My Pet Obsession

Let me give a little recap for those of you who sometimes pay attention: out of the last six nights, I have spent five roleplaying. Five different play groups (with some overlap), five different systems, five different worlds. So I've logged something like 40 hours of RP this week--and that's not counting the hours I spent talking about it.

Now I'm up late, at the end of this particular gauntlet (and after a gruelingly emotionally painful session for tonight's character), and reflecting on why it is that I spend so much damn time playing "Let's Pretend" with dice. Is it because I'm unhappy with my life? Well yeah, I like living out fantasies as much as the next guy. Is it a vehicle for me to socialize with my friends? Of course. But neither of those explanations really seems to justify the manic pursuit of gaming I've engaged in recently. Nor does it feel connected to the emotional wringer I just went through.

Part of it is probably related to my deep obsession with stories of all types. I love stories. I want to live stories, want to eat and breathe them. RP provides a social way of doing that, keeps me from spending all my hours reading in my room or watching movies downstairs. Maybe another part is that RPing lets me explore my own capacity in much the same way that traditional acting does. I've discovered a lot of very interesting bits of myself thanks to these games... and more recently (and possibly more importantly) I've begun to discover things that are not me.

That's probably where most of the weight comes-- I use roleplaying as a kind of self-test to see how I'd perform under diverse circumstances. So I'm a really good player because I get invested, but I can be really scary sometimes to myself and to everyone else. Problem with the old "separating game from real life," I suppose.

But then, I love stories. And I like to describe myself as made up of stories, as containing all these characters and ideas and ideals. So the process will likely continue.