You don't have to see many games of Dungeons & Dragons in movies or TV shows to know that media doesn't understand how D&D works. But with the innovation of homemade videos and podcasts distributed over the Internet, we've all gotten access to "live play" shows of real people actually playing tabletop games. But they also probably aren't the way you really play at home. That's not a problem, and in fact it's nice that we can have games we play, and different-but-similar games we listen to being played as entertainment. I don't feel the need for a live play game to be accurate to the way I play or even to the rules it claims to be using. It's nice when they make it clear where they deviate from the rules, but the way people interact with another, and banter and collaborate during play, is personal preference. I fully expect a game that's not my game to be different from my game. Or at least, that's what I used to think.
Lately, I've been playing wargame battle reports in the background as I work. Compared to an RPG, a typical wargame has a lot of structure. When a rule specifies that something lasts "a round", it's not like in an RPG where you ignore the time limitation because you're not in combat and nobody has any idea of how long anything's going on for anyway. Unlike an RPG, you're always in rounds in a wargame. And you can't wander off to pick flowers or debate with the pastry chef about whether apricot or blueberries make the best danish topping. There are clear objectives in wargames. So I'd assumed that the live plays on the Internet would have to be the same as how I really play at home.
And I was wrong.
To my surprise, the way I play wargames bears almost no similarity to the way the same game is played on the Internet. All the usual and most obvious aberrations apply. I don't stand around shouting at my opponent at the top of my lungs, because I'm not performing for a microphone or audience. I don't jump up and down and cheer when I roll well.
On the other hand, there are all the usual similarities. My games do have tense moments, and some dice rolls are excruciating. Gaming sessions often end with a cliffhanger that keeps me thinking about the game until I can find time for the next round.
Could it be that live play and real play are indeed the same game, after all? Well, yes. They are the same game, but being the same game doesn't mean the way you connect with them feels the same.
After giving this phenomenon some thought, my theory is that wargame live plays and real life play feel different for 3 reasons.
Live plays usually have a hard time limit, often just an hour or 2. Each game session is structured, however loosely, to fit within the time constraints of the show.
Interestingly, I think conference games often do feel like a live play game because they are also operating within a time constraint, and the Game Master and the players tend to play with that in mind.
Wargames have a great deal of structure, but what you choose to focus on during any given turn is up to you. You can make an upcoming hit roll feel like the most important moment in your life, or you can just roll to hit and then make the wound roll the most important moment of your life. Or you can make your rolls casually and then agonize over your opponent's saving throws. Or you can breeze past the rolls and make the entire game about movement.
The ability to shift the gravity of specific elements of the game is exclusive to your own gaming experience. You don't get to do that when you're watching somebody else play. In a live play show, the entertainers build and resolve the tension. If you wanted to agonize over a saving throw and the entertainers happen to breeze past it, that's just the way it plays out.
I'm not interested in tournament or highly competitive games. The battle reports I do watch are strongly focused on narrative. Some, of course, focus on narrative more and others favour gameplay, but none of them are documentation of a tabletop "sport". But watching a story unfold is different than playing the story out yourself. Even the best narrative live play wargame, regardless of how invested I am in the game, pales in comparison to the satisfaction I get from playing a narrative wargame myself. It's the old chestnut, "I guess you had to be there", proving itself reliable yet again. Sure, the game was good enough to make you actually anxious about where the story was going, and maybe it was really well hosted and presented. Maybe you binge-watched the whole campaign. But until you live it, you haven't truly experienced it.
If there's a moral to this thought exercise, it's that playing games can be better than just watching games. Obviously you probably don't have the free time to play games as often as you can listen to a live play session in the background as you work. And that's why it's nice to have both available to us.