Casting Shadows

I seem to be sticking with a path of sharing thoughts on being a player of roleplaying games as opposed to my approach from previous years of sharing specific experiences.

The #RPGaDay prompt for this August 14th is the word guide. As I am following my instincts and then shaping those first reactions with quick but reasoned thought, my two-minute video for today took me to brief coverage of the classic admonition to read the manual.

It is, despite all these years of witnessing it, still a matter of unyielding surprise how the internal war between enthusiasm to play versus learning how to play is so often win by the former.

Since the rise of social media, it has become even easier to see the results of this as people now publicly wrestle with questions about concepts, mechanics, and settings that are answered in the core rules of the game they are playing.

“So what?” many say. “We can make our own rules and solutions. What is at risk?”

I agree.

Some can.

Some prefer it.

Are they, though, the sort to cry out in the wilderness for answers?

I think not, and it is for the people who rush in before they are ready and when they hit trouble prefer to receive rather than create a solution that I say there is hope. There is hope back where the desire to play started: with the book.