Escaping From Reality In D&D
After reading this, this is very much a stream of consciousness and probably doesn’t make a lot of sense...but here it is all the same. Maybe it will help some people and/or generate a dialogue. I think there are still things I’d like to say, or wish I could articulate - but the heart of what I mean is here.
I’m asked a lot what my favourite tabletop game is. In my line of work that is pretty much a standard first question. I always tell them that while I love miniatures and board games, my real love is role-playing games - however fleeting my experiences with them might be.
At the very surface layer, a role-playing game allows you a form of escapism unlike many others and together with a group of friends, maybe two or as many as six, you cooperatively tell a story and weave together a narrative producing watercooler moments you’ll most likely remember for the rest of your life.
But, it goes deeper than that. What I don’t tell many people and yet drives me to write this now is that at the very heart of it, role-playing games allow me to be the person I don’t have the confidence to be in real life and provide me with a safe space in order to feel out particular issues and try and resolve them in some small way.
This isn’t to say this is always the case but sometimes you get perfect moments where you truly embody your character, becoming them, and finding a way to solve a problem.
One of the problems I’ve always had in the real world is a lack of confidence. I don’t know when it truly started but I think when I was at secondary school a lot of the real world scared me, as did growing up.
Because I had no real idea of what I wanted to do, or any certainly when it came to my path in life (it appears I was a very deep teenager...) I always played the role of Paladins and Clerics.
These warriors of faith were so sure and confident about what they had to do that for me it was almost a way for me to ‘be’ confident without fear of getting it wrong.
I still remember my Paladin, Auduin who was strong and able, forthright and devout, accused of a crime he did not commit and seeking a way to prove his worth. I lived and loved that character, in many ways thanks to my friend who was the Dungeon Master, but because it was a part of me that I wasn’t capable of showing in real life, but could explore on the tabletop during my games - in real life, I was never a leader, and still don’t particularly take on that role, but in a game I felt safe to do so.
I think through role-playing games and that particular campaign I came to genuinely be more forthright - I feel like that might have fallen away a bit again over the years but it helped a lot during that time.
The leader figure would again be personified in Leopold, my soldier character from a particularly exciting Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play game we played for many months.
He again was a man pursued and haunted by his perceived failures on the battlefield, letting people down for his cowardice - in the end, he ‘died’ fighting one of his fallen comrades, but in the doing so saved the life of a little girl alongside his friends. After that moment he was reborn as a Warrior Priest (see, I’m back on the devout side of things again!) and I remember genuine feelings and emotions in the final moments of that campaign as he tried hard to rally people to his cause to fight an invading army - this led me towards another aspect of role-playing I’d been using to supplement my own failings, and that would be a heavy dose of charisma.
I’ve never truly played a properly talkative character in games - more often than not because I didn’t think I could do them justice, but there have been times where I’ve played the Galliard in Werewolf, the storytellers and wordsmiths of the world.
Again taking on these roles allowed me to try and be the person I wanted to be within a safe space with people I knew. No-one was going to judge me (too harshly) for saying the wrong thing, and I could learn to try and be more articulate and think about the words I’m using.
I genuinely think that the time spent around the table being these characters has made me feel more comfortable expressing myself and talking with others in social settings. More often than not I’d been the nervous one who just waited to me talked to but I think as I’ve grown up and realised it isn’t that hard - I’ve started to be more like the characters I’ve played.
Many of my characters have been a way for me to be someone I don’t feel capable of being in real life in that regard.
In recent years I’ve played a toweringly strong Werewolf named Baldur, and a man afraid of what he’ll become if he gives into the monster in Simon.
Both were so utterly different. I think in many ways Baldur was a way for me to deal with the angry person I’d become at the time - simply able to lash out and solve things using his fists. Simon grew out of the same period of time where I think I found myself counteracting that idea and trying to deal with it in a setting where violence was, for the most part, the only way - I had to think and strategise more about what I could do in order to get past whatever hurdles were put in front of us without resorting to violence.
My latest character is more the ideal me than I think I’ve ever thought about before. Currently, I’m playing a Warforged Fighter named Ward in a game of Dungeons & Dragons.
He’s brave and strong, true to his friends (dangerously so) and says everything he’s feeling no matter the consequences because to him - the truth is important and he can’t stand the thought of lying to people. He embodies a lot of what I wish I could be.
Ward wears his heart on his sleeve, and in many ways, I wish I could be more like him and lay the cards on the table in so many different situations.
Role-playing games then at the heart of it let me know that all of these different things are possible - even if it takes me a while I work up the courage to do them myself.
A lot of people who play characters for a long time in the likes of D&D say that they take on attributes of them in their everyday life. The folks behind Critical Role have said as much when they talk about themselves and I can understand how that happens.
A bit of you goes into every character you make, and then I think as things unfold, a bit of them returns when the game is over.
I might not be fighting dragons any time soon but when life throws something big at you may be asking yourself what one of your characters might do isn’t such a bad thing?
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