There are better ways to play
It might be my Dutch heritage, it might be my inability to overlook even the smallest flaw, or maybe my lust for constant discussion and bickering. Whatever it is, the language that's used in large portions of our hobby kill another part of my soul whenever I hear them. "There is no right way to play," "The only thing that matters is that everyone is having fun," plenty of other things to the same effect. Empty platitudes, no, worse: thought-terminating cliches. They're insidious in their appeal; I'll grant them that. However, they prevent any and all serious discussion on how your game could be improved.
Let's get the easy stuff out of the way first
Even if we were to cede that "there is no right way to play" (which I'm not willing to), that certainly doesn't mean that all ways are equal. I might be able to get to my parents' using a variety of different modes of transport and via infinite routes, but that doesn't mean all ways to my old home are equal. Trying to drive through the lake would be suboptimal, as would taking my bicycle onto the freeway.
There are clearly ways of playing tabletop games which are suboptimal. Alienating your fellow players. Being boring. Not paying attention to the game and slowing it down. These are all major things everyone can agree on that aren't the right way to play. If there are wrong ways to play, it takes a certain amount of arrogance to say there aren't better ones either.
Similarly for "the only thing that matters is that everyone's having fun". Is people (generally) enjoying themselves integral to a good game? Yes. Does that mean that that's all that matters? No. Firstly, we could all be having fun drinking a beer on a sunny day and shooting the shit while we're barbecuing. That doesn't mean that's a good tabletop game. Slightly less fallaciously perhaps: that you're having fun now doesn't mean you couldn't have more fun. If you're currently on a 7/10 on the fun scale, and someone who's at a 9 comes up to you and tells you "oh I did X too, but once I started doing Y instead we started having a way better time", "well as long as we're having fun now it doesn't matter".
Hobbies are about mastery
Let's not try to pretend they're not. I can play a bit of guitar, and do so for fun once in a while. But let's not pretend I'm just as good at it as a Robert Fripp, 'because I'm having fun while doing so'. Similarly there are totally better ways to play an instrument. That's why your guitar teacher kept scolding you for playing fingerings wrong, or not having your thumb behind your middle finger. It might work now but as soon as you try a more difficult song, all that muscle memory of playing the guitar wrong will make your life a whole lot harder. You are playing the guitar wrong, even if you're having fun while doing so.
But what if I don't feel the need to get better
Firstly I find that hard to believe. Within their means and resources people to strive for excellence. People are unhappy if their drawings aren't as good as they like, and look up advice on how to get better at them. Weightlifters that start to plateau change their routines in order to break through that barrier. Why would Elf Games be so unique that they're the one hobby where we're ok with sitting at the top end of mediocrity?
A tortured analogy
You and your buddies recently started playing in a football1 league. You guys have been doing middling at best, but you guys have been having fun. You practice once a week, sometimes once per two weeks; Dennis can't always get a sitter, and once a month you play in a league game. You drink beer after the game (and often during training), you get to socialize with your friends. You're having fun playing the game, right?
Well, are you?
Two questions: 1: are you playing the game, but more importantly 2: are you having fun because you play the game? To me it seems entirely unrelated from it. If that same group of friends were to drop the football and instead would come together at those same hours to watch a film and drink a beer. It's not the activity that's what's fun, it's their time together; their Third Place replacement activity.
Now, there's nothing wrong with that in isolation. However, when some trainer sees you guys all running after the ball and tells you that you probably shouldn't do that since it leaves the goal open, "well we're having fun, so what does it matter" becomes a rather weak excuse. It doesn't hold water, since you have decoupled being good at what you're doing from having fun.
Why do people do this
So far I have identified two particular groups that I feel wield these arguments in deliberate bad faith. I'll discuss both below.
Playing at play
There's this element to this debate too which Rollin' Bones called 'playing at play'. There is a rather large group of people not playing the game, but pretending to play the game. They've seen """Actual""" """Plays""" like Critical Role and decide that this form of DnD is an aesthetic they like. However, play is not about the aesthetic.
In the field of music fandoms and subcultures these people used to be called poseurs (or poser, for the less literate amongst them); people who acquire the aesthetic of a subculture without actually being part of it. In the goth subculture you see people take on the aesthetic, but do not join in on what makes the subculture actually the subculture; the music. Now, this example makes it sound like a cliquish high schooler thing, but it's not.
