I was originally going to write an entry today using the Safety prompt, wrote quite a bit and discarded it. I think instead I'm going to discuss things from the angle of using the prompt "Limits."

Game Night for me is really all about fun. By fun, I mostly mean fun as you'd expect, but really any enjoyment. A dire session where awful things happened can also be enjoyable or provide food for thought in a way I appreciate even if it isn't necessarily "Yay!" fun.

Roleplaying, theoretically, can be about absolutely anything at all. You can roleplay a fantastical past, a far future, a dream inside a dying drug addict's mind, all of those at the same time, or none of them. You can play as a character, many characters, of any somewhat sentient form or formlessness imaginable. Events that occur can be exciting, boring, the greatest cruelties, the deepest kindness and anything else you might imagine. You can roleplay in person, online, live-action RP. You can roleplay in a house, in a field, with friends or enemies. Out of these infinite possibilities, this formless chaos, GMs and Players must shape what and how they wish to play. This is done by placing limits and chopping away, or more often taking a pre-existing genre or setting as a base from which to form the scope and nature of play, combined with folks' default social habits.

So... limits are good in so far as they set the stage, help set expectations and contribute to the fun had at the table. "Safety tools" are this subject that has been a thing over the last few years people get fired up over, and feel as you may about them, I think they are at least aimed at setting limits that contribute to fun at the table for all participants. When players all feel a sense of safety or trust in fellow players/GMs due to agreed upon limits, it frees them to play fully and confidently, without as high a level of concern their fun may be undermined in certain ways. It can even allow play to get to some edgier places than it might have if these limits weren't discussed and everyone was working on assumptions, if that's what people want.

In the realm of more concrete traditional RPG rules, limits also serve the purpose of supporting the fictional reality, maintaining challenge, or possibly enforcing role differentiation. While I'm not a huge fan of class systems, they do define abilities and limits for various reasons, be they for some attempt at "game balance", to provide strong "niche protection" and differentiation, or to try to emulate certain archetypes and evoke a certain kind of vibe. Also, RPGs differ in how powerful characters can become, and it is worth considering this and if it matches with the kind of game experiences you want to create. If a game allows a character to start as a simple peasant and eventually be able to wade through hordes of men, chopping them down left and right while their companion makes meteors rain from the sky... is that what you want? Maybe yes, maybe no. The thing with limits is that they shape play and approaches. Sometimes limitations in play lead to creativity, made necessary in an attempt to circumvent a limit or achieve a goal in spite of it.

In conclusion, the ultimate aim of all of this, for me, is fun. Do the limits you impose create a play-space that is conducive to the group having a good time, either due to the interesting challenges they create, or the confidence they create? Those are some good limits. If they make the game more of a hassle for everyone, or lead to a frustrating game? Maybe those are bad limits.

The fact that I wrote and posted this #RPGaDay2021 post for the 14th on the 17th maybe means I'm starting to hit my own limits! I guess you will know, when further posts either arrive or do not. But... I'm having some confidence I can get back on track!