There lies, deep within my GMing soul, an underlying belief that it’s not a good use of my limited hobby time to do gaming things that are not specifically prep for games I am running.

It’s taken me a long, long time to spot it but some events over the past few days have helped me notice. This post is me working out that unhelpful thinking.

The last week of 2023 has been a pretty disjointed affair (ref: Holiday Doldrums) but I did have the pleasure yesterday of having a good chat with Mr_Sandman (aka “Andrew from Long Island” if you listen to the podcast) about GURPS. He has a great blog post entitled, “My Tips for GMs New to GURPS” and I wanted to pick his brains.

The long and short of it is that I found myself owning up to the fact that I really do like playing GURPS, prefer to strip the game down to a fairly basic core, and just want to play around with it more than I do. Of course, the barrier is the belief (true or not, it’s hard to be sure) that players won’t want to play GURPS with me.

That barrier is constantly reinforced: bring it up with most gamers and you get told GURPS is super-complicated, full of rules bloat, not good for fun games, too hard to learn, impossible to create characters with, and really bad at <insert whatever you like here>. These assertions generally reinforce the impression that most gamers have not played much (or any) GURPS.

In fact, this impression from other gamers is so strong that I have internalised it as a deep-seated sense of guilt. It’s as if the disapproval of other gamers – especially my friends – about my enjoyment of GURPS is something that I should feel (and often do feel) shame about. I feel there is a kind of “fun police” in gaming that disapproves and shames.

At the heart of this lies the underlying belief that it’s not a good use of my limited hobby time to do gaming things that are not specifically prep for games I am running. It’s also not a good use of my time to work on gaming stuff that others disapprove of. There are plenty of opinions about the One True Way, after all.

All this was triggered again this morning when Andrew innocently posted a link to the “2024 Character Creation Challenge” in the RPR Discord. This provoked a tension in me: I’d like to take part because I love making characters… but I worry about a) what to create and b) posting daily character sheets to this blog. The latter is the same concern I have over posting daily during #RPGaDay – that it’ll bore most readers.

The most interesting project for me right now is the idea of creating GURPS characters aimed at low-powered (sub-100 points) gaming in a few Worlds that I find appealing. For example, I (truly) want to play Fellmyr with GURPS and so making characters for that world is a fun idea. Another desire is to convert the old Alternity Dark*Matter setting to low-powered GURPS for modern conspiracy-horror-weirdness.

But that underlying belief trips me up: it’s not a good use of my limited hobby time to do gaming things that are not specifically prep for games I am running. I think I can counter the perceived disapproval of others more easily: it’s mind-reading, probably not true, and even if it is then the reality is that other people’s disapproval is subjective. But the deeper belief…

It comes back to childhood disapproval, I think, the mantra of my father: “If you spent as much time on your school work as you do on those silly games, you’d be rich and successful!” It feels like the child internalised games as “silly” and a “waste of time”, not to mention, “unproductive” and opposed to the idea of “success”.

I know all this is unhelpful thinking. I’m actually pretty grateful that it has arisen and I’ve been able to spot the thought-pattern. Now I can see it, I can question it and challenge it. But, oh my goodness… it’s deep-rooted and strong. This is something that sits underneath my common sense of shame and unworthiness.

The way forward is to challenge myself with small experiments. It bodes well to suggest that I make time for small acts of personal enjoyment. Another friend yesterday shared their NPC creation as an act of Tiny Prep and I felt a mix of joy (for them) and jealousy (for me). I’d like to do that but the unhelpful thinking prevents it.

Perhaps doing the Character Creation Challenge is a good step. I can experiment with character designs for Worlds that I’d like to run. I can imagine interesting people I’d like to play with. Who knows, sharing them might be interesting to someone else… who could say? Maybe my version of the challenge can be a series of summary posts once a week.

All of which is to say this: beware unhelpful thought patterns. If, like me, you are feeling inhibited and fearful, anxious or guilty about things that are designated as “fun” and “enjoyable” then the chances are some unhelpful thoughts are the root of the problem.

I’m going to spend some time digging out those mental weeds to make space for something more beautiful to grow.

Game on!