RPGs as moral support
I don’t have much contact with former colleagues, but I do still play tabletop RPGs with the group we started back in early 2020. I’m currently running the Tales from Wilderland campaign for The One Ring for them, using first edition rules. We have players in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Russia.
Friday, we had another session. Of course, the topic of the war in Ukraine came up. The player in Russia was born in Russia, and has the Russian nationality. But their father is Ukrainian. Their home-town is 40km from the Russian/Ukrainian border. They have extended family on both sides of the border, an absolute nightmare scenario. Understandably, they were in tears about what is happening.
They were in contact with their Ukrainian family, who were taking shelter in subway stations against bombardments. And they said they couldn’t even go out on the streets to protest against this invasion, rightly fearing they’d get arrested.
We talked about sanctions. Someone mentioned the potential of Russia being kicked out of SWIFT (that hadn’t been decided then yet), which would mean that it could get impossible for them to get their salary paid, as they are working for an international company after all. They didn’t care about that. They’d rather have put as much pressure on Putin to make him stop. If that meant not getting paid for some time, then that was a sacrifice they were willing to make.
We expressed our grief and our support, and it felt weird to start the game after that. I feel so powerless. But being able to offer moral support and distraction for a few hours is something I could do, and I think it worked.
I’m still upset about it. I mean, I’m upset about the war in a general sense, but I am upset at much more personal way about this.
Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.