# Giving up RPGs



## Eudaimonia (Sep 24, 2013)

Has anyone had to give up RPGs because you felt like it was interfering with your grasp on reality?


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## nonnaci (Sep 25, 2011)

Could say the same for any sort of fantasy/escapism; the problem is that one's needs aren't met in real life and so the fantasy becomes a substitute. e.g. went through a Diablo phase cause I wasn't doing as well as I wanted in highschool.


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## OQHeckshire (Dec 20, 2013)

I think it was more coming back to reality. When I was younger (late teens to early twenties) I loved playing non-stop until the story was complete. My first RPG was FF7 (okay, Zelda Link to the Past), I sat down until the timer stopped at 99 hours. Okay, there was some bohemian crawling from the chair to the floor to get sleep action in there, maybe some food and drink. Really, I would be motivated and want to do something grand with life. Reality usually gave a pretty hard slap in the face. And then, as reality grew (jobs, family, etc.) I found myself returning less and less often. I can't play an hour here and an hour there, I need long spans and dedication to the story.


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## StElmosDream (May 26, 2012)

To a point yes. Becoming a (former) University student for me meant that I had to reassess priorities more as the type prone very long gaming sessions, realising that in the end I no longer wanted nor needed to play RPGs or MMORPGs, only really playing 1-4 hours a night, realising I no longer sought roleplaying escapism or the false sense of community such games used to offer. 

Hearing about silly people that let studies slide to play games online (no doubt others problems existed too), experiencing somewhat of an epiphany before WoW:Mists of Pandaria came out; my energies were better spent dealing with actual life rather than the artificial gaming world, realising the same thing again when I came unstuck on Diablo at the end of Diablo 3 (as is seldom the case time spent on difficult endgame bosses I do not beat, just felt wasted when life is too short to devote all energies to one 'achievement').


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## Eudaimonia (Sep 24, 2013)

OQHeckshire said:


> I think it was more coming back to reality. When I was younger (late teens to early twenties) I loved playing non-stop until the story was complete. My first RPG was FF7 (okay, Zelda Link to the Past), I sat down until the timer stopped at 99 hours. Okay, there was some bohemian crawling from the chair to the floor to get sleep action in there, maybe some food and drink. Really, I would be motivated and want to do something grand with life. Reality usually gave a pretty hard slap in the face. And then, as reality grew (jobs, family, etc.) I found myself returning less and less often. I can't play an hour here and an hour there, I need long spans and dedication to the story.


Wow. Yeah, I relate to not being able to pull away once I get into it. Even when I've stopped playing just to sleep, I would dream about it and feel like I'm still in the game and it would be the first thing I return to when I woke up.

Except that I'm not quite as extreme as you were. lol :laughing:


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## Eudaimonia (Sep 24, 2013)

StElmosDream said:


> To a point yes. Becoming a (former) University student for me meant that I had to reassess priorities more as the type prone very long gaming sessions, realising that in the end I no longer wanted nor needed to play RPGs or MMORPGs, only really playing 1-4 hours a night, realising I no longer sought roleplaying escapism or the false sense of community such games used to offer.
> 
> Hearing about silly people that let studies slide to play games online (no doubt others problems existed too), experiencing somewhat of an epiphany before WoW:Mists of Pandaria came out; my energies were better spent dealing with actual life rather than the artificial gaming world, realising the same thing again when I came unstuck on Diablo at the end of Diablo 3 (as is seldom the case time spent on difficult endgame bosses I do not beat, *just felt wasted when life is too short to devote all energies to one 'achievement'*).


It is seems like it envelops my mind then in the end it is like what you said (whether I won or not) I feel like there was something better I could have accomplished with that time I spent on the game.


I like what you said. I suppose what I was more trying to ask if anyone felt like it was screwing with their sense of reality or how they relate to the real world.

i.e. Did you have to remind yourself who you were or rethink about what is the game and what is real life?


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## Flipit (Nov 13, 2009)

Scruzz said:


> Has anyone had to give up RPGs because you felt like it was interfering with your grasp on reality?


Had to give up WoW before Cataclysm came out. Not because of a fading grasp of reality, but because I'm a highly competitive person, and competing to be amongst the top PvP'ers took a lot of time and energy and put strain on my relationships. I would think about how to become better even when not playing. I then realized that I can excel outside the virtual world, and while quitting was quite hard, real life finally got ahold of me.


