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I'm looking for a word that means "The various manners in which one is able to enjoy, gain fulfillment from, and/or experience a given activity."

For example, you could say "The <filler noun> of paper and pencil role-playing games includes the inherent social interaction, applying tactics to combat situations, puzzles, role-playing situations, immersion, and the story." You could also say "Joe appreciates a different part of the <filler noun> of clubbing than Susan; he likes to drink and meet new people, but she likes to dress up and be the center of attention."

I think that most activities are probably like this, in that they can be appreciated for different reasons. However, I'd find it useful to also have an adjective that describes how diverse a particular activity's manners of experience are. For example, you could say "Reading is a very <filler adjective> activity. It's much more <filler adjective> than boxing."


Is there an existing word that conveys the concept that I've described above?

Slang and short phrases are also acceptable, if there isn't a more formal way to express this concept.

The first thing that I considered was the phrase "diverse experience." However, "experience" does not convey the idea of there being multiple facets to the experience. "Diverse experience" seems to connote instead that the activity might be different every time, rather than that on a single occasion there might be five distinct facets of the activity that can be appreciated.

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    @Jon It was only an example to covey his purpose. A thing like MacGuffin! Commented Feb 11, 2013 at 17:35
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    I would use "experience" in the first two example sentences. Commented Feb 11, 2013 at 17:45
  • That sorta works. The closest phrase that came to mind for me was "Diverse experience" and "diversity of experience" for the last example, though it'd need to be mangled.
    – corvec
    Commented Feb 11, 2013 at 17:48
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    The word you misheard was surely panoply. (Also: Please try not to edit your questions to invalidate existing answers based on text that you have since erased.)
    – tchrist
    Commented Feb 11, 2013 at 23:37
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    @tchrist that has nothing to do with his question (and did not before his edit, either); and as he already explained, the word he misheard was probably "people playing." Commented Feb 12, 2013 at 1:06

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Perhaps...

Role playing games offer a multi-faceted experience.

I think facet is a good word here; as it describes one aspect (of many) of a thing, it maintains the singularity of the experience.

EDIT: In reading a recent article by Alan Jacobs, a literature professor, about the cumulative impact literature can have on a person, I came across an expression that may be useful in this context. Here is the passage:

I’ll repeat here, with some emendations, something that I wrote to a friend last night. For most people literature has limited power to do character-shaping because of the limited range of ways it involves the person. (There are of course exceptions to this rule — I think of William Cobbett, for instance, whose whole life was, according to his own account, altered by reading Jonathan Swift. But even then I can’t help thinking that that could only happen because a whole range of complex experiences had prepared him to receive precisely what Swift had to say.)

Various forms of ritual enactment — Yoni Appelbaum is working on some of these matters in his dissertation-in-progress, and I put the point this way after corresponding with him — seem to me to have much greater power because (a) they engage our sensorium more completely and (b) they benefit from repetition.

Kinda wordy and high brow, but it seems that the expression is being used to express the variety of ways in which an experience reaches us.

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  • "Multi-faceted" also works as an adjective in the context above, making it a good choice.
    – corvec
    Commented Feb 11, 2013 at 20:18
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To use your example, you can say that the socializing is a "fringe benefit" of a role-playing game.

Definition from Merriam-Webster Online:

2: any additional benefit (increased energy is a fringe benefit of regular exercise)

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An activity that's multi-experiential can be said to be experienced and appreciated on many levels and (possibly) via several senses.

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I'd go with excitement/exciting/exited or any of the spectacular choices below in italics:

Part of the excitement of role-playing games comes from the chance to be cool like all the popular kids who do it.

When clubbing with Susan, Joe enjoys different forms of excitement.

Reading is pretty exciting, much more so than boxing. In fact reading is awesome. Whereas boxing is dangerous, reading is fun.

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