What are games

24 Jul, 2026

I've had some thoughts lingering in my mind for months. Their conception originated with Quinn's Quest's Stonetop review, where I learned that games were for being better at doing something than a different game. For example, the purpose of a game could be to not be Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. Okay, cool. And some games do that really well, innovating super hard. I quite successfully proceeded to play many things that weren't D&D 5e at all. I accomplished... wait, where was I going with this?

So, ultimately that train of thought took me in circles. Not this post's circles--regular ones that followed me around in my everyday life. I didn't know what I was rebelling against. I had not found a concrete answer to what I want games to be, for me. They are fun and should be fun first and foremost, as well as a source of laughter and joy, but I consistently want them to mean something.

I was listening to Says Who's Flavours of Science Fiction earlier¹ when some gears turned and I found myself closer to what I think RPGs are doing for us... or doing for me... what they're doing. Hand in hand with this thought was the meaning of something like rules being substrates while ultimately also being the finger that points at the moon (some people called this System Doesn't Matter but they obviously do in certain ways. I mean, they matter for what kind of resolution mechanics your group wants to interact with, but there's a layer that is roleplaying that has little to do with The Rules and yet also depends on it, and that relationship attracts and creates gameplay). These two conjoined as a gut feeling and then escaped before I could put them into words, more of a flash of intuition.

I think the Flavours of Science Fiction post set this in motion in particular because MTB (AKA Says Who?) describes usages of SF to not just define a game, but imagine a future through intentional methods. This summary, too, is a finger pointing at the moon, however. But I will point back to the phrase "intentional." I like to think that I can approach a game with a goal to explore a particular perspective, such as one where it takes weeks for communications to reach my superiors. I hear a voice nearby saying that this is obviously the function of roleplaying, but I don't always think about what I'm doing, or haven't always. I mostly have viewed it as a list of constraints and abilities dictated by how I want to approach problems.

The longer I type, the more I wonder if it would be possible for me to accept that I just like having fun and playing. I'm already making the world better by engendering joy with my buds. I spend a healthy amount of time doing it and it has had numerous positive downstream effects. It makes my brain work more better in several ways. But to articulate the gut feelings further down, I need to spend more time with the ideas about rules and moons and structures and dreaming of other butterflies to access an important purpose of RPGs, mainly because it feels so tantalizingly true and necessary.

I can hear many voices with different viewpoints about what I've written above, and fortunately I know how to hear them, so bear in mind that I wrote this for the express purpose of hearing other perspectives.