the-wizard-challenge

[the-wizard-challenge]

wizard tea 

[the-wizard-challenge]

My Wizard Challenge wizard Phalena, a fairy who enjoys a cup of tea and a good book.

[the-wizard-challenge]

The Wizard Challenge

If you're like me and you have both an unquenchable thirst for roleplaying games and executive dysfunction, then you might also find yourself in a similar headspace of getting distracted and not tackling tasks that are necessary for the average functional civilian.

So, I decided to use my favorite pastime (coming up with D&D characters that I'll never use) as a way to help me motivate myself and trick myself into adopting better habits and routines in the coming year.

I didn't make any major new years resolutions for 2023 other than "do the the damn thing," and generally get around to all the things I should get done. My mental illness often inhibits me from getting into the correct state of mind where I feel motivated enough to start something, much less finish it.

And then I got to thinking, what if I could give myself XP for actually finishing tasks I set out to do? What If I could fuel my motivation with my inherent desire for escapism?

As a millennial with mental illness, I've seen motivational plans and tips like this a hundred times before, and have always felt pretty meh about them or fallen off early. Since I thought of this concept, however, I haven't been able to get it out of my head. Might as well give it a shot!

I first turned to D&D 5e, the TTRPG system I'm most familiar with. It's easy to grasp, and there's tons of materials available online.

Then I started going down the rabbit hole that is creating a character concept, which is my favorite part of starting any game. But I also had to think of how I would apply my task management and routine-building.

I decided to pick a Wizard for my class. Because one of my general goals is to read more often, Wizard felt like a good option; any time I finish a book, I can treat it as a spell and add it to my wizard's spellbook.

I've been playing a lot of Potionomics and I adore the design for Luna, a moth girl with a talent for marketing. I picked Fairy for my wizard's ancestry, and got to work designing a moth-ish Wizard baby. Her name is Phalena, she enjoys green tea, and I'm aiming for her subclass to be Order of Scribes.

Then I sat down to think over how certain tasks and goals should be calculated in terms of experience. I didn't want to make things too easy on myself, so I factored in the idea that most D&D groups are about 4-6 players on average. I looked up some basic enemy stats for 5e (specifically, low CR enemies) and used that to build up my own system.

Basically, everyday tasks like doing laundry, washing dishes, or picking up groceries are equal to low-level monsters like zombies and skeletons (challenge rating 1/4). These are things that must be done, but can still be difficult to accomplish.

The total experience points awarded for defeating a zombie is 50 xp. As I said, though, you'll typically be playing D&D with at least 2 other people. Taking into account a 5-person party, that 50 xp is divided into 10 xp each.

Considering that the average time to actually start and finish one of these tasks is relatively low (15 to 30 minutes being the range), the trick that made the most sense to me was to take the total time in minutes it took to finish something and multiply it by 2 to get my total xp.

The original idea was to just multiply the minutes by 10, which would get me roughly around the average amount of xp in an encounter. For example, washing the dishes would be 150 xp. But if I'm trying to keep my numbers more in line with regular D&D sessions, that number would have to be split 5 ways to account for companions that I would surely need to overcome these encounters.

I mean, we all know how squishy wizards are. Let's be realistic.

So, the system became # of minutes a task takes to start and finish x 2. This also accounts for more arduous and draining tasks like studying or a workout session, which take longer, to have a proportional reward.

I'll be real right now: I haven't ironed out absolutely everything yet. I already have lots of ideas for other things I want to try. For example, I'm currently studying for specific certification that is in my field of work. Rather than just tallying up all experience points from studying sessions and taking the test, I also want to treat it like a side quest for a magic item - maybe a flying broomstick or an upgraded spellbook.

I also have thoughts about how rests should be treated, if I should think of those as self care activities. Maybe activities that I like that should be more moderated like playing video games can be seen as spell slots or once-per-long-rest abilities.

There's a lot of mechanics in 5e I could potentially incorporate other than just xp and new spells, but I feel like this is a good foundation for what I'm trying to do.

I also wanted to share this on Tumblr because I know there are others like me who may or may not find this interesting, and also 2023 is the year of the wizard as I understand it.

I want to be able to sketch my wizard and share her soon, but in the mean time I've already racked up some xp in the past couple days that I'm itchin to log.