Roleplaying, or role-playing or role play, if you want to be pedantic, is the act of adopting the attitude, action and approximate accent and or discourse of another person or character. It is much like acting, but without the fame and the camera pointed at your face. Of course, that is precisely how our dear Willis must have felt all her young life. She saw herself as a person who was trying to adopt a whole other character. The girl of the house. Best kept in the house in the kitchen and best married before twenty.

In fact, that was quite the issue in Estra, at least in Willis’ eyes. Everybody seemed to be quite content with their respective roles. From the butcher to the baker and even the candlestick maker, all of Estra’s human kingdoms seemed locked into their monotonous cycle of life. Of course, kings and queens have changed in the last few years and many have seen a more colourful life like those of sailors, adventurers and even treasure hunters, but even then they seemed to only ever exist in a circle of very tight lipped and secretive individuals. Nobody in the city ever thought of joining them. There was no reason to. Whether it was by complacency or content, the people of Estra were simply not bothered.

All except for our dear girl of course. She often dreamed of what lay beyond her beautiful manor on the hill. The world so vast and full of wonder beckoned to her, as if a siren luring a ship to shoals. Could it be a destiny that called her forth? Could she have a fate unseen that would bring her on the greatest journey of her life? Or was some body writing her story somewhere that found her to be an interesting perspective for a narrative? All these things, except for maybe the last point, ran through Willis’ mind as she headed for the outskirts of the city of Kingseat to seek out an adventure. While she’s doing so, let us explore the concept of roleplaying in further detail, shall we?

Role-play, if the Miriam Webster is to be believed, is simply to ‘act out’. This is most often used, in our seemingly advanced age, in the context of a role-playing game, or Arr-Pee-Gee for the younger audience. In this particular scenario, people are encouraged to take on the role of a person they have never met or seen, but are somehow expected to relate to them. Much like presidents or religious figures. We find simple threads to link us to the character in the tale or scenario that help us reach a possibly new level of understanding about human reaction, compassion, empathy or sometimes, lack thereof.

For example, let’s adopt a simple character. For instance, a simple father. He wakes up in the morning, still in his nightcap and onesie that he had on the night before. We expect, as he is human, to have simple human interactions to act out. He would kiss his wife, only she is not there. Naturally, he would assume in his slightly myopic misogyny that she would be downstairs in the kitchen, already making breakfast. He fumbles his way out of bed and heads toward his bathroom to wash. “Ah!” but you say, “human interactions would dictate he would feel the cool of the floor, and thus immediately regret that action!” Indeed. Such is the nature of roleplaying that, should you have your mind fully invested in the actions, thoughts and feelings of our poor father, he would indeed be having cold feet. In rectification, he immediately returns to the foot of his bed to put on his slippers. Having done so, we resume his predictably mundane human interactions. Washing up. Dressing up. Going downstairs for breakfast. Greeting his wife.

“Good morning, wife!”

“Good morning ,husband!”

Greeting his son.

“Good morning, son!”

“Good morning, father.”

Greeting his daughter.

“Good morning, daughter!”

Silence. Oh dear.

“Daughter? Daughter?!” shouts the father.

Of course, in the act of roleplaying, we act out the scenario. Which means we can all agree the next logical step the father makes is to go to the room of his daughter to find out just why she is not at the breakfast table. Upon arrival, we pause. Should he barge in? Naturally if we were more of the impulsive and impatient sort, we would. But let us say, for this particular instance, that perhaps a little empathy comes into play on the part of the father. Feelings, after all, sometimes govern our actions. And a right bother though they can be at times, they are still, unfortunately, a part of life. So with a little empathy, he knocks politely. “Daughter,” he says, “I know you are angry at me, but please, breakfast is ready. I would very much like to start the day right.” Diplomacy. Tact. A gentle voice. These are the things that the father employs in his speech to invoke a similar response from his offspring in the hopes of reconciliation.

Silence. Oh dearie me.

“Alright, what’s going on then?” he grumbles. Now the time comes for the father himself to turn impulsive and impatient. Nobody likes to be ignored. Imagine your boyfriend not texting you back for a minute. A full minute. That is the fury we would feel from a silent response. So the door opens at the father’s intrusion, revealing the empty room of our dear girl, Willis.

What followed of course, was the first time any mother within earshot on manor hill had to cover the ears of their children to shield them from some rather nasty words.