Magic's Psychographic Profiles Work For RPGs Too

Give us a Mel card, Rosewater!

    If you're lucky enough to have never engaged in the addiction semi-affectionately dubbed by some of us as "Cardboard Crack" and to others as "Magic: The Gathering," your bank account probably thanks you - but unfortunately, that means you likely missed out on Mark Rosewater's categorization of gamer types. Rosewater, one of the longtime members of the design staff for MtG, wrote an article almost a quarter of a century ago that defined three primary player archetypes, and in the intervening years two more meta-archetypes have been added. You can check Rosewater's 2025 post updating the first three here (assuming that when you read this WotC hasn't inexplicably deleted their archive, again) and this 2015 post on the latter two here - they're fascinating, and he breaks down the differences between the psychographic profiles of the first three versus the æsthetic profiles of the latter two, but for simplicity's sake in this post I'm going to be referring to them as archetypes and I'll define them briefly here:

- Timmy/Tammy: a player who likes playing big dramatic cards because doing big dramatic things is fun

- Johnny/Jenny: a player who revels in crafting their deck as a means of self-expression

- Spike: a player whose primary goal is to play at optimum technical proficiency (i.e. a tournament player)

- Mel: a player who enjoys understanding the reasons behind game design choices to build a deeper appreciation for the game

- Vorthos: a player who is all-in on the lore of the in-game universe

Truthfully, these archetypes exist in the universes beyond those of Magic the Gathering, and I think that understanding them in the context of playing TTRPGs can help you make your table a lot more fun. Not only does this help you identify what kind of needs you and your fellow players have at the table, but by giving name to something you are more likely to be able to vouch for your own needs.

Take a walk with me.

Time Walk, by Amy Weber.

T_mmy

    If you're a T_mmy, I guarantee you that you have picked - and went on to enjoy thoroughly - at least one game based on its cover and your deep desire to recreate whatever was depicted. A T_mmy is going to revel in moments where they can become the center of attention using a cool ability - left unchecked this might lead to a case of Main Character Syndrome, but deployed carefully you may be your party's Dramatic Sacrifice person. Being a T_mmy as a TTRPG player means that you know you're here to have fun with your friends playing a game, and by Crom you're going to inspire your friends to have fun via your actions.

    Playing with a T_mmy at the table may rub some people the wrong way, especially if they've been hogging the spotlight too long. I find games like Stonetop (and, y'know, I guess a lot of PbtA games) that have a mechanized way for you to grab the spotlight at certain times are great games for T_mmies not only because it lets them do what they want, but for newer players it can be a teaching tool for understanding the right times to do the big flashy thing. I find my favorite T_mmies are the players who will use their wild ability to set up an alley-oop for another player, in whatever form that may take.

J_nny

    If you're a J_nny, you're absolutely the kind of player who in your D&D-oids may spend days agonizing in the Character Optimization boards - not because you want to powergame, but because you have such a specific idea for how you want your character to operate and must simply find the best combination of traits to realize them. In less crunchy games, you have have a specific character in mind when choosing your character archetype and will attempt to play your character to become your ideal character. In other words, if the T_mmy at the table is the "haha yaaaay Fireball" type, you're the one who has brought your original character Blonic to the table.

    Those may sound like slightly sour interpretations, but as with all things these personality types exist on a spectrum. The less table-friendly J_nny may insist that they find fun by loudly and repeatedly making sure that everyone knows their character ISN'T an original character named Bluckles but is in fact Knuckles trapped in the real world, but the more table-friendly J_nny is going to be someone who is locked in and ready to be that character - they may not be LARPing necessarily, but they know who they want to play and they're willing to make it happen.

Spike

    If you're a Spike in the TTRPG world, you are the sick freak who spends hours on CharOp threads learning how to make number go up better. You view games as adversarial, hopefully just between you and the GM, and probably because that GM hurt you and rather than using your big boy words you're going to hurt them by ruining the encounter balance of every single game they run.

