They’re different from novels, short stories, comics, theater, movies, and most other forms of storytelling. That does not remove the tale being told nor the concept of story.
If anything they are most similar to communal storytelling around a campfire and improv dramas. For the most part roleplaying games are communal events with a group.
How did I bump into this well-worn debate? Via a recent thread on EN World, the rare bright spot in RPG discourse.
My response there focused mostly on the story and plot aspects, and the power of having more voices (something rare in written fiction, but common in other forms of storytelling).
There are people who are not good authors, nor good directors, nor good actors who are good roleplayers/gamemasters/etc. By leaning into the ways that community, plot and play-to-find-out work the creation displays, maybe even demands, story emerges.
Sometimes conventional Western storytelling formats can lean into the things that make the emergent and divergent story that happens in RPGs. This can be magical — because it shows how all story is really a reflection of point of view, or in our hobby — spotlight.
RPGs-as-story feel messy when considered through a lens of a literature class or mainstream television.
But, stories are quite messy
Two people can read the same story, watch the same film, listen to the same podcast and come away with different meanings, see different main plots even.
To me, RPGs are stories in the way that campfire tales are. They involve a lot of wandering, forgotten threads, lack firm outlines and are at their best when the tale is woven through multiple voices providing input.
Can they be a traditional novel after the campaign? Absolutely! But during the telling of the tale they are similar to writers who don’t edit as they go or a director who over films alternative concepts that aren’t on the script.
One of the more thrilling things about RPGs is that it is an ensemble cast of both PCs and recurring NPCs. Together they’re important, but the tale and spotlight as to who is most important can easily shift. Use any of them as the point of view to change the story as you understand it. Each can be vital.
The messiness is the fun part of RPGs as story.
The messiness is what helps me discover tales I cannot tell on my own. That’s part of the power of the table and broad casts in ensemble stories.
You think you’ve seen stories like this before, so you can guess what’s going to happen. Who’s important and who isn’t, but that’s because you’re trapped in your POV. – later – When you file people away as sidekicks you don’t realize their importance to the story, and this story belongs to a lot more people than you think. Where to shelve a book, it’s not a little thing. You’re telling the world what to value. Who to value.
From The Magicians, Side Effect (S4, E7).
RPGs are very much like that.
They remove your assumptions. You don’t know what’s going to happen. The POV constantly shifts and the importance of the broader cast shifts constantly.
From RPGs-as-Story we learn what and who to value by including others.
This post will not contain spoilers for Season 5 because I haven’t yet watched Season 5 of Stranger Things, though I do know it features more Dungeons & Dragons than Seaons 2-4 combined.
If you were to go into Target this fall you’d see a massive Stranger Things display somewhere in the store. Part of that display would feature the D&D boxed set Welcome to the Hellfire Club, which is a continuation of Eddie’s D&D campaign. It felt late, because Eddie isn’t part of season 5.
It was not late.
Welcome to the Hellfire Club sold out at Target. It sold out on Amazon. A light informal survey of local-to-me stores have it as sold out. The physical boxed set can still be ordered on DnDBeyond.
Sure, that could be a lack of ambition from Wizards of the Coast by not manufacturing enough of the sets.
It’s much more likely that the heavy lean back into D&D by Stranger Things Season 5 drove more desire for D&D the game than previous seasons, Critical Role and Baldur’s Gate 3. BG3’s drive of interest into D&D is hard to quantify, but has an extended window over several years.
Google Trends can show you.
Search trends for Stranger Things
Here are the four adjacent media and D&D
Stranger Things is more popular than the others by far.
D&D, the game, had its biggest boom from the movie, but…
Stranger Things Season 5 nearly matches D&D: Honor Among Thieves
There’s one major difference — lack of tie-in gaming products.
Rime of the Frostmaiden contained a single adventure related to the movie. There was a boutique NPC download related to the movie, but nothing like the amazing boxed set Stranger Things got. Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus was barely related to the video game and its release timing was horrible.
