Using RPGs to Understand Impermanence and Navigate Change

Exploring role-playing and mindfulness

Hi friends!

We're collectively facing massive transitions—new year, new (old?) politics, new climate challenges.

This essay aims to show gamers and non-gamers alike how structured engagement can help us navigate uncertainty.

If you’re new: welcome! You’re dropping into the final third of a series organized by the three marks (or characteristics) of existence in Buddhist philosophy. Don’t worry about going back.

Start where you are, as they say.

Anicca — Impermanence

Change is a natural part of life. As the saying goes, “A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up.”

The three characteristics of existence (tilakkhaṇa) help us understand the nature of all conditioned phenomena, aka stuff that happens. While these characteristics are reliable patterns, even they are not “permanent” descriptions. They themselves are processes.

• Nothing stays the same (Anicca), yet we often pressure ourselves to fit a certain mold or “ensure” things should become or remain a certain way

• The resulting stress (Dukkha) feels bad

• Anattā refers to an always relational self—so when we define and limit our not-selves to a fixed state, we naturally stir up Dukkha.

That things change isn't a hard concept to understand, but it can be difficult to accept. This breath ends. This breath begins. This breath.

In Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, Tyson Yukaporta writes

Adaptation is the most important protocol of an agent in a sustainable system. You must allow yourself to be transformed through your interactions with other agents and the knowledge that passes through you from them.

Given daily life can sometimes feel like an ongoing onslaught of “interactions with other agents,” some gentle practice can be useful. The concept of impermanence finds a parallel in games.

Let me begin with how I’ve interfaced with impermanence(, not-self, dukkha,) and games in school and work.

Learning Through Living

What’s a game, other than shared systems like laws, rights and freedoms? What’s a government, other than a group co-creating “house rules” based on changing circumstances?

In college, I was a busy triple-major, double-minor, earning a city commendation for my SA/DV crisis work, working in London theater, and applying to graduate schools. The plan was to become a professor of political philosophy and advocate for the rights of lesbians of color.

But in Johnson Hall that final year of undergrad, I experienced the glory of flying into Stormwind City on a gryphon for the first time.

This! this! This was a world where anyone (with a credit card) could become whatever they wanted (within given taxonomies and if life granted them a computer and time to play). The potential of massive multiplayer online role playing games like World of Warcraft was incredible.

In graduate school, I focused on the similarities of in-game and lived political economies. Because, as was always my dream, I would become a professor expounding wisdom at the intersection of QTBIPOC research, information studies, and interactive media.

My academic career didn't unfold as planned. The vast majority of graduating PhDs, aspiring for tenure-track jobs, feel shades of grief, rejection, despair, shame. Not getting a job offer isn’t “rejection,” I’m told, it’s “redirection.”

And I’ve always said my dream was to trade labor for money.

Teaching has never covered my bills and the games industry rarely hires newbies full-time. Contract work seemed like a win-win in terms of livelihood and actually affording myself.

Through a contact, I landed a game writing test, an audition for game writers, for a well-known franchise. I didn’t “pass.” That said, the narrative director kindly told me why.

“Honestly, everything was technically perfect.”

I was flattered but confused because, while Tomb Raider writer Susan O’Connor’s masterclass had been helpful, I felt my background was too academic to be “technically perfect.”

“Okay, uh…what can I do better?”

“The team wasn’t sure you understood our genre. We’re going for kind games.”

Rejected for kindness blindness.

Suzuki Roshi: “Just be willing to die over and over again.”

Easy to say. “Normal” difficulty (whatever that means) to understand. “Extreme” to be willing.

Have your plans ever been “redirected” like this?

When a door closes, we might just hide in the corner. Hey, I have.

Sometimes it’s an eight of swords situation, where you realize the door was never locked.

Sometimes when a door closes, we get out our file and start working the bars.

Let me share a tool folks have used to get out.

But first! A testimonial.

I had never done any role-play before this year, and I definitely felt the anxieties of "am I doing it right?" and "am I fitting in?". Logan creates such a welcoming space as a facilitator in which to explore role-playing, even for me as a complete newbie. To me, role-playing is a really unique kind of mindfulness practice - I get to thoughtfully help create new stories in a world that we as a group build up piece by piece. Thank you for your gentle and skillful facilitation, Logan!!

