Some days I feel very detached and lack the energy for creative work like blogging. On my desk, among many other things, is figure8thinking’s WonderRigor Deck. I decided to pull a card from the Mindset cards for a suggestion to Wonder over:

Who did I pretend to be? Back at the beginning, I pretended to be a brave British soldier fighting the good fight against the Third Reich. We used to go out onto the waste ground near where I lived and imagine ourselves assaulting the defensive positions of Northern Europe during World War II.

From my earliest memories, I was already imagining heroic characters and it wasn’t long before they were getting stats for RPG play. I’ve mentioned before the journey we took from running around outside with sticks and moving inside with dice and more codified rules. Wargames were in my life from the beginning and roleplaying games arose from those roots.

But what are elements of the pretend world I would like in my present state? I’d like to be playing the hero more. As much as I enjoy running games for others, I often feel the tug towards playing in-role and realising that I just don’t get to do that in a way that’s meaningful to me anymore.

So I wonder how to capture that sense of freedom and heroism that we enjoyed as children. I don’t really miss the mud and the cold of running around with a pretend Lee Enfield rifle but I do sometimes miss the sense of adventure and free spirited play that we had back then. Can we ever return to the innocence of youth? I wonder…

Game on!