Nothing sold out because of Honor Among Thieves, the best D&D marketing in the history of the game, because D&D wasn’t run as a franchise system with business units failing to talk to each other.
Both the current starter set and Welcome to the Hellfire Club are selling out.
What’s that mean for us Dungeon Masters?
Be welcoming to new and returning players.
Reduce house rules when they join you.
Talk about the intent of your table and what type of play you focus on .
Be familiar with the most popular products.
Help teach your current players to DM.
See if local cafes, libraries, schools, pubs, etc need DMs.
We are responsible for growing this glorious hobby. Thanks to the Creative Commons, various SRDs, the eternal nature of homebrewing and the thousands of other roleplaying games there is always something that’s right for someone.
Find what’s right for your family, your friends and your community.
People are interested. It’s up to you to be the reason they stay interested.
It’s incredibly difficult to capture what D&D can be in 30 or 60 seconds. That may be part of why the latest advert for the Starter Set, Heroes of the Borderlands is 75 seconds.
That’s also a short amount of time.
My sessions are typically three hours. We’ve played nearly a dozen campaigns in 5th edition from 2014 to the present averaging a game session every other week for the past 11 years.
Critical Role plays closer to four hours on average with the main campaign playing about 40 sessions a year over that same stretch.
How do you introduce the layers of play, the layers of friendship and the depth of potential in a minute?
Wizards of the Coast did that by showing a generation of players who said yes to adventure in the 90s and now play with their kids.
Saying that first “yes” to playing D&D
The people who introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons way back in the 80s introduced me to science fiction, to creative writing, to journalism and debate.
Later the second group I played with introduced to the concept of joining the Army, anime/comic books, writing my own game, and British comedy because we played Twilight:2000, Albedo, TMNT, Synnibarr, MERPS and of course D&D.
Saying yes to Vampire: The Masquerade helped me during language school, when the stresses of required success were overwhelming and I needed an escape from the combination Army-university life.
A year later saying yes to D&D with another nerd in 5th Special Forces Group helped me be myself while being all I could be and more. Those duet sessions created an escape and creative outlet.
Then I stopped.
Saying yes later
As my soccer blog matured and jobs came-and-went 5th edition D&D came out. I didn’t have a group. I hadn’t played in two decades except for those dozen or so sessions with a combat medic.
But, I was intrigued.
I asked my friends who wrote with me, who edited, who advised a small soccer blog as we grew.
Those first sessions of 5e included grand friends who helped each other learn the new system, remember our pasts and tell tales of glory through fellowship.
Those campaigns tuckered out and then ceased due to a wonderful job opportunity and then the pandemic.
Yes during covid
My last yes to adventure was when one of those friends asked me to DM again. During the pandemic I’d stopped running sessions. I still played, but online play and my DMing style don’t get along. I tried it once, in an actual play.
This yes meant getting a new group together. The old groups had scattered. Unlike the characters in that D&D advert I’ve never managed to maintain a group across decades. Not even my brother who was part of that first yes still plays.
This yes has our group playing in public, right in front of other people who don’t know what D&D is. We played with strangers who became friends. We introduced others to the game.
Marketing D&D
Saying yes to playing role playing games took me a lot of places.
And in 75 seconds the marketing team behind D&D reminded me of all of that. Taking us backwards on a journey of glory, of watching a child grow up, of a pregnant woman playing the game and a group of friends who stick together from 1995 to the present is brilliant.
Where will yes take you?
To the Caves of Chaos and The Ferments. To rolling d20s at a brewery and getting on stage at a security event. To Krynn, to Theros, to Sigil, to Exandria, to Trinyvale, to The Strix, to Wagadu, to al-Qadim, to Grim Hollow, to Drakenheim, to Midgard, to Obojima, to Eberron, to the darkest crypts and the glorious eternal afterlife, from dragons to halflings.
But mostly it will take you on a journey of friendship and discovery of the stories that you are unable to tell yourself.
That’s what saying yes does — it opens you up to things beyond what is contained within your own being.
