Temperance

What Temperance means in play

The cooperative campaign has reached the end of a chapter. Your friends begin packing up, but you want to open the next envelope. It makes an excellent argument simply by remaining sealed. You put it on top of the box and help collect the pieces. The mystery can wait for another evening; the people who shared this one have trains to catch.

Temperance gives enjoyment a sustainable place among the things you value. A satisfying session has a shape: anticipation, involvement and an ending that leaves room for other commitments. You do not need to become bored before stopping. In shared play, stating your available time early also gives others something dependable to plan around.

Finding the balance

In ordinary play

A guild schedule

When raid nights consume the evenings you meant for something else, reconsider which sessions you can commit to.

An absorbing solo puzzle

Leave a short note about the idea you want to return to, then keep the ending you chose.

Nearby virtues, different work

Discernment

Discernment examines whether a reason to continue is sound. Temperance moderates the appetite even when the next chapter really would be enjoyable.

Recognizing a counterfeit

Joyless policing counterfeits Temperance when a player treats every moment of absorption as a moral failure. Moderation asks whether the appetite is governing judgment in these circumstances.

Cultivating Temperance

• Choose a stopping point that suits the kind of game and your available time.
• Make it easy to resume without making the next session an obligation.

Try it today

Before a session, decide how much time you can give it and tell the people whose plans depend on yours. Choose a stopping point that leaves room for those commitments.

Questions worth returning to

• Did the session leave room for the other things I meant to do?
• Would a different stopping point better fit this game next time?

Choose your practice

These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Seven readings, one for each day. All remain available here. Historical arguments and fictional dialogue are identified in their source notes.

1. He cannot tell whether he puts his knapsack on, or takes it off, with more delight.

   Robert Louis Stevenson · Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers
   Walking Tours, opening paragraph
   Robert Louis Stevenson · 1897 Chatto & Windus edition, Project Gutenberg 386 transcription

   The walker enjoys both beginning and ending. This gives the sealed campaign chapter a positive reason to wait: rest and anticipation can belong to the pleasure of the activity.

2. After the game is over, we put these roofs inside one another and stick them into the bookshelves. The roof one folds and puts away will live to roof another day.

   H. G. Wells · Floor Games
   III, Of the Building of Cities
   H. G. Wells · Project Gutenberg 3690 transcription of the 1911 work; specific underlying print imprint not identified in Linked text

   Putting the game away preserves its possibilities for another day. The concrete foldable roof makes ending compatible with continuing to value the game.

3. Do not make the mistake of thinking that children want to play games incessantly during a half-day session of a playground.

   Jessie H. Bancroft · Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium
   To the Teacher of Games, p. 28–29
   Jessie H. Bancroft · Project Gutenberg #25660; introduction dated March 1909; Linked text does not identify a dated title-page imprint.

   Even a session organized around games needs changes of pace. The campaign can pause while everyone still wants to return.

4. So also in regard to pleasure we must do away with excessive desire, and in regard to vengeance with excessive hatred of evil. For so in the former case one will not be apathetic but temperate, and in the latter one will not be savage or cruel but just.

   Plutarch · Morals: Ethical Essays
   On Moral Virtue, XII
   Plutarch · Arthur Richard Shilleto translation, Bohn’s Classical Library; Project Gutenberg #23639; preface Cambridge, March 1888.
   English translation by Arthur Richard Shilleto

   Temperance leaves room for pleasure. Stopping the campaign at the agreed time can preserve the delight of its next chapter.

5. But though I have worked much harder at the toy theatre than I ever worked at any tale or article, I cannot finish it; the work seems too heavy for me. I have to break off and betake myself to lighter employments; such as the biographies of great men.

   G. K. Chesterton · Tremendous Trifles
   XXIII. The Toy Theatre
   G. K. Chesterton · Project Gutenberg #8092 transcription; underlying printed imprint not identified in preserved text.

   Chesterton’s joke depends on how absorbing a small entertainment can become. Enjoyable work can still need a stopping place.

6. if anyone pledge you to drink with him at a dinner when you have had enough, do not be bashful, or do violence to nature, but put the cup down without drinking.

   Plutarch · Morals: Ethical Essays
   On Shyness, V
   Plutarch · Arthur Richard Shilleto translation, Bohn’s Classical Library; Project Gutenberg #23639; preface Cambridge, March 1888.
   English translation by Arthur Richard Shilleto

   Plutarch describes declining more when one has had enough. An invitation need not decide the length of a session.

7. and perhaps I may visit the elephants later on. Besides, I do so want to get into the Third Square!

   Lewis Carroll · Through the Looking-Glass
   Chapter III, Looking-Glass Insects
   Alice · Project Gutenberg 12 transcription; no specific historical print imprint identified in Linked text

   Alice leaves an intriguing detour for later so she can continue her chosen journey. Something enjoyable can wait without losing its appeal.

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