Explain More to Understand Better
There's been a blog post that came across my desk, about how this is a literary hobby with illiterate hobbyists 1. Some people take issue with the tone, but I would prefer to focus on the notion of Text and Literacy, which has implications about how we communicate, how we relate to one another, and how we learn more about ourselves through our exposure to text.
Broadly speaking, a text is something left behind by the writer, open to anyone who can be called a reader. It is an expression of something left for someone to experience, transform, and express in turn. This means that there are at least two diametrically opposed perspectives on the text, which exists outside of each of them. When we read, we are experiencing the trace of someone else, someone other than ourselves, and through effort we have the opportunity to learn about who we are as readers and potential writers.
Because there is that distance between us, the text, and the writer, we have to interpret using our own limited frame of references, but the beauty of reading is that the more things we read, the more effort we put in, the wider our frame of reference becomes, and the better our understanding of the text becomes. Because a hard book to read― I mean hard because it challenges you and not because it's badly written― requires us to try to explain why it's hard, and why we're struggling. Over the course of these explanations, we see where our previous understanding has failed, and where we can improve. Already by doing that we have improved.
Reading is a way for us to open ourselves to others and by so doing, explain ourselves more to understand them better. In the context of ttrpgs reading the rules, the prose, the bullet points, etc. means trying to understand the design intent behind the rules, going beyond the mere utility of to-hit bonuses and game procedures to see, for a brief moment, what the writer saw. It won't be perfect, we cannot fully integrate into the other without annihilating them, but we can get closer. As the designer tries to explain through text how their game is meant to be played, we can try to understand better by taking them where they are and going down the road they mean to lead us. We can always backtrack if the path goes dark or if we're unsure that it leads where we want to go, but to refuse to follow completely is to shut yourself off, by which point perhaps it's time to find a hobby better suited to you. After all, this is a cooperative game.