Does the golden path exist?

In the previous prompt, I briefly mentioned the insane amount of games we can choose from. But what happens after you choose a game?

Every time you play, your experience is unique and can never be repeated. And you must enjoy and learn from it. Let’s say you are a group of 5 players (GM included) and decide to play a D&D oneshot. You create a character and play. You probably had fun too.

Now, take the exact same group, the exact same oneshot, and the exact same characters. Even in this extreme scenario, your play experience will not be the same. Again, in this extreme scenario, your experience would not be that great because you’d be playing the same thing, but that’s not the point. The point is that each time you play, your experience will be unique, and you should keep two things in mind.

The first thing you need to keep in mind is that you must savour every moment of your play experience. When you play, be there. Not just for your GM and the rest of the players, but also for you. I have had players who, during the session, decided it’s a good idea to get out of their seats and go eat at the other side of the room, or pet my dog, or listen to music, or draw, or play video games, and the list goes on. And, of course, they couldn’t remember a thing in the next session. Did I like that? No. Did it make me feel like a source of background noise? Yup. But also, what kind of memories did these players keep? Probably nothing. They just wasted their time by not actually being there.

Which brings me to the second thing. We are creatures that can learn well. So we should learn from each session. As a GM, I learn something from every session I run. This can be something related to mechanics, or something that has to do with running a specific type of scene, or even managing the social part of the group. As players, we can also learn. We can learn about our character’s story, about our character’s mechanics, how we can help new players, and how to act respectfully in a group.

Of course, there is no golden path, so we won’t reach a point of enlightenment and be perfect from that moment onwards. Every time we learn. And every time we should focus on the game and have fun, and enjoy it.

I hope this heat-induced rambling makes a bit of sense. This wasn’t an easy prompt, because there are so many things to talk about related to it. And I went and made the silliest connection I could find. Next on the schedule is the prompt “darkness”.

And until next time, have fun!

P.S.: You can find all of my posts for this year’s RPGaDay here. Thanks to AUTOCRATIK and Casting Shadows for hosting another year of the event.