What is Folk Tabletop?

An alternative view for passionate tabletop gamers

What is Folk Tabletop?

O an Quan - A Vietnamese Folk Tabletop Game - photo by Tieu ngao giang ho

To put it simply, folk tabletop gaming favors non-brand tabletop gaming, do-it-yourself, indie, home-brew, kit-bashing, vintage and classical games, new games and experimentation. The serious study of the roots of gaming or just as likely the childlike enjoyment of spontaneous and unstructured play. It explores the application of unique and non-mainstream ideas.

To put it precisely, folk tabletop is when the authority of the game arises from the table, not from other sources.

Folk tabletop is about the source of authority. Someone with a folk tabletop mindset or principles recognizes that the authority of tabletop activities comes from a consenting individual to voluntary participation in a table, where a “magic circle” is formed. It does not come from anything else, there is no shared authority with the table.

An initial note – This blog post is only about folk tabletop, my idea of it, and my experience with it. I do not speak for others, and this is not a commentary on anything other than games of imagination and miniatures. The sources of my ideas are based in the last several years of running an online, international play club as well as the Questing Beast video “Does DnD need WOTC anymore?” linked at the end along with other suggested resources.

What are the elements that make something “Folk”

A community origin and transmission. It's creators are often anonymous, or there is less of an enduring cult of personality. It's “leaders” do not govern, but there are often artists and leaders who by charisma, new ideas and the energy of galvanizing people to play will inspire others to do Folk tabletop games. It is often concerned with practical, simple and functional matters rather than hypothetical ones. It is accessible to anyone who wishes to engage in it and is able to. It varies from group to group and evolves over time. It is by nature non-commercial, though it can be commercialized and sold to willing buyers that don't require a product. It is of and from people, not corporations, vague identities, abstract labels and ideas, ideologues such as streamers, youtubers and bloggers.

Folk Tabletop gaming is less about brand gaming, merchandise, the adherence to intellectual properties, the discourse between ideologues, talking heads and bloggers, the division of gamers along ideological lines that are often reductive and binary, and the incursion of toxic cultural aspects into gaming that destroy the “magic circle” of the game, as well as the freedom and expression of the soul that arises from the game.

Anything which threatens either the authority of the Table or the “magic circle” they form is anti-Folk. These games join other folk traditions as the storehouse of cultural identity and the garden of cultural creation and so, Folk Gamers have faith that if people can set their differences aside and meet at the table within the magic circle, good things can arise from it.

Folk Tabletop gaming possesses the qualities of other Folk crafts, hobbies and cultures. Similar to fishing, knitting, meditation, and storytelling. For that reason it is available to everyone, owned by everyone (and no one), there is no central voice for Folk tabletop gaming and cannot be. There are leaders who serve, but they fulfill narrow purposes, change and are followed voluntarily. There are products, but none of them are needed.

In our current year, Folk Tabletop gaming looks like indie tabletop RPGs, adventure games, solo games, wargames, cardgames etc. on Itch.io, One Page Rules, crowdfunding, the Old School Renaissance and cottage industry companies like the Arcane Library.

It does not look like Games Workshop's “Warhammer 40,000” and Wizards of the Coast's “Dungeons and Dragons 2024.” Folk Tabletop gamers enjoy any part of those brand properties that serve them and leave the parts that do not. The authority is consented to by the individual and then arises from the table. A Folk Tabletop gamer does not feel compelled to adopt the authority of a company, an ideologue, a blogger, a YouTuber etc. nor anything they produce.

Folk tabletop gaming is anti-RPG orthodoxy, since all authority and the “right” way arises first and foremost from the table in actual play. Folk tabletop games are inherently variable and diverse. This does not mean that there are not good and effective ways to play games, and that these can't be shared confidently and with evidence of their results and towards the practical matter of the games having the desired outcome.

The Principles of Folk Tabletop Gaming

1. Games are based on consent - Tasks which do not require consent are survival and not games. Games are an important function in human life and culture.

2. The table is the authority - The goal, truth and authority of play arise from the table where play occurs, in actual play.

3. “It depends.” The right way to play depends on the table's actual game, and it's goals.

Definitions:

Games, play and secondary worlds – A feature of the human soul and human life. Human beings will project, by divine ability, a “what if” which borrows from the real world and also alters the real world in it's effect on the conscience and culture. From this dungeon of the heart arises the Divine and the Horrifying. It is the primordial source of culture. These things may look like football or fashion, but for us resemble pretending with pencil, paper, dice and friends.

Consent – Consent is the conscience act of a willing person to participate. Consent is possible to attain, can be known and communicated, and arises solely from the individual. The consent of the individual must be accepted by other people, but it is also up to that individual to express their consent. Whenever someone is suspected of not being conscience or willing, another person should not require the person to act, except in survival. Gaming cannot be a survival task.

Note: Consent has become malformed, codependent and unhealthy in The Discourse. Consent has often come to mean the opposite: i.e. the demands of the group for the individual to agree, often achieved through mechanistic and inhuman means similar to ineffective workplace practices when employers are distant from their workers and seeking ways to control them. Consent is sometimes conflated with other more serious concerns about mental health, which should never be entrusted to untrained non-professionals, and should be treated seriously. Among others, it has come to mean something else entirely, the demands of the individual for the group to change. The absurdity of the latter idea of consent has led to some claiming tabletop games shouldn't be for certain people such as those who have mental health disorders, or those who are simply different. This likewise is a form of control. Neither of these are true versions of consent or healthy relationships, and they are both anti-Folk in character. Consent arises solely from the individual, and it is up to the individual to express this consent. Both the individual and the table must be able to act equally to willingly participate. To do otherwise destroys the “magic circle.”

