Why Your Life Is a Collection of Role-Playing Games
And why that is a great fact.
“A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game; [abbreviated] RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting.”
For a long time, I didn’t have the urge to look up the definition of role-playing games. It never even entered my mind to do so. At least, at first.
I’d heard about role-playing games; some friends and extended family members played them and still do.
Hearing about them didn’t ignite my curiosity. I thought of myself as a non-gamer, and role-playing games were so alien to me that I never thought I would be interested enough in them to look up their definition.
That all changed when I realized that everything in my life was not only a game but also a role-playing game.
Sometime before this realization, I once made a not-quite serious but utterly revealing (at least in retrospect) list of different roles I had played that day. Extended a little, that list included:
- being a partner for my husband,
- a parent to my children,
- a child to my mother,
- a sister and friend to my sister,
- an aunt and a friend to my niece,
- an employee (at that time),
- a manager of projects at work and at home,
- a team member in the same,
- a house owner together with my husband,
- a holiday planner for my family,
- an amateur interior designer for our new at that time house,
- a cook,
- a cleaner,
- an entertainer for my children,
- a writer,
- an editor of my own writing and that of my colleagues,
- a student,
- a teacher,
- an adult,
- a teenager with whirling emotions,
- and so much more.
The icons on the cover of this book represent some of these actual real-life RPG roles.
I also learned that I simultaneously played at least some of those roles and respective games.
You might wonder if everything is a role-playing game. In the past, I might have said no. But the more I study life through a gameful magnifying glass, I see that it is. Even playing games is a role-playing game. The games we play might not be considered role-playing games, such as many card and board games, but we still play a role there. We are game players, and we are possibly also rule breakers of that game, judges of ourselves and fellow players, creators of our own, or developers of that game, its extensions, and variants.
But also, inside of those games supposedly without roles, we play at least one role too. For example, in games such as Spore, where you have the omniscient (all-knowing) view and power to develop “a species from its beginnings as a microscopic organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture,” you play a role of a God, Nature, Universe, or any other all-mighty force. Even when you attempt to be objective, you play a role too — the one of a non-judgmental observer.
As I became more aware of the role-playing game nature of life, I started calling those real-life games defined by the roles I engaged in “real-life role-playing games.”
But some time later, I discovered that my use of this term was not entirely accurate because real-life role-playing games are a specific genre, which is still set up in a fictional setting. This setting imitates real life, but it is still fictional. It is not the reality you experience at any given moment.
This book is not about the games that imitate reality. Instead, it is about games that happen in reality. That is why the title of this book is Actual Real-Life Role-Playing Games.
These Actual Real-Life Role-Playing Games (ARLRPG) happen where you are right at this moment. You may or may not be aware of these games and the roles you play in them. And regardless of this awareness or lack thereof you are most probably playing several of these games and respective roles simultaneously.
But with this awareness, you can play your ARLRPG with intention and adjust their design in the most exciting way for yourself.
You can do that by playing three specific actual real-life role-playing games. You can also play them simultaneously. However, you always start with the one focusing on awareness. The other two games embrace awareness and each other in their nature and design. The result is a powerful synergy of skill sets.
Here is the list of these intentional and actual real-life role-playing games:
- The self-anthropologist’s role-playing game, or the Self-Anthropology game
- The kaizen master’s role-playing game, or the Self-Kaizen game
- The self-motivational game designer’s role-playing game or the Self-Gamification game
The ideas behind these games are brought together to make up a powerful synergy and approach to turning life into fun games. Turning something into games is less about changing something and more about adjusting the perception and approach to how we live our lives. I call this resulting synergistic approach Self-Gamification.
It bears the same name as the third role-playing game I listed above, and you will wonder if it is the same thing. It is because when you live your life gamefully, you start with awareness, being your own anthropologist. Then, while being aware of the worlds inside and around you, you approach anything in your life one tiny and most digestible bit at a time (kaizen). And all that culminates in Self-Gamification, where you are still aware, progress one little step at a time, engage in it fully as gamers do, as well as design and celebrate each of these steps in the most fun and gameful ways for yourself.
I have already devoted many books to this unique, simple, empowering art of living gamefully and happily. At the end of this book, you can find the complete list of books and online courses I have written, produced, and published on this utterly natural approach, which I like to say I have discovered and described, or grasped with words, rather than invented or developed.
The book you are holding considers turning life into fun games, which equals living gamefully, as a collection of three role-playing games. You can also see it as a game of three levels. I also love seeing it as a game where the tiniest step — called, among others, the “gameplay loop” — comprises being aware of where and how you are (or are not), where you want to go, identifying the smallest and the most effortless step in the direction you want to go, then taking and celebrating it in the most gameful and fun, for you, way. Then, do it all over again.
I invite you to explore all these possibilities from different angles. The multi-dimensionality of role-playing games, in particular, and games, in general, offer a brilliant tool for this exploration.
About this article:
It is a slightly modified excerpt from Actual Real-Life Role-Playing Games: A Gamefully Philosophical View on Life and How to Design and Play It.
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