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## uncertain (May 26, 2012)

Scruzz said:


> Has anyone had to give up RPGs because you felt like it was interfering with your grasp on reality?


No because they are so different from reality. I love RPGs. I just don't have time for gaming. (I will get addicted)


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## spiderfrommars (Feb 22, 2012)

I think I often live more through fantasy than reality. I don't have this problem with video game RPGs so much, though when I get started playing one I can get sucked in for a bit. It's much more with tabletop RPGs and writing. No, they don't screw with my sense of reality, but I do sometimes care more about my characters than I do about myself. Especially the ones in my writing projects. 

I think this might be because I'm depressed. Role playing allows me to get out of my own head and be in someone else's, and since that character doesn't have depression, it's a nicer place to be. Video game RPGs don't hold this appeal, however, so I don't have this problem there, really.

I don't get confused about what is the game and what is real, or about who is my character and who is me, however. I can mentally switch over very quickly.


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## Eudaimonia (Sep 24, 2013)

spiderfrommars said:


> I think I often live more through fantasy than reality. I don't have this problem with video game RPGs so much, though when I get started playing one I can get sucked in for a bit. It's much more with tabletop RPGs and writing. No, they don't screw with my sense of reality, but I do sometimes care more about my characters than I do about myself. Especially the ones in my writing projects.
> 
> *I think this might be because I'm depressed. Role playing allows me to get out of my own head and be in someone else's, and since that character doesn't have depression, it's a nicer place to be. Video game RPGs don't hold this appeal, however, so I don't have this problem there, really.*
> 
> I don't get confused about what is the game and what is real, or about who is my character and who is me, however. I can mentally switch over very quickly.



I like what you said a lot especially about it being a nicer place to be. It is possible it isn't so much depression when it comes to what I experience wanting to visit someone else's head/mind from it probably having more to do with stress about something or dissatisfaction with my life; therefore, turning to escapism. Any RPG will do.

You care about the characters you are writing about because you spend more time thinking about them than you do yourself or you prefer them to yourself?


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## spiderfrommars (Feb 22, 2012)

Scruzz said:


> You care about the characters you are writing about because you spend more time thinking about them than you do yourself or you prefer them to yourself?


The first one. I don't dislike myself, it's just that sometimes I spend more time in life thinking about my characters than about me. In addition to actually writing & planning, I spend a lot of time analyzing my characters. I could actually have them do whatever I wanted, but I think about them more as separate entities. I make them do stuff in creative mode, then think about what that means about the character later, in analyzing mode.

I agree, I think the idea of escapism and wanting to be in somebody else's head makes sense for a lot of reasons, not just depression. Any kind of dissatisfaction could lead somebody to that. Some people get obsessed with characters in a TV show when they're stressed out, I get obsessed with characters I made up. I think it's a similar behavior.


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## Eudaimonia (Sep 24, 2013)

spiderfrommars said:


> The first one. I don't dislike myself, it's just that sometimes I spend more time in life thinking about my characters than about me. In addition to actually writing & planning, I spend a lot of time analyzing my characters. I could actually have them do whatever I wanted, but I think about them more as separate entities. I make them do stuff in creative mode, then think about what that means about the character later, in analyzing mode.
> 
> I agree, I think the idea of escapism and wanting to be in somebody else's head makes sense for a lot of reasons, not just depression. Any kind of dissatisfaction could lead somebody to that. Some people get obsessed with characters in a TV show when they're stressed out, I get obsessed with characters I made up. I think it's a similar behavior.


This perhaps gives me some insight into Ne which I'm not sure how much Ni ['s propensity] does the imagining of characters in the moment because I can do the same as you and did a lot of pretending of characters as a kid and creating my own stories on other worlds type of fantasy. I need to read more on Ni.

What you said has helped a lot. Do you think it is more of an Ne thing to create characters or does it matter what type of iNtuition it might be?

I'm pretty sure I have Ni because I can think about what will happen before I think through all the possibilities, but for some reason I'm getting the sense that I might have Ne too... which is weird and I'm trying to figure it out.


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## spiderfrommars (Feb 22, 2012)

Scruzz said:


> What you said has helped a lot. Do you think it is more of an Ne thing to create characters or does it matter what type of iNtuition it might be?


I'm not sure if character creation is linked to a particular function, but for me, the creative process does seem to be a Ne-Ti cycle. People of all types will probably be imaginative, though, and enjoy fantasy. You may be right that imagining things in the moment, spontaneously, is more like Ne or Se than it is like Ni or Si. 

