In Praise of Variety

Its loud. Costumes, miniatures, colorful promotional banners, a riot of colors. There are thousands of gamers in this room, and its only one of many rooms. The sensory overload of a major convention like Origins with rows of miniature tables next to indie RPG tables, next to the vendor hall and across from more sponsored RPG rooms, well you can’t blame someone for feeling out of their comfort zone already before they even roll their first die. There is a natural tendency in some gamers to stick to what they know (the "home game system" comfort zone) because learning new rules feels like work.

The Origins Game Fair, sponsored by GAMA, is one of the larger gaming conventions in the United States. It takes place in June in Columbus Ohio, and I regularly make plans to attend. Given my Legends of Greyhawk position and that I write for D&D and D&D adjacent products most often, people I talk to often assume I am there to play some D&D. However, that would be an incorrect assumption. While I might get in one or two games of D&D, I always set Origins aside to do something different. I try to play as many games that I rarely get to play, or have never played, and your home game would be better if you did the same!

The Columbus Crew mascot immediately recognized a fellow feline and came over to have lunch with us!

Playing a wide variety of games is a great diagnostic tool for your "home game system" and how you approach it. Every game has strengths, weaknesses, and invisible assumptions, whether it’s in their narrative structures or their various mechanics, and when you are locked into those assumptions, you might not be taking advantage of everything you could be doing with your home system. Playing different games exposes the invisible assumptions of your favorite game, allowing you to run, play, or write for it with greater clarity.

Here’s my schedule for Origins 2026 (in the order I played them):

· Warhammer 40K miniatures, 11e (Games Workshop) – We were excited to test the new edition and always to play at least one non-RPG game.

· Cosmere RPG (Brotherwise Games) – I have read a few of the books and wanted to see how the magic system was designed.

· Shadow of the Weird Wizard (Schwalb Entertainment) – The GM didn’t show so I did my best to run it for the rest of the table and I think it went pretty well. Rob Schwalb writes such concise and easy to digest adventures!

· Cyberpunk RED (R. Talsorian Games) – We liked it so much, we played this system twice!

· Dungeons and Dragons, 5.5e (Wizards of the Coast) – While we didn’t visit the Baldman Games folks much, we couldn’t pass up playing on Legends of Greyhawk Special.

· Vaesen (Free League Publishing) – This was actually supposed to be Ragnaborg (Broken Brain Games), but the GM had a family emergency and had to leave. A different GM had no players, so we swapped and it was lots of fun.

· Phantasy Star (Skydawn Game Studios) – I love Esper Genesis, so I was excited to see the their take on this Sega classic video game.

Expanding Your Design and Play Vocabulary

When you only know one system, you assume its limitations are universal laws of gaming. There’s lots of these: "combat must take hours," "characters must start out weak," or even “every character should be a hero on a quest.” Playing in Cyberpunk RED, it was clear that if you have those assumptions, you are missing out on a lot of great opportunities! Playing Cyberpunk RED at Origins let me explore a very different, and very exciting, game. For example, in adventure, the characters were literally trying to save their apartment building from being illegally torn and protect their neighbors from a predatory corporation. The narrative wasn’t exactly “save the kingdom” or “slay the dragon,” but we got the chance to explore gritty problems that are very easy to relate to in a narrative that’s not at all like your standard D&D game. The characters were highly competent, despite being runners starting their career.

Our Cyberpunk GM was full of energy!

We also explored netrunning, a mechanic notorious for isolating one player in virtual space, and watched how the system occurred in parallel initiative turns to keep the physical combatants and the netrunner synchronized so all the players involved stayed involved. Experiencing this different structure made me think about ways to empower characters in my design, how to make stories more personal, and appreciate how to keep everyone involved at the table, even when characters are separated between the virtual world and meatspace. It made me look at D&D's combat/exploration split differently and consider ways to make the stakes personal. After seeing how Cyberpunk made a local apartment building feel as vital as a fantasy kingdom, I went back to D&D-adjacent project I am working on and starting rewriting the stakes my adventure. Tension can be made twice as high when the scale is intimate. Seeing how another game handles "splitting the party" mechanically teaches you how to manage spotlight time better in your home game. Playing different games can equip you with all sorts of new tools to handle pacing and tension that will be useful when you return to my home system.

Reclaiming the Beginner's Mindset

Experienced GMs and writers do not always explain things as clearly as possible because they have forgotten what it feels like to be confused by a rulebook. I have recently gotten into Warhammer 40K at the prodding of some of my friends. I learned the 10th edition rules just in time to have 11th released, but that’s okay, we were very interested to try out the new version of the game we had only gotten to play a few times. When we signed up, we didn’t know that GW was going to release an abbreviated version of the ruleset for free shortly before Origins, and like any fan, I read them.

After the intro game, my friends both bought the boxed set. I had already pre-ordered it!

So, when we sat down to play this introduction to the new rules, I wasn’t as much of a beginner as my opponent or the couple playing next to me. While we played, I noticed a few times where the new players were confused by the materials provided or the way the organizer was presenting things. As an academic in my daily life, I was ready to help! I saw how the new players tripped over rules presentations, and it occurred to me ways to simplify rules explanations for my fellow beginners. I really appreciated what it’s like to start fresh with beginner’s eyes. Stepping outside your comfort zone with a new game (or helping others do so) rebuilds empathy for the learner and directly improves how you write adventures, explain rules, or onboard new players at your own table. This is crucial for writers and GMs who often suffer from the "curse of knowledge" and forget what it feels like to not understand the rules.

Variety is the Spice

Playing a game once or twice doesn’t make you an expert in that game, but you don’t have to be an expert to take something away from the experience. You don't need mastery; you need exposure. A single session of a narrative-heavy indie game or a tight skirmish game can spark an idea that resolves a long-standing issue in your weekly campaign. Variety is a palate cleanser, not a career change. Just as you don’t need to master French cuisine to use a French culinary technique or new spice to improve your everyday cooking, exposure to a new game helps you appreciate what the games you play most often do well, and poorly, as well as giving new ideas of things to try.

If you look closely, you might guess that I am probably about to be up to shenannigans!

Variety isn't about finding a "perfect" game to replace your current one; it’s about collecting perspectives. Next time you are at a convention, local game store, or looking at a PDF sale, pick up something outside your comfort zone. Play it once. Your home game, your GMing techniques, and your design skills will be better for it.