Learning to dad through play
I've been not playing RPG for 20-or-so years, after having played a bunch as teen. This year, I got into the hobby again, after stumbling on the Die comics and getting super curious about how RPG had evolved in this past decades.
After having my mind blown, and then getting into an obsessive dive into new systems, scenarios, ideas, I went after play. The quickest route was to go solo, as finding a group and matching agendas really do gets harder with time. I picked Ironsworn as a system and setting, pulled some strings here and there to have a place for a story I'd live to play through and kicked off.
All was fun and well, and I'd been playing through a view adventures when I took a time to look back into what I was creating, and it hit me straight in the nose: I was using these sessions to walk through my own fears, ideas, expectations and unknowns of fatherhood. Basically, I'm using RPG to learn how to dad.
See, my dad died in my early years - I was months away from turning 6 yo, the old fella had a sudden heart attack and laid still, at the doorstep of the front door to our home. He was coming back from work, managed to pull the car into the garage, but never managed to get through the door. This is an image I live with still, and though it isn't a massive pain, it's a lingering one.
Not having him around meant my father figures were dispersed among uncles who were around and helped, and a few other figures (like sports coaches and teachers), but non were THE figure. So when my first child was about to be born, it really got to me that I didn't quite have a model on how to dad. Not a model to follow or to oppose, not one to mirror, to question, to compare. I had - and still, luckily, have - an amazing mom. But I was about to become a dad, and didn't quite have any rails to go on or off of. Shit was scary, ngl.
Baby came, and it was amazing - it's the best thing ever, folks! go have kids -, and the second one is on the way. I'm quite happy and proud as a dad! While the being-a-dad thing is a therapy theme, I noticed it is also a play-theme.
See, my character is a father of two in his late 50s. Both his kids left home and the hamlet they used to live in, dad still there. Kids joined sort of a cult, and with time stopped showing up. Character-dad background vow (this is Ironsworn stuff) is to reunite with its kids before death takes him. Cool-cool-cool-cool-cool, not at all something that is going on (....but what if?).
Ok, let's head on to other adventures! What is my first not-background-vow about? A hunter of our village was attacked and killed while accompanying a healer to an errand! Hmm, what was that about? Turns out the healer was mourning her unborn child at their grave, and the attack was the father's father coming back as a revenant to make that unborn baby the actual heir of their heirloom. This coming-back-of-a-deceased is tied to the cult-thing, sure. Ooookaaaaay now, that's a lot being unpacked through play yea?
And how was it resolved? Welp, once my character's friend decided to adopt a kid and turn that very-much-alive kid into his heir, and show it to his sort-of-undead father, it all became chill. And the kid was child to the hunter lady that was murdered by the undead granpa.
I step back, read all of this. And it's there. A dead father, the unrealized grandaugher/son, the fear of separation, the adoptive father(-figure?), the living a life as a dad and having your children as a beacon of life, etc. All a bunch of questions, fears, traumas, experiences, packed through a hobby. Some of it intentionally added, most of it just coming through as "wouldn't this add depth to this story? Huh, let's see!"