Modesty Studios

 Okay, you were invited to a night of table top gaming. Maybe you know the people well and maybe you don't but it's exciting to be included. The first time playing may be tricky and may even convince you never to play again! Here are a few things to do to help prevent you from totally losing your cool or having a bad time. (No guarantees though!) Remember, the point is to have fun!  What's in Your Control 🎮 In the game, there are elements that are not in your control. The outcome of dice rolls, how other people will behave, and the rules are unknowns. But the following things are under your command:  Your Character: Even if you are using a pre-made character or an assigned character, you control it.  Your morals: Your beliefs are yours. While you can play a character with different morals, you don't have to abandon all that your mama taught you.  Your safety: Your body is in your control. Have a backup plan or a contact if you're done and want to leave early.  Prep

- For my first session, I was invited to a legit Table Top Game with my Ren Faire and Board Gaming friends. The GM and I were Catholic and everyone else was Christian.  I had known these people for many years through Church and Ren Faire activities. The married couple in our group hosted our sessions in their home.  - The GM had been working on a modern fantasy novel series. He wanted to run a game with the premise, setting and characters from his novel. At first, I was excited to create my own character set in this world but was surprised to find he had a cast of characters for us to pick from. I ended up picking a teenage girl who was rebelling against her Mormon parents. We were using the d20 Modern system. (The d20 system is the basis for D&D 3.5 edition. d20 modern translates the magic into modern superhero type systems.) Here' were our first characters:  Jessica (My character) - a teenage girl --> Psychic  Kevin - a black, research professor --> Elemental martial ar

 These are games I have played or observed others playing to give context. (This post is a Work in progress, I will likely come back to correct things. Genre - borrowing from movie and book categories to give you a shorthand sense of what the tropes, characters, and stories are like. (i.e. Western, High Fantasy, Space Opera, etc) Setting - A bit more specific than genre, it will include specific things like time period, location, character types, and world premise.  Dice Type - a quick description of what kind of dice and how many might be needed for playing a game. Some systems may have special dice specific to that game while some may have alternatives.   Difficulty - this is from a brand new player perspective but this incorporates how complicated the rules can get as well as how in-depth the lore might be.  Easy - rules are intuitive and there's only low-level world building Average - you can skim rules and kind of learn as you go, the lore is based on tropes  Hard - you hav

The purpose of this is to be a reference for introducing people who have maybe heard about D&D or Table Top Role Play Games (TTRPG) but just don't know much else about it. It can be a very intimidating world to get into. But I hope to clarify what these games are like, clear up some misconceptions, and a few resources to get you started. I also feel like this is helpful to adults responsible for children to get an idea what the real concerns about appropriateness for certain age groups.  (Side note: I'm working on a TTRPG-like game that can be scaled in difficulty for different age groups.) What is a Table Top Role Playing Game? 🧝 In a nutshell, Table Top Role Playing Games (TTRPG) are a collaborative story telling game that put rules and limitations around the setting, characters, and actions the players can make.  The most apt analogy I have is it's like an improvised play. One person is like the play's busy-body director who is also responsible for the backgroun