For years I've been fascinated by what draws individuals—other than family heritage or problematic incentives such as a charismatic leader and/or a common enemy—into an intentional community (whether spiritual, political, intellectual, or social) and what, other than simple serendipity, sustains such communities and enables them to endure and thrive.

Eventually I concluded that the enticement, which is also the “glue” that ultimately holds communitarian endeavors together, is an agreement based on shared beliefs, dreams, and visions which are consistently articulated in word and deed, habitually reinforced, and continuously renewed. In other words, a myth or myths that everyone embraces.

So myth, in its various forms and diverse modalities, became my preoccupation, and continues to be the focus of my talks and 'PlayShops, which were named to reflect the perspective of Joseph Campbell, who famously remarked: "What you do, you do with play. The Universe is God's play." More and more explorations of how and why such impactful narratives come into existence became my focus.

In my Playshops over the years, I exploited an array of 'tools' and structured activities to facilitate interpersonal explorations and mythmaking that eventually metamorphosed into what has become known as D-PiCT: the Game of Mythogenesis.

D-PiCT is a story-telling game that anyone can play. It is a game in which players are prompted to recall significant personal events or challenging experiences and to represent each of those moments pictographically, without using words, on a "chit" that will serve as a story prompt.

D-PiCT is also a listening game. It affords every player the opportunity to recount the stories they have depicted without any interruptions, questions, or crosstalk from other players, and to weave/meld/merge their deeply personal narratives into the group's evolving and expansive saga—their own myth.

That said, 'the map is not the territory', 'the menu is not the meal,' and as Samuel Beckett wryly observed: "Sometimes even words fail." You are invited to play D-PiCT and experience Mythogenesis.

               —Bob Walter