Dr. Lou Baker (they/her)

Bodies in Motion, Bodies in Play

LARPers are conspirators breathing belief into each other. In LARP, we literally practice impermanence—building worlds designed to fade.

Play is intimate and absolutely electric when everyone and everything (props, environment) is “in” on the story.

My exploration of liveness in videogames deepened with live-action role-playing (LARPing). This became interactive queer murder mystery jazz cabarets in New York, Urban Pac-Man in Phoenix, and facilitating LVL 5, a LARP about actualizing avatars designed by concept artists and Scandinavian game designers that lasted three days each.

Embodying a character allows for a player-controlled experience of vulnerability and emotional release. Participants experiment with different responses to difficult situations, potentially rewriting personal narratives and developing new coping mechanisms.

While LARPing, “bleed” refers to when a player's emotions and experiences in-game begin to blur with their “out of character” emotions and experiences.

Investigating this interface can lead to a deeper understanding of the impermanent nature of identity and emotion, as players make explicit how their in-game experiences, wait, all things, are temporary and fleeting.

Psychiatrists like Bessel van der Kolk might call this “healing trauma.”

Adoptees and foster care youth with cPTSD benefit from embodied storytelling, as van der Kolk argues in The Body Keeps the Score, as well as war veterans and sexual assault victims working with more acute forms of PTSD. He writes,

The traumatized kids and veterans we work with are embarrassed to be seen, afraid to be in touch with what they are feeling, and they keep one another at arm’s length. The job of any director, like that of any therapist, is to slow things down so the actors can establish a relationship with themselves, with their bodies. [Embodied storytelling] offers a unique way to access a full range of emotions and physical sensations that not only put them in touch with the habitual “set” of their bodies, but also let them explore alternative ways of engaging with life.

What is a game but a dynamic, temporary space where we feel with others in a shared system?

As noted in my piece on skillful view, I was drawn to Nordic LARP for its emphases on structures of identity and emotional resonance. One sub-type, called Jeepform, focuses on intentionally evoking strong emotions in a structured environment to practice self-regulation and build community support.

Let me give you an example.

Fat Man Down

When I taught experimental performance at the University of Southern California (Go Trojans! Bruins! Yay Everybody!), I facilitated games like Fat Man Down by Frederik Berg Østergaard.

Fat Man Down provided a space to explore our relationship with our bodies. While body image issues affect people of all genders, cis men rarely have forums to discuss their experiences. The game creates what trauma-informed practice calls a "window of tolerance": a space safe enough to explore difficult emotions, yet challenging enough to evoke self-compassion practice.

After establishing the container via grounding, community rules review and safety discussion, a male student gamefully volunteered to be the titular “Fat Man.” Then, based on luck, he had various encounters while shopping for clothes, at an interview, at the grocery store, where his body was casually criticized.

This single-serving container of focused, experiential engagement exposed common tendencies, thought patterns, biases in a safe, “playful” space. Participants saw their ongoing weathering of this poor guy who just wanted tacos, a job, clothes that fit him. There was a lot of awkward laughter around how easy it was to be cutting, regardless of setting.

The post-game discussion about what happened and how we feel about it (debrief) was generative in understanding body image issues, social impact, and casual cruelty. The female students in the classroom hadn’t thought of male body image issues before, and the male student had never previously felt support. The debrief is crucial to “closing the book” and integrating the play with daily practice.

Have you ever LARPed before? What was your experience?

While group play offers one path to practicing with impermanence, solo games provide another way to explore these themes more privately.

Image from Tim Hutchings’ Thousand Year Old Vampire

Allow Yourself to be Transformed

Creating characters, relationships, and imbuing the items with emotional meaning…only to lose everything, is an opportunity to interface with change.

Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) involve players using dice, cards, and other tools to navigate a shared story.

Tim Hutchings’ Thousand Year Old Vampire is, on the tin, “A solo roleplaying game of loss, memory, and vampires.” (Before you buy, please respect the designer’s wishes in terms of who he accepts money from.)

