Casting Shadows

Today, I will respond to the bold prompt rather than answer the standard question – though I might answer that question in a Short or on Bluesky.

Runeslinger

One of the great things that has kept me returning to co-host #RPGaDAY each year, but especially #RPGaDAY2024, has been the potential for people to share what is important to their enjoyment of the roleplaying game hobby. We share the games that have been fun for us to play, or fun to play with a certain group of people. We share the memories that groups or individual players made in the context of our play. We share inspirations, and our own creations. There is a lot of potential to contribute to and benefit from the passions and pleasures of others who share the hobby with us. Taken as individual moments (tears in rain, anyone?) these are pearls of positivity that might otherwise pass unperceived in the daily press of other people’s opinions. In #RPGaDAY, finding them is made easier – especially if we remember to share posts that are not ours.

This hobby is bigger, and quieter, than we might think. The year-long conversation about games and gaming, about new games and old games, about good ways and better ways to play by talking heads like mine on YouTube? That for many people is distant and lacking immediate relevance. At conventions, in events like #RPGaDAY2024, and around the gaming tables of the gamers who round out the seemingly silent majority, the talk is different. It’s about what we played and who we played it with. It’s about what characters did and didn’t do. It’s about “our games” and “our group.” It’s practical and personal. It’s the talk of newcomers and old hands. It’s the excited talk of wrestling with a new game or the confident discussion of the ongoing campaign. It’s the talk of friendship and laughter, and it is the memory of friendship and laughter taken from us. These conversations for most of the year are among close friends and inside the group. They are not posted for the world to find. They are hard to find and localized.

During #RPGaDAY, these important, foundational, and inspiring conversations are made easier to find, and hopefully easier to share. While it is hard for many to stand up alone before the crowd to share thoughts and opinions, it is perhaps easier to stand with a crowd to speak up for the thing unable to speak for itself: our beloved roleplaying games.

Do you have a little more time?

Check out this podcast episode where we blast through the first 4 prompts and then dig into a system I have found is easy to run and play with an example campaign well-suited to players just getting into it.