The Gaming Den

Is it possible to convey thought provoking themes through tabletop role playing ? I've been playing two PC games lately, Soma and Pathologic, which happen to be pretty good vehicles for reflection upon certain human-related conditions and themes. Can the same be made with table RPGs ? If so, how, and what games happen to do this for you ?

In theory, yes. In practice, games are mostly written by people with only a vague idea what they're doing, and your group has to have 100% complete and utter buy in to that sort of experience, which really just leads to everyone feeling really silly.

Of course you can convey thought provoking themes through a tabletop game. Its a story and any story can tackle any themes. Will players self-reflect on the issues you bring up? Like Prak says maybe but they can still appreciate the themes of their game without sitting around in deep self reflection or engaging in navel gazing.

I ran a Mage The Awakening game that revolved around an abyssal MMO. Players loved the meta aspects of this as "insane" npcs would claim wildly that reality was just a game, magic was real and reality could be reprogrammed. Players found it somewhat thought provoking as they (the players themselves, outside of the game and on their own time when I wasn't even around) argued whether the characters were trapped in a simulation or other theories they had.

I ran a Supers game that brought up the usual X-Men style are supers the future? Should humans fear them, serve them etc. The villains were morally ambiguous transhumanists perfectly willing to engage in debate rather than violence and the game imploded because some of the players sided with the villains outlook and decided to join them while others didn't. I call the game when the party splits on each other in the second session.

You can, but I can see it being tricky.

First, you have to have players who care about that kind of thing. If they're just here to vent off, roll dice and kill monsters, they won't care.

Second, you can convey such thoughts just by talking about them. You have to think about why you'd want to bring them up in a game instead. Is it because you want to give some special perspective on the issue to your players, because you want to see how their PC would react to that, because you want to bring up the subject with your friends but don't know how?

Third, you mention Pathologic, and something that makes Pathologic (and Ice-Pick Lodge games in general) special is that it's meant to be fun. And you can get the same thing with a thought-provoking game. Sure, you can drive a point home, but if it's not fun, is it still a game you want to play with your friends?

I've never been in or run a game like this, so I can't offer any anecdotal advice. I think the others are right in what they way about needing everyone to buy in ahead of time. I've never been in/run a group where people wanted anything other than semi-serious D&D mixed with some jokes.

I tried to run a horror game once, and it basically played out like a normal D&D game with darker-themed monsters.

Similarly, I had two different encounters where the player involved got genuinely scared for their PC. Both times, the PC was alone (one solo game, and the other separated from the group while scouting), and it just worked out with the situation and they way I described it, that the player got freaked out. It basically happened by accident.

So, is this all just high-level "is this possible?", or do you have a mature group and a concept in mind?