I recently experienced a strange, unintentional message in a (c)RPG.
I've been playing the (excellent) Disco Elysium for the last few weeks. The game is, on it's surface, about a detective who wakes up after the bender to end all benders, sozzled and with a heavy dose of amneisa (that old cRPG favourite). I'm not sure if I could say what the message of the game is, in general. But I can talk about a message that I got from it.
Avoiding spoilers, there's multiple moments in the game where the main character recalls the "ex-something", a figure of regret and loss in the life of the detective you are shaping as you play. In one of those moments, near the climax of the game, I was struck by a message. A message of loss and loneliness and a desire to recapture things that used to be.
I was suddenly reminded of Atlanta, of the friends and life I had there before I moved here, to New York. That message revealed to me my own sense of loss, which I don't think I'd fully reflected on; it allowed me to recognise feelings of loneliness here (still under lockdown). It revealed to me a desire to get back to the life I left behind in Atlanta. In short: it was not an easy message to hear.
But it was a useful message. It galvanised me to take action, to take some deliberate steps (as much as I'm able to in a city still under lockdown) to find and join meetup groups, to look for opportunities to start building that same sense of community I'd found in Atlanta. I don't regret the move, it was the right thing for me to do in the bigger picture, but I don't think I'd really heard that message, that call to action until now.
I wrote earlier that I'd never really experienced the helpful, supportive, or therapeutic side of RPGs. To some extent that statement is no longer true. Whilst it wasn't around a tabletop, it was an RPG that helped me to see something about myself, a message from an RPG that helped me to work through something I'd be (subconciously) grappling with for a while. Thanks, RPGs.
#rpgaday2020