Stop Just Playing Games You Know You Like

 Intro

This post has existed in an endless number of forms in my head for months now, so this might as well be the energy we're bringing into 2025: if you want to be Good At Games, I need you to just shut the fuck up and play something that isn't that one game you like playing.

What Does "Being Good At Games" Even Mean?

Every time I interact with a game I do not know, whether that is by playing it or by reading it with friends (which some, including myself, would argue is a valid form of play as well), I learn something. Every time I engage with a creator whose work I've never seen before, I see how another person sees the world and articulates their thoughts. Every time I sit down with a new game, I find things to smuggle back into other games and have talking points for my friends about how they play games to see if they've ever considered doing something differently. Sometimes I gamble and end up playing a game I didn't enjoy - but I would argue games you don't enjoy have more to teach both players and creators than games you do enjoy. We'll come back to that in a bit.

The Parable of the Anglerfish

comic by Beetle Moses

Recently, the Internet has been going wild over some extremely rare footage of an anglerfish spotted near the ocean's surface. In the same vein as Beetle Moses' comic above, many people are losing their collective minds over the poetic nature of the moment: a creature born in the darkest depths of the ocean decides in its final moments to literally ascend towards the light - to choose an option it had had the entirety of its life but never took, an option that would be its last and yet would treat it to experiences it couldn't have even imagined until it took that chance. While we may never know why this particular anglerfish made this particular choice, what we do know is that in its last moments, this fish experienced something it could have never known without making the choice to do something outside of its normal nature.

I need you to be like the anglerfish. Just choose to do something else for once, please, and gain an understanding of the world previously unimaginable to you.

Obligatory Anecdotes

I know these tend to ramble on so I'm going to try to keep this succinct. Despite the fact that I don't really think of myself as a game designer as compared to actual game designers since I've got, like, two writing credits and a handful of APs to my name, to my friends who have not engaged with writing TTRPGs in any kind of professional sense, I very much am a game designer to them. Several times now I've been asked by friends to help them with a game they're working on and most of those times those friends have handed me a game that is D&D But Worse, except for that one time my old roommate handed me something that was A Gunpla And Some d100 Damage Tables That They Claim Is A TTRPG. 

In every single situation, I have asked them to clarify the game that they wanted to make, and it was in no way like the draft they handed me. When I press deeper, inevitably they tell me some variation of "I was playing [game they like, often either 3.5 or 5e D&D] and just really wanted to make a game where you can do [specific thing they really like]." When I ask them "why not just make a homebrew for [that game]," the response is "Well yeah but I want to make a game!" I ask "Have you considered the rest of what goes into a game aside from that one thing you're really excited about?" and they go "Well that's the easy part! I'll just make my own system that does those things!" And finally, I will say "I think I know some games that do things like what you're trying to make. If you're going to design a system from the ground up, why not look at these games? You might get some ideas, or you might find that someone else has designed a core system you can hack to be more like what you want" and the response is either "No, I'm not going to read that" or "No I don't want to steal from someone else, I'm just going to create my completely original system influenced by literally nobody else." 

Protip: Do not ask your friend for help and then ignore every piece of help that they offer you.

Protip 2: None of us are where we think we are on the Dunning-Kruger scale. 

Coming Back To That In A Bit

There is a reason that the people I know who are game designers design games, and the people I know who are not game designers do not design games: a lack of desire to learn. And time. Okay, so there are two reasons - a lack of desire to learn and time. And lack of technical knowledge. OK so AMONG the reasons that the people I kno-

 

There are a number of creators I really respect who have successfully taken a game, modified it to fit how they play, and then in turn continued going until they had made a game that was more to their liking - Jason Cordova and Erika Chappell come to mind for The Between and Flying Circus, respectively. These were both games that trace their lineage back to the common ancestor of Apocalypse World - whereas The Between is much farther down the branching evolutionary path by way of Blades in the Dark and then Trophy, Flying Circus is still nominally a PbtA game just with a whooole lot of homebrew bolted onto that chassis. While a full breakdown of both games is probably beyond the scope of this post, suffice it to say that in the context of what I've mentioned earlier, both creators had an idea they were passionate about and worked until they could make a system work for them by drawing in their expertise in other fields to help realize their vision: I've gone over the evolutionary lineage that got us to The Between of course, but all of the Carved from Brindlewood games focus on their emulation of certain kinds of TV shows and movies - The Between is Penny Dreadful, Brindlewood Bay is Murder She Wrote and Golden Girls, and so on. With Flying Circus, it's extremely obvious that Erika brought her love of aviation, military history, and tabletop wargames into the game because of just how much attention to detail there is and how many Easter Eggs there are to find.

(And both of those games fucking rule and have been pretty noticeable successes, as an aside - Flying Circus is a Platinum bestseller on DTRPG which means it has sold between 1001 and 2500 copies there plus all the Itch sales, and The Between's Backerkit crowdfunding campaign broke the record for longest overtime funding thanks to the efforts of the 3500ish backers.)

Let The Hate Flow Through You

Something that feels painfully obvious to me but usually requires beating the aforementioned friends of mine with a stick about is the fact that we do not create games as Zeus birthed Athena - these things do not pop out of our skulls out of nowhere. Everything we consume goes back into what we create - everything we see or read or play or eat or love or hate will be reflected in what we make, and by having a larger supply of information to pull from, we are in turn able to make more varied and interesting creations. When we consume something we like, we will in turn insert it into what we make, sometimes giving it our own spin, sometimes as a straight up homage or Captain Ersatz. But when we interact with something we don't like - whether we just think it's okay, or if we really hate it - we have an opportunity to examine that and understand WHY we don't like it. These fruits are the most succulent, because whether as a creator or as a player, you have a chance to define yourself.

