I am not exactly sure why Sophie at The Roleplay Experience thought I would have something to say about
“ideas and techniques of how to learn a new roleplay system, or how to convey the system as a designer to readers, or how GMs teach a new system to their player group”.
Something constructive that is.
I mean, yes, you can probably do a lot of very neat things, cribbing notes from learning management or, better yet!, knowledge management, but, you know, if you want that, maybe reach out to HR and ask them to put you on an appropriate training because you … need that for your professional development or somesuch?
(As an aside, I still have it on my to-do to run a session with the help of a slide deck to communicate key information to players. That obviously could be done for rules as well, but as said, I am not really here for the constructive part, and even less for giving an introduction to slide decks.)
So. Approaches to learning (or conveying) systems.
I dislike the sound of that.
I am likely overreacting, reading too much into this, but it seems to carry an implication of … the system being its own distinct thing, perhaps more bluntly, an implication of there being a right way to play (to use) the system.
That is missing a key point.
So let us add to it:
Approaches to learning systems to make them your own.
To me, that makes for an important change in perspective, in purpose, even. Plus, it is the reason, why I feel I cannot be really constructive around this, because the original (overinterpreted) implications irk me so much.
All the shifts towards more intensive (and extensive) communication between designers and (would-be) players, the engagement, the aim of pervasive, integrated community (singular!) around a system, the implied(!) striving for the attainment of play “as it was meant to be”, it galls me.
I do not want to engage with a designer. I want to engage with their design. With the material itself. And for that, all I need is the material itself. All the technique there is to it, is reading (probably, or otherwise consuming) the material.
And then consciously making that material my own. Interpreting it in my own way. Taking from it what I want. Getting inspired by it. Discarding half or even all of it, and just running with that impression or that idea of my own, that was kindled by the material (maybe even by my dislike of the material).
There is no technique to that. Or rather, none that makes sense sharing. You do you. That is the whole point.
…
This would actually have made for a fine closing line, but …
… there is one thing I actually do want to share (and which some even might, perhaps, maybe find constructive) and that is a metaphor for the above approach:
Roleplaying systems and materials are not artworks, they are art supplies.
Image by Apurvo Mahmud from Pixabay