Have you seen what’s going on out there in the real world?

What is this world coming to? Every day I look at politics here in  the United States and locally in Iowa, roll my eyes, shake my head, and then dive back into anything and everything tabletop roleplaying. That might sound crazy or delusional to people who don’t know me. I primarily consider it ulcer prevention for myself.

Once upon a time I watched the news every chance I got. That was journalism school for ya. Since then I moved as far from mainstream media news as I can possibly get most days. For one thing the narrative is always written to the bias of someone’s political agenda. For another I can only stand so much human tragedy before I have to go stare at kittens on the internet for a couple of days.

It’s still important to separate fantasy from reality, though.

I can still reasonably do that. Despite the notion that a lot of things others consider crazy I consider perfectly rational and vice versa. Look at where the common, popular, mainstream notion of what “sane” and “reasonable are supposed to be. Who defines what’s “crazy” and what isn’t?

Also, my beliefs in the Law of Attraction and my own spirituality dictate that by focusing on negative, horrible, awful things like the ones we usually hear on the nightly news, we’re just bringing for of that into our reality. I feel like the more I focus on the things that truly make me happy or at least content brings me more joy and contentment.

Plus not feeding into the mainstream fear machine keeps my stress levels down. It’s a lot easier to relax and think clearly about life when I don’t have people telling me what to be afraid-of on a daily basis. I don’t even need to hear the weather most days. It’s gonna do what it’s gonna do here in Iowa.

I try to live free from certain triggers. Sure, there are human rights violations and personal liberties being trampled every day in the US right now. It’s appalling. I could go all keyboard warrior on it. For now it’s all rhetoric. There could come a time when rebellion becomes necessary, and I’d rather save my fight for that. Besides, have you met about a third of the people in the TTRPG space on social media and YouTube? We have enough drama of our own.

Circling back to my favorite hobby.

Even if it’s just once per week or every other week, gaming helps blow off lots of steam. Even a couple hours of solo play takes me out of that day-to-day worry about kids, cats, my wife, money, health, technology, and even the TTRPG news of the week. Video games can’t achieve the same results because it’s very active eye-hand stimulus response which is more numbing to me personally. Analog gaming, especially TTRPGs are a great way to step away from all that screen interaction.

I also find the rolling of dice and womping on imaginary monsters with imaginary weapons is a great way to blow off stress. Rough day at the office? Blast some zombies. Boss getting on your nerves? Treat the BBEG and their minions like you’d like to treat the boss. It’s harmless fun and a good way to get some of that aggression out. (Just maybe don’t take that one too far or talk about it outside of game in public…) Still, beating down some demons or undead is usually pretty relaxing for some of us.

No, I’ll never get to be or meet a real live elf. But at least I get to play one once per week in Dragonbane or D&D. That’s good enough. I envy my younger friends and even my younger self. Being in four or five games per week can be a blast. Plus it keeps us out of trouble and enjoying one another’s company.

Once you have kids, should you be so blessed, time goes out the window. Suddenly instead of the casual BattleTech or D&D game, there’s soccer, baseball, or swimming. Band parents get a whole heap of things going on year round here as I’m finding out. My wife usually gets about a month off in the summer before things get rolling again. (She’s a teacher and a band booster.) I miss gaming on Saturday nights.

I know this wasn’t Worldbuilding Wednesday as scheduled. My wife read me an article in the news about a really nasty deportation case that likely ended in the death of the deportee and that kind of thing really sucks. No one deserves to go out like that. Sometimes I’d rather be talking about what someone’s Dragonbane character did last session or what people might be planning to do for the next Power Rangers game.

Please, be kind to other real world humans today as much as possible. Please remember we’re all in this together. Many of us have this goofy hobby about elves with sticks we like to play, but sometimes the real world does take precedence. Please apply some of those lessons learned at the gaming table to help those in need out in the real world.