Everything is Tables

There’s something very pleasing about a well-written random roll table, and they celebrate and enshrine the principle of mutable truth that exists in every TTRPG.

What’s down this alleyway? We don’t know. None of us know, not even the GM. What do these guys think of us? What’s in this desk drawer? What spell is on this scroll? It’s exciting to poke around at the edge of the world and see what happens.

There’s very little room to hide in a short table, and everything in this game is D6s; you can faff around all you like in a D100 table, half of that can be bumph and it doesn’t matter tuppence, but anything D12 or smaller is a stark light shone upon your creativity. Which leads us to something else that Grant’s been mulling over for a while: the principle of unplayable games, or at least games which require the user to have a think rather than just plug through what’s on the page and get to it.

You’re not supposed to take what the tables tell you as gospel. Technically, rules-as-written, you have to roll a 6 to start playing, and every time you don’t you have to run a game of Dungeons & Dragons or buy an indie roleplaying game. (Although, if you’re forced into it, you can always pick up a fine book here at RowanRookandDecard.com.) That’s daft, isn’t it? Right out of the gate. So hopefully what you have here, in the form of Everything is Tables, is something curious that encourages you to break it and ignore it and patch bits in. Try it.