Identity Exploration and Tele-Roleplaying

[RangerEd]

In another topic, Mike seemed to suggest to me tele-roleplaying. That suggestion gave me pause. Well hell, why NOT use chat of some kind to role play? Thinking through an answer, I thought I would start another topic for discussion.

Tele-roleplaying presents a challenge for me. The games I've played remotely, usually via non-video chat with voice link, could not overcome the challenge presented by the lack of physical presence. For the most part, the chat window was in-character and SIS-gameplay, while the voice was non-SIS-gameplay and sidebars. It seemed to work, but the experience left me wanting somehow. Thinking about it now, less as player but more as a GM, I am very interested in nonverbal communication to understand what folks at the table are experiencing. I also like the social aspect of sharing physical space and getting out of the house every now and again, but that is beside the point.

Given the communication challenge of tele-roleplaying identity exploration, I wonder if journaling is a strong enough technique to mitigate the risk of miscommunication. To be successful, the journaling done by the players would have to accomplish four fairly difficult and interdependent tasks.

1) To understand game events and analyze those events from the character's point of view. That analysis requires understanding the context in which the events occur. Context in this instance is the character's history (previously defined, or fleshed out on the spot). A character's life experiences leading up to an event ought to inform (perhaps post-facto) the most recent SIS events. The question at had is what causal linkages does a character make to generate narrative meaning?

2) To describe events from an in-character, first person perspective. A little bit of bleed is helpful here. The actor stance is important for this task. The question is how does the character perceive events?

3) To interpret the meaning of the events as observed from the character's point of view and understood within the character's history. This is the "so what" question.

4) To consider some implications those events might have on the future-thinking the character is doing at the time. This is the "so, what next?"

My personal experiences with roleplaying (anecdotal, I know) tell me few people will accomplish all four tasks and then explicitly state them in writing, present company excluded. How does one cope with the previous sentence as an assumption for the coming session? First off, some subtle leadership (through teaching, coaching, and mentoring) comes into gameplay. Subtle is the operative word in that sentence, because few people come to a roleplaying session looking for critiques on their self-awareness and ability to confer that self-awareness to an imaginary character. Secondly, clear and effective writing is a skill that seems to be somewhat...how not to sound like an old fogy...less emphasized than I think it ought to be. Again, knowing how and when to encourage improvement in written communication without turning players away is a sensitive leadership task and requires a subtle approach.

Subtlety and sensitivity in leadership, as I accomplish it during gameplay, relies heavily upon nonverbal communication. I think it is fair to say I primarily rely on body language for feedback on my efforts. Barring some insight this group might offer, I have to conclude that my gaming style (CA), even with the strengths of journaling, cannot overcome the communication challenges presented by tele-roleplaying.

What techniques help you accomplish effective tele-roleplaying?

[Ron Edwards]

I'm sorry to have let this languish for so long, but I think I know why, for others too.

Basically, the medium has been developing for about a decade, with many blind alleys and many promising beginnings. Currently the big rage is using G+ Hangouts. I find myself unable to summarize the various attempts, both because there have been so many and because opinions are widely divergent. 

Can anyone else help with that?

[RangerEd]

I had an interesting conversation with a non-role-player friend of mine yesterday as part of an ongoing attempt to convince him to join me at the gaming table. Bottom line, I think the conversation answered my question about tele-roleplaying and has put it outside of my consideration for good.

The topic was the fruitful void. I explained that the gaming table has all these activities going on, but he shouldn't be distracted by them. The point to all these activities swirling about is to create the actual point of playing the game in the first place. I went on to explain that the objective of my gaming style was not silly story creation, schizophrenic identity exploration, or an ill-defined pursuit of fun. These simply established a fruitful void in the middle.

My fruitful void is learning new life skills from people I respect enough to game with. The characters, the story, and the game mechanics simply enable my objective, similar to the way sci-fi enables writers to deal with socially sensitive topics. The game is a vehicle by which I learn through witnessing and evaluating the practical application of other peoples' models of reality in a safe, imaginary space. My friend admitted he had suspected there was more to roleplaying—as he supposed I did it—and thus was willing to discuss what he thought was a childish pastime. He respected me enough to listen to my "want to do something that sounds dumb" invitation.

