Play Unashamed

One of the things that I learned as I became an adult is the art of "self-care" as it has become known among millennials, or rather "not pushing to the point of burnout and sacrificing comfort for the sake of convenience" as I prefer to call it.

People often forget the importance that games play in our lives; as with any other social animal, play serves as a way for us to communicate with others and learn the proper rules and styles of communication, but being capable of conscious thought we can also find deeper meaning in games that seek to provide it.

When people ask how they can break into roleplaying, I often tell them to feel free to do things that may feel uncomfortable. Of course, there are caveats here (not all rules are meant to be broken), but predominantly people fall into two camps: the people who are nervous and ask questions like that, and the people who take things too far anyway and won't bother asking.

Games are a place for exploration. Don't be ashamed to customize your experience to yourself: I know people who've spent a lot of time playing games that they really don't like. I'd much rather have someone drop out fifteen minutes before a session or ask me if our group can play something else (typically, others have the same desire, and there's only one person bold enough to ask) than have them get frustrated and fail to receive what they're coming to play for.

And one of the key things to realize is that while gaming can have negative effects if it becomes the sole focus of your life, so can everything else. A lot of people I've known don't game as much as they want to–and could without sacrificing other areas of their life–because they consider it to be "wasted time" or an "indulgence", so they ration their gaming out to a single three-hour block every week or cut it back. They don't see any increased productivity for this, since this time winds up being spent fruitlessly in any case, but they are then stuck dealing with feelings of guilt when they would be enjoying themselves.

Play is entering a state of exploration and whimsy, and that's something that's important for all minds. It takes away immediate, major consequences (my first rule of gaming: don't take it too seriously), but leaves motivations, freeing the mind to consider things in other ways than the tried and true patterns that tend to dominate our regular lives. It's a way to relax and remove stress, and increasingly gaming has become a regular convention for social interactions and storytelling.

We believe that the height of gaming comes in social experiences, especially roleplaying games where players invest in the world and story unfolding around them, but even solitary gaming can have benefits; a way to hone reflexes and hand-eye coordination, practice skills, or relieve stress.

And, when enjoyed in moderation, gaming helps improve your quality of life, which has benefits across the board.

So play a game, and play it unashamed. Take advantage of the opportunities it offers.