There's an old article about geeks, mops and sociopaths. Now, the sociopaths I won't go into right now, because it's the mops that are pertinent here. They're the same thing. It argues that in a small amount, these mops are good since they provide additional members to the subculture. However, they prefer a watered down version, since the actual subculture is too niche for them.
But what happens when someone says: "you're playing this game wrong"? Any poseur/mop/tourist (as I've seen them called in this particular hobby, but it's the same thing) would feel attacked. It's calling someone out, calling them not part of the in-group. There are several fallacies that could be used to counter this. Tu-quoque, asserting that the one making the argument is actually the one playing it wrong. It can work, but it can also backfire, since any discussion on merit of style of play or credentials would instantly show the tourist for what he is. No, the safer way is to assert that there is no best way to play; that it's all personal preference. It is a pre-emptive strike on any discussion of actual value on how to play, since it's already been asserted that anything found to be better is just 'personal preference'.
Lake Wobegon Effect
In his series the Gervais Principle Rao talks about the Lake Wobegon effect, referencing a fake news radio show about a town where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average". Groups of players, even those with wildly differing play styles, can band together to form a mutually reinforcing script: "all of our ways to play are good". The breaking of this script is terrifying; you could go from "our way to play is Good because we enjoy doing it" to "our way to play is average, even if we enjoy it" or worse: "our way to play is below average".
To break this fiction of above average equality for all would be to create a hierarchy (or, permitting the idea of several different proper ways to play, still a parallel group of hierarchies). You'd know roughly where you'd stand on the totempole. To this group, "there is no right way to play" is a defence against attempts to break this shared fiction.
So why do I let this bother me
There are a few answers to this. The simple one is: "because it's not true". However, this is insufficient on its own. "Because it offends my sense of rightness" isn't enough of a reason to dedicate close to 2000 words on a subject. That way lies madness.
So let me posit this:
It's the crossfit of ttrpgs
With all of the badness that entails. Crossfit, for those not in the know, is about lifting a lot of weight as fast as possible for as many times as possible, consequences be damned. There's oodles of video footage out there about pregnant women ready to burst lifting heavy weights, people lifting with bad form, and injuries. Loads and loads of injuries. In lifting weights, the most important thing is using proper form. Not just because this helps you lift heavy weights, but also so you do not hurt yourself. If you deadlift with a bent back it'll go fine at lower weights, but as you start to pile on more, eventually you'll shot your intervertebral disks into the stratosphere.
In this, the "no right way to play" crowd is the crossfit of ttrpgs. If they tell someone new to the hobby that "there's no right way to play as long as you're having fun" at best they condemn him to mediocrity. At worst to his table leaving for greener pastures, burnout and leaving the hobby disillusioned. You need someone there to give you the advice you may not wanna hear: "stop doing this, it's holding your game back". It might not be what you want to hear, but you'll thank them for it later.
So what are better ways to play
Is there a best way to play? I don't know. Ask me in 20 years or so. Over the last decade and a half I've found that as I discover new things my definition of best has been drifting further and further from how I play. And that's as it should be. You will never go further than your wildest dream, so set your standards as high as you possibly can.
Have I found elements though that are objectively (and I'm willing to stick by this) better? Yes. Total player autonomy. No fudging. Letting the story of the game be what's told in the Waffle House the day after, instead of what you preconceived it ought to be. Allowing players to face the consequences of their own actions, both for good and for ill. I believe full-heartedly these principles will make your game better, period. Objective ways to gain experience, knowable to the players, and in a format which enables and supports the fiction you're playing. At any table I have seen these done in good faith I have seen them make the game better. I have seen people converted from staunch disbelievers to adherents after they saw the positive effects they had. The proof of the pudding, after all, is in the eating.
There are several others I strongly suspect will be added to this list in time. I can't yet, since they're still in the experimental phase for me and my tables. I've talked about them before. Some I've already had to alter because I found a better form. Others have crystallized out to one degree or another, but until I can be sure I'm withholding judgement on them as objectively better.
Barriers to better gaming
Now, to stick to bad metaphors: not everyone who lifts weights will eventually be Klokov. Not every martial artists will break livers like Bas Rutten can. Sometimes we lack time to implement all of these ideas. Sometimes other factors prevent us from living up to the purest standard we hold. But that's no reason to not move towards them. No man will ever become the best he could be, but the least he can do is move towards his ideal.
Until next time: keep getting better at counting your torches, and keep drawing better maps.
Proper football, not handegg.↩