I explained The Journal to him. He pitched me a kicker involving a poor dooms-day prepper who finds his post-apocalyptic delusions fulfilled by a local nuclear accident: instead of helping, he reenacts a zombie FPS in his neighborhood. Awesome! When can we get together?

Given my true roleplaying objective, I think too much information would be lost via tele-roleplaying. It took researching and a lot of self-exploration, from the time of my original post on October 22 to yesterday, to realize and explicitly state my gaming object. I apologize for withdrawing the question so late. Like most good research questions, the search for answers can be more important than answering the original question.

Respectfully,
Ed

[Moreno R.]

Ed, there is something I don't understand about your anecdotal experience...

You purposely did limit communication, limiting the SIS to the written parts, and used your voice only to... distract yourselves from the SIS?

THEN you observed that online play limit too much the communication?

It was not online play the limiting factor.  It was yourself. You limited your communication during the game, until it was simply a play-by-IRC (written chat) with some noises added to better distract you.  Think you had done the same at the table: "we will play only using written notes, but we will talk all the time about everything else". How could it work?

It's true that playing by hangout does limit communications, but not so much, by far! To hear the tone of the voice of the people who play with you when they talk in character, all you have to do is... use the voice, instead of not using it. For the visual communication, use a webcam, instead of not using it.

Some people I know even said that they prefer to play by hangout (and they practically stopped playing in any other way), I don't agree, playing with people that are there with you instead that on the other side of a screen will be always better, but playing by hangout is fun, too... if you allow it to be.

To show you how playing by hangout really is, here is a link to game played by hangout-on-air (public) with Julia Bond Ellingboe demonstrating her game "steal away jordan":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1tULJpJS_0

[RangerEd]

Ah, insomnia. Thankfully I have thought provoking engagement here.

After watching the first two minutes of the video, I see your point about "not so much, by far." I intend to return to the video to learn more about Julia's game and G+ as a venue. Your post makes me want to revise the ending for paragraph one of post #2 from "for good" to "for now."

To clarify a bit, I think my original post reflects a poor understanding of what SIS meant, as of October. Markus Montola's "The Invisible Rules of Role-Playing: The Social Framework of Role-Playing Process" from issue 1 of The International Journal of Role-Playing, available at http://www.journalofroleplaying.org, helped me unpack SIS in a way I found helpful to understand what I was observing during play. Using Markus's taxonomy, the anecdotal experience I described used the voice portion of the link to accomplish the same mix of exogenous and endogenous conversations one might expect around an in-person session, just like Julia's does. I would not characterize the voice portion as distracted.

The written posts in the anecdote were strictly diegetic. Journaling in my game is a reflective process meant to understand character experiences and explore character identity. The purpose of accomplishing such a task is manifold. One, it is a process that recalibrates a player to their character, a sort of QA/QC to ensure the player is roleplaying the character as they intended. Two, it reveals undercurrents of the story by collecting every character's perspective, especially given the limited amount of spotlight allotted during a particular instance of play. Three, it records past story events that may be referenced when memory predictably and reliably fails. Four, by sharing journal entries with each other at the table, it offers insight into other people's mental models of reality.

I offer this sidebar on journaling to point to its significance in accomplishing my intended fruitful void. Doing it (players' journaling) well is important to me as a player and moderator. It is learned skill, however, that seems to take some gentle coaching to have happen effectively. Some are better than others at understanding and analyzing an imagined identity. As of now, I am less skilled than I'd like to be at helping others through the process, and need every advantage I can garner. This includes full access to nonverbal communication.

Perhaps as I get better at leading the process of journaling, I can accomplish it over an AV-IRC mixed channel. For now, I need to polish my craft. So I say "for now."

Thanks for the post,
Ed