    Whoa, sorry, I blacked out there for a second, I think I was overcome by a wave of unhealed trauma. Playing with a Spike can be difficult if they're the adversarial type - but when everyone at the table is a Spike, you may well be able to bear witness to one of the most technically masterful presentations of whatever game you've decided to play that evening. I feel that Spikes tend towards crunchier games - after tall, more options and intricate systems means more ways to prove your mastery. I think there's a version of Spike that lives in the realm of storygames, however - I feel like basically everyone playing in The Bad Spot's The Lands Remaining campaign is a Storygame Spike because of how well they have weaponized their ability to make each other feel feelings through their roleplay.

Vorthos

    Vorthos are much rarer in the indie TTRPG scene - mostly because of the amount of time it takes to build up the amount of lore necessary to be that voracious. Sure there's fans of the various D&D campaign settings, and you've got games like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun or even Call of Cthulhu that have been around long enough (and have enough other media tie-ins) to have allowed all kinds of fans to make their way into these games - but I feel like outside of maybe the recurring names throughout the Carved from Brindlewood games or perhaps those depraved enough to have tried to find a continuity through Into the Odd + Electric/Mythic/Intergalatcic Bastionland through Chris McDowall's various and sundry blogposts, the push for many indie games to be self-contained experiences and/or be staunchly anti-canon makes it hard for a Vorthos to find good eatin'.

    Having a Vorthos at the table, though, can be wonderful - you'll have someone ready to be your lore guide and setting bible, you'll likely have someone who's able to roleplay completely off the cuff as they're already immersed in the world, and as long as the GM hasn't changed any canon for this world everything will be perfectly fine. You...you wouldn't change the canon would you? It was like that for a REASON you hack, you think you're a better writer than- 

Mel

    If you're reading this, you're a Mel. I'm sorry I had to be the one to break it to you. Statistically speaking, the only people who read this blog are fellow game designers, and that means that no matter what when you're finally a player in a game, you're consciously or subconsciously going to be picking apart the game's mechanics to figure out why it does what it does. Used for good, you may be able to spot ways that the game's core motifs are reinforced via its mechanics - turned to evil, you will almost certainly start talking about why another game would have been a better choice for the story you're in and how if your GM would just LISTEN and let you bring in this mechanic from YOUR FAVORITE GAME (I'd make the joke that it's D&D, but again statistically speaking only sicko indie RPG perverts read this blog so I'm just going to say...oh, let's go with the dice resolution mechanics from Midnight on Roseville Beach)...

Actionable Content

    Okay okay look I know, this is starting to look more like player bashing than player advice, but just

vibe with me for a second. In reading through those descriptions, you likely thought of people you know. You almost certainly found moments where you identified with each of them - and that is very much the point. Nobody is purely a J_nny or a Spike - I'm not bringing out some kind of new gender pentanary or astrology here. No, it's important to understand these archetypes and the spectrum they live on because by knowing how you lean, you'll be able to talk with your fellow players to make sure you're all having fun. If you lean hard into T_mmy territory and you know you've got a Spike at the table, it's possible you'll come into odds where both of you are trying to show off something that's important to you but one of you might end up hogging the spotlight preventing the other from having a chance to have their fun. A J_nny and a Mel are just as likely to have fun discussing the finer points of why certain mechanics are in a game and how they're utilized to emphasize certain kinds of storytelling at the player and the character level as a T_mmy and a Vorthos are to have fun discussing the lore implications of that new super powerful artifact that just showed up in-game. If you really hate keeping up with the plot of a game and you're more interested in just rolling dice, being able to identify that everyone at your table is a hardcore Vorthos is going to save you (and them) a whole lot of heartache because you simply are not going to have the kind of fun they're having.

    Again, all of these identities are fluid - some nights you might lean one way, sometimes you'll lean a few other ways at the same time. By being able to give names to the way that you want to have fun, however, you'll be able to find folks who want to have the same kind of fun as you, and when you have to have hard conversations about why you may or may not be vibing with a table, you'll be able to articulate them.

Outro

    I really do recommend actually going and reading MaRo's blog posts over the years on these player archetypes. It's really fascinating stuff, and he's able to explain those things way better than I just kind of gestured at here.

    Also, at time of writing we're just over a month out from PAX Unplugged, where I will be maaaaybe running games for a company or maybe just vagabonding my way around Philadelphia. Feel free to say hi or reach out!

Stay weird out there.