I used to think roleplaying games were a form of escape, an acquired entertainment taste that, despite its idiosyncrasies, served basically the same function as TV—a way to step outside yourself for a while before being sucked back into our everyday drudgery. Now, though, I think they serve a higher, more essential function, but this cognitive shift could only happen once I began rethinking the terms of my own failure.

Looking back at my Blades in the Dark group and our little three-month jaunt, I don’t think we told any sort of exceptional story. If I tried to recap the characters and the plot for someone else, it sure wouldn’t come out like a literary masterpiece—it would sound like blithering nonsense from a second-rate hack. But of course, that’s not the point. When I think on my time with Anatoly, Dr. Blebton Lucius Mooney, Orlan “Daddy” Skelkallan, Bogsworth Vein, Abbascu, Cass, and the other peripheral members of our badass gang, the Friends in the Dark, I think about the weird and beautiful alchemy that happens when you and your friends smash your brains together to come up with something that is only yours. A story that can’t be marketed, resold, submitted, evaluated, broadcast, or otherwise eaten up by the economic machinery that can feel like it is sucking us dry.