I want to blog more about indie tabletop roleplaying games, but I've got a serious writers' block problem with the topic. Somewhat ironically, I think the problems causing that are analogous to problems you sometimes see in these games when they don't work. It's like a fractal, macrocosm and microcosm.

Over-incentivizing can reduce performance

Conventional wisdom is that people respond to incentives. But there is some psychology research indicating that it's not always a linear relationship, that too-powerful incentives on mental tasks can cause a “choking under pressure” effect. Feeling “put on the spot” or being “in the center of attention” can sometimes be a problem in RPGs because the increased pressure can make it hard to come up with ideas, which then increases the urgency of needing to say something, which makes it harder still. In terms of writing, feeling like I'm behind where I want to be makes it feel like the stakes for every post I write (or fail to write) get higher.

Too Big

A problem that sometimes crops up in games is that the scope of the problems the characters face seem so vast as to be irrelevant to anything a character could actually do. If a character's goals seem huge, like “Defeat the forces of evil” or “rid the government of corruption” or “stop oppression” then it doesn't automatically translate into specific action. Similarly, wanting to write about “RPG stuff” or “game design” or “RPG Theory” doesn't naturally manifest as blog-post-sized thoughts.

Too Smooth

“Big” ideas also often have the quality of being metaphorically smooth, they don't have many edges and corners or rough patches to grab on to. These things tend to work like “nucleation sites” for ideas – in a game when you have concretely described situations they often spark more ideas than vague or abstractly described ones. In the indie RPG world there aren't many discrete “news hooks” to prompt blog posts, and a lot of the news that does happen involves the announcement of projects or products that have been sanded smooth in order to match the bland positivity expectations of “marketing”, such as Kickstarter announcements.

Too head-on

Sometimes the bigness and/or smoothness issues aren't insurmountable if you come at them obliquely. “Fighting evil” may be intractable as a whole, but “Fight evil while maintaining your other vows” or “Fight evil in this town” can be more productive. “Write a blog post about it” is very head on, other framings like “explain” or “demonstrate” or “show how this relates to...” are probably more effective. But without something to push toward that oblique perspective it's easy for the attraction toward the main topic to leave your oriented at it head-on.

Situation is too static

Sometimes in a game you'll have your character take an action but then end up back in essentially the same situation you started in. Maybe your action fails with no consequence, or you discover that what you did was irrelevant to all of the other agents involved. That sense of not having an impact has a de-motivating effect. Similarly, if one blog post doesn't produce the kind of response or discussion you hoped for it can be incrementally harder to muster up the enthusiasm to post the next one.

It's hard to go first

Many games depend on a player to “go first” in order for things to get rolling. For example, in a political intrigue game it might be necessary for somebody to put some sort of plot in motion before anything can happen. But often times it feels like whoever goes first will be at a disadvantage – the person that details their plot first exposes it to the counter-plots of everyone else. In the RPG world it can feel difficult to broach certain topics, especially if you feel wary of exposing yourself to criticism. It's sometimes hard for me to maintain motivation for writing about topics if it feels like I'm just opening myself up for unfair criticisms or negative reactions, or like I'll end up just talking into an empty void.

Unfortunately analogies don't solve problems

I think all of these problems are contributing to me having difficulty writing the blog posts I'd like to be able to write. Unfortunately, saying “these problems I'm having with writers' block are very similar to problems you can run into in game design” doesn't really tell you how to solve them – in the case of the game you'd generally be working within the specifics of all the other aspects of the design to find solutions. In the case of fixing the “game design” of “talking about RPG stuff” you don't have the tools you would as a game designer because it's a game with no agreed-upon structure or rules that you can directly manipulate, you have to use mechanisms like “convincing people” or “being a good role model” from within.