The Joy Of A Role Playing Game
Children are amazing to watch when they are growing up.
I am always amazed at the energy and vitality of children at play. And their imaginations are boundless when they become caught up in a game. They can take on any character they have come across and this role playing game can become a reality.
Sometimes they take on the role of animals, or characters from a story that they have been told, and they truly believe they are this character. The importance of the role playing game for children is immense. It enables them to show an aspect of their character that they are perhaps not fully comfortable with when they are just “being themselves”.
But when they get involved in a role playing game they can become anyone or anything they want to become. Very often they will become animal characters, because so many of their stories that they are told involve animals which take on human characteristics.
The role playing game enables them to become someone else, but perhaps it also enables them to overcome shyness which they would normally feel if they were just being themselves. It is an essential part of their development.
As a young child, my eldest daughter was always fascinated by the theatre. It was a favorite activity for her as a child to be taken to the theatre. She would become so involved in the story line of the plays that she would always come home and act out the role of her favorite character in the play. We would often find her engaged in a role playing game all on her own, transported to another world where she was some magical person with special abilities. When friends came to play, she would automatically include them in her role playing game and the story would develop as her friends also became caught up in the magic of the fantasy. Her love for the theater has never diminished.
From her early days of role playing games, she developed into one of her schools’ most accomplished actresses, and was often given the lead role in school productions.
The energy that she showed as a child was even more evident, and she loved every moment of this more “real” side to the role playing game of her early childhood. Today, she is still involved in the theater, and has made this her chosen career.
I am certain that the magic of those early role playing games encouraged her to be sure that this was always going to be part of her life.