While we do technically have the chance for this kind of introspection with things we love, I find that negative emotions are the most fertile ground for growing the aforementioned succulent fruits of self-discovery. When we come upon something we do not like, we can avoid it of course - but with no further introspection we will inevitably stumble into more things we don't like if we keep poking around and exploring new ground. This, in my opinion, is a major contributing factor to why people give up and just stick with stuff they know they like - because tilling the fields is hard, and rather than going through and removing all the big rocks and dead roots in the ground, it's easier to just go grab an apple. It is much easier to just shut down and do the thing you know you like rather than articulating why something you didn't like made you feel that way. 

But if that's you - if you've somehow made it this far without succumbing to loss of circulation due to all the blood flowing to your hateboner, just consider for a moment - let's say you engage with something you don't like. You begin to dig down to find the root cause - what could have caused you to have such a strong emotion? What about that thing made you so mad? By being able to define this, you then bring it back to your preferred game - and suddenly, you have something you can avoid. If you really hate how a new game handled combat because it doesn't feel engaging and ends up with people sitting around with 45 minutes between turns where they can do anything if there are more than five characters on the field, then the next time you go to plan your next game night, you'll be able to tell the other people you're playing with something you like AND something you don't like, which lets you filter through options more efficiently - maybe you find a different playgroup, or even try another game! Not to mention, you might - God forbid - spark a conversation with your friends about why you have those feelings, and wow isn't that neat all of a sudden you've got a cool new thing to talk to your friends about?

Sometimes You Must Touch The Stove To Know That It Is Hot

There is one further imperative I put upon you: you need to go back and play games you know you don't like. I don't mean you need to keep sticking with a game you think sucks, I don't mean that you should just keep cycling through games you didn't have a good time with and never play a thing you enjoy - I mean that every once in a while, you need to go back and see if your tastes have changed. 

"But Adam," you cry, "I played that game a decade ago and I was able to articulate why I didn't like it! Isn't that enough?" Are you seriously that boring and stagnant of a human being that you have not changed in 10 years? Have you spent roughly 3652 days without a single moment of personal growth? Do you think the rest of the world has remained the same in that time?

The ten years thing is arbitrary, but the point is that sometimes with the benefit of hindsight or a fresh viewpoint or even just a new group of people to play with, you can find new joy in something you once hated. Sometimes, someone whose opinion you respect makes a good point about something they liked in that thing you didn't like and you decide to give it a shot to find out why they saw something you didn't. (A perfect example of this is how many people in the last few years have made "D&D 4e Was Good, Actually" videos - sometimes there's a nugget of game design hidden amongst what we first deem to be chaff that requires the winds of time to blow upon it before it is revealed.) Sometimes, all your friends like playing a game and you want to share in their passion even if you didn't like it the first time only to find out that actually it was the people you played the game with that sucked, not the game. Sometimes, creators release errata or updated editions of their game that fixes the thing you hated about it and now it's a game you'd enjoy - and you'd never know if you never went back to look.

But guess what? Sometimes you go back and play a game and are like "Oh, god, yeah, I remember why I hated this game." And that's okay too! Reaffirming your tastes is the name of the game - but the important thing is that you tried. Sometimes, you can find new reasons why you don't like something, and those things can spawn new ways to find/make things you do like.

I Don't Want To Be "Good At Games," 

I Just Want To Do My Thing

That's fine. Like that's actually fine. If you and your playgroup have fun playing the game you like, keep playing that way. If you're passionate about the play culture that you and your pals have built and you're able to do everything that you want to do and all of your gaming dreams are fulfilled, then I am legitimately happy for you. May we all one day reach that bliss. 

Ok, you can go now. You've confirmed there's nothing here for you - a decision that you came to by taking a chance and engaging with content you weren't sure you would like, or maybe even outright knew that you wouldn't like. It's a good thing this won't inspire any desire to talk to your friends about anything discussed here, and definitely that there's not a single sentence that you might take away and apply towards how you interact with the world. That would be a real shame.

Outro

Ok, we've had a lot of fun here watching Adam vent to an audience that will never see the advice they need to take and otherwise retreading a lot of basic media literacy that most creators already have. What's some actual actionable content to take away from this if you want to have this kind of conversation with real people in your lives?

1. Find out who made your favorite game. Find out what their favorite game is. Play it. Read other things they've written. Listen to interviews they've given. Try to crawl inside their brain and figure out why they make games the way they do.
   
   
2. If you don't want to commit to buying/learning a game you don't know if you'll like, find an AP and consume it that way - these days, you've gotta really work to find a game that NOBODY has played as long as it's been out for a little while. If it HAS been out for a while, there's a very high chance it's been played by SOMEONE on the One Shot Podcast Network.
   
   
3. If you find a game you think you'll like but don't have anyone to play it with, join a Discord community for that publisher/author/game. I guarantee one exists. You will find people to play with. The blessing and curse of Discord is that there definitely exists a niche community of fans for something, you just sometimes need to go hunting for it. Depending on the kind of game or creator, you may find an extremely strong and thriving community of people passionate about that game and the topics it touches on. You might even find people who encourage you to share the things you've created for your home games! Wow! Building community and encouraging discussion!
   
   
4. You know those friends who keep saying "Man, we really need to find time to play a game together" and then you can never manage to line one up because nobody is REALLY passionate about the games that get proposed? Start a book club. Start reading games you've got in your backlog together. At worst, you're getting to hang out with your friends. At best, you get to hang out with your friends AND you find a game you're all passionate enough about that gets you off your asses and actually play a game together.
   
   
5. Find a local convention. Play or run a game with people you've never met before. Think about how that experience made you feel and proceed accordingly.
   
   
6. If nothing else, hearken back to the sage advice of Ms. Frizzle: take chances, make mistakes, get messy!