Last updated on 11/02/2026

Flip over to TTRPG youtube, and you won’t be able to go more than ten minutes without some creator with more followers and clout than I could dream of saying “Everything is Play”. Why do they say that? Well, a few reasons, but here is what I think the biggest one is: there’s a lot of, for want of a better word, guilt in the hobby around not playing enough games. ‘Everything is play’ is meant to point out to disappointed gamers and our price-sensitive significant others that we are deriving value from the hobby treats that we are accumulating.

Play Happens Away from the Table, Sure…

And honestly, lots of things about the hobby are play. I don’t think the notion that play happens outside of a game table with the group sitting there is a controversial one. Of course it does. Certainly when the DM reacts to the players’ decisions and plans out the BBEG’s response, the DM is playing the damned game. If the DM tracks and simulates factions, or simply decides that, you know what, honestly it’s been a while since the fighter guild stirred up some trouble and they’re going to throw the following wrench into the party’s plan next session, that is, I think, inarguably play.

My beef is that I think it is too easy to over apply the notion that “everything is play”. In our effort to assuage the inner voice that says “Do I really need another system?”, which, of course you do, novelty is part of fun, we reach too far. I argued, by authorial fiat if nothing else, that preparation is play in the previous paragraph. I really believe that, and in particular because preparation has the following elements of play:

• Structure
• Uncertainty
• Decision Making
• A Social Contract with Other Players of the Game

Even if you are the sort of DM-by-the-seat-of-your-pants improv legend that I dream of one day being, your preparation has structure forced on it by the simple passage of time:

• what happened previously, especially last session
• what can I introduce next session to give my players something to chew on

Chances are, you’ve got way more structure than that. God help you if you don’t have notes of what happened, and most of us need to produce notes about what we intend to run. Stat blocks, names, important locations, possible maps. And, unless we’re running a canned module, these things all come with uncertainty and decision making. Did I set the difficulty of this encounter too high? Is there enough content for our planned four hour block? How am I gonna get them back on track if they wonder off into the wilderness without it feeling like railroading? That is strategy. That is thought provoking. That is challenge, and those experiences are fundamental to play.

But Reading Manuals Isn’t Play

By comparison, reading a manual is not fucking play. Separate it from TTRPGs for a moment. When a chess nerd reads yet another book on openings, are they playing chess? No, absolutely not. It isn’t work, of course. It is leisure, and I’m exactly the sort of rules lawyering pedant to feel that the distinction matters. They are inarguably engaged in the hobby of chess, but I think it takes a sort of willful misinterpretation of play to say they are playing chess.

To abandon chess and return to our TTRPG manual, the issue is that reading the manual lacks fundamental aspects of play. There isn’t really uncertainty in outcome or decision making. The words on the page don’t change, we don’t have to make decisions in the moment about the words on the page (we leave the questions of ‘does homebrewing or deciding not to apply a rule at our table constitute play’ to future scholars). We are putting effort towards the social contract of the game by internalizing the rules so that we can play more correctly and more efficiently in the future. And, certainly, we should hope that reading our manuals is enjoyable; that it is leisure time. There’s so much great prose and art in them, it would be a shame not to enjoy it.

Play Is Leisure, but Leisure Isn’t Play

So, there’s the heart of my point. Leisure and play are distinct, and while any engagement with our hobby should be leisure, it is only when there is uncertainty, decision making, and stakes that we really engage in play. Everything is play is pithy, and I think it’s a fine sentiment in so far as we use it to remind ourselves that we derive value from our hobby treats whenever we enjoy them in any capacity. However, not everything actually is playing, and the distinction is important.

Play stimulates us in different ways than more passive leisure activity, and that difference is worth protecting. When we flatten everything into play, we don’t validate the hobby, we elide the very thing that makes it special. If everything counts as playing, then nothing needs to have stakes. Nothing needs uncertainty. Nothing needs the little electric jolt of having to make a choice that matters, even if it only matters inside our fictional worlds.

And that’s a shame, because play is precious. It’s rare in adult life to have a space where uncertainty is safe, where decision making is meaningful without being dangerous, where outcomes are unpredictable but the risks are chosen and the consequences are shared. TTRPGs offer that. That’s why we care about them enough to read manuals, buy supplements, and argue on the internet.

So yes, enjoy your books. Read your modules. Sort your dice by color. Watch actual play streams while you fold the laundry. Listen to (or read) nerds arguing about the hobby until they’re blue in the face. All of those are legitimate, nourishing leisure, and the hobby would be poorer without them. But don’t confuse those pleasures for the thing they orbit, and be sure to balance your leisure and playing.