All the Bits

"Play invites us to draw an overdue conclusion that the potential meaning and value of things, anything — relationships, the natural world, packaged goods — is in them, rather than in us.  Play is not a kind of self-expression, nor a pursuit of freedom.  It is a kind of creation, a kind of craftsmanship.  By adopting, inventing, constructing and reconfiguring the material and conceptual limits around us, we can fashion novelty from anything at all ... the task of the craftsman is not to generate the meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill for discerning the meanings that are already there."

 — Ian Bogost, Play Anything

Going back to the decision most of us made when we played D&D of getting rid of paying attention to encumbrance and food, random events, the drudge of slogging through "bookkeeping play" at the table, we were taking a step that felt like improving the game's running.  We didn't see any value in these hum-drum details; they didn't feel purposeful or interesting, certainly not as much as plumbing a dungeon's depth, fighting off a horde of orcs or burning down the local tavern.

But while we thought we were making a good thing better, we were, in fact, robbing ourselves.  Mind you, the majority wouldn't think so.  But I shall try to explain.

When people imagine playing professional baseball, they picture making great plays, hitting home runs, winning games, the camaraderie of the team, meeting fans, being looked up to and obtaining immortality.  But these are the outward, visible parts of baseball.  Dreamers don't fantasize about the bruises and permanent physical damage.  They forget that even good players fail seven out of ten times.  They don't imagine themselves making errors or about the crippling stress of enduring a slump, not knowing if the ride's going to end or reach into one more season.  They don't hear the hate in their daydreams.  They don't understand that playing professional baseball is about a lot more than glitz; and they don't see that a professional ball player obtains a character through the hard time that compliments and strengthens what they are in the good times.  Hardship and difficulty give meaning to things; or, to address it as Bogost does, within the hardship we find the meaning that gives us the strength and mindset to become truly great, in ways that mere accomplishment never can.

Those are strange words for some: "mere accomplishment."  We tend to perceive accomplishment as the end-all; but accomplishment is fleeting.  Wellington lived 21 years after defeating Napoleon.  Amundsen lived 13 years after obtaining the South Pole.  Einstein lived 50 years after his first four groundbreaking papers.  And while these men accomplished many, many other things in those remarkable lives, they themselves had to invest themselves in more than what they had accomplished, or what they might.  We cannot pat ourselves on the back year after year.  There are deeper, more resounding things that feed our souls than what we've done.  Those who cannot find that meaning, like Presley and Monroe and Jackson, tear themselves to shreds.  Accomplishment alone is a horrorscape.

When we cut out the "boring bits" from our campaigns, we seek to compress time so the game includes only the parts we really want to play.  We have only a few hours on a Saturday to play the game, and so it follows that we shouldn't waste those hours.  However, by striving for the "good bits," we erase parts that would have been shared tests of resilience, innovation, catharsis and evaluation.  In short, the unpleasant, uncomfortable parts of life that bind groups together emotionally.

Imagine that, in our marriages and in raising our children, whenever we came to the difficult or unpleasant bits, we could just push a button and jump past those.  I'm not saying the button solves anything, only that it bypasses the emotional nuisance of having to experience other people's troubles and pains, in favour of only enjoying "the good bits."  Life might be less disagreeable, but it would also be empty; the partnerships and attachments we have would mean little or nothing, since we'd deliberately failed to share.  Inevitably, we'd start hitting the button more and more often as we enjoyed the trials of having to live with ourselves and others less and less tolerable.

Most resist the idea that figuring out encumbrance or calculating consumed food does anything to bring a party together.  These things are just boring.  There's no message or "craftsmanship" to be found ... only the irksome necessity of calculating numbers.  This perception involves a certain blindness, one that fails to recognize what we takeaway from a night's gaming.  We presume that the best bits, the truly memorable bits, involve those moments when we overcame the deadly monster or deposed the evil overlord.  It certainly seems that way initially, when we harken back to groups and games that have become only memories.  But I think if a moment is taken to realize the source of our emotion for those things, it's the time spent with our friends, not the time spent as player characters.  It's the eternal discussions about why we hated something that pulled us together as friends, moreso than the accomplishments.  The "good bits," in fact, included every bit of that time, even the bad bits we couldn't skip past ... because we were changed by every moment we had together.

On the other hand, if we keep removing the bits that seem bothersome, there's less and less that's left.  The game steadily loses its flavour as it's purged of every inconvenience ... until what's left seems vain and hollow.  Eventually, playing at all has a taint of futility.

This is very hard to see.  We don't want to remember the days we sat by our child's bed, worried to death about a 103 fever, or the day we watched in alarm as our little one rolled into the MRI scanner.  We don't want to remember those long screaming matches we had with our spouse, or those four days when one of us moved out of the house, threatening a divorce.  We want to believe it was all balloons and days at the beach.  What's very, very hard to understand is that value and meaning is found in the bad bits, not the good bits.  Love is understood and embraced in moments that are the worst things.

In the small, petty troubles that we include in games, we practice how to overcome the bigger problems of real life.  We learn that success is found in endurance, and in the acceptance of the unpleasant things.  We learn that by addressing those things with an understanding that they're not going away, we become inventive and practical, improving our outlook.  We grow into better human beings.  We find a certain joy in doing the dishes, buying the groceries, putting up the Christmas decorations, doing our taxes, lending a hand to a stranger, taking time to help out at the local church, and all of the things we must do regularly.  Some of us do these things with resentment, wishing for the moments when they can do what they want ... and some of us do them like its a craft we're learning to acquire.

It's a matter of outlook.