all consider usability a little more, we can see more of these wonderful games grace our tables and help folk find their next favourite RPG.
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