Before I did the exercise suggested in this chapter I was very skeptical. I am not good at writing about myself in that way. Even though it is really about writing down some of your favorite RPG moments, games, and sessions. I think what I cringed at was writing down how I felt about these things.
Having done the exercise, I think it is brilliant. My passion statement eventually distilled down to “Looking back at my roleplaying days I enjoyed being the hero.”
I am not going to share all of the intermediate steps between the initial question, to complete the sentence. My final passion statement is really short “I solo roleplay so I can be the hero.”
There are two or three pages of the Complete Archives that I didn’t show in the video. These pages show Kenny developing his own, and cycling through every stage. I did mine before reading his. Once I read his version I started to doubt if mine was ‘good enough’.
So, I skipped that part of the video. Do your own, and then if you buy the Collected Archives, you can read Kenny’s process. His passion statement reads “I solo roleplay so that I can be myself. So that I can do what I enjoy, tell the stories I desire, about characters whom I care about. Characters who look after others, who’ll make a splash on the world, who are great at what they do, and who are driven to fulfil their own purpose. Characters who hold fast to what they believe even if it means they’re outsiders.“
You can see that mine is somewhat shorter. For me, the word ‘Hero’ carries a lot of meaning. It embodies the entire story or even many stories. It suggests both the oppressed and an oppressor. Challenges that are both internal and external that need to be overcome. It also implies an amount of recognition. My characters do not care overly about adulation, but I like to look back and recognize what they have achieved.
All in all, I enjoyed this activity, and feel I got some value from it.