"In our modern civilization, the old play-element has been weakened or driven underground. What remains of play is often subordinated to the demands of utility and efficiency, or it is falsified by a spurious seriousness. The spontaneous joy of play has been supplanted by an over-organized, technical spirit that governs life, leaving little room for the free and noble forms of culture that once arose from it."

Johan Huizinga (Homo Ludens 1938)

The Table – The Table is the space where a game occurs. This could be an imaginative space, a “secondary world”, a physical table with friends and pizza, or online at regular intervals, moderated on a shared platform. The table is where the “magic circle” or a “temporary autonomous zone” or “sub-created world” arises. Within that world, the real person is safe and the divine faculty of fantasy can gush forth from the heart.

Authority – The motive force which compels a change in the world or on a person in reality. This could be a club organizer, the owner of a business, or the consenting person's control of their conscience will. At a table the willing consent of participants acts as a 'group conscience' creating an environment where the magic circle is formed. The Folk tabletop idea of authority is that this group conscience must be the source of authority in gaming, defining everything from it's limits, to it's venues, to the fictional content to the rules. In the case of Brand Gaming, this can be a market, a platform, an advertiser, private equity firms, a game designer or a company.

Goal of play (Telos of play) – The ultimate outcome the table wishes to achieve. This will likely include more than one thing, but is the main distinction between tables related to the game they are playing. Some games will value more challenge, others narrative and others simulation of the real world, to give 3 examples.

Brand gaming – The treatment of tabletop RPG's as a product. You can purchase it, subscribe to it, adhere to it. It competes in a market of money, attention and social prestige. It is accompanied by merchandise, splat books, and centrally controlled 'lore' which the participant awaits changes to and purchases to keep up with. This hierarchy bypasses the clubhouse and ideally goes from individual desires straight to the companies that make products. Unfortunately, companies exercise tactics to create a hierarchy that begins with the company, then flows through social groups like clubhouses or platforms (sometimes manipulating social groups in order to maintain this control), then considers the individual gamer last or sometimes not at all. Sources of brand power and ownership often do not lend themselves to the interests of games or participants of games.

The Discourse – A 'zeitgeist' which includes online discussion, the conversations between personalities, forums, and social media platforms. The Discourse can contain useful information and ideas. However, the Discourse is not the game actually occurring, at a table, in actual play.

To test this, find 10 groups which play Dungeons and Dragons.

Ask all of it's participants what “The Open Gaming License” is, or “Safety Tools” or one of the many acronyms like “PBTA” or “OSR” are. You'll likely find that the majority are playing games and unaware of these supposedly important concepts.

Worse, the Discourse proves to be a battlefield akin to Brand Tabletop's desire for control, consisting of various factions all in a petty, vapid, and rather sad, resource war.

While the Discourse can have useful ideas or simply be fun to explore for passionate gamers, whenever a force outside the table seeks to usurp the table's authority, it is anti-Folk in character. Folk Gamers place the authority of the table above talking heads and chatter on social media platforms.

The Signal – The Signal is a euphemism (based on the 2005 movie “Serenity”) for Brand Tabletop's ability to make Folk Tabletop look obscure or non-existent at best or an evil at worst. To test the signal, try typing “Dungeons and Dragons” into a major search engine, or a search bar on a streaming, social media or video sharing platform. You will, apart from historical entries like Wikipedia, likely find no folk tabletop games and all results will be related to the current version of the brand game. All products shown under product or shopping categories will be by a single company. It is possible for someone to go years and never know that folk tabletop gaming exists, even in the “information age.”

The signal includes retail and physical space. Try going into your average game store which stocks, at most, Pathfinder, and ask them to stock even “Call of Cthulu” or “Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars.” A person making this request will likely be treated as an inconvenience at best or an interloper at worst. Go to your Wal-Mart or other general retailer and go to the games aisle and see which RPG shows up there for the average person. You will likely only find one.

The Signal is also social. Try going to most tabletop groups and mentioning an indie or folk tabletop game. In most cases you will get ignored, in some you'll receive antipathy. I was recently told in one local tabletop group in response to offering a game other than 5e, “you are doing a disservice to new players, who will need to play 5e with others in order to find other players and groups.”

Since the OGL crisis in 2022, the Signal has been discovered by more gamers than ever and is starting to erode. Shadowdark is now dominating games from Garycon to Gencon, and online platforms like Startplaying.games are increasingly featuring many other games than brand D&D. Game stores and platforms which saw themselves tossed into the cold by a movement to direct sales are seeing that partnership with the Leviathan may no longer be working out. Third party creators have been utterly betrayed and fled the 5e market. With the seeming imminent failure of D&D 2024, we may see a new era where brand D&D is irrelevant. On the other hand, Games Workshop has seen the opposite and is succeeding year after year. Increasingly “wargames” simply mean “Warhammer.”

Summary:

Tabletop games are for everyone and their play arises from the participants. The western tabletop hobby is beginning to awaken from a dream we entered long ago, and it belongs to all of us once again.

References

Homo Ludens – Johan Huizinga 1938

On Fairy Stories – Tolkien 1947

Man, Play and Games – Roger Caillois 1958

Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes – Hakim Bey 1995

All fandoms are toxic – Ben Milton 2020

https://questingblog.com/all-fandoms-are-toxic/

Thank you, I will now destroy my channel - Dungeoncraft 2023

DnD doesn't need WOTC anymore – Ben Milton 2023