On Hobby Best Practices - Part 5

 

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Part 5 - Practice your actual hobby

I have saved the most blatantly obvious of these posts for last. Yet it feels sometimes like the obviousness of this is not as clear as I or others might think, so it bears stating it out loud.

First off, let me direct you to Weird Writer’s excellent post on the roleplaying hobbies. She breaks things down in an excellent manner, and frankly much better than I ever could. Going by their list, this post will be specifically about participating in the “core hobby”.

To do so first one must define what their core hobby is. In the case of TTRPGs, as that is the primary focus of this series, it can be rather tricky, however for the purposes of this post I will say that playing at a table (in person or virtual one) with other people is the core hobby of playing tabletop RPGs.

That might sound like a hot take, or even “controversial”, but the fact that it does is the same reason it needs saying. Playing tabletop RPGs, with other people, is the core of the TTRPG hobby. Buying books, reading books, writing and preparing adventures, scenarios, locations, sub-systems, magic spell lists, writing session reports, doing solo play, engaging in the community, watching actual plays - all of those are perfectly nice and enjoyable activities, but they are not engaging with your core hobby.

However one can’t become a more engaged and better hobbyist at their chosen hobby by simply nibbling around the edges. I put off writing this post for over a year, because due to various life reasons I was not able to do much of any gaming until the very tail end of 2024, and it felt disingenuous to declare the importance of play as I was not engaging in any myself.

TTRPGs are in a lot of ways a craft and crafts require purposeful, focused practice to become better at. And surely we, as hobbyists, should desire to become better at the thing we love and enjoy doing right?
This was the last planned post in this series. I might add further ones if I feel a specific thing benefits from being highlighted as a best practice. Or even better, I encourage you to contribute to this list yourself! If you do, please share it with me.

Thank you for reading, and go do more hobbying!

On Hobby Best Practices - Part 4

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<< Part 3 * Part 5 >>

Part 4 - Be a creative hobbyist

Last month there was a post on Grognardia about "being a creator, not a consumer." While very good advice in general, let’s talk a bit more about what this actually entails.

After all, simply saying that creating things is good is kind of vague, isn’t it? Because intent and end goals matter. Creating things is fine. But to what end do you create those things? There is, I feel, a substantive difference between creating something to simply share with other hobbyists, and creating stuff with the goal of making it into a product.

Plenty of people have already pointed out that the OSR is turning more and more into not a hobbyist space, but a place for people to sell each other their own house rules and, if you’re lucky, some adventures. This is in many ways antithetical to a hobby community, as the relations it creates are those between product maker and consumer, rather than between peers both engaging in the same shared interests. While I agree with, say, Marcia that reducing that is a good thing, I also think it is a logical step in the capitalist reality in which we all have to exist.

As such the natural inclination to turn one’s hobby into a side hustle, or a product of some kind. I will not tell you to not do it, mostly because it’s not my place to do so. I will point out my own personal story with this, being someone who used to draw a lot of art relating to the setting of Glorantha, to the point where it then became my job to do so for a solid 9 years. While I am quite happy with the stuff I learned while being a professional artist, that’s the rub - I was a professional artist now, not a hobbyist. And while then, as now, I do plenty of art for my own enjoyment, that change has been permanent.

People like Gus L for example have mentioned before that the reason they charge money for some things is that it helps that specific module get seen and treated as worthwhile, because in the capitalist reality that we exist in, things being given away for free are often seen as worth less than something that you have to pay for. So I suppose if you want to go down that route, that is a question one must answer for themselves - do I want to put a money tag on the hobby creativity that I am practicing or not?

I personally prefer not to. If I am writing a class, or house rules or something else, I prefer to simply have it online and available for other hobbyists to see and freely take from, just as I freely take from what other hobbyists have done as well. That free flow of ideas, tools and concepts is what initially drew me to the OSR as a niche, as it seemed to contrast the consumer-focused broader RPG hobby, where the main thing discussed is what books you bought and what books you have in your collection, rather than what you are running or what you’ve created yourself.

Ultimately, with the consideration of monetization of one’s hobby aside, I do still think that, yes, being someone who creates rather than simply consumes is definitely a best hobby practice. It allows you to break out of the mindset of being a passive participant in what is an active hobby, and allows you to talk to others as peers rather than as a customer.

In the next post, I will talk about what might be a rather obvious point - practicing one’s hobby (as opposed to simply discussing it or participating in peripheral activities and side-hobbies).

On Hobby Best Practices - Part 3

 

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Part 3 - Participate in a hobby community

Most hobbies, but especially tabletop RPGs, tend to be social activities to some degree. Many people become interested in a hobby as a way to find others with similar tastes or views and participate in a community of like minded people.

