A good friend of mine gets into arguments all the time with his partner when election time comes around. He refuses to vote for the lesser of two evils, and often casts his votes for idealistic and independent candidates. And often those candidates don’t have a chance of winning. But he says, “I don’t want to spend my time and energy supporting compromises that I don’t believe in. I just want to water the things that I want to see grow.”

I think about that idea a lot. What if instead of spending all my time criticizing and complaining about what I don’t like, I spend my time celebrating and championing the things that I love? It’s definitely more fun, and I wonder if sometimes it isn’t more effective. Or maybe it’s a both/and: sometimes we water the things we like, and other times we weed the things that we don’t like.

So what does this have to do with role-playing games?

Well, for one thing, I want to spend my time celebrating and getting excited about what’s great in role-playing games. So this blog is going to spend more time cheering on new games and pointing out great things about existing games, and less time criticizing and bashing them (that’s less time, not no time. Sometimes I need to call things out.)

But more importantly, I want to encourage you (and myself) to focus on what’s going right in our games instead of obsessing over what’s not working. Lean into the fun, the joy, the good stuff. If someone hams it up with a great character voice, encourage them to use it. If the party loves spending three hours shopping for new gear, find interesting things to save for. Let’s spend more time hitting the good notes, and less time worrying about the off ones.

And also, if there are things you love in the game, by all means, WATER THOSE THINGS! If you like combat, you better be picking some fights. If you like exploration, you better be asking what’s beyond that next hill. If you like interactions, start speaking in-character. Water the things you want to see grow.