A few days ago, I caught a post from John (jenskot) on Story Games that I found cute and clever.

Story Games – Sometimes RPGs are like food.

Cute and clever, yes, but I would never have thought to make something out of it. Earlier today, though, I was editing and fleshing out some of the posts I hope to publish on the Monkey this week, and it struck me as interesting that taken at face value, many of the things I post seem to be all over the map. Sometimes I imagine it seems like I’m even contradicting myself. And when I explore ideas from other folks I enjoy following, you’re sure to catch me saying that I agree with two or more opinions that seem incompatible. When it comes to espousing a particular ideology, you could easily accuse me of coming off like a waffler.

Now, it occurs to me that many readers and friends of mine will not need to have this behavior justified or explained. Most people that I respect and get along with have similar tendencies. It’s called being open-minded. It’s called recognizing that we’re on a journey and not walled up in a fortress. It’s called having varied interests and enjoying getting to scratch different itches at different times with different tools.

But some people, especially in this medium, seem to occasionally forget that. So I decided that for the sake of those folks, I ought to write up a clarifying post to establish that anything I might post here on the Monkey (or express in any other venue for that matter) about my thoughts on roleplaying at any given time should never be taken as my single-minded definitive stance.  Just because I think such-and-such today doesn’t mean I’ll think the same thing next week, or that such-and-such is the ONLY option in any given moment.  And it occurred to me that a good metaphor for that would be to compare my play preferences to food, like John did in the post I’ve linked above. So now I’m going to riff off of that idea and invite you to consider that to me, roleplaying is a lot like food.

Sure, I have favorite foods that I like to eat more often than others. Certainly there are flavors and textures that I prefer and will usually choose. But that doesn’t mean I won’t taste other things, or even retry things I haven’t really liked in the past to see if they’re tastier in a different venue with different hands involved in the preparation.

If I were able to eat my favorite meal every day, I would not do it. I’d occasionally choose other things to eat – things that are not quite as tasty to me, but offer a way to tickle different taste buds and fire different synapses.

Also, I’m in the midst of still discovering, tasting, and experimenting with a big smorgasbord of new and interesting foods – and I want to try those out, but I also want to keep eating some of the familiar and comforting fare I’ve grown up with.

And finally, although there are some things I know I like, and a few things I know I don’t like – most things still fall within the sphere of stuff I don’t want taken off the menu because I want to keep tasting, discovering, experimenting, mixing, and cooking.

I think you get the picture. I could also reiterate a lot of the same things John and other folks in that SG thread wrote, but that’d mostly just be me saying “ditto”.