The Kink Shelf

If you’re a roleplaying game enthusiast and even a little like me, you’ve probably got a kink shelf. This is the phrase I use in my own head to describe the shelf of RPGs I’ll probably never play. Shelves plural, at this point. And you know, I’m okay with that. Would I like to play more of the games on my kink shelf? Absolutely! But is my experience of the hobby diminished if I don’t have that opportunity?

Well, some would say yes. I’m an advocate of RPG diversity, but I also get why everyone and their pet squirrel seems to play variants of D&D. Learning different ways of doing something you already love is a pain in the ass. Personally, I love playing bass, but I cannot be bothered to muster the discipline and patience needed to learn guitar.

My D&D-analogue is RuneQuest. In no small part, that’s because I’ve dedicated a ton of time to figuring out how the game clicks. Once you start to understand a ruleset by intuition, it’s hard to transition to another one. Sure, you can do it, but it’s just not comfy. This is an emotional situation, not an intellectual one. Doesn’t hurt that most of the people I play games with enjoy RuneQuest, too.

So most of my RPGs are relegated to the kink shelf.

They’re the weird stuff, the uncomfy stuff, the stuff you’d love to try but can’t quite pitch to your group. Sometimes you’ll grab an idea out of one and everyone loves it—I adapt adventures from other systems all the time—but they don’t really want to experiment further. That’s OK.

The kink shelf is why I think about RPG publications as sitting on an “armchair to kitchen table” spectrum. This isn’t about evaluating a book as “good” or “bad,” but rather about describing how a book gets used.

Armchair

The armchair books are your classic kink shelf books. You have them because they looked cool, and it’s fun to give indie designers disposable income so they can keep making weird stuff. At the deep end of the armchair spectrum are lore books, setting books, and art books. For my RuneQuest crowd, this is stuff like The Guide to Glorantha or Armies & Enemies of Dragon Pass. A good example off my own kink shelves would be Gooey Cube’s Encyclopaedia Zyathica. Am I ever going to play a game in their Wy’rded World? Probably not. I picked up the product because I like worldbuilding, and it looked like an interesting, detailed read.

I bought those books for my armchair. They’re RPG books, not fiction, but my intended use is reading them while curled up with the cat. Lots of stuff in the armchair deep end isn’t really meant to be on your table while you play. It’s meant for enthusiasts to read and enjoy.

On the shallow end, there’s books that were really made for use in games, but which I end up consuming as an armchair book instead. This space covers a ton of books. I suspect I’m not alone in this experience, that a lot of RPG fans read many RPGs, but don’t play them. Playing a game requires so much time and energy to organize, but it’s easy to sit and read.

One recent example from my shelves is the D&D 5E campaign Odyssey of the Dragonlords. What, D&D on the kink shelf? Well, I don’t play much of it, and I was almost certainly never going to play a full-length campaign like this one. However I’m a huge sucker for dragons, and a huge sucker for ancient Greece-inspired games, so of course I loved the campaign’s pitch. This was a book intended for the tabletop—and I think it’d play pretty well, for what it’s worth—but I instead consumed it as an armchair book.

This is the space where most indie rulesets live. People think they’re cool, they read them, maybe they cross into the shallows of the kitchen table space, but people don’t play them. Not in hordes, anyway. The games don’t get adopted—for a million reasons or no reason at all—as a group’s new “comfy” game.

Kitchen Table

In contrast, kitchen table books are those which can be used to play a game. Usually on a table, and usually with other people. Starting from the shallow end we have stuff like setting books—which tend to straddle the blurry line pretty easily—and other background books which provide useful details, rules, or procedures for playing the game. One example from my RuneQuest collection would be Simon Phipp’s Secrets of HeroQuesting. This book’s not really something I use directly at the table, but it’s chock full of ideas, advice, and gamemaster tips which help when I’m processing how to GM a heroquest into Glorantha’s mythology.

Another good example of the shallow end would be setting books which also include random encounters, new antagonists, and other tools for bringing the setting to life. In my mind for a book to fit the “table” space it’s got to have something I might plan to play directly out of the book. From my kink shelf one good example might be The Islands of Sina Una. This campaign setting for D&D 5E has decent “armchair” value, but also includes a lot of content aimed at “table” play—like player options and new monsters.

As we move deeper, we hit the meat of this section of the kink shelf—core rulebooks. I’ve got them, you’ve got them. They’re written to be played but so, so many see just a session or two of use. They’re definitely “table” books, but we use them really more in the armchair. Or perhaps just swipe an idea or mechanic from one game, and use it for another. A great example of this from my own games has been nicking the resource dice mechanic from Forbidden Lands to simplify tracking food, water, etc. while playing RuneQuest.

I tend to think of different core game systems as the heart of the kink shelf because they’re the odd, interesting stuff that pushes outside the comfort zone. A lot of indie material I pick up falls here, and my suspicion is that I’m not alone in this habit. I like indie games, I read a fair number, but I don’t really play a lot of different games. They’re kinks, something to spice our gaming life up. Some of my favorite examples include Overlight from Renegade Games, and Olde School Wizardry. I’ve played just a dash of Overlight, and haven’t had a chance to run Olde School Wizardry. I’ve read them both, I like them both, I’ve nicked ideas from both when GMing or brainstorming adventures.

Living on the kink shelf does not mean a book is bad.

Ultimately, most of these core games won’t see significant play, much less become a “comfort zone” game. There’s several games on my shelf I’d love to play a campaign of, but not that many I actually think could be my new “vanilla.” They’re “table” books, which I mostly use in an “armchair” way.

At the deepest end of “table” books we come to the adventures. These are the most intense example of what I think of when I think “table” book—a book you leave open on the table, and play straight off the page. In my opinion, the ideal adventure is one which you can skim through once, then jump right in and play. For me this captures the essence of “table” books. I have the book because I can use it to play the game, rather than to read it or enjoy the art. More “armchair” uses aren’t in some way “invalid”—they just aren’t the focal use of the book. Again, Odyssey of the Dragonlords is absolutely a “table” book, I just consumed it as an armchair book because that’s what worked best for me.

Subjective

Again, it’s important to remember that this is how I’m finding I think about RPG books. It’s a dynamic I’ve had in my head for a while, as you can probably see in my recent reviews. If you think I’ve got an element wrong, or that there’s a missing dynamic to this spectrum, I’d love to hear your thoughts! I find this way of thinking useful, but it’s hardly intended to be some kind of 19th century-style “definitive statement on all TTRPG publications.”

Until next time, then!

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