[[POST-PUBLISH EDIT: If you’re strapped for cash, Tim Hutchings has provided free community copies on his itch page!!]]

Contrary to the seeming permanence of vampirism, the game is truly about the fleeting nature of things we think should be stable. In it, writers/players/vampires have five different traits: memories, skills, resources, characters, and marks.

Relevant to our discussion here, memories are made up of three, non-linear experiences. You are allowed five memories at a time. As your immortal character experiences centuries of existence, you must physically cross out older memories to make room for new ones. Hutchings:

forgetting things is a fundamental aspect of the game so embrace it.

This economy meant my character/I had skills and resources, but lived so long I didn’t remember who taught me or the item’s significance.

Have you played TYOV? Any journaling game?

I remember beginning as a female in France, disguising myself as a male pirate. I remember being sent to kill someone that turned out to be a child. Instead, I saved Janie, who became my ward.

A certain male pirate was chasing me down, seemingly relentlessly, through the years, hellbent on revenge for something I don’t remember. He gravely maimed Janie, while I was fighting for women’s land rights. (I was a very political transgender pirate vampire.)

It was a blow, actively crossing out memories; willfully forgetting interactions with characters, redacting entire chunks of my life, evoked a sense of grief.

If you play, remember you can always stop.

Notice what arises through the character creation process. What does your character mean to you? Or don’t, and be spontaneous.

Notice what kind of relationships you create with what kind of other characters. Or don’t overthink it and see what arises.

See how your body responds to the changes in narrative or memory. What elements from the story evokes what feeling?

TTRPG’s are, in my view, gates to active meditation. Besides TYOV I’ll also recommend The Present. I just added 25 free copies if you want to check it out.

You don’t need to play and you certainly don’t need to play these games.

But now is the time to be alive through whatever means: drawing, painting, singing, dancing, coloring, cycling.

I will name a sense of dread toward 2025.

For that reason, it’s been important for me to remember my why: joy, wonder, imagination, awe, love. The ability to hold both fear and awe, grief and deep love, is liberation. The how, I acknowledge, is trickier.

No one can, nor will “master” impermanence.

I’m asking, “Can we play with it?” 🥁

(My, are you in for some good puns.)

Happy holidays, friends.

Takeaway Practice

Consider how you might practice non-attachment to a specific outcome.

This could involve noticing your reactions to small changes in your routine, acknowledging any frustration or disappointment that arises, and gently reminding yourself of the impermanent nature of all things. This too will pass.

Additionally (or alternatively), consider: when was the last time you were grateful for change? How many recent instances can you think of?

You know what’s temporarily permanent? This Substack. All aboard!

Events

If the registration fee is cost-prohibitive, please ask for the link via email or DM.

You are a value add. But if you feel weird asking for the link, I would accept “payment” in the form of post-event feedback (to refine), a Notes/bsky thread (help me spread the word)…whatever is within your bandwidth and wheelhouse would be welcome as we make this hive a home in 2025. No obligation through, you really are welcome.

Creative Coalition: January 5th

The Creative Coalition centers mindful play—a different game each month—to expand our imagination, practice with our not-selves, and work with change.

January’s focus will be on our relationships with our changing bodies.

In January, we’ll be playing This Body of Mine, I Will Make it a Temple by Aliza A Courtney.

No gaming experience needed. This solo game will be facilitated like a traditional workshop, where I will walk you through each phase step-by-step. It would help to have your own tarot deck, but I will also plan for digital tools.

• Regular Price: $45

• Reader Rate: $18 (code: hive60)

• No one is turned away for lack of funds

Adoptee Alchemy: January 19th

Adoptee Alchemy is an adoptee-only space to practice meditation and mindfulness. No experience is required to join.

We’ll create the container by naming the community agreements, meditate, and then share what’s arising for us. I’ll bring a couple light journal/writing options, too.

• Regular Price: $15

• Reader Rate: $6 (hive60)

• No one is turned away for lack of funds

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Bio

Logan Juliano, PhD (they/them) is a writer, educator, facilitator, everyperson at Light Hive, and continuing lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles. They hold a PhD in Performance Studies and the in-apartment high score in Slay the Spire. Go Defects!