The dead man wrote:
"And a third kind of possession and madness comes from the Muses. This takes hold upon a gentle and pure soul, arouses it and inspires it to songs and other poetry, and thus by adorning countless deeds of the ancients educates later generations. But he who without the divine madness comes to the doors of the Muses, confident that he will be a good poet by art, meets with no success, and the poetry of the sane man vanishes into nothingness before that of the inspired madmen."
I thought of this reading the "Who Cares?" Thread.
I don't think the issue at hand (for some of us, at least) is whether the character exists.
For some of us the issue is a matter of inspiration. The question is, can you be inspired to create more than you "know"? More than you can actively "choose" in the moment?
Whether we call it a matter of madness or inspiration, the point remains that in active, terrific creation, the best stuff, every decision made is not made in the kiln off rational thought built upon picking through rational, thoughtful choices. I can guarantee you that the best actors don't know every motion, beat and intonation of line before they perform. They "know" something -- through research, analysis of the test, exercising their body and voice to match the part -- that they release in the act of acting the part.
The same with other arts as well. The painter who could actually know absolutey and truly know exactly how each brushstroke would react to pigments already applied would have to be God. (Or John Singer Seargent, perhaps, the man terrifies me with his loose precision), and so every painter is in a state of improvisation with what has come before, and shooting toward a completed goal in his mind he can never possibly reach.
I can't imagine that some role players don't manifers their characters with the same combination of purpose and inspiration. And that means, yes, sometimes being surprised -- in the moment -- by what the character does -- which is, of course, a choice made by the player, but one he could never have anticipated until the moment arrived.
An example: playing Jesse's Gothic Fantasy game, my PC was a man who's son had left home without a word 20 years earlier. In the intervening years he'd acquired a demon -- appearing as a young, golden haired boy -- who he doted on as his own child. The Kicker was, "The Son Returns."
Jesse thought there would be a power struggle within my manor between the boy and the demon, with my PC caught in the middle. I thought my PC would be caught between his desire to reconcile my love for each with each other.
But when the PC's manservant arrived and said, "My lord. A man, claiming to be your son, is at the door and wishes to speak to you," I suddenly knew what my character would say. "Send him away."
I had no idea that would happen.
Yes. Christopher made the choice. But I'm relaxed enough as a performer now to simply let choices, hopefully honest ones, come to me without anxiety and act on them without second guessing myself.
Some here might think this is a matter of semantics. I know for a fact that many here are rationalists as a point of faith. But I honestly can't reconcile this obsession with saying, "There is no character," with my own experiences in creativity.
This does not mean there is a character as a living man. There does not need to be. And I offer the quote from Plato as the blade to cut the Gordian Knot. To surrender "control" when playing a character does not mean surrendering to the character. From my experience it's a matter of surrendering to the Muses.
Do the Muses exist? Call that moment of inspiration what you will, but it is an experience for many. (I'm weary enough of arguments these days, and well-travelled enough in the world, to assume that that there are many, many different temperaments wrapped in human flesh. One of the few things that still surprises me is that people keep insisting their way of living and percieving the world is the "human" way and everyone need only open their eyes and see it, get it, and finally leave behind ignorance. I don't know what human means anymore, except, maybe, "variety".)
So, do I believe my character exists when, while on a film set in front of two hundred extras, I do something that is completely honest (and funny) for my character, but that I never could have planned? Of course not. But do I believe I tapped something that was far beyond a choice rationally made by me? Yes.
Muse, Madness, Inspiration. Call it what you like, but there's more than one way to make something up. To be moved by something more than ourselves is how some of us know the act of creation. I don't really see the conflict. It's not a matter of being the character It's a matter of being more than yourself.
Christopher
Christopher, I am not sure if you want a discussion of Plato or a discussion of inspiration. I am going with inspiration. (If this is deemed off-topic, please just delete this. I am willing to start my own thread at a later date.)
Andre Breton, in his Manifesto of Surrealism 1924* called this automatism or surrealism. "SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern. . . I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak. It is in quest of this surreality that I am going, certain not to find it but too unmindful of my death not to calculate to some slight degree the joys of its possession."
So for Breton and the surrealists, the creative act is achieved through tapping into Surreality (beyond reality) through a type of automatism called surrealism. So for our purposes this would be known as Surrealist Role-playing.
Christopher said, "To be moved by something more than ourselves is how some of us know the act of creation. I don't really see the conflict. It's not a matter of being the character It's a matter of being more than yourself. "
Exactly and I would believe the surrealists would agree with you.
I beleive their is a connection between these points and what Jungian psychologists call synchronicity or acausality, physicists call it acausality, and what Taoists call Tao (the way). I beleive its an acausal principle. Oddly enough, I am trying to create a model of acausality for my RPG which is akin to recreating the Tarot or recreating the I-Ching.
