Game Ideas Un limited: Happy

  I heard a song one morning that started some thoughts in an odd direction.  The lyrics asked, are you who you want to be?  Part of me said no, I'd like to be a lot of things I'm not.  I'd like to be someone who didn't have to worry about having the money to cover my bills.  I'd like to be a dynamic and charismatic speaker to whose words listeners cling with rapt attention.  I'd like to be in better physical shape.  (None of these characteristics were the point of the song, incidentally; however, the question struck me has having ramifications that reached beyond its intent.)  In many areas of my life, I would like to be someone else, someone who had easy solutions to my problems and strengths where I have weaknesses.

  On the other hand, part of me said no, I pretty much am who I want to be.  At least, who I am is the result of my own decisions concerning what is important to me.  If I really wanted to be in better shape, I could exercise.  It is within my power to change myself, to some degree.  There are no major flaws in my personality which particularly bother me, most of the time.  If I really wanted to be different, I would at least make an effort to change.  I concluded by this that I must be pretty happy with who I am.  At least, I'm not unhappy enough that I'm investing any significant time or effort into trying to be someone else.  I'm not even putting too much into pretending I'm someone else.  I am me, and I have come to terms with that.

  Then why, something inside me asked, do you play role playing games?

  That was an interesting question.  It had nothing to do with the song, of course; yet it had everything to do with being who I want to be.  If I am truly happy with who I am, why would I take time to pretend to be someone else?  What benefit or attraction could such an activity have for someone who is happy with who he is?

  Another song brought an answer to my mind, a song I would be too old to know had I not had children.  It is sung by a world famous television star who goes by the name Ernie.  The words to this song start, "I would like to visit the moon."  He sings about going to wondrous places to which few people can go, but always says he would come home afterwards.  "So although I might like it for one afternoon, I don't want to live on the moon."  Being happy with who I am doesn't mean there's no pleasure in pretending to be someone else.  I can visit and explore places I would never wish to live.  I can try out different careers and lifestyles.  In my mind's eye, I can see what it would be like to live through different kinds of events, from horrendous natural disasters to frightening political upheaval to peaceful utopian boredom.  In much the same way, I can imagine what it would be like to be someone I would not truly want to be.  Walking two moons in another man's moccasins, as the Native Americans put it, means I will begin to understand who he is and how he thinks and why he does what he does.  It does not mean I will ever necessarily want to be, think, and do those things.  It is a path to discovery, to understanding.

  Besides, I've been role playing for a lot of years.  I am not completely sure that I would then have been happy with who I then was a quarter century ago when I first heard of these games.  Certainly I have changed since then.  For one thing, I started playing role playing games.  It is also certainly the case that in playing role playing games I learned much about many things.  Although it took a long time, eventually I came to understand stories from the inside well enough to write at least one worth publishing.  More significantly, I learned much about the characters I played, and sometimes incorporated some of their qualities into myself.  Role playing has helped me become the person that I am, so if today I am happy with who I now am I got this way in part by pretending over the years to be other people.  Anything that has served me well in regard to molding me into a person I respect is worth keeping for that, at least, so perhaps I role play because it has benefited me in the past.

  Beyond that, who says that we role play because we are unhappy with who we are?  No, I know you didn't say that; but someone probably thought it at some point.  It can be inferred from the question.  If you are happy with who you are, why pretend to be someone else?  One very simple answer could be that I pretend to be someone else to remind me how very blessed I am to be me.  My life is not perfect, but clearly it could be a great deal worse than it is, and on balance I find I should be thankful for who I am.  There is something very positive about going through a difficult and dangerous time in your imagination, then setting it aside and being able to thank God that that was not your real life.  It has some things in common with awakening from a bad dream and suddenly realizing with joy that none of it was real.  It may be cathartic.  As I wrote some years ago in Faith and Gaming:  Bad Things, for some imagining a great terror leads to a greater faith, the knowledge that God is greater even than this.  Even those without faith can walk away from such a game with the feeling that the world is a good place, and the life they lead is perhaps not so bad as it might have been in a different time or place.  They might even drift so far as to suppose that whoever made the universe made something that really is pretty good, all things considered.  I can play a character because I am entirely happy with who I am, and enjoy being reminded that I am not someone else.  Someone else can play a character who is not who he is and recognize that his life has been good.

  Certainly in role playing, in pretending to be someone else, we can learn much about ourselves and how to change who we are into someone we like better.  Even if we like ourselves well enough, we can learn and improve by considering how we might be different.  Our hobby is a wonderful petri dish for experimentation in self-identity and self-improvement.  Yet it is also great fun and encouragement for those among us for whom the biggest lesson is that who we are is a great and wonderful thing to be embraced and enjoyed.

  Next week, something different.

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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.