I've been wondering about how functions interact with the creative process, actually. Descriptions of N sometimes sound like they should apply to art, and sometimes not really. I guess that it depends on the specific person. But I do think functions are likely to affect _how_ somebody writes, and I wonder exactly how.

My ENFJ DM really enjoys making his characters, though he's even more into the worldbuilding. I asked him about character creation and he told me:



ENFJ DM said:


> Basically, I think there are 3 parts to my character creation (not counting stats):
> 1) A picture, music, or image of the character, how I imagine them moving, dressing, sitting down, how they look wounded and how their voices sounds like.
> 2) How I plan them out.
> 3) How they surprise me in the game.
> I think when I have time to properly plan a character, about 70% is already done with the remaining 30% being surprise. However, when I don't have time to plan a character, I mostly just go with the flow. So I'm more preplanned but I have a lot of room for the character changing.


That does make it sound like he plans more than I do, however, he still experiences the "surprise" of spontaneous character action. Could you relate to what he described?

I'll ask my ENFP girlfriend @randomshoes to post about her creative process here when she has the chance. It is very different from mine.


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## StElmosDream (May 26, 2012)

Scruzz said:


> I like what you said. I suppose what I was more trying to ask if anyone felt like it was screwing with their sense of reality or how they relate to the real world.
> 
> i.e. Did you have to remind yourself who you were or rethink about what is the game and what is real life?


At present all that comes to mind is social identity, when fearlessly 'wielding' magic, swords and 'skills' in healing in a game felt easier than challenging socialising norms and external expectations. Recalling how being friends with an extrovert in my teens meant always following his lead and seeing others often, feeling like his friends were my friends by association while in-game everyone is anonymous and equal until competition ensues to do x feat or challenge the best. At times favouring 'the game' to human company as if being an introvert needing to prove masculinity (well quiet rebellious stoicism in my case) when around in-person peers just faded away when playing games since gender, age-mental maturities and gender expectations no longer mattered until returning to non game life.


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## Aya the Abysswalker (Mar 23, 2012)

Not really. Maybe because I never played online games where I actually had to RP.


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## sinshred (Dec 1, 2013)

I was once play the sims, but when found my character cant die because he simply eat anti-aging food, i never play this game again.


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## Aya the Abysswalker (Mar 23, 2012)

sinshred said:


> I was once play the sims, but when found my character cant die because he simply eat anti-aging food, i never play this game again.


I still play Sims. I never do that.


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## randomshoes (Dec 11, 2013)

Scruzz said:


> This perhaps gives me some insight into Ne which I'm not sure how much Ni ['s propensity] does the imagining of characters in the moment because I can do the same as you and did a lot of pretending of characters as a kid and creating my own stories on other worlds type of fantasy. I need to read more on Ni.
> 
> What you said has helped a lot. Do you think it is more of an Ne thing to create characters or does it matter what type of iNtuition it might be?
> 
> I'm pretty sure I have Ni because I can think about what will happen before I think through all the possibilities, but for some reason I'm getting the sense that I might have Ne too... which is weird and I'm trying to figure it out.


As an ENxP child, I actually did not have imaginary friends or worlds that I made up. I loved other people's stories (books, movie, etc) and got really intensely emotionally involved in them (I would talk out loud to books or movies sometimes), but I was always hyper aware of what was real and what was not, even if I cared more about what was not real right then. A story, if you'll permit me:

When I was about three my mother had been taking a lot of parenting classes. In one of them she had learned a quick way to defuse a child's fear of the monsters under the bed or in the closet or whatever. So, one night I was sleeping on the floor next to her bed, and there was moonlight and the shadows of tree branches moving on the wall. They scared me. So I said: "Mommy, I'm scared. The shadows look like monsters." And my mother, thinking, _ah! a chance to use my new knowledge,_ responded with: "I have a magical monster spray that will get rid of the monsters. Will that make it better?" And I looked at my mother, concern in my three-year-old face, and said "Mommy. They aren't _actually_ monsters; they just _look_ like monsters." And then I paused, and I thought, and I said, "Can you make them stop _looking_ like monsters?"