* http://www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T340/SurManifesto/ManifestoOfSurrealism.htm
This is touching on a couple of things in an article I'm preparing for Matt Snyder's e-zine, regarding using Keith Johnstone's Impro as a resource for role playing... as well as some matters arising from SteveD's review of MLwM. Specifically, the thread about people making up stuff for "The Horror Revealed" and being shocked by what they come up with.
Just to be a tease, I'll leave the meat of the article for the e-zine, but one of the main points is to relinquish your fear of what the contents of your mind are: you're not "responsible" for what your mind has lurking in it's forgotten corners, only for what you do with them when they come out.
With that attitude, you find yourself in the position of being as surprised by what comes out of your own head almost as often as what other people come up with. You also find yourself coming out with stuff you don't want to use, and instead of thinking "Jeez, what's wrong with me?", you can respond along the lines of "Hmm... that's odd, what's next?"
Stopping now to scribble the next bit of the article while the boss isn't looking
Hi Christopher,
What puzzles me in your post is the insertion of "rational" into the picture.
None of the points that Ralph is making in the parent thread, or that I've made in some of the past threads linked from it, require that the creative processes involved in role-playing be "rational." To the contrary, I contend that these processes operate on a non-verbal level that creates art (or may do so) in the medium of communication.
So, poof - away with the mistaken perception that the phrase "Characters do not exist" advocates doing away with the feeling during play that characters exist. I am 99% sure that this mistaken perception is at the core of the shocked and indignant responses the phrase always generates.
This issue is related to my contention that Narrativist play is widely misunderstood to be some bloodless analytical "h'm, this Premise yields this Theme," puff on pipe, "What do you think, Alphonse?" sort of exercise. Whereas in reality it is marked by passion and what can only be described as creative ferocity. Another related misunderstanding is to mistake "playing in character" as Simulationist.
This may or may not surprise people, but I read Christopher's post as supporting "characters do not exist," not refuting it. I've said over and over, we are not discussing what role-playing feels like but rather what role-playing is.
When I say, "Your character is a function of yourself," I specifically include your capacity for creative potential and unpredictable inspiration that Christopher is talking about.
Best,
Ron
Hi guys,
First, its good to be posting again. (I've been reading the boards, but busy drawing path maps for zombies on the video game I'm working on, and unable to even think about playing, let alone posting about, RPGs, for a while.)
Ron, if I overstated my concern about things "rational" I apologize. But this statement (an example) suggests where I split from you, Ralph and Pete in the act of creativity (or, at least, one practice of it): "But whether that idea gets realized in actual play is completely up to the player."
I just disagree. To my ear Ralph's implying there has to be some sort of "judgement" mechanism that discerns what's coming out and what's not. I considered that a "rational" quality. I might be using the wrong word.
My point is that there are methods of creating, especially in the context of performance, where, if you've done you're homework, you're better off just letting it come out "un-judged." My best acting teacher worked us through weekly improv exercises designed specifically to get us out of our heads when actually performing. (His exercises were just published as a book, "Book on Acting" by Stephen Book.)
Neil Gaiman says, "Write now, Cringe later." This is terrific advice for the writer. The performer has no later. He's simply got to act now. Thus, the editing has to have been done when building the "character" into the body of the actor and letting loose in the moment.
That said, I've just realized I've set up a conundrum for myself. You can't do any damned thing that comes into your head. (Striking a fellow actor for real, for example, no matter how fierce the impulse.) So clearly some editing is going on. But the way I've experienced it is, I know the specific places I'm not allowed to go (actual violence, for example), and all else is fair game. As long as I don't hit the "red" areas, it's good.
Let me quickly say I've no confusion about Narrativist play and passion, and that wasn't my point at all.
To all, and Ron pointed this out, the real crux for the post was trying to remove the concern for whether the character "exists." It just doesn't. But something else does.
Finally, since Christopher has arrived, I'll be ChristopherK (if no one objects slipping a K onto my name), just for clarity's sake.
Take care,
Christopher
Hi Christopher(K),
It's good to have you posting here again.
It seems to me as if we're on the same page ... but that's probably because we're taking the time to define "up to the player" a little better.
By "up to the player," I take Ralph to mean in any way, shape, or form. Whether he or she plays the character according to "rational thought," or wholly non-constructed intuition, or who knows what, sunspots perhaps, isn't an issue.
But I do see a judgment mechanism at work, in the very grossest sense of the concept. It's the same sort of judgment mechanism at work for any living thing engaged in social communication; I'm not talking about "rational" or "intended" or whatever else. When Susan plays her character Amoraliana the Elven Princess thus and so, as opposed to the multifarious other ways she might have