I wrote this, back in 2006ish some time, and just found it again recently. I think it’s relevant to this blog.
I’ve been playing, writing about, and developing D&D campaigns off and on since 1982, which means I’ve been pretending to be someone else longer than many D&D players have been eating solid food. And I can tell you from personal experience that it’s an engrossing, seductive, cathartic, and highly addictive sport.
Role-playing is not just a hobby. It’s much more than just something to do on Friday night. All night. And through Saturday, and Sunday, until your mother rudely reminds you that you have a research project due on Monday at 8am. You are almost done typing it up, aren’t you? Oops…
You’re playing a role. You’re not watching a movie, where you can sit back on the couch, tell the good guys how to beat the bad guys, and cheer for the guy when he gets the girl in the end. You’re living another life. You’re thinking, you’re talking, you’re scheming, you’re gesticulating wildly while triumphantly marching a small figurine across a plastic mat like Don Quixote on a mad crusade against King Arthur and the Spanish Inquisition. And rolling dice and munching on Doritos.
You learn to question assumptions. Things you once took for granted might no longer be so. On Earth, you can very easily spend a whole day engrossed in reruns of your favorite shows. Who’s on first…?
But you live in another world too. One, perhaps, where electricity hasn’t been invented, civilization doesn’t yet have a chokehold on the world, and a hard-working peasant like you can’t afford luxuries like servants to cook your meals and do your laundry for you.
So you sell your farm for a sword, throw a blanket and some jerky in a burlap sack, hop on your trusty mule, and set out to find the Spanish Inquisition.
Some would call it immaturity, irresponsibility, running away from your problems… but if anything it’s pulling your head out of the sand. The challenges you face in your career as a wandering soldier of fortune will dwarf the worries of the average peasant farmer. Indeed, your adventures will likely beggar description. But eventually you will gather sufficient wealth to retire comfortably… assuming you manage to survive, through the favor of the gods or simple blind luck.
But when you triumph in the end, and you will, you’ll know that it wasn’t just Fate and Circumstance, or some predestination to greatness. It was a learning and growing process. It expanded your mind in ways you hadn’t even dreamt of when you first opened the covers of your Player’s Handbook. It made you a hero.