“Life
must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices,
singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the
gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the
contest.”
– Johan
Huizinga
It’s
that time of year again. We make plans to visit friends or family.
Someone prepares a meal, others bring drinks and snacks. Hopefully we
don’t have
too much anxiety that everyone gets along and carefully laid plans
come together. Time to clean the house and prepare the table as
everyone gathers. We
set up our rulebooks, scenario notes, gamemaster screen, favorite
dice. Wait...are
we here to celebrate Thanksgiving or play games?
The typical Thanksgiving holiday and gaming share many similar
elements. We gather together around a table or similar shared space
for a celebration, one of thankfulness and another of play and
imagination. Each has a symbolic purpose grounded in some form of
play: the recreation (to some degree) of the mythical first
Thanksgiving, the immersion in an interactive game that mirrors some
reality, however fantastic. One provides an opportunity for
reflection, the other for entertainment, and both for taking a break
from the normal, often tedious routine of our everyday lives. Both
require some degree of preparation – of food, game material,
cleaning the house for guests – sometimes fraught with anxiety:
will we all get along, will the food be just right, have we forgotten
anything, will the overall experience be satisfying? Often everyone
brings something for the table, whether a main dish, a host of
indulgent snacks, drinks, and dessert. Games even form part of the
Thanksgiving tradition as many people sit down afterward to watch
their favorite football teams compete...or those of us who aren’t
into sports might actually break out some of their favorite adventure
games to play or introduce to non-gamers (something I plan on
indulging in during my Thanksgiving observance).
Years ago I moved to an area where my gaming friends all lived within
about a 30 minute’s drive. We regularly gathered on the weekends
for several hours of roleplaying, with different people hosting the
location and running the games, everything from Castle
Falkenstein, Star Wars, Legend of the Five Rings, and Dungeons
& Dragons (among others I don’t recall). One of our friends
loved to cook; he’d prepare the main course while each player would
bring something else...drinks, snacks, dessert, side dishes. It was a
nice way to break bread over gaming, to share two group activities
that brought us together. Alas, those days are long gone, but I’m
thankful for them and the happy memories of good food, friends, and
gaming.
And that reminds me of a major difference between Thanksgiving and
gaming. Those of us in the adventure gaming hobby play all the time.
If we’re not gaming around the kitchen table, at the Friendly Local
Game Store, public library, or elsewhere we’re busy preparing
scenarios, painting figures, crafting terrain, even just reading
rules and source material to fuel our imagination and inspire our
next game session. As a hobby it’s something we engage in
throughout the year. Thanksgiving, however, is just one day each
year. We take time during that holiday to reflect on our blessings,
give thanks for the good things in our lives, and then move back to
our hectic daily lives (with an extra sheen of stress from the
upcoming holiday season). It takes effort for the Thanksgiving
message to persist beyond the holiday itself. We often get together
to game, setting aside our worldly cares for a short while with
friends and fun...why can’t we more often remember to take time to
appreciate the good things in our lives? And more importantly, why
don’t we always think to improve the lives of those less fortunate?
Somewhere I have an
unfinished, unpublished missive on “Zero-Sum Games, Cooperative
Games & How We View Our Fellow Humans.” It’s grounded in
politics (rare for me) and for the most part rambles on pointlessly.
Yet its central theme reminds me of gaming and Thanksgiving. Some
people view life as a zero-sum game in which one person’s success
comes at the expense of another’s loss. Others view positive
advances in our individual lives as something we share with everyone
as if we were playing a cooperative game, “a rising tide lifts all
boats” kind of mentality. Rather than seek to score points over our
adversaries in the game of life, I’d hope we’d strive
cooperatively to advance the plight of all players. As we reflect on
our blessings I encourage everyone to seek opportunities to express
our gratitude by helping others, to give them as many reasons to be
thankful as we have...maybe even more.
This Thanksgiving – and
throughout the year – let us gather around the table to reflect,
celebrate, give thanks, and play games.
Thank you, kind readers, for following Hobby Games Recce throughout
the years and interacting with me on various subjects. Thank you for
your support of my creative gaming endeavors through Griffon
Publishing Studio. I am fortunate to have the support of friends and
family.
For those more interested in my usual Thanksgiving missives, you can
find the most recently recycled one at “Step Up & Give Thanks.”
And, as usual, I’ll end with one of my favorite
quotes on the subject of thankfulness:
“In
ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more
than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes
rich.”
– Dietrich
Bonhoeffer
