This article was machine-translated from the Japanese version.

Thoughts on Board Games and TRPGs

This is the Day 12 article for Tansu Advent Calendar 2020.
Yesterday was makino’s Thoughts on All Classes, Types, and Ode Specialties in Shoujo Tenrankai.

1. Who are you?

I go by Unigiri. Read as “unigiri”.
On https://tablegame.mstdn.cloud (commonly known as Tansu), I enjoy board games and TRPGs in roughly equal proportions.

I’ve listed the board games I’ve experienced here and the TRPGs here.
For TRPGs, I’ve been exclusively a PL so far, but I’m planning to GM for the first time soon.

2. What will I talk about?

I’m a beginner who, until joining Tansu on August 10, 2020, had absolutely no experience with TRPGs and nearly no experience with board games.
As such, I have no useful information to share, so I’ll do the classic beginner-in-the-community thing and talk about myself.

This time, I’ll talk about how my impressions of board games and TRPGs changed before and after joining Tansu.

3. Board Games

3-1. Before Joining Tansu

To be honest, I didn’t really know what a board game was.
That said, it’s not like I had never played one at all — I played several at a friend’s house when I was little, but since I was never taught that they were called “board games,” I perceived them as “strange foreign games.”

Also, the office I used to go to before joining Tansu had stacks of board game boxes, but I never really picked any of them up.
Looking back now, I realize what a fortunate environment that was.

Speaking of fortunate environments, there was a shop called Sugorokuya about a 10-minute bike ride from my childhood home, but I moved away without ever setting foot inside.
Why didn’t I go in??????

3-2. After Joining Tansu

Right after joining, as mentioned above, I didn’t really know what “board game” referred to, so while reading Kimunii’s various game introductions, I was holding back the question “How are board games different from Sevens or Solitaire?”
(I thought it sounded like such a silly question so I didn’t ask, but it might have been entertaining if I had.)

Fortunately, after that I was invited to play various games and taught many techniques as well.

Now, I particularly feel this when playing games like Catan or Carcassonne where you lay tiles and manage your territory. As someone who mostly played solo against the CPU in PC games, my impression of board games was:

“Things like the Civilization series or card games that you can play on PC originally originated as analog games, and in analog form you can only play against other people.”
“When playing against other people, you can chat and have fun together, and unlike a CPU the moves aren’t monotonous, so it’s more enjoyable.”

It feels like I’m stating the obvious, but up until now my only opponent for this kind of thing was the CPU.
So rather than formulating strategies to win, my playstyle was about reading the CPU’s patterns and making the optimal moves accordingly. That made human-vs-human games that don’t follow simple patterns more difficult, and more enjoyable.

I still don’t have a game where I can confidently say “I won’t lose at this one!”, so I’d like to master at least one game sometime soon.

4. TRPGs

4-1. Before Joining Tansu

For TRPGs, I used to watch replay videos or replay-style videos on Nico Nico Douga.
Specifically, I was watching Yukkuri Kuzu-domo no Cthulhu.

Now, I’m not sure if this is a common experience, but because of that, I didn’t know that TRPGs other than Cthulhu existed.
In other words, TRPG = Cthulhu, so when I read Tansu’s description as “a server where you play board games and TRPGs,” I thought “Ah ha. So it’s a server where you play board games and Cthulhu.”
Looking back now, I think — how did that even happen…?

4-2. After Joining Tansu

Despite such ignorance, my first TRPG was Tokyo Nightmare.
By that time, I had already learned from Tansu’s HTL that there are various TRPGs and they are called “systems.”

The GM (technically RL since it was TNM) of that session was Usaturn, and I clearly remember when I said during introductions “This is my first TRPG; I used to watch replay videos a lot,” they told me — somewhat seriously — that actually playing TRPGs is quite different from watching replays.

And indeed it was. In an actual session, you can’t instantly make the optimal decision, nor can you instantly do the calculations needed for checks.
However, that was absolutely not a problem for me.

To use an analogy, perhaps it’s the feeling of someone who aspired to be an actor, who kept watching others’ performances, and finally — with still-clumsy skills — stood on their own stage.
For me, who had been watching replay videos (for about a year?) thinking “that looks fun,” my first TRPG gave me a strong sense that “I’ve finally become a participant in the story.”

I’ve always liked acting, so I’ve been happily roleplaying at every session.
I’m very glad to be able to create many stories together with everyone in Tansu.

5. A Nice Wrap-up

And so, I now enjoy both board games and TRPGs very much.
I may still be unpolished in many ways, but I look forward to your continued support!

Tomorrow is -101-’s illustrated report.