Why TTRPGs?

[@Archaeo_Matt]

I enjoyed listening to this. I have been self-conscious of my own tendency toward static backgrounds. I know they're not the norm for the medium of video; but, personally, I don't like the use of constantly inserting superficially related stock video footage just for the sake of change. I was glad when one of my "viewers" recently mentioned that it was a good podcast to have going on in the background while they were painting minis. I realized podcast with some visual supports/cues really is a better description of what I actually want to produce. Both Stoicism and Existentialism have been very influential on me personally. More than any other single philosopher, Karl Jaspers has had the biggest influence on me; I'd definitely recommend his _Way to Wisdom_ for anyone that hasn't read it before. Many thanks for mentioning my "preparation as part of acting" video; it doesn't get many views. It attracted a critique, which brought me some new subscribers, but didn't earn the actual video much in the way of new views. As someone who enjoys writing stories, and also prefers to run TTRPGs more as a "sandbox," I think the world needs a lot of stories, even more than any one person could ever actually write for a fictional world. I think they work best as background stories, not something that a GM expects to be carried out by the players' characters. Whether, it's Hercules, or Robin Hood, or Gilgamesh, or Beowulf...aspects of those stories are known by many people who have never read the story themselves because their part of our cultural history. So, rather than have my player re-hash the 12 labors of Hercules, I'd rather just let that be something that NPCs casually mention along the way, or have scrolls with that story on it be the key to solving part of the current adventure by using them like a book cipher, etc. I've never been a big video game player myself, but have definitely played all kinds...coin-op arcade, console, and online. For me, no matter how massive and open the video game is written to be, I always find boundaries very quickly; and, after that, I can still enjoy it as a game, but I'll never get the same sense from it as I do from playing a TTRPG. While I really enjoy the world-building aspect, it is the negotiated process of having that world explored by imaginative, freewilled beings with their own independent ideas that actually makes the game interesting to me. Best!