Casting Shadows

#RPGaDAY2024 is hoping to prompt sharing on really good advice for Day 24. You can talk about the best advice if you like, or stick to good advice, but the idea overall is that the advice you share today has a good reputation in your group.

Advice for gaming that I consider essential – not the best advice – but essential advice, to which I have given my share of acclaim, is to read the rule books of the games that you play completely. I find this is general enough a way to phrase it that it can then be taken by a lot (maybe most) gamers and applied to their specific circumstances in a way that is valuable to them in those circumstances.

That starting point is not of much value without a second piece of essential advice, which is to know yourself. Again, the intention is to be clear enough to point in the direction the advice suggests, while being usefully ambiguous enough for broad application as we navigate the many variations and vicissitudes of life. This is the central piece of advice. It provides a hook on which to hang the advice to read the manual, while being a firm place upon which the final piece of advice may stand.

What is that final piece of essential advice? It’s the (holy) trinity of good gaming. What’s that, you might ask if you do not normally hang around in these parts? Well, this particular dao of getting along and finding satisfaction as a gamer can be summed up as being willing to do three things in an ongoing cycle before, during, and between periods of play in your life. The three things which make up the trinity are to be willing to talk with the other players about expectations, to then be willing to find the right game to best meet those expectations for the group you are gaming with at that time, and finally to be willing to be a part of finding and implementing solutions for any mismatches in the results of actual play and the group’s expectations for that play.

I find this is advice worth sharing, worth repeating, and most importantly, worth following.