Ne is, at the end of the day, an extroverted function. I would theorize that someone's childhood relationship to imagination, and therefore perhaps to adult creativity, would have a lot to do with the extrovert/introvert dichotomy. Because a child who is extroverted is ONLY extroverted, and visa versa. (If it helps, my mother is an INTJ, so her thought process there might give some clue about Ni.)

As for my creative process now, I'm actually not dramatically character-focused. I'm word focused. I like to follow the string of words where it goes. However, I am still character obsessed when it comes to other people's stories. There's a big line for me between what I've made up and what other people have. I guess I'm just so personally aware of the fact that I made them up. Maybe it's an extrovert thing. I don't really think how character-oriented you are is at all dependent on intuiting functions.

I DM a bit for spiderfrommars, and it's really different from writing for me. It's hard for me to let all the possibilities go and just do one of them. Plus, I get too emotionally invested in the NPCs I'm playing. I think that because it's real interactions with a real person who's sitting in front of me, it feels more real to my extrovert brain. Add to that the fact that I didn't write fiction at all until I was thirteen or so, and not seriously until the second half of high school, and it makes me pretty sure that I write mostly with my Fi and DM mostly with my Ne.


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## Eudaimonia (Sep 24, 2013)

randomshoes said:


> When I was about three my mother had been taking a lot of parenting classes. In one of them she had learned a quick way to defuse a child's fear of the monsters under the bed or in the closet or whatever. So, one night I was sleeping on the floor next to her bed, and there was moonlight and the shadows of tree branches moving on the wall. They scared me. So I said: "Mommy, I'm scared. The shadows look like monsters." And my mother, thinking, _ah! a chance to use my new knowledge,_ responded with: "I have a magical monster spray that will get rid of the monsters. Will that make it better?" And I looked at my mother, concern in my three-year-old face, and said "Mommy. They aren't _actually_ monsters; they just _look_ like monsters." And then I paused, and I thought, and I said, "Can you make them stop _looking_ like monsters?"
> 
> Ne is, at the end of the day, an extroverted function. I would theorize that someone's childhood relationship to imagination, and therefore perhaps to adult creativity, would have a lot to do with the extrovert/introvert dichotomy. Because a child who is extroverted is ONLY extroverted, and visa versa. (If it helps, my mother is an INTJ, so her thought process there might give some clue about Ni.)
> 
> ...


This is all fascinating. I loved the story about the monsters and your mom. 

This makes me wonder with you being more attuned to words and dialogue are you also more musically inclined and not so much visual? I'm not very musical, but I'm very visual.

It makes sense with the creative process to use F predominantly and for other stories bordering on probability flux you'd need to tune in with N.

When you are saying you don't really think being character oriented has to do with iNtuiting functions, this might be true to some extent, but my focus isn't about characters as such (or soley) but about BECOMING the story and the characters. I think it is the N that causes this complete immersion into the story... just like how N is used by children to pretend.

I like your input. It has given me more to think about.


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## spiderfrommars (Feb 22, 2012)

Scruzz said:


> It makes sense with the creative process to use F predominantly


That's interesting, I'm Fe inferior but I think it has a _lot_ of influence on my writing. So I think this is true.

I'd love to see some Se and Si users describe their creative process, because I agree with you that there seems to be a connection here between perceiving functions and writing. But I wonder if it's just a Ni+Se style vs a Si+Ne style, or if Si and Se as dom or aux are quite different.



Scruzz said:


> I think it is the N that causes this complete immersion into the story... just like how N is used by children to pretend.


I don't think that's true. All children pretend, but only Ni and Ne doms (so 2/8 of children, if we assume types are equally distributed, and most claim that N is much rarer than S) actually have N as a child. As a child, I was an ITP or Ti: I had no Ne. My middle functions were not differentiated. Yet I definitely played pretend, similar to what you've described.

I think it may be introverted children who are more likely to get lost in fantasy, and extraverted children who are more aware of reality. At that age, differences between introverts and extraverts will be really pronounced. Extraverts will play pretend, but remain very aware of what's real (and likely play pretend with others): that's true whether they're Ne, Se, Te or Fe. Introverts will be subjective and lost in their heads, so they may have imaginary friends and other stuff like that. That's what I think you're getting at when you refer to N.

It's definitely possible that Ni is far more detached, dreamy, and unable to distinguish between thoughts and reality than Si, Ti or Fi. But I don't think it's possible to say the same of Ne. That's what randomshoes was saying, that as a child she was very aware of objective reality, even when she was creative.


