Roleplaying and its effect on our brains

I've noticed after an evening of playing Pathfinder that I have trouble sleeping beacuase my brain is very active. Has anyone else noticed this effect?

Something about roleplaying engages me more than most other activities. Assuming this is a common effect on roleplayers I wonder if there have been any psychological studies. It seems I'm getting some mental exercise that would otherwise be hard to find. More passive forms of entertainment don't have this effect on me.

Well, you answered the question yourself. The vast majority of entertainment today only engages a few parts of your brain (in the case of TV, I cannot emphasize 'a few' enough.) Your brain suddenly got called on to visualize, interpret and strategize simultaneously for several hours, and now you got the poor li'l organ all worked up. It's bouncing off the walls like a Lab puppy who just got a bath and a tennis ball.

Ive found the same thing in my opinion it's because role playing gets you compleatly immersed in the action and the interaction with the other players.
unlike films or books where you have no control over the course of events and are just along for the ride,
and it's a sign of a good game if your getting that into it

I find that roleplaying definately scratches a mental itch. I often feel drained after a particularly eventful session, but kind of satisfied. I also feel similarly with a board game night, though that is less creative and more logical thinking. I have actually started a boardgame night with my family in the hopes to keep my parent's minds active and fresh as they get on into their golden years.

The important part is the critical thinking and the experience and processing of new experiences (creating new pathways in the brain) that dont follow daily paterns. I dont think roleplaying games specifically have been studied, but I remember studies on using your imagination, playing games (board games) and doing critical thinking excersizes (sudoku/chess etc) help fend off alzheimers.

Being a person with ADD, I crave stuff like playing RPGs because it engages so many kinds of thought and focus at once.

AND being a person with an active brain, I often have trouble falling to sleep because a variety of things can get my brain going. My biggest struggle is to stop myself from playing TTRPGs/video RPGs/other stimulating stuff at least a half hour before I go to bed, and then only do really routine boring stuff. Sometimes I manage to do it, and I do sleep better. When I don't manage my time well and play right up till bedtime, as it were, it takes a longer time for me to settle down and go to sleep.

so you're saying that an actif form of entertainment uses your brain more than a passif form, amazing!

It should be quite normal, however thinking about things of my campaign is a little like counting sheep sometimes, so it doesn't cause me to loose a lot of sleep, except if playing is very close to sleeping time.

I don't believe there are a lot of studies for roleplayers in specific (except perhaps those bogous ones back when D&D was associated with satanism). However there are a lot of studies how to help you sleep, like superficial reading before sleep is very good, but nothing that gets you all worked up.

Brainnnnssss......?

I've noticed after an evening of playing Pathfinder that I have trouble sleeping beacuase my brain is very active. Has anyone else noticed this effect?

Something about roleplaying engages me more than most other activities. Assuming this is a common effect on roleplayers I wonder if there have been any psychological studies. It seems I'm getting some mental exercise that would otherwise be hard to find. More passive forms of entertainment don't have this effect on me.

Try GMing your own campaign for 6 hours. You will fall right to sleep.

From the professional point of view: RPGS as such have not been thoroughly checked in terms of clinicals trials and the lke. I guess the sampling would be both scarce and heterogenous. Mostly MMORPGs have been studied. Check this site and perform the search if you like: www.pubmed.org

Being a person with ADD, I crave stuff like playing RPGs because it engages so many kinds of thought and focus at once.

AND being a person with an active brain, I often have trouble falling to sleep because a variety of things can get my brain going. My biggest struggle is to stop myself from playing TTRPGs/video RPGs/other stimulating stuff at least a half hour before I go to bed, and then only do really routine boring stuff. Sometimes I manage to do it, and I do sleep better. When I don't manage my time well and play right up till bedtime, as it were, it takes a longer time for me to settle down and go to sleep.

I actually have a similar problem sleeping sometimes, my mind is going a million miles an hour and I cant sleep. RPGs actually help with that in a way. I will get to bed a little early and tell myself a story(internally). Some of them have been going for years now. And the one I that started off with is based on the characters from my highschool gaming groups original party.

Thac20 wrote:

I've noticed after an evening of playing Pathfinder that I have trouble sleeping beacuase my brain is very active. Has anyone else noticed this effect?

Something about roleplaying engages me more than most other activities. Assuming this is a common effect on roleplayers I wonder if there have been any psychological studies. It seems I'm getting some mental exercise that would otherwise be hard to find. More passive forms of entertainment don't have this effect on me.

Try GMing your own campaign for 6 hours. You will fall right to sleep.

Oh yeah...

/fistbump

I have few problems sleeping after roleplaying, however if I play good video games or play sports after 9pm, I usually can't sleep for another 2-3 hours.

MMOs are the worst though, I could be dead tired, but once I start playing I'm wired and could play all night if I wanted, no problem.

RPG's satisfy my need for an outlet for my imagination. Even before I ever learned what a RPG was, I was imagining characters, storylines, etc. RPG's allow me to "vent" these ideas and see them come alive in play. It's extremely satisfying to play out these ideas and see where they go; even if the character dies or fails in their task, I was able to have it happen in the open, and not just in my head.

RPG's also satisfy my overactive, scattered-brain. I'm addicted to multi-tasking; I'm not properly engaged in an activity unless I'm keeping track of multiple things at once, and playing a RPG keeps my mind busy, gives it the workout it needs so I can relax afterward.

Evenings after gaming sessions tend to be late ones for my fiance and I because even once we are in bed after cleaning up, even though we are tired, post-game analysis talk keeps us up for at least another hour or more. It really is hard to "shut down" sometimes. We talk about memorable interactions, one-liners, the dynamics of a particular encounter or rules questions that came up that were new.