Rules, Mechanics and Expectations, Oh My!

Many people going into TTRPGs believe they are ill-prepared. I am here to tell you that even after a decade of playing, that feeling has never gone away. I'll tell you something else, my friends and I look back at the time we first started playing with nostalgia.

The experience of learning a new system together with your friends can cause you to butt heads sometimes, but it reveals something incredible that is unique to tabletop: The rules are more like guidelines. Sure they structure play, and you want rules to help you decide how xyz works, but you don't need to follow every rule. I'm not going to call the Tabletop Police Force because you think how this ability works is stupid and what were the developers thinking? I do recommend writing down how you change the rules somewhere though so you can refer back to it.

This is a long winded way of me saying learning rules to a complex system takes time, and fumbling through the journey is half the fun. If your worries are that you won't do a good job or you'll forget the rules then make up rules how they make sense to you, or use this incredible website to find the rule. I made this game and I forget the rules, forcing me to have to look things up. Making shit up and altering the game in ways that make it more fun is what TTRPGs are all about.