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## randomshoes (Dec 11, 2013)

Scruzz said:


> This makes me wonder with you being more attuned to words and dialogue are you also more musically inclined and not so much visual? I'm not very musical, but I'm very visual.


I do play music but I'd say I'm more aural or rhythmic than directly musical. I relate to words primarily as sounds. I'm not a particularly visual person when it comes to creativity, although visuals really help me understand things like math.


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## randomshoes (Dec 11, 2013)

Yeah, I've never been one to lose my sense of the real or myself, even when I care about something fictional a LOT. It's not something I do at all. My favorite quote ever:

"We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay." --Lynda Barry


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## Eudaimonia (Sep 24, 2013)

spiderfrommars said:


> That's interesting, I'm Fe inferior but I think it has a _lot_ of influence on my writing. So I think this is true.
> 
> All children pretend, but only Ni and Ne doms (so 2/8 of children, if we assume types are equally distributed, and most claim that N is much rarer than S) actually have N as a child. As a child, I was an ITP or Ti: I had no Ne. My middle functions were not differentiated. Yet I definitely played pretend, similar to what you've described.
> 
> ...


Somehow I have the impression that children have higher N up until a certain age and then it falls back into the shadows or becomes a dominant function. There is nothing to back this up mind you and I would have to look into it further before I can say definitively why this might be so (or not).

I'm considering what you are saying so don't take this as me disagreeing with you by any means. I had to look up ENFP's functional stack to see that their Ne is also dominant because I wasn't so sure since ENFJ is Fe dominant. OK, so, yes, it seems very possible that it has more to do with being Introverted than Extroverted when it comes to differentiating between reality and fantasy. And, I was very very introverted as a child and I'm still very introverted, but I've learned how to manage socialising better which really I could have become a total recluse if I didn't work at socialising.

This is helping me understand Ni better because for a lot of the descriptions they like to say it is future oriented intuition and that it is a Perceiving function which causes a lot of mistypes for INxJs and so on. Some people talk about it being "fuzzy" intuition and the problem with that is that I would have to know what Ne is to understand how Ni is different and for some reason sites talking about Ne seems to have clearer descriptions that I can understand.

Ok, I'm becoming more convinced of my intuition being Ni without it crossing over to Ne.


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## birdsintrees (Aug 20, 2012)

I have had a bit of addiction and over-identification issues with my characters in the MMORPG I used to play. The time I spent on there bordered on fanatic and it was an awesome form of entertainment with a pinch of escapism. I identified so much with my characters that it was hard to separate storyline from reality and I even remember 'being' my avatar in my dreams at night if I had been really pre-occupied with the game for a while. 

I gave up by entering the real world. I just didn't have access to the game anymore and the connection faded because of it, I moved on from it. I still miss the people, the storylines and the fun some times.

I stick to Civ these days


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## OldManRivers (Mar 22, 2012)

I knew one young man, back in the original Dungeons and Dragons games with multisided dice and such that became so enmeshed he wanted to discuss these characters constantly and said they were about 80 percent real, that they were role models. He had been shuffled from mom to grandma to aunt - all believed to be in his best interest - his father died when he was little. He had to go into therapy when the roll of the dice got his avatar killed - He flunked out of high school, believing he could "use his powers" to see the answers without studying. That was an extreme case. He was thirty before he was able to function normally. His imaginary world was so much better than the real one -no abandonment issues in his imaginary world, until the avatar was killed. He pretty well lost it then.
I think if there are no serious issues to start, RPG's may waste some time, but are not likely to warp one's sense of reality.


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## Sweetish (Dec 17, 2009)

I'd say this was an issue for my INFP best friend. Maybe it's an NF enneagram type 4 thing, or maybe she has type 9 in her tritype, I dunno. She becomes attached to characters. I like watching her play a game, like Lost Odyssey, because then I don't have to play it, myself, to enjoy the story and appreciate the characters.

I say that because I didn't keep playing an RPG due to immersion, it was more wanting to see the whole story play out, like a mild OCD quirk that I needed to finish something. I was drawn into maxing stats, or finding items, or learning skills, or getting to the next animated cut scene. While watching someone else play a game, there was no compulsion to keep watching or for that person to complete it. I could walk away at any point to do something else, return later, and not be invested to an addictive degree.



