When Reality is Simply Not Enough

or ‘Roleplaying for Beginners’

Alright, so I’ve been writing about all of these sort of complex topics and went maybe a bit too in-depth with the theory in my Quantum Exam Thingy, so today I wanted to talk about something more ambiguous and presumably more applicable to the real life… presumably. Oh yeah, before I get started, I have no idea why surrealism (see the picture above) and role-playing match together in my head, so don’t even bother asking. Without further ado, let us ‘see how deep the rabbit hole goes’.

Introduction

Not too imaginative a title, eh? Anyhow… All of us are playing a role somewhere in our lives, from pretending to be someone you are not on the internet to having a completely separate personality, like one of those folks with MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder). Whatever the case, people have been doing it for millennia. For example, role-playing in Ancient Rome and Medieval Europe was introduced in the form of historical reenactment, where people got together pretending to be from an earlier age and recreating some of the aspects of a historical age, mainly for the entertainment purposes.Today, however, many people approach role-playing with a skeptical attitude — it is seen as leisure activity for children or a treatment technique used in psychological therapies, like CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). However, I can assure you that many people, including me, love to role-play among friends and in casual daily conversations just for fun. In all seriousness, if you think about it, even mimicking your grandma could be considered role-play. (Yeah, I’m going to use the term ‘role-playing’ a lot in this article. So, if you ever need a drinking game, just read this and drink every time you see it. You’re welcome.) And to end this lengthy ‘Introduction’ I give you a Wiki definition, because this wouldn’t be an article without one:

Role-playing refers to the changing of one’s behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role.

This is not a Paragraph

While researching the ‘art’ for this post, I found a connection between Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images” and role-play. (Weird connections are kind of my thing now) Have a look here:

For those of you who have never seen this before, the picture shows a pipe and yet it clearly states that “This is not a pipe”. It establishes the idea of presentation and representation (connotations and denotations if you will), in that it presents an image of a pipe and yet it represents far more than it shows. What I am trying to get across to you is that it is kind of the same with people. On the outside we just present a man, a woman, a child etc. However, we are able to represent what ever the hell we want and that is where role-playing comes into play.(Aha! I think I got it right! Did I get it right?) . Representing different people, personalities, ideologies and so on, usually involves acting something out. So, for example if you are invited to a really fancy party with a lot of important high-placed people you would need to act more intelligently, use different kind of language as opposed to what you would use in every day life, behave in a specific way, therefore representing someone you are not, i.e. role-playing. I think by now, you should understand the core concept, so I’ll move on to something a tad different.

Living the Fantasy

It is quite difficult for some people to understand that it is all right to imagine being someone you are not. Some will find it childish or silly,but I, honestly do believe that role-play is an escape from reality that provides far better emersion than any book, movie, theatrical play, TV show or video game. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a famous French writer and poet, in his memoir called “Wind, Sand and Stars” once said:

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

which is more applicable to the topic than you might think. People gather in groups to imagine themselves as mighty warriors of the past or futuristic law-enforcers because, lets be honest, we will never get a chance to be either of those things in the real life. We assume the roles of these fictional characters and then play out different scenarios like fighting mythical creatures or resolving diplomatic problems. People have been doing this for years in tabletop games, like Dungeons & Dragons and in my opinion it is completely fine to do so.

I agree, that not everyone has the time, an opportunity or a bunch of enthusiastic friends to try out tabletop role-playing, but let me just show you what you are missing. In these kind of games you think up a character, bearing in mind that there are almost no restrictions to who you can be apart from your own imagination; you create a background story, establish relationships with other characters, complete tasks and go on adventures which would not be possible in reality and this is just the beginning. For these two or three hours you become someone completely different from yourself, someone that you would want to be and that, as Antoine says, is ‘a supreme joy’. More to the point, it doesn’t even matter if you are good at acting out your character. If you find the right ‘group’ of people to play with, they will point you in the right direction and you will forget that you are just playing a tabletop game in no time.