Back in lockdown #1, there was a lot of discussion about the mental health benefits of TTRPGs and I ended up speaking to various people about this - but there was one I completely missed until chatting to my therapist this week.

I've struggled with the monotony of lockdown #3 a lot - it feels like my body's getting the same sensory input every day and is absolutely screaming for something new. Prior to March 2020, my work meant I'd often be doing different things from month to month -

I'd be working in different places, with different people, on different projects (and sometimes even on the same project I'd be playing different roles every night). A big thing for my brain is experiencing lots of different challenges/activities/things.

And often, #ttrpgs have actually been where I'm getting that in lockdowns. Where things feel unpredictable, where I'm playing different roles, where I might get emotional low-key role-play and big bombastic action and hilarious absurdity in a few hours.

I understand that for people who've never played #ttrpgs, this might sound superficial ('you're just pretending, so it can't really make that much of a difference') but, whilst you're obviously *not* on a sewer crawl or at a spa or avoiding a bar fight, you get the feeling of it.

And it wasn't till talking to my therapist about how much I thrive on/seek out variation that I realised that's probably one of the biggest things #ttrpgs have done for my mental health this past year: given me some of the variety that has been inaccessible in real life.