Why We Roleplay
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
This is not an explanation of what it is to roleplay. Rather, it is an attempt to explain the psychological underpinnings of fantasy (or other) roleplaying games.
I have a very casual seat on the border between normalcy and wierdness. Because of this many of my normal friends inquire of me: "Why do you roleplay?"
To do any sort of justice in my response to that question, I must first give the response that I would like to be true. "In terms of social interactions, the most typical venues in my life are movies, restaurants, and parties. Apart from not getting invited to many parties, the remaining options are 1) eating based activities, and 2) sitting silently and watching an inanimate object. As this is the case, there came into existence different activities, which, to the surprise of many, depended on the interaction between the people who were there. One of such forms is roleplaying, and I partake because it is one way to interact socially and actually socially interact."
That answer, no matter how much I would like it to be true, is not as much the cause as a pleasant side effect. The truth, which many of Us (Us: a pronoun referring to the geeks, nerds, dorks, dweebs, and other losers who partake in RPGs) prefer not to think about is this: We want to be cool. Desparately, and with much of our being, we wish to be popular, cool, and accepted. At the same time, we have, after years of failure at sports and social interaction, convinced ourselves that the flaws are with the system. It is not that we lack social skills, the system just doesn't care about the social skills we have. We want to be cool, but we don't want to be jocks or preppies. Ideally, we want a society in which we are accepted for who we are, and are cool for who we are.
Since that does not appear to be the case, we turn to roleplaying. If one were to examine the basics of roleplaying, to understand what occurs, basically, nerds get to 'be' someone else, someone who is popular and cool, in a time and place when that is appreciated. This happens on two levels. First, you are now in a society of roleplayers, and your ability to roleplay (also known as your nerd quotient) is a positive, rather than a magnet for dodgeballs. Secondly though, you get to escape to a world where you are the popular person, where you, an adventurer, save villages, kill beasts, and, most important, the social interaction within the game, is rule based. There are scripted rules of ettiquette and so-forth, such that, your lack of social skills in 20th century society is no longer a hindrence.
Now, this does tend to further ostrasize us from the actual community we are members of, propelling a greater desire to roleplay and escape. In the end though, we all just want to be cool, and if we don't like the rules life gives us for being cool, we'll retreat into our fantasy, or our sci-fi, or any of a number of other venues that will allow us to be the alpha-males.
Perhaps this is a good point at which I might interject a note about female roleplayers. First off, girls go through their roleplaying phase at a much younger age, on the whole (yes, playing house is a lot like roleplaying), but they get past that phase, for the most part, by the time they get to high school. Many girls at the high school level maintain their roleplaying. (They plan out their wedding with movie star A, or rock star B, and there is a point, from what I am told, at which they actually, for a minute, start to believe that it may actually come true.) Such is the way of roleplaying. The primary goal is to get so engrossed that you become your wizard or warrior.
I'm sure Freud would make mention of the pointy ears on Elves as a phallic symbol, and make a conclusion about the psuedo-sexual nature of roleplaying, as that is the Freudian goal of becoming the alpha-male; to have better chances at procreation. Coke-heads, though, so rarely understand the psychological structure of the human mind, so we can discount Freud's opinion as utter rubbish.
From an insider's perspective, though, the actual reason Elves are so popular is this: They have beauty, but it is combined with distinction. That's the way we roleplayers see ourselves. We are not the Paul McCartneys, the popular choice, we are the John Lennons, the ones who are appealing in a unique way. We tell ourselves this, and, in our games, we model ourselves after this.
Any time you wonder about roleplayers, you can think back, and realize, discovering yourself is hard, doubly so if you lack social skills and athletic skills. So you need to cope. Some people cope with drugs, others with music or art. We, the losers and the nerds, the outcasts, we cope with our fantasy worlds.
I have a very casual seat on the border between normalcy and wierdness. Because of this many of my normal friends inquire of me: "Why do you roleplay?"
To do any sort of justice in my response to that question, I must first give the response that I would like to be true. "In terms of social interactions, the most typical venues in my life are movies, restaurants, and parties. Apart from not getting invited to many parties, the remaining options are 1) eating based activities, and 2) sitting silently and watching an inanimate object. As this is the case, there came into existence different activities, which, to the surprise of many, depended on the interaction between the people who were there. One of such forms is roleplaying, and I partake because it is one way to interact socially and actually socially interact."
That answer, no matter how much I would like it to be true, is not as much the cause as a pleasant side effect. The truth, which many of Us (Us: a pronoun referring to the geeks, nerds, dorks, dweebs, and other losers who partake in RPGs) prefer not to think about is this: We want to be cool. Desparately, and with much of our being, we wish to be popular, cool, and accepted. At the same time, we have, after years of failure at sports and social interaction, convinced ourselves that the flaws are with the system. It is not that we lack social skills, the system just doesn't care about the social skills we have. We want to be cool, but we don't want to be jocks or preppies. Ideally, we want a society in which we are accepted for who we are, and are cool for who we are.
Since that does not appear to be the case, we turn to roleplaying. If one were to examine the basics of roleplaying, to understand what occurs, basically, nerds get to 'be' someone else, someone who is popular and cool, in a time and place when that is appreciated. This happens on two levels. First, you are now in a society of roleplayers, and your ability to roleplay (also known as your nerd quotient) is a positive, rather than a magnet for dodgeballs. Secondly though, you get to escape to a world where you are the popular person, where you, an adventurer, save villages, kill beasts, and, most important, the social interaction within the game, is rule based. There are scripted rules of ettiquette and so-forth, such that, your lack of social skills in 20th century society is no longer a hindrence.
Now, this does tend to further ostrasize us from the actual community we are members of, propelling a greater desire to roleplay and escape. In the end though, we all just want to be cool, and if we don't like the rules life gives us for being cool, we'll retreat into our fantasy, or our sci-fi, or any of a number of other venues that will allow us to be the alpha-males.
Perhaps this is a good point at which I might interject a note about female roleplayers. First off, girls go through their roleplaying phase at a much younger age, on the whole (yes, playing house is a lot like roleplaying), but they get past that phase, for the most part, by the time they get to high school. Many girls at the high school level maintain their roleplaying. (They plan out their wedding with movie star A, or rock star B, and there is a point, from what I am told, at which they actually, for a minute, start to believe that it may actually come true.) Such is the way of roleplaying. The primary goal is to get so engrossed that you become your wizard or warrior.
I'm sure Freud would make mention of the pointy ears on Elves as a phallic symbol, and make a conclusion about the psuedo-sexual nature of roleplaying, as that is the Freudian goal of becoming the alpha-male; to have better chances at procreation. Coke-heads, though, so rarely understand the psychological structure of the human mind, so we can discount Freud's opinion as utter rubbish.
From an insider's perspective, though, the actual reason Elves are so popular is this: They have beauty, but it is combined with distinction. That's the way we roleplayers see ourselves. We are not the Paul McCartneys, the popular choice, we are the John Lennons, the ones who are appealing in a unique way. We tell ourselves this, and, in our games, we model ourselves after this.
Any time you wonder about roleplayers, you can think back, and realize, discovering yourself is hard, doubly so if you lack social skills and athletic skills. So you need to cope. Some people cope with drugs, others with music or art. We, the losers and the nerds, the outcasts, we cope with our fantasy worlds.