Flipit said:


> Had to give up WoW before Cataclysm came out. Not because of a fading grasp of reality, but because I'm a highly competitive person, and competing to be amongst the top PvP'ers took a lot of time and energy and put strain on my relationships. I would think about how to become better even when not playing. I then realized that I can excel outside the virtual world, and while quitting was quite hard, real life finally got ahold of me.


It was like that for me years ago, back in the days when the battlegrounds Player vs. Player system in World of Warcraft was rewarding people according to their honor points accumulated during a week in relation to the participation of all other players competing head to head in that same bracket. Every week was a fatiguing grind of game, after game, after game, trying to keep up with the other PvPers to reach the top of the bracket and win one of a few coveted rank promotions for that bracket on that server. I wanted to reach rank 11 if I remember right, but each week was more grueling than the last against people who wanted it as badly as I did. A person had to play w/o a break and often people would trade favors with friends to PvP for them on their accounts while they went to work or school (or, MMORPG gawdz forbid, SLEEP).

I might have made it that week, maybe not, but the day before the week ended I said, "@#$% it. I'm tired of this hamster wheel. You other players can have your damn PvP black war mount. This is dumb. I don't have a life!" It was just, the worst designed form of competition. It pitted us against each other not only in the game but in terms of what we were willing to sacrifice in real life in pursuit of a petty achievement. it encouraged people to not only treat their body badly but also to share their account /password information which was risking their account being hijacked- I never did that, instead I just got very little sleep.

Within a year or so that PvP rank system was oblivious and no remnant of it returned until the game let players put their old rank as a title optionally displayed above their character's head. Cut to a couple years later when Blizzard decided HEY anyone can have a black war mount, now, just earn and spend the honor points! Yeeeeaaaahhhh.... just invalidate all that hard work players put into earning the recognition of being esteemed PvPers on their realm. If practically anyone can earn it and show it off, it no longer holds the same value. Very disrespectful.

I'm sure plenty of people on the pre-made teams I joined missed my colorful expletives gracing their ears over TeamSpeak and Ventrilo during a battleground after I took that break from ranked PvP. Ahh, how I miss that intense, blood thirsty sensation of pwning pixels for honor points, of winning a game due to skillfully executed strategy, communication, dedicated players and gear, and ideal team composition. So satisfying.


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## Eudaimonia (Sep 24, 2013)

OldManRivers said:


> I knew one young man, back in the original Dungeons and Dragons games with multisided dice and such that became so enmeshed he wanted to discuss these characters constantly and said they were about 80 percent real, that they were role models. He had been shuffled from mom to grandma to aunt - all believed to be in his best interest - his father died when he was little. He had to go into therapy when the roll of the dice got his avatar killed - He flunked out of high school, believing he could "use his powers" to see the answers without studying. That was an extreme case. He was thirty before he was able to function normally. His imaginary world was so much better than the real one -no abandonment issues in his imaginary world, until the avatar was killed. He pretty well lost it then.
> I think if there are no serious issues to start, RPG's may waste some time, but are not likely to warp one's sense of reality.


You probably couldn't say what his MBTI was could you?


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## Kysinor (Mar 19, 2009)

*Arrogant Alert*

Wait... there's a RPG that makes me hard to stop playing? Gief Plox. It is not that I dislike RPGs but... :S


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## Aya the Abysswalker (Mar 23, 2012)

Now that I recall I had a INFP friend (at least I believe she's an INFP) who gets sucked away from reality very easily.
Her father left her when she was little, even though he keeps contact with her, and her stepfather equally left her little brother, so she pretty much grown to hate real life man and adore fictional men, especially characters with families issues like Sephiroth, Cloud or Tidus. It's goes beyond gaming and RPGs. Not only she over analysis everything, her days used to be counted according to Death Note both the anime and the manga and she was depressed to the point where she couldn't leave home when she could no longer count her days that way.

Another example is how my fiancée likes to role play (he's not amazingly found of JRPGs but western RPGs like Risen are up his alley) especially when he's away from someone he likes to be with (myself, a close friend) and he has clearly stated that he needs it be able to keep his sanity among people who dislike him. He never lost his sense of reality ever since I meet him and he has a very strong sense of self, the way he lets me rule a role play is only a reflection of his tiredness.
Unlike that other girl, who pretty much lost herself in her obsessions and stories and refuses treatment.


