Role playing and the game designer

I have been playing role playing games since I was a kid, albeit video game rpgs.  Diablo and other action-roleplaying hybrids were my introduction into the game type.  I started playing juicier role playing games later with the Fallout series.  Even as the level of immersion increased with each game I played, I felt as if I was only a spectator in them.  I wasn't free to do as I wished in these ginormous worlds.  The limitations of game engines and developer creativity stifled my desire to play out characters I built.

When I started dating my now wife, I was introduced to the world of tabletop roleplaying.  She is an avid role player and her friends kept pushing me to join.  Being the techie in high school, I always used to make jokes about Dungeons and Dragons, using it as a punching bag.  I didn't want my carefully created self-image to be "sullied" by something as trite as pen-and-paper rpgs.  After all, I was playing much prettier games on my self-built PC.  When I finally caved, I realized how wrong I was about the tabletop and what it means to me as a game designer.

Why is it important?  It puts into stark relief how fragile your carefully thought out story and "immersive" speech tree actually are.  I foolhardily started as a DM, not just a player.  "I've built games, surely building an engaging dungeon crawl isn't that hard!"  Man, was I a fool.  I got my first dungeon crawl mocked up, with a prison that changed layouts and everything.  After an agonizingly long character build session, the party sits down, and...  I break a cardinal rule in DMing.  I dump one of the players into a fight already in progress without letting them know first.  I thought it would build tension and incentivize the party to go to the prison first.  I had no idea that the party would want to actually explore the town.  Tough first step, but not session breaking.

After some rather strained improv, I was able to get the party to the prison and introduce them to their final player character.  They go a bit further into the prison, finding a circular room with an oculus shining light into the center of the room.  At the center of the room was a pedestal and a note.  I figured the party would take a look at the note, maybe a quick glance at the pedestal, and then move on.  That's what I would do in a PC rpg, why wouldn't it work here?  No, no.  They spent at least an hour investigating the room and the pedestal.  Players become obsessed with the oddest things.

After all was said and done, the group still had a good time in the limited setting I had created.  The experience taught me a lot about what players experience when playing role playing games and how my expectations differed wildly from the experience that they had.  As I continue to develop games, I look back at my time playing D&D and remind myself that, no matter what I do, the experience I craft will not necessarily be the same experience that the player has with my game.