This is good, and you should do it too. Obviously community participation carries its own sets of issues and problems, but I believe it is still best practice to find at least one community focused around your hobby and be a part of it.

I will not go into details on how to be a good participant in a community, as that is deeply context sensitive to each community and each hobby, but I will direct people to this excellent post on Papers and Pencils about it.

Being part of a hobby community allows you to be exposed to other hobbyists that you can talk with and share your experience with. After all, if you have been writing about your hobby and about the experience of practicing it, it would be useful to have people who would read those writings. And to read the writings of others and compare them to your own experience and learn from them.

Obviously, a hobby like TTRPGs is a social activity, so having other hobbyists to all do your hobby with is a big boon. While running demonstrations and playing with newcomers or complete outsiders to the hobby is valuable, it can also end up ultimately rather limiting your own experience as a hobbyist. If this is all you want to do, then great - more power to you! But I consider it important to also practice your hobby among peers or, even better, those who are more experienced hobbyists than yourself in order to grow.

To go to miniature painting for an example - it will be more useful for your own learning to be around better painters than yourself, rather than to demonstrate the basics of base coating to new people and nothing else.

A hobby community does not need to be big, either. Tony Bath, a luminary of the wargaming hobby, ostensibly started his hobbyist practice with just one other friend to play games with, eventually it ballooning into the Hyboria Campaign, a wargaming campaign of such scale and importance that even now, some 60 years later, people are still mentioning it or referencing it!

Don’t have anyone though? Well, I think you know what you have to do here, right? If there is no community for you to participate in (and that is almost never true, but maybe you want an in-person rather than an online one!), then it is your job to create it. Yes, community creation, maintenance and growing are difficult, hard and complex things that most people are not suited for or good at. As someone who has done that work before, I fully acknowledge that. But it is also a good thing to at least try and do, even if you just learn that you are not strong at it.

Perhaps your efforts will attract the attention of someone who is better at these things, and you would have helped start a community anyway! It does happen, believe it or not.

In the next part I will talk about being a creative hobbyist, not just a consumer.

On Hobby Best Practices - Part 2

 

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<< Part 1 * Part 3 >>

Part 2 - Introduce others to your hobby

In four large cities with communities of early D&D adopters Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Boston cross-pollination proceeded quite rapidly. Each of these major cities boasted lengthy pedigrees in both science-fiction fandom and wargames, and each supported several independent clusters of dedicated players. None, however, was very close to the midwestern roots of D&D, where the influence of the game's creators might hold greater sway. In keeping with hobby best practices, these coastal groups began publicly recording the state of their campaigns and hosting visitors unfamiliar with their ways. - The Elusive Shift, Jon Peterson. Emphasis mine.  

This is the second post in the hobby best practices series. In this one I will continue with the second example given in the quote above - introducing new people to your hobby! I’ll talk about participating in hobby communities later, but in general most people tend to enjoy the company of other hobbyists that share their interests. And the way those people get there is that someone introduces them into the hobby. So why not have that someone be you?

In hobbies like TTRPGs, this more or less means one thing - run games. Be it at conventions, at your LGS or for your friends, it doesn’t matter. Organizing and running games for newbies is the best way to demonstrate the hobby and bring more people into it.

If you want to do this right, this does mean that this is a role with a good deal of responsibility to it. Being the person responsible for introducing people to a brand new thing means you are, by default, an ambassador to the entire hobby. A bad or a good experience can mean either getting a new convert or driving someone off the hobby entirely.

Also lets be clear here - you will drive people out of the hobby. Even if you are the best GM out there, you will sooner or later run a game for someone who just…isn’t into it or doesn’t actually like the hobby you are demonstrating, and your demonstration will be what helps them realize they don’t like the thing. This is not bad. Remember how I mentioned that forming taste happens through contemplating experiences and learning what you do or don’t like and why you do or don’t like it? Well you have now helped someone refine their own taste just a bit more!

In miniatures wargaming this activity often takes the form of running demo games for people. Either by individuals or by gaming clubs, organizing demo games where others can become acquainted with the hobby.

Speaking of clubs, if you are part of one, having an open doors day of some kind is a good idea and a great way to get new faces to look at your hobby. Run exhibitions, or hell - maybe even a small convention. Or have a presence at an existing local convention, showing off what it is your club is focused on!

Importantly, this activity is not just for bringing complete newbies into your hobby. For example, if you are someone like me who is interested in a specific sub-niche of a hobby (OSR or DIY Gaming or whatever you want to call it) you can still do demonstration games for people who are part of the broader hobby that yours is a niche in! Do you practice your hobby in a different way than what most others would be familiar with? Excellent, run a demonstration for them. These demonstrations among hobbyists have different requirements and different expectations to them, as others would be familiar to at least some degree with what you are talking about, but are hopefully curious to learn a new perspective.

