# RipIt With RipCrypt tags: #thoughts **RipCrypt** is a thing. It's a real thing. It's a thing that someone made. I love it when a designer tells me about all the things that went into motivating them to make their game, because I think everybody can empathize. Every single one of us.  But then I hit the inevitable issue in that in almost every single one of these things, I hear the magic line: *"But no other game does this."* And I look at my shelf and think about all the books that are kicking around in my library, and I go, *"Have you looked?"* I don't think I'm all that unusual. Okay, my need to collect and categorize every single mechanism known to man and throw in a few extra along the way is pretty weird, but we've had games for 40 years which are deliberately lighter weight, faster running, and more aligned with zero prep than **D&D**. In the last decade, we have a vast number—and more every hour, it seems. Now, let me be clear: I'm not saying that there is no purpose or joy in creating a new game. The act of creation itself is itself a form of play. I wouldn't tell anyone that they shouldn't play in a certain way, and creating games is play. But exploring the world is also a form of play. Going out into the hinterlands of *"RPGs which aren't **D&D**"* and experiencing entirely new and exciting things is a form of play. Putting your field notes down and working to understand how something operates in a way you've never seen before is a form of play (and we have entire journaling RPGs which center around that as the mechanism of play). Am I slamming **RipCrypt**? Absolutely not. Hell, I'm going to dig into it a little further and see if it's something that would be worth adding to my collection. Some things are, some things aren't. Mainly, I say this to follow it up by telling you: *don't be that guy* who only has played and understands one RPG, especially if you think that one RPG isn't sufficient to your needs and you should build your own. Maybe you should. Maybe you should because it's fun, but first you should definitely look around way outside your normal horizon and see if there aren't things that already do what you want to do in ways that you may not have imagined could be done. Definitely check out **RipCrypt**. Maybe it's exactly what you've been looking for. Maybe it'll give you ideas of different places you could look, but check it out. Check out everything.