I’ve been toying with the idea for a show entitled “Why We Game”. On it’s face it doesn’t seem like a topic that could be sustained for an hour’s worth of conversation. I mean it’s pretty simple right? We game because it’s fun. We get to hangout out with our friends either in person or virtually. Of course that’s true and probably plays the largest factor generally speaking. There are, however, a lot of other things that are fun that we could do with our friends though. So why gaming or more specifically why roleplaying games.
I think the thing that provoked this thought was something Jesse said to me the other day. He said, “We don’t game for fun.” We both laughed, then sighed but there’s a kernel of truth to it. Not that we’re not having fun or enjoying each others company but we’re looking to tell compelling, interesting stories. We want to fully engage with the story and the characters and live in that moment and sometimes that’s not “fun”.
What I mean is, some of those stories can be dark and uncomfortable. You are opening yourself up and allowing yourself to be vulnerable. There’s the potential for your character to kill or be killed, to destroy their relationships, to be left, abandoned or broken. Also, real talk here for a minute, the decisions you make in game should matter and have consequences. If you’re just going to murderhobo your way through a scenario then you should expect to be arrested, jailed, run out of town beaten or killed. Not a “good” time right? At least not for your characters anyway.
Following up that thought. Flawed characters lead to better stories. Full stop. The reason being, we can relate to those characters because we’re all struggling with something. Big or small it doesn’t matter what. Few people are going to find a story compelling that’s full of shiny happy people. It’s boring and saccharine. Conflict drives narrative, always has.
Besides that there’s a lot of mental overhead that goes into gaming. It can be a lot of “work” especially for us since we really only play in campaign mode, with multiple campaigns going on at the same time. Currently I’m in six long term campaigns. That’s six completely different characters with different personalities, quirks, mannerisms, views on life and experiences. Plus I still have to be me most of the time. It can be exhausting because there’s a lot to keep track of and a lot of time devoted to these disparate fragments of myself.
Nobody likes canceled sessions but fuck, sometimes it’s a welcome break.
Now we choose to play that way, that’s totally on us. It’s the modality that we gravitate towards and so it’s unlikely that you’ll hear a cute, fun, silly game on the podcast. It’s just not the type of stories we’re interested in telling. Perhaps I should say more specifically that it’s not the type of story or game I’m interested in. As goes the captain, so goes the crew I suppose. To be fair though, our generic fantasy game on the MFGCast tends to stray towards goofy and meta but still retains a dark undercurrent. And that’s not to say that we nail it every time or that we don’t joke around while we’re playing. We do. Sometimes for no other reason than to break the tension but, and here’s the key thing, it doesn’t break the immersion.
Yes the character sheet is an osmotic membrane that exists in the liminal space between game, player and GM. Although lets face it, we all know we’re playing a game. That doesn’t mean we don’t feel things however. The stories may get emotional, dark, gross or even scary (though that can be hard to pull off) but we all know that we’re safe and whatever is happening exists within the context of the game. We all trust each other and know that no one is attempting to ignore boundaries or intentionally cause harm.
Maybe we take that for granted playing playing with good friends. Playing games with strangers, that’s not a given. Especially for women and those in the LGBTQIA+ community. At the very least when playing with a new group there should be a discussion about safety tools. Lines and veils along with an X card are a minimum but I digress.
If I may drag myself back to the topic at hand, why we game.
As previously stated it’s fun and we get to hangout with our friends. That’s going to cover the vast majority of players, honestly probably all players to some degree or another. If it wasn’t fun we wouldn’t do it. Great, we’ve hammered that point home.
I guess the corollary to our question at hand is why do we continue to play. I suspect that the answers to both questions are more or less the same. It’s like different sides of the same coin, right? Not everybody that tries playing RPGs stays though and those reasons vary just as widely as those for who do stay but I’m drifting again.
For many of us there’s a catharsis we experience while playing. Of course how that’s experienced is unique for every player. Some players choose to explore different facets of their own personality. Highlighting certain aspects and ignoring or minimizing others. Some people like to play characters that are completely at odds with their own personality. Maybe they are shy and retiring but love to play a barbarian or even the “face” of the group. Thereby being able to step out of their day to day lived experience in a safe and supportive space.
It can also be interesting to play a character that falls outside of societies accepted norms. Someone who is marginalized by society. Say you’re playing a tiefling in a world where most people think you’re essentially demon spawn. How does that character navigate their position in the world? How do they relate to the other characters? What makes them different than everyone else? And really it’s just a metaphor. You can see that right? Games give us the opportunity to explore those spaces safely and examine our own prejudices. Or at least it provides us the opportunity to do so depending on the type of game your playing.
There are those who suffer with social anxieties but thrive in a tabletop space. They are able to step outside themselves, if only for awhile, and be someone else. To really come alive and inhabit a different person. Almost like wearing that character as a kind of armor that gives them the freedom to take chances, step outside their comfort zone and just exist and take up space. That’s fucking awesome and empowering.
Sometimes you’re playing and come to realize that you’re working through some “heavy shit”, whatever that happens to be. Some people may do so intentionally when creating their character. For other people that realization sneaks up on you and by then you’re in the middle of it with no where to go but through it. We’ve never had a game come to a stop while someone come to grips with a situation like this but I’m sure it’s happened to other people.
Piggybacking on this, games make you feel things. Sometimes viscerally so and that’s a good thing. It means your connected to the characters and the story. Connection, something we all crave on some level. Even those of us who are fiercely independent.
The older you get the harder it is to make friends. Especially if you’re introverted. Those social interactions can chew up a lot of bandwidth leaving you exhausted. Gaming provides the ability to find like minded people, helping to conserve some of that social battery. Now it may still take some time and a bit of work to find “your people” because not all gamers game the same way, right? Whether you meet people at a local game store, a discord server or social media, your people are out there. You know they’re into the same stuff that you are, generally. It’s a foot in the door. Then you go from there.
When I first got back into gaming one of the podcasts I started listening to was Nerdbound. They had an active forum, which I joined and I became part of the community. That experience allowed me to meet a lot of different people and experience a wide variety of games. Games I may have never found on my own. I made good friends there and some of us still hangout and play today. That experience helped to shape me as a gamer and a person.
Now as I meander through this I think this is more of an affirmation of gaming rather than a, why we game and that’s ok. Usually when I start something like this I don’t really know where we’re going. It’s more the journey rather than the destination. So I’ll leave you with this. Play games, have fun and tell good stories.