I started this roleplaying games thing when I was pre-teen, during Middle School in the days when RPGs were finding their identity. Before going to Secondary School, I liked to imagine and explore. I would play games and I would hang out with friends. It was an innocent time.

As we transitioned into Secondary School, the hobby was a stabilising and grounding thing for me. Escaping an emotionally cold home life and discovering friends who cared about me for who I was, not some imagined social role that I was expected to play, was liberating.

Roleplaying games with friends became a haven. I used to play starships and fight monsters. I used to conquer nations and defeat evil… all in my imagination and through the collective imagination of the group. I was free in a way that nothing else gave me.

40 years later, the experience of life has pushed me to hide my emotions during most of the day so that others can respect the role I play in my work. Imagination has often been forced off-stage and hard reality the bitter pill to swallow.

But the truth is that the imaginative young boy still resides deep inside my heart. In fact, I am still that imaginative wanderer who enjoys exploring and play. When I sit with imaginative people at the table today, it’s like medicine for my soul.

Stifling my anger and hurts so that other people don’t get upset has taken its toll. I’ve tried to please the people around me in various ways that cost me my passion and dreaming. In recent months, that façade has begun to crumble.

Finding time for what my inner self dreams about exploring has been a gift of enormous joy. When I find kindred souls who wish to explore the fantasies we can create through roleplaying games, it’s a magic all of its own for me.

Finding what’s true means unearthing the wonder of the child who began this hobby, adding the experience of the adult who knows a little bit more about how to do it well. But I realise that the child inside has more to express.

Letting go of the stifling and rigid beliefs that I’ve been enacting for too many years has been a blessing. Games are a pathway to play, and this playfulness is a pathway out of anxiety. There’s a wonder to be shared with friends as we roleplay.

As a kid, I liked to draw cartoons and make silly stories about wizards and heroes in space! I invented characters to tell stories! I loved the feeling music gave me, the images it inspired. All together, it awoke my imagination.

Even today, I am connected to that imagination through roleplaying.

Game on!