This slipped into my feeds today and I’m interested in what y’all think of.
Top of my own list is going to be the people and having a sense of a “third place” - somewhere separate and apart from the expectations of home and work, where I can engage in what some folks would call “fellowship” around shared interests.
Some of you (alright, just about everyone signed up here) are people I’ve been playing D&D with for a couple years now, and I’m incredibly grateful to know you and get to spend time with you in person. I’m not naturally a highly-social person, for a lot of reasons of varying quality, so it means a lot to me personally that we get to come together and share ideas and creative impulses.
There are a couple of indicator-behaviors on the “friends or just acquaintances” checklist, and “inviting into your home” and “help them move” are two that I can mark complete for at least some people here.
I’m not sure that “escapism” is, for me, a reason I play, or something I fully engage with. Like it goes in the saying “wherever you go, there you are” - I tend to approach gaming as more of a reframing, maybe a speculative recontextualization, of what’s on my mind. I don’t get to swing a sword or sling spells in real life, my acerbic tongue doesn’t disrupt my enemies’ endless meetings, the normal course of my day doesn’t often let me work with other experts committed more to solving a big problem together than scoring individual points.
And it’s a creative outlet, a much-needed one, that doesn’t always insist on maximal resistance of the medium. Sometimes there’s a lot of work, even tedium, to get to the table, but it’s worthwhile effort far, far more often than it’s not.
So that’s me - how about you? What makes this hobby worthwhile to you?