role play

Advice: Treat life like a role-playing game.

Exhibit 1: MapleStory — a major source of my pre-pubescent pleasure  

One of the most formative aspects of my pre-teenage years was having access to two playgrounds. The first was a classic outdoor fare, decorated with a red rubber slide, shoe-loving pebbles, and a winding maze of monkey bars. I’d flirt and frolic with my cast of wacky classmates, slipping into mental costumes of cops, sharks, and aliens. 



But the real party didn’t start until I came home to my second playground: the virtual world.



Boop, beep, click. I’d welcome the low-throated purr of my Windows XP server, my main conspirator in helping me hop to alternate universes. My sandbox was MapleStory, a 2D sidescrolling multiplayer role-playing game (RPG), where players explore fictional lands and engage in quests through a chosen class: warriors, magicians, pirates, and thieves. 



Wait, you’re telling me I can just *become* whoever I want? 



There was something so liberating about crafting an expansive online persona and interacting with other playful souls across the globe. It was the first time in my life where I could feel the power of full agency: this is my storyline, this is how I want to dress, these are the stats I want, these are quests I want to go on. Each time I logged on, the most fulfilling task was helping my new internet friends level up, to get better together. 

Naturally, the years scroll by and MapleStory fades into background obscurity like my other shiny toys. One thing has remained constant though: my experience in the RPG world has given me a massive edge in unlocking unique opportunities and enabling new ways to think about adding playfulness to adulthood. Join me on this voyage to see how!  

. . . 



A modern hero’s journey

While real life doesn’t typically operate on the axis of a programmatic, rule-based game, I still think it’s important to consider what a “hero’s journey” means in the context of our lives. Our immediate environment is always offering many calls to adventure. When I first moved to Brooklyn from Vancouver three years ago, I took special care to observe the countless sub-cultures that pump creativity through the city’s concrete veins. I wanted to catalog every ounce of inspiration into a gritty collage, to immortalize the sensations that I can only live once. I could feel the NYC “main character energy” that many Gen-Z’ers usually joke about. 



But this type of extreme optionality would overwhelm me very quickly; there was no blueprint on how to figure out whether I should invest time into new social clubs, immerse myself in creative arts classes, or stick to building a technology career. In an ideal RPG-esque world, the trade-offs are much less punishing — you can change titles with a click of a button, drift in and out of communities like a runaway balloon, and deploy crazy schemes with low risk.         



As in most RPGs, the genesis of a new journey — a job change, a substantial move, a budding relationship — is designed to be an open-ended sequence of choices. Think about a dropdown menu of options as your accompanying adventure guide, and by rattling and bumping around in the world, your filters become sharper. The best approach to start is to make any choice, and watch the world twist and unravel into more options. Then, start piecing together a daily game plan; a map of what you want and where you want to end up. Experiment with different reward systems and side quests, and a hero’s journey transforms from a conceptual literary device to a practical tool to model your lifestyle. 

People often neglect that large-step changes to their lives are possible and feasible with this mindset. If you want to be an artist, live and play like an artist. This is exactly how I’ve crafted my winding, hyper-generalist career: shifting from finance to food science to education tech to climate strategy in ~5 years, by avidly following my curiosities to the extreme, and asking myself raw questions to determine if I needed a shift: was I still challenging myself to grow? Was I enjoying the process of learning? Was I still having fun?



In praise of side quests 



One of my favorite principles from the RPG world is permissionless apprenticeship: the ability to achieve any outcome through mentorship or guidance from those more seasoned than us. We sometimes need another wizard or sorceress to invite us on a side quest, to pierce the blurry veil of possibilities, and dare us to do something that a quiet part of our soul yearns for, but is too scared to initiate. 



The word “permissionless” is key: even for mentors who seem so out of reach and out of our league, you can show your bias to action by creating value upfront. Want to work at a hot technology start-up? Send the founder a redesigned app prototype based on feedback from real users. Want to publish your poetry in an esteemed citywide zine? Record yourself performing at open mics and share them with the editor-in-chief. Want to collaborate with a high-profile personality? Pilot a small proof-of-concept first and use it as fuel for reach out! 



At a minimum, you want to collect as much feedback after the engagement. But the ideal outcome is that you gradually plug into the broader ecosystem through well-intentioned relationships. Remember that a role-playing game is never a solo affair. World-building with others, and often in service of others, is the primary way to build a flywheel of good faith, opening up more doors to keep playing sustainably. 

You’ll often want to balance the collective world-building with internal training arcs that add a breadth of rich experiences to your character arsenal. In the spirit of pushing RPG life design to the extreme, I’ve invented compelling side quest ideas that explicitly invite serendipity and spontaneity into your side quests: 



• Character comics: Create a living journal filled only with daily conversations with strangers, over a 2+ week period 

• Odd jobs: Volunteer with a cause or organization that is drastically different from what you do, what you know, or what you’re generally interested in

• Chance visits: Roll a dice on Google Earth ("I'm feeling lucky!") and build your next vacation around that specific travel destination



You’ll notice that each of these experiences is individually thrilling, yet also promotes the discovery of valuable “skill-smithing” opportunities: elevating your social prowess, serving the public benefit, and honing greater cultural awareness. 

. . .  



Choose your own adventure



Treating life like a role-playing game allows you to become both a designer and a player, turning each thread of curiosity into tangible pathways of growth and self-development. Sometimes it’s best to take a step back and introspect: what’s not working for me right now, and what can I implement to change that? Other times, the inverse is true: just do the thing.  



You can view life as monotonous, and grow frustrated with your lack of “results” or “success” compared to your peers and what society deems as “optimal”. But people in actual role-playing games “grind” for experience points all the time, so why shouldn’t you sink hours into growing into a stronger character, leveling up a skill, or finding a new quest plotline? 



The trick then is to engineer a game-driven reframe. For example: 



• I have trouble making myself work out. However, it's easier if I frame it so that "exercise increases my Strength and Agility” so I can access new challenges or areas.

• If I keep pushing myself in social situations and meeting more people, I’ll “get an increase to my Charisma stat”, which might unlock new dialogue options.

• If I fail at something, maybe it's just because I'm "under-leveled for the area and need to come back later".



So this is my PSA — a playful-service announcement — for the traditional goal-driven go-getters out there. If you’re feeling stuck, lost, or otherwise unhappy, allow yourself to gamify life. Instead of tracking hours worked per week, try logging hours played. Give yourself skill points for completing a hard-earned milestone or practicing a high-ceiling skill: +15 awareness for morning meditation! +20 intelligence for finishing a coding course! +5 initiative for leaving your apartment on this gloomy rainy day! 

You’re ready now, young adventurer. Go play and prosper!