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## Sweetish (Dec 17, 2009)

I forgot to mention, my INFP friend writes, and writes, and writes... she's all over fiction and likes to actively write role play stories with other writers. She definitely wants to become a character and lose herself in that. She's very creative, but yes there's that element of escapism. She doesn't like her life, her body, her circumstances, so she role plays. That slogan "Live in your world. Play in ours." concept, except that she likes crafting her own world, too. Being someone else I guess provides her relief. She's told me that most often she isn't even herself in her dreams, she's someone else.

I don't want to become a character, I just want to observe them. It's very external. Very rarely am I able to identify with a character strongly- so strongly that my awareness of reality would blur in the process and I'd start to think life is some effed up dream or virtual reality. I guess I just have strong ego and superego boundaries.

The INFP friend can fall in love with practically anyone, and that's not something I can even begin to understand.

I would say that she does lose herself in a person, to the point she can love that person the way they love their self. There's usually a stark jolt back to reality when my friend realizes the ugliness in a person that she thought could be loved has caused her pain.

I should also add, rarely has she finished a game. I think it's because she grows so attached that she doesn't want it to end. Somehow, that finality is just too much.


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## OldManRivers (Mar 22, 2012)

Scruzz said:


> You probably couldn't say what his MBTI was could you?


His development issues and maladaptive behavior put him off the chart. Psychosis negates normal decision-making modes.


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## Eudaimonia (Sep 24, 2013)

OldManRivers said:


> His development issues and maladaptive behavior put him off the chart. Psychosis negates normal decision-making modes.


Yeh, I hear ya.


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## Mammon (Jul 12, 2012)

No. I never had that happen to me.

However, anime is interfering with my grasp on reality instead, I think. Will never stop though.

Game on~


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## Word Dispenser (May 18, 2012)

I could never lose my grasp on reality. I'm actually kind of sad about it. I really enjoy horror movies, as an example, and no matter how scared I am, when lying in the dark before sleep, I never see anything creepy or neat.

But, anywho, I actually read an article that stated that watching horror movies and stuff like that actually increase your ability to see the difference between reality and fantasy, and it's a great way to deal with stress. The increase in adrenaline actually helps you to calm down when stressed, lol. :3 

But, I'm different, I guess. I.. Weirdly adored the scariest horror movies since before I can remember. And I can remember when I was around 2 years old.

So, if you're afraid of losing your grip on reality, have a horror marathon, and then get back to Mass Effect. :kitteh:


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## Aya the Abysswalker (Mar 23, 2012)

Word Dispenser said:


> I could never lose my grasp on reality. I'm actually kind of sad about it. I really enjoy horror movies, as an example, and no matter how scared I am, when lying in the dark before sleep, I never see anything creepy or neat.
> 
> But, anywho, I actually read an article that stated that watching horror movies and stuff like that actually increase your ability to see the difference between reality and fantasy, and it's a great way to deal with stress. The increase in adrenaline actually helps you to calm down when stressed, lol. :3
> 
> ...


Does it works with horror games too? XD


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## Word Dispenser (May 18, 2012)

Aya Nikopol said:


> Does it works with horror games too? XD


I don't see why not. In my personal experience, I'd say that it supports that conclusion. But, then again, when I'm playing horror with headphones on, there are usually people in my environment to kinda 'remind' me, or give me cues that there's another world outside my head. :kitteh:


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## Aya the Abysswalker (Mar 23, 2012)

Word Dispenser said:


> I don't see why not. In my personal experience, I'd say that it supports that conclusion. But, then again, when I'm playing horror with headphones on, there are usually people in my environment to kinda 'remind' me, or give me cues that there's another world outside my head. :kitteh:


I hold that Silent Hill games are the worse, especially the second one. It involves, takes you in and doesn't let you go until the story has ended.


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## Word Dispenser (May 18, 2012)

Aya Nikopol said:


> I hold that Silent Hill games are the worse, especially the second one. It involves, takes you in and doesn't let you go until the story has ended.


I played that with my mom back in high school. Don't remember much, sadly. Keep wanting to watch a playthrough on Youtube and get distracted.

I found Silent Hill 3 a whole lot more creepy. I still have awesome nightmares about the ground turning into metal grating and running away from zombified evil cult abhorrations


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## stargazing grasshopper (Oct 25, 2013)

Scruzz said:


> Has anyone had to give up RPGs because you felt like it was interfering with your grasp on reality?


Rocket Propelled Grenades?


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## The Wanderering ______ (Jul 17, 2012)

Why is this in the Cognitive Functions subforum?


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