Hell, let’s go one step further - even with fellow hobbyists who are part of your sub-niche, but don’t participate in the specific group that you practice your hobby among? Try running a demonstration for them. Maybe your playgroup have developed an interesting technique or practice that is not widely adopted by the rest of your hobby - why not share it for others to experience and learn from?

In the next part I will talk about participating in hobby communities since it naturally follows from this one.

On Hobby Best Practices - Part 1

Series Index
Part 2 >>

Part 1 - Record your hobby experience

In four large cities with communities of early D&D adopters Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Boston cross-pollination proceeded quite rapidly. Each of these major cities boasted lengthy pedigrees in both science-fiction fandom and wargames, and each supported several independent clusters of dedicated players. None, however, was very close to the midwestern roots of D&D, where the influence of the game's creators might hold greater sway. In keeping with hobby best practices, these coastal groups began publicly recording the state of their campaigns and hosting visitors unfamiliar with their ways. - The Elusive Shift, Jon Peterson. Emphasis mine.  

    This is the first in a series of posts regarding what I consider to be best practices when it comes to one's hobby. In this case - tabletop RPGs, but I hope this advice is broadly applicable to other hobbies as well.

Lets begin with one of the examples from the quote that inspired this - recording your hobby. The simplest way to do this is, of course, to just start a blog on a free blog platform like blogspot or bearblog or whatever, and write about your game and your experience in it. This is a big part of why I started this very blog myself.

But, what should you write? Well that depends on the hobby in question. In the case of TTRPGs I would say there’s a few things that are worth covering.

First 

    Session reports! You’ll notice there’s a lot of these on here. I write session reports for two reasons. One is to simply have a place where I can store notes about the events in previous sessions of the game I am running, and two - so I can write my observations about the gaming experience and what it’s made me think about since it happened.

That latter one is, I feel, the more valuable of the two. It is what lets others understand how you practice your hobby. If you’re a referee, talk about your decision making and the process through which you organise or run your game. How do you stock dungeons? If you only run existing modules, how do you pick which ones to use? How do you keep track of your NPCs? What about keeping track of time in the game?

Are you a player? How did you handle a certain situation that the GM presented in your latest session? What long term plans do you have for your character(s) in the campaign, should they survive to see them come to fruition? Are you playing using a more complex system involving a lot of moving parts - how do you navigate it? Do you have any “builds” that you think have worked in the game? Any curious or clever ways in which you or your fellow players solved a situation in the game?

All of these above are things one can and should write about, I think. Writing about what you feel about the gaming experience, what you like and don’t like, what works and what doesn’t is important. For me personally, it allows me to actually think about the events of the game. Not the campaign, the game. About why I decided to resolve a situation one way, instead of another. Thinking about your hobby this way is what leads you to deciding what it is you like or don’t like. It builds actual taste. And simply knowing what you like, and why you like it will put you ahead of so ,so many people out there.

Second

    Write theory. If you already have plenty of practice with your hobby, and have gathered a good amount of useful information, knowledge and tricks of the trade? Share them with everyone else so that other hobbyists may learn from them.

This is the biggest thing that helped the OSR take shape as it did - people blogged about games, and about how to run games or play games. And it was born out of actual practice, like all good theory is. There are so many elements of this niche of the hobby that started their life on blogs, by having people write so that they can share their experience with others. And doing it for free, too. But we’ll get to that point later.

Third

    Write criticism. TTRPGs especially are woefully lacking in decent criticism. Be it reviews of products or what have you, things are….rather dire. Everything is either reading ad copy at you, or if you’re lucky someone reading through an adventure module and telling you how it feels. There’s nothing wrong with that, but playing TTRPGs is a hobby of doing things, not simply consuming media. Real, honest and valuable criticism comes from actual play (see below) and I would love to see more people writing about things they’ve run or played in, and giving an honest opinion on what worked and what didn’t.

There are issues with this, of course - in small circles like TTRPGs (let alone something even more niche like the OSR or Storygames) people tend to more or less know each other, and so it can feel a bit awkward to write a review about how another fellow hobbyist’s project is just kind of bad.

And that’s true…but conversely, this is part of being an adult. Taking criticism when it is given honestly and earnestly and without malice, and learning from it. And, hopefully, emerging a better hobbyist in the process.

Fourth and Last

    Just write about whatever is on your mind! This is probably the least important, but still valuable to keep you in the habit of recording and writing about your hobby.

You of course don’t have to just do a blog at all. Maybe you have a YouTube channel, in which case you can record videos about all of the above mentioned topics! Or maybe you write a newsletter that you send out to people. Or you want to go proper old school and take the atavistic route, writing, printing, hand-stapling and distributing small print run physical zines with your writings in them.

The actual medium matters only a little. The practice is the important part.

In the next post I will talk about introducing others to your hobby.