I'm dipping my toes into the waters of Hive after many people from tabletop Twitter headed over there. There's a feature in the app that lets users answer questions from other users, and since I posted a reflection on tabletop, ritual, and spirituality here a couple days ago, I thought I'd share a Hive question I received and the answer I gave.
Alyssa Visscher asked me: "...I would love to know a bit about how you view and approach the embodiment of significance and meaning in ttrpgs!?"
My response, slightly edited for cohost:
I love this question so much. I'll take a pass at an answer knowing I have much more to say...
One of the most impactful lessons I took from my time formally studying ritual and communal practices of meaning-making is that we do them, in part, to form group connections through storytelling. I know I'm not the only person to think about ttrpgs through the framework of ritual -- but for me, rituals and tabletop often share rhythms. There's a sense of anticipation, a time of initiation or introduction, the sense of crossing over a portal into a kind of liminal space, and then a winding down and conclusion followed by processing and integration.
And I think that many of us come to tabletop to have this kind of rhythmic experience of telling stories that matter to us, and to have fun as we explore our own values, desires, questions, fears, and joys. One of the beautiful things about ttrpgs is that we can find systems that support us in doing this individually and as part of larger groups. I love that. And I think that the format of a game - of something that takes place a little outside ordinary time and space - is so significant. It can give us permission to be, well, more playful, more willing to open ourselves up to experiences and possibilities that seem intimidating in our everyday lives.
I think meaning-making can often be frame in solemn terms. There's nothing from with that, but when we only talk about it in those terms, we lose something. One of the things I love so much about tabletop is that it very explicitly makes room for playfulness as part of telling stories that matter & of encountering and exploring concepts and experiences that matter. It very explicitly centers play as meaningful. And I think that's beautiful.
