By Melissa Kirsch

Good morning. When socializing is stressful, rule-bound role-playing games can offer some relief.

Lawful good

Growing up in the 1980s, I knew there were kids like those on "Stranger Things," which returns Friday for its fourth season, who spent their after-school hours playing Dungeons & Dragons. I was not one of them; I played with Barbies. I figured what I was doing with dolls — acting out scenes involving homework, school dances and what happened last weekend at the plastic pool — was a far cry from the secretive world of the D&D table, with its arcane mythos and complicated rules.

It wasn't until 2000, when an episode of the show "Freaks and Geeks" featured kids playing D&D, that I got a glimpse into how role-playing games worked. In essence, it was not so different from what my friends and I were doing with Barbies: imagining and then inhabiting characters, writing stories collaboratively, escaping reality while developing real-life social skills.

While I retired my Barbies by the time puberty hit, the universe of Dungeons & Dragons is intricate and expansive enough that it has continuing appeal for adults. In fact, it has so fully emerged from nerd-dom that it has become "something of a social flex — the antithesis of the popularity contest that was the 1990s and early 2000s, an antidote to our more basic tendencies," Amelia Diamond writes in The Times this morning. Vin Diesel plays. So does Tiffany Haddish.

I've written about how socializing is weird lately. D&D offers one way to alleviate some of the anxiety. Rules govern interactions, and a dungeon master who acts as both narrator and referee enforces them. In the safety of this container, players explore, improvise, cocreate worlds.

"All of us at times feel a little inadequate in dealing with the modern world," Gary Gygax, one of the creators of D&D, once said. "It would feel much better if we knew that we were a superhero or a mighty wizard."

D&D and other role-playing games, improv comedy, murder-mystery parties where each guest is assigned a part in a whodunit, even escape rooms: They're all creative, rule-bound forms of fun where scenes are created in real time and success requires teamwork and trust.

They're lo-fi ways to socialize through performance, a relief from social media venues that insist we perform as ourselves for an audience of friends and followers. These activities give us permission to play, to drop our inhibitions and try on new personas. They let us escape into another world for a little while.

Ideas for structured fun that you recommend? Drop me a line.

For more

• "If you spend enough time in spaces that demand you be interesting, you eventually become boring," a new photo-sharing app seems to say.
• We joined the playwright (and later the "Tokyo Vice" TV series creator) J.T. Rogers for some D&D in 2017.
• From Input: "It's Normal to Get Into Fortnite as an Adult, Actually."

WEEKENDS ARE FOR …

🍿 Movies: Five action flicks to stream.

🎧 Audiobooks: Six picks.

👟 Exhibitions: Sneakers that were among the designer Virgil Abloh's final projects are going on display in Brooklyn.

🎼 Opera: "The Wreckers," a rarely staged work, premieres in Britain.

🖼 Art: Six fairs in New York City.

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

• Hollywood hopes Tom Cruise's "Top Gun" sequel will bring older adults back to movie theaters.
• Cruise was back in force in Cannes, as was the city's film festival.
• Pete Davidson, Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant and Kyle Mooney are leaving "Saturday Night Live" after tonight's season finale, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
• Broadway is celebrating the Tony nominations as a sign of success in a challenging season.
• In "Conversations With Friends," a tasteful home is its own object of infatuation.
• Four decades later, the influence of "Little Shop of Horrors" endures.
• Taylor Swift told N.Y.U. graduates to learn to live with cringe, Vulture reports.
• Gucci's latest collection upended old rules about who can wear what when, Vanessa Friedman writes.
• Roger Angell wrote elegantly and thoughtfully about baseball for The New Yorker across half a century. He died at 101. (Here's a guide to his work.)

THE LATEST NEWS

• A chaotic day for the stock market extended the longest stretch of market turmoil since 2001.

• Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, lobbied Arizona officials in 2020 to effectively reverse Joe Biden's victory there.
• Russia cut off gas supplies to Finland in apparent retaliation for its plans to join NATO. Follow our live coverage.
• A lack of manufacturers aggravated the baby formula shortage. (Some parents are sharing breast milk, which has risks.)
• Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google are positioning themselves to grow even more dominant.
• A judge ordered the U.S. to continue expelling asylum seekers at the border.

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RECIPE OF THE WEEK

By Melissa Clark

Jordan Marsh's Blueberry Muffins

I've always been a strong advocate for eating dessert for breakfast, which is part of why Jordan Marsh's blueberry muffins have been on my radar for a while. I finally whipped up a batch this past week, using thawed frozen berries as suggested in the recipe notes. And I'm here to report that these purple-speckled beauties are truly deserving of their 11,000-ish five-star ratings. Yes, they are distinctly cupcake-like: fluffy and sugary, and completely delightful with your morning cup of coffee or tea. But if the idea of cake before noon puts you off, serve them as a midafternoon snack or even dessert — the after-dinner kind of dessert, that is.

REAL ESTATE

What you get for $2.7 million in California: A midcentury-style retreat in Palm Springs, an Edwardian in Palo Alto or a renovated home in Sonoma.

The hunt: They wanted an Upper West Side home for under $800,000. Which did they choose? Play our game.

Low volume: One of the world's quietest rooms is in midtown Manhattan.

Disappearing treasures: Open houses are often the scene of small-scale thefts.

Lost in translation: The language of house listings can mask all manner of problems.

LIVING

Still staycationing: Some travelers are opting for trips closer to home.

Makeup trends: People want a "healthy, horny flush" now.

Culinary adventures: Pairing food and wine.

Pushing boundaries?: Mullets are back, though perhaps without the shock value they once had.

GAME OF THE WEEKEND

Carolina Hurricanes vs. New York Rangers, N.H.L. playoffs: The Rangers are hot. Down 3-1 in the last round, they beat the Penguins three games in a row to win the series. "They have the best goalie in the league this year, Igor Shesterkin," David Waldstein, a Times reporter who has been covering the playoffs, tells us. "They are really fun to watch and are becoming a big story in New York. Lots of folks are jumping on their bandwagon." Game 3 is 3:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday on ESPN.

For more:

• The Rangers had little postseason success in recent years. Here's how they rebuilt the team.
• Shesterkin is part of a lineage of great Rangers goalies.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

The pangram from yesterday's Spelling Bee was raunchy. Here is today's puzzle — or you can play online.

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week's headlines.

Here's today's Wordle. If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

• What time is it? Consult the Literature Clock.
• Check out photos of Andy Warhol and friends.
• Here's Japanese Breakfast performing "Be Sweet" on "The Tonight Show."

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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