I am in a thoughtful and introspective mood today as I sit here a little after three in the afternoon. A wet somewhat dull Northeastern November day broods outside the windows, still deciding between whether to actually rain or just sulk in a misty kinda foreboding vibe.
Last night I was at our regular D&D game. Some readers may know I've recently gotten into the Dungeons and Dragons 5e games, playing as a result of joining long time friends who played, one of whom is the dungeon master.
For those of you not familiar with the game it basically boils down to each person having a written character on sheets of paper with a number of abilities, and as a group of people we meet the challenges set by the dungeon master, rolling dice and moving through a fantasy world very much like the one Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee inhabit in Tolkien's Lord of the rings.
Now Role playing in a group is funny, as you may have a character with very different traits to you yourself.. loud/quiet/reserved/brash etc etc...so as you can imagine it makes for some funny and amusing interactions, and thus over all creates a communal story telling experience. Escapism if you will.
However. Social interaction between players can often begin to mirror the social interaction in game between characters, or vice verse. And so it was last night. In a nutshell my character was annoyed with another for doing something stupid and putting the whole party needlessly in harms way....(think Gandalf and Peregrine Took in the mines of moria....you'll get the idea...)
Fool of a took
The reaction of the other party to this event was not great, as the impending retaliation reaction was, to put it mildly, as stupidly self serving as their original action that caused the original incident. If you will it became a "pretend dick waving contest" and thus ensued a brief group wide argument though mercifully settled quickly by our party's senior character member and defacto leader.
So... It set me thinking. (what doesn't?) A bunch of grown adults are sat round playing fantasy games, "pretend" stuff. That then gets imbued with real world rules like "thought" "action 'and "emotion" With "consequence" as a result. Very matrix ish in that you then by virtue of the character having been created by real people, some of whom are very highly invested in their characters survival, get a blurring of real person verse character reactions.
Add in a Human tendency to create character traits in game that we would like in ourselves, strength honour, bravery whatever, and you get a situation where in some cases the characters can do stuff that the real person would like to but can't. Be empathic for example, or stand down a bully, lead or challenge, all this sort of stuff.
So much is made of the D&D role play and improvisation being a good thing for learning social skills, creating a team ethos and developing a critical thinking mindset. However in this case its been, through no fault of the game, a detrimental influence.
In real life I am shy of many forms confrontation, always have been. I have been subjected to corporate bullying and a number of unpleasant real world scenarios. (yeah weird huh? a 6 foot former Military type & Former bloke being bullied pre and post social transition.. well yes that happened) It took quite a lot for me to allow the small piece of plastic on the table to act out exactly what I thought she might do. As a person I'm usually the peace maker of sorts. The huge wave of negativity as a result has not only ensured for the time being that the small plastic model doesn't use quite as many of its imaginary abilities in such a group friendly way, but it also dented my real world confidence, since it would appear I miss judged the other player, leading me to second guess my participation and enjoyment levels within the current game.
Sure it's "just" bits of plastic on a table, its "Just" numbers on a paper But it's also hours of imagination, and pouring through books to find obscure rules. That little bit of plastic and those dice roles begin to mean quite a lot. But isn't that the point? after all if they didn't we wouldn't play would we? Just watch this video from critical role episode 62. At 2hrs:42mins where Laura Bailey playing Vex'halia gets quite irate about her broom...a flying broom that doesn't even exist! Soooo pent up in fact that her real life hubby Travis (bearded large chap top right) looks really really worried he's on the couch again... (apparently when he almost killed her imaginary bear that happened too...)
So in an effort to try and bring my inane ramblings to a coherent point. We are all in some way the product of our characters, and them of us. The games we play and the things we "pretend" often bleed into our perceived reality.
For the philosophical mindset, where all creation takes place in the mind first before anything physical even gets done, one could say some of those characters are as real as any other that we watch on the big screen. Frodo and Sam, Luke Skywalker, Micheal knight, Luke an Bo, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Merlin, or even Tyrian Lannister. Thinking about them and being invested in their story makes it so.
So whatever you're playing, watching or doing, be it "real" or "imaginary" Remember the cardinal rule.
"Don't be a Dick"
You'll just piss off the DM, and thats reeeeeaally bad....
#Stubbornlyoptimistic
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