TTRPGs Can Make Even Tic-Tac-Toe Interesting

I’ve written previously about how puzzles should be incorporated in RPGs and why tension and escalation makes them interesting. Let’s approach it from another angle and see how far a dead-simple system can go in powering a TTRPG scenario. 

Take, for example, tic-tac-toe*. Tic-tac-toe is a game many children learn to play. But they do not play it for long. They learn the rules, optimize their play, reach an equilibrium where no one can win, and then stop playing the game. You would not ask anyone (besides a young child who has not yet learned the rules) to play tic-tac-toe with you. It would not be a fun experience for either player. In a way, tic-tac-toe is like a very simple lesson in how to enjoy games, and by extension, how to design them.

Now think about Hollywood Squares**, the game show that has been on and off television for nearly 60 years (revived once again this year, Wikipedia tells me). It's a quiz show where players win by connecting a line on a three-by-three grid of celebrity panelists. 

Nobody is watching Hollywood Squares for that hot tic-tac-toe action. But everyone watching brings their understanding of tic-tac-toe to the experience. It provides a framework for the real entertainment. Tic-tac-toe is not in itself fun, but the show wouldn’t have lasted as long as it has without the structure tic-tac-toe provides.

Apply this idea to TTRPGs. You could play a “game” where both players roll a d20, and whoever gets the highest result wins, and there are no other mechanics. This would obviously be a boring game. But a lot of action in a TTRPG session basically boils down to “two people roll, and the better result prevails.” It’s interesting because we care about the fictional events the roll is resolving.

So a mechanic can be too flimsy to stand on its own, but can still serve as a tool in a larger game.

Imagine the following scenario (set aside for a moment the artificial premise and how or why this puzzle would exist in-fiction; this is an example only). A room is divided into nine sectors. Two opposing sides are in conflict to control it – say the adventuring party and an antagonistic faction. Creating a tic-tac-toe streak “wins,” allowing one side to prevail over the other. What constitutes marking a square is up to the DM; maybe just physically controlling a space, maybe overcoming an opponent in one-on-one battle, maybe something else. 

The players will quickly recognize that they’re playing tic-tac-toe, but the scenario is obviously more interesting than “regular” tic-tac-toe. For one, as described above, tic-tac-toe is facilitating something larger than itself, rather than carrying the entire weight of being fun through its rules and mechanics alone. And two, the open-ended nature of TTRPGs means that tic-tac-toe is only a loose framework, not a rigid structure. 

Can a marked square be returned to its blank state, or flipped by another team? Can PCs mark more than one square at a time, or otherwise break the turn order? Can they stop the opposition from marking a square? How can their characters’ abilities and equipment and knowledge be adapted to this unexpected scenario? 

Remember that many games and game systems can be combined in unexpected ways to create something that is more than the sum of its parts.

*AKA Noughts and Crosses

**AKA Celebrity Squares