Quote Originally Posted by C-Moon View Post
Do you play TTRPGs to escape reality or to address issues within it? Or both?
Both. And in practice, I don't see how you can escape a game being both. Yes, I'm playing at pretending to be somebody else, in a world unlike our own. I'm not really a wizard, musketeer, starship marine, or other adventurer, but ...

In our current game, we are out to save the town's children. We are saving them from an evil fairy who wants their souls, not from ill treatment or poverty, but my character believes in the mission because I believe in saving kids.

In our most recent game, we were trying to get home, which will require getting different races to accept each other and work together. The races are squirrel-folk, ant-folk, and kobolds, but its real-world analog is obvious.

In the game before that, we were trying to save an ever-darkening world from destruction. It was dimension-skipping magic crystals, not a coronavirus, but there is still some reality to it.

And in a game before that, my character became the Earl of Devon, and started trying to improve the economy of the county, for the benefit of the people (and to get rich himself).

In fact, I will go further: you cannot design a game that completely escapes reality. It can't be done.

I don't wander through the wilderness looking for adventure, but I spent two summers teaching Scouts how to survive in the wilderness as a Philmont Ranger.

I have never studied magic, but I have researched how to send messages over far distances as a telecommunications engineer.

I've never saved a princess from dragonfire, but I have helped carry somebody on crutches down a flight of stairs out of a burning building.

Closer to home, I've never been on an adventuring party, but I've been on teams that work together to achieve their goal, from school learning teams to a baseball team to teams at work.

As long as characters attack with swords, carry things in packs, and wear shirts, there is a basic level of physical reality.

And as long as they work together to help people, or even just to get rich and powerful, there is a basic level of social reality.