Somewhat overshadowed by the release of several high-fantasy systems not based in 5e D&D is that Wizards of the Coast has two starter sets, a two-book/three-pdf Forgotten Realms set, and Eberron expansion coming out from September through the holidays.
Additionally, other 5e systems inspired by D&D are also cranking right now.
There’s a plethora of choice, right as genre TV’s most D&D related property is coming back — Stranger Things season 5 releases Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s in the U.S. Several of the early monsters based on Dungeons & Dragons are making a comeback.
Your normie (non-RPG) friends may be interested in the game again thanks to the combination of product releases, the Mighty Nein release, Stranger Things and the general zeitgeist around being big heroes with power in a world where that feels missing.
What game or books are the right system for them right now?
If you read Full Moon Storytelling it is likely that you are a DM/GM. It’s also likely that you lean towards 5e D&D. That will be the focus, with a small discussion of the other systems capturing attention (million dollar+ Kickstarters and the like).
Are you the GM/DM?
Go with what you like best, what fits your world, and be welcoming. Cut back on house rules and homebrew, at first, as the people who are new to the game can be overwhelmed with normal rule sets that can stretch to 1,000 pages.
Fold the new invitees into your world by asking them what they enjoy about high fantasy roleplaying. Finding out what your table’s Appendix N always helps, but it is the most helpful knowing what someone new (or returning from long ago) to the hobby wants.
If they want something simple, but familiar like the D&D of the 80s, but modern there are a few routes. Sticking with 2014 5e one can still get the older starter sets from Target or Amazon. Dragons of Strormwreck Isle is under $16 at Target online, and some physical stores may have it. Check with your local gaming store to see if they are offloading old product.
You can also intro them to 2014 via Kobold Press Tales of the Valiant Starter Set. It is under $14 at the time of publishing. The primary differences between Wizards of the Coast 2014 D&D and Tales of the Valiant lies in Tales having character creation that separates nature and nurture, luck replacing inspiration and the insertion of unique abilities on every monster.
I’d recommend Tales of the Valiant over 2014 D&D because of those changes, even if it doesn’t have the branding your friends expect. It also comes with minis! If Stormwreck Isle is 5.1 5e, ToV is probably 5.3.
Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club
Maybe your friends didn’t get into D&D from Stranger Things season 1, or 2, or 3, or 4. Or maybe they did, but didn’t have the time, energy or mental space to play the game.
Welcome to the Hellfire Club uses Wizards of the Coast’s modern take on starter sets — lots of tokens, handouts, cards and a written approach that blurs the line between board game and roleplaying game.
modern take on starter sets — lots of tokens, handouts, cards
The presentation includes a look that borrows from 80s nostalgia as expected. The four adventure books include trade dress that would make Gary Gygax and TSR proud.
This is the second starter set built out of Stranger Things by Wizards of the Coast. Both lean heavily into using the voice of the character from the show that was the featured DM, lean into the mythology of the TV show with its ‘not quite D&D monsters, but monsters that middle/high schoolers would think are D&D monsters.’
The first Stranger Things set was rather linear in nature, which fit the times and works fairly well for people newer to roleplaying. Welcome to the Hellfire Club uses 2024 5e D&D rules.
D&D Starter Set: Heroes of the Borderlands
Similar to Stranger Things pulling out 80s nostalgia to pull people into its world, Wizards of the Coast uses Dungeons & Dragons most popular adventure from the foundational period to inspire its new general purpose Starter Set.
Keep on the Borderlands is now Heroes of the Borderlands, with three adventures. Using 2024 5e D&D’s rules, card-based character creation, tokens and maps, the intent of Heroes is to again bridge that gap between board game night and RPG night.
Because it is 2024’s rules rather than 1974s, the set is massive. Those three little folios that could fit in a small lunchbox are gone. Instead Heroes has more than 400 cards and tokens, a quick start, a set of rules, and three adventures.
The game of D&D is simultaneously more complex and more approachable than it was in the 70s and 80s. Being a more pervasive part of the culture is part of that. Also the decades of exposure to computer RPGs changes how one approaches teaching the game.
