Community Matters
Love Letter to the Roleplay Hobby
From the very beginning the roleplay hobby as been a social endeavour which always grew communities. Even with the rise of solo play, people stayed connected, sharing their ideas and techniques to benefit the hobby at large. And The Roleplay Experience seeks to continue that tradition.
Removing barriers, dismantling gatekeeping, and allowing more people access to the various cultures of play, while accepting that not every table will have the same preferences on how the hobby gets to be experienced. There is no wrong way to play, at most there is lack of communication in regards what expectations are brought to the table.
Of course some hermetic tables exist, but with the rise of the internet and especially social media such insular groups become a rarity. Playing away rom the public eye might have been reasonable in the times of the satanic panic, or when gaming got accused of causing violence (even though that hit for the most part video games) and again when gaming was declared dead because cause supposedly sexism (again with video games at the centre, but by that time games with RPG elements have been rather popular already). Nowadays with Stranger Things on Netflix and the ever so popular Critical Role and shows based on their campaigns on Prime Video, a new golden age of roleplaying seems to have arrived.
Besides the commercially successful representation I want to talk more about the fan projects, the hacks for systems, the fanzines or blogs. All that love that people put into the hobby without asking to be compensated for, since it is the feeling of belonging and that makes sharing easy without the need to nickle and dime people for it.
The Price of Freedom
As much as I would love to talk now about the Marvel film Captain America: The Winter Soldier or worse, the reality the orange tyrant with tiny hands causes. I will come back at another time to such topics, but for now, gaming and storytelling cannot exist independent from politics, like book banning shows.
No, I want to stay on topic (for once?) and talk instead about how giving things away for free was always what made the hobby thrive while corporate greed always hurt the hobby. Just look at the history of TSR and later WotC. To keep it somewhat concise, we evaluate the OGL from the latter company.
WotC released the third edition of D&D with an Open Gaming License — the OGL. This allowed plenty of people to develop their own hacks which are basically sanctioned products even though third party. And even though not every product was of high quality, it enriched the space nevertheless. And I say that as someone who is not particular keen on D&D.
But then WotC must felt like they giving away too much, so they first wrote a more restrictive license for the 4th edition of D&D, and it never took off. And while some might blame it on the paper button play style, looking at system in recent years like Daggerheart or Draw Steel, it becomes clear that this was not really the issue.
Thus WotC returned for a while to the original OGL for their 5th edition, but he legacy of greed reared its ugly head or their 2024 revised edition, when they thought to kick the old OGL to the curb and rework it to tighten the leash. This backfired pretty much immediately and they dropped this silly notion.
The lesson here is that nobody minds these games are products that are supposed to make money, but if the community gets excluded form contributing to the systems and settings we have fallen in love with, then the companies lose the loudest advocates who basically marketing their game for free.
In the Spirit of Sharing
I miss days of the YouTube RPG Brigade or the time people used to gather on internet forums. The decentralisation of the hobby allows more niches for everyone, but it makes it occasionally harder to find systems and techniques outside the bubble on fins oneself in.
There are attempts like every August the RPGaDay initiative, while trying to promote positivity in the hobby, many a year felt just like naval gazing, people telling anecdotes or just talk about useless preferences but not to enrich the hobby. Like in 2024, the official list of prompts was just hollow prompts suited for vanity. Luckily an alternate list was made by someone that could better be used to create in-game content. Of course there have been other countre programming around, like the German Carnival of Roleplay-Blogs.
I am not writing this to put RPGaDay down, I have participated in a few years when the prompts allowed for design or worldbuilding answer, and the core idea to bring the community closer together is certainly an upside. Which brings me to my own call to action: The…
RPE Collab. With the myriad of system around, my thought was to invite the roleplay bloggers and youtubers (Influencers still feels like a weird word) to share their thoughts on learning new systems, how convey system elements in design, or how to teach players a new system as the GM. A single technique or approach would be enough.
I know it is rather short notice, but as deadline to not drag this out for too long, I thought January the 30th of this year (2026). Which is only about two weeks. Again, a short video or a short blog article are enough to join this little expression of community love.
To reach me leave me here in the comments a link to the video or article, or use on Bluesky the hashtag #RPEcollab or on threads a post under the topic of RPE Collab. Sorry, but I X’ed out of the dead blue birdie app, and while I like Mastodon, it requires to many connections to allow me to see all possible replies there. I can be found on Discord as well, as Drudenfusz.
At the end of the month I will curate a playlist on YouTube for all the video responses an write a article here, sharing the techniques, regardless if any participation happens or not, I want at least to share some techniques I have in store. But I really hope others will heed the call. That is what The Roleplay Experience is about, to build a community that wants to experience the hobby in a more meaningful way. And I would like to have you celebrate this beautiful hobby together with me, and by sharing learning techniques helping others to play more different systems.