在新冠疫情反复爆发至逐渐平息的三年间，笔者观察到，以“剧本杀”、“狼人杀”、“跑团”为代表的一类桌面角色扮演游戏，正在被称为“Z世代”的年轻消费者群体中快速拓展受众，在受到严重打击的线下娱乐产业中形成一种逆流而上的新消费时尚，并在社交平台上拥有不俗的分享讨论热度。笔者通过分析这类桌面游戏受众的消费特征与心理需求，总结出了角色扮演桌游在本时代焕发生机的背景、原因以及特殊意义。笔者认为，桌游为受众提供了一种介于虚拟符号娱乐与传统线下社交之间的折中娱乐消费方案，既迎合了“Z世代”以兴趣为导向、强调个性化、多元化、体验感和趣味性的消费特点，又弥补了线上互动中的“人”由于无法实时进行多感官维度的观察、交流与合作，从而缺乏真实感与生动感的弊端。桌游作为一种社交媒介，在高度“原子化”的工业文明中，能够提供一种新型的社交场域，满足受众渴望建立深度情感连接的心理需求，有利于重建个体间的信任与理解，恢复个体间被割裂的联系以及群体日趋淡薄的同理心与道德感。同时，桌游本身也是极具文化承载力的创意载体，能够有效接入并传播科学知识与人文内涵。因此，笔者将上述发现融入自己桌游设计的核心理念并展开实践，设计了一款面向“Z世代”年轻消费者、以情感探索和关系养成为导向的神经心理学科普题材桌面角色扮演游戏。神经心理学相关研究表明，人体内的多种神经递质是影响人类情感、欲望与行为的重要因素，因此，作品《浪漫反应》从科学规律中获取规则灵感，将神经心理学知识与叙事冒险玩法相结合，以六项参与情感关系的神经递质为线索，让玩家在游戏过程中，通过沉浸式地塑造角色的情感和行为动机，更深入地了解情感背后的生理机制。另一方面，作品以探讨亲密关系为人文内核，充分发挥桌游媒介的社交属性，旨在满足目标群体对亲密关系的好奇心与探索欲。通过唤起玩家对情感的理性关注与感性体验，作品能够在传递知识、提供娱乐的过程中加深个体之间的情感连接，最终引发人们产生对自身生命情感有关的思考和感悟。
During the three years from the repeated outbreak to the gradual subsidence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the author observed that tabletop role-playing games represented by “script killing”, “werewolf” and “COC” were rapidly expanding their audience among young consumer groups called “Generation Z”, and had a good share of discussion and popularity on social platforms, forming a new trend that went against the current in the offline entertainment industry that was severely hit. The author analyzed the consumption characteristics and psychological needs of the audience of this type of tabletop game, and summarized the background, reasons and special significance of the role-playing tabletop game’s revival in this era. The author believes that tabletop games provide a compromise entertainment consumption scheme between virtual symbolic entertainment and traditional offline social interaction, which not only caters to the consumption characteristics of “Generation Z” that are interest-oriented, emphasize personalization, diversification, experience and fun, but also makes up for the shortcomings of online interaction, where the “human” lacks a sense of reality and vividness due to the inability to observe, communicate and cooperate in real time in multiple sensory dimensions. As a social medium, tabletop games can provide a new type of social field in the highly “atomized” industrial civilization, which can meet the psychological needs of the audience to establish deep emotional connections, help rebuild trust and understanding between individuals, restore the severed connections between individuals and the increasingly weak empathy and moral sense of the group. At the same time, tabletop games themselves are also creative carriers with great cultural carrying capacity, which can effectively access and disseminate scientific knowledge and humanistic connotations. Therefore, the author integrated the above findings into his own core concept of tabletop game design, carried out practice, and designed a popular science-themed tabletop role-playing game for young consumers of “Generation Z”, which combines neuroscience knowledge with narrative adventure gameplay, and focuses on emotional exploration and relationship development. Neuroscience research shows that various neurotransmitters in the human body are important factors affecting human emotions, desires and behaviors. Therefore, the work “Romantic Reaction” draws inspiration from scientific laws for rules, and uses six neurotransmitters involved in emotional relationships as clues, allowing players to shape their characters’ emotions and behavioral motivations in an immersive way during the game process, and to understand the physiological mechanisms behind emotions more deeply. On the other hand, the work fully utilizes the social attributes of tabletop games, takes exploring intimate relationships as its humanistic core, aims to satisfy the target group’s curiosity and desire to explore intimate relationships, and deepens emotional connections between individuals by arousing players’ rational attention and emotional experience to emotions. In the process of conveying knowledge and providing entertainment, it ultimately triggers people’s thinking and feelings about their own life emotions.