Forgotten Realms expansions
A massive two-book, three-digital book expansion coming with the brilliant marketing around “The Realms will know your name” these books aren’t necessarily great for first timers to tabletop roleplaying, unless…
You know people who were heavy into the lore of Baldur’s Gate 3 and/or D&D: Honor Among Thieves and/or the once dominant fantasy novels set in the Realms. Those legends exist within the expansion, but the point of D&D and RPGs in general is to tell your story.
Only dive into this if you are being joined by people who absolutely love those non-tabletop versions of the Forgotten Realms. These expansions include 50 micro-adventures that fit an on-the-fly DM rather well (similar to those in the 2024 DMG).
Those playing with your classic group you need little guidance. If you are using the 2024 D&D rules, or at a table that permits a broad swath of 5e rules, the expansion is handy if you want to borrow factions, subclasses, new species and nuggets of lore to insert into your homebrew.
In total the Realms expansions add about 30% more character creation options while dramatically expanding the story through the lore expansions.
Eberron: Forge of the Artificer
High fantasy doesn’t have to take place in a world that’s pseudo medieval/Renaissance and Euro coded.
It can also include pervasive magic, spread widely among the populace in a world that echoes tropes related to early Industrialization with great Houses, lightning rails, elemental airships and a ‘war to end all wars.’
That’s Eberron.
Forge of the Artificer is a lightweight updated to the setting originally invented by Keith Baker.
Don’t get Forge of the Artificer unless you already have Rising from the Last War or you really want to have the magitech Artificers at your table or you are a completionist. I’ll be getting it for the first two reasons. I’m currently playing a goblin Artificer.
The Artificer in Forge is updated for 2024 with a brand new subclass as well. From what was in the Unearthed Arcana developing this coming version of the Artificer it looks to have the quality of life improvements I would expect.
Other RPGs
LevelUp
LevelUp is built on the 5.1 5e chassis, but advances it. This does make it a more complex version of high fantasy role playing. Some of the greatest improvements come from expanding the social and exploration pillars. This helps tell a wider variety of stories. Like every offshoot of D&D from the 5e era it separates nature and nurture.
There’s now a Starter Set available. Yes, it has tokens and multiple adventure, because that’s what modern starter sets do. EN Publishing’s Starter Set is an excellent way to try on a different version of the game you already know.
Cosmere RPG
If you enjoy Brandon Sanderson’s writing you might enjoy the Cosmere RPG. It is not based on 5e. It is the highest earning RPG kickstarter of all time.
Cosmere is beautiful, complex and the most extensive lore heavy game upon release likely ever.
Draw Steel
While not the level of Kickstarter success of Cosmere, Draw Steel was still a massive earner. The design team from MCDM is mostly people who produced wonderful 5e products, but are now releasing a system that emphasizes combat (tactical, heroic, cinematic) even more than D&D. The rules are crafted so that the feeling of conflicts is a reminder of watching a movie or TV show’s fight scenes.
Daggerheart
If Draw Steel is inspired by D&D, but wanting to be more combat, Daggerheart is inspired by D&D, but wanting to empower more story. Like Draw Steel and Cosmere, Daggerheart is a wholly new system. Most simply defined there is a Hope/Fear mechanic attached to the double-dice roll of players. Additionally it covers more ground about how to communally create the worlds and social interaction. Coming from Critical Role’s Darrington Press Daggerheart is designed to showcase the types of stories Critical Role excelled at.
Similar to Cosmere and D&D there is a wealth of media associated with it already — with more coming from the media arm of what was once a D&D actual play, but is now a multimedia company.
There are plenty of other games too — listing them all is foolhardy. Pathfinder and Starfinder, Legend of the Ring, Warhammer, Shadowdark and the list could go on.
But the zeitgeist right now seems to be focused on 2024 D&D versus a few upstarts with million dollar or more crowdfunding campaigns all coming out in the second half of 2025.
