The Culture: How To Git Gud, Part 3: Learning From Others Is Free

(Following from yesterday's post.)

Good players learn from their own mistakes. Great ones don't wait to screw up; they learn from the mistakes of others.

Remember what I said about reading the manuals and reviewing your performance? If you want to Git Gud fast, review the performance of other players. See what they did wrong, and and learn how to avoid their mistakes. By doing this on a consistent basis, your skill and acumen will surpass your peers and you can take the lead in the campaign by merit of your quality alone.

And, by making this commitment to making yourself the best player in the campaign--if not the hobby--you prompt other players to raise their game in turn.

The Other Value Of Session Reports

You should be reading others' reports specifically to learn from how they played, both what they got right and (more often) what they got wrong. This is not just the rules, but also their decisions during play; if they made unforced errors that lead to their men (or others in the party) getting got, that's an opportunity for you to learn valuable lessons for free and avoid suffering such pains yourself.

All of the critical analysis you do in review of your own performance applies here; same skills, same methods, to the same ends, with the same results- meaning that you get the same improvements faster by increasing the amount of comprehensible input that you take in. Again, all the successful athletes and gamers know what I'm talking about, and again this can be done by yourself at a pace you can manage- throw on some music or a podcast to get your brainmeats on the right frequency and away you go.

You may not be spending eight hours a day over weeks at a time to level up like your men do, but this is deliberate and focused attention to the specific end of mastering both how to work the machine (the rules) and how to use the machine as intended (playing the game). Add in some Appendix N reading and you'll be #EliteLevel in no time.

Which is good, because the Big Show is nigh.

The hour is later than you think#BROVENLOFT TOO: TOGETHER AGAIN, FOR THE FIRST TIME

SOON pic.twitter.com/EIYQySGj5l

— Moundshroud of the Snows (@KKalvaitis) August 28, 2023