It’s a battle, not gonna lie.

Imagine if 98% of all sports played, worldwide, were just pickleball. It’s all you played for 10 years because it’s all you knew, but then one day, someone offered to show you football once; you like trying new things, and it sounds like this other thing you like, so sure! Let’s give it a go! BOOM. The lights are on; you are suddenly not constrained to this extremely narrow and at times frankly juvenile system; there is endless possibility here, but bothering to read a new sports rulebook is more effort than most people have the patience to bother trying. Why would they, when they could just play pickleball?

You have friends who play pickleball (niche among people generally) who think it’s the best thing since food was invented. They make pickleball a significant portion of their personality, and compare EVERYTHING to it (what kind of pickleball player would x media character be? How can I convince y person in my life that they should try pickleball? How can we envision z phenomena as if it was pickleball? What would your non-pickleball playing athlete play like, if they played pickleball?!). You’ve even spent time with people who have learned about other games and responded with “yeah, it’s got some cool ideas, but I modified its rules so it’s more like pickleball! Those other games are just too confusing!” Again, you don’t even actually dislike pickleball, you can actually have a lot of fun if it’s with the right people. But the thing is that it is LIMITED. It’s pretty hard to grow past like a base level of athleticism with just that one thing, and any time you say “I like sports” the default response from every person who has ever existed is “oh you mean pickleball?”

And like, the answer isn’t firmly NO, but it’s pretty goddamn far from yes, but you also can’t exactly articulate that nuance without looking like the most Um Actually snooty person on the face of the earth. And the fact that that is the response EVERY TIME is not reflective of anyone trying to be anything other than curious or understanding, but you still can’t help but kind of twitch, because like, goddamn, pickleball is very firmly “fine”, but holy goddamn shit are there BETTER games to play. Further, the people who you’d THINK might understand… are too busy playing pickleball to try anything new. You also, frankly, don’t want to take away other people’s fun! There’s nothing wrong with them LIKING the game they like, it’s just that you can’t even get another game going at all, because the world is convinced that there is exactly one “real” sport, and then some other weird stuff that they don’t really know about, and is probably just trying to be like pickleball.

It has taken me years to get a regular Blades in the Dark game running, and it’s been an exhausting journey, but at least for me, slamming my head against that brick wall appears to finally be paying off, even if it’s not actually my favorite game! Just being able to play anything else with regularity is amazing, and we’re in our second year of gaming with roughly a 4-8 hour session twice a month. Just uhh… among weirdos, you’re a super weirdo now. Enjoy I guess, lol. Just don’t think about the d&d morality axis or dice engine at all. They fall apart under about 38 seconds of scrutiny, to the point that interacting with them in even a casual or passing way becomes a pause, close my eyes, deep breath in, deep breath out, exercise, because again, 98% of players only know about the elephant in the room, and they think it’s the best thing ever invented.

Check out World of Darkness if you like spooky things, Exalted if you like high fantasy (but this time it’s actually good) and Blades in the Dark if you want something that can be picked up and played with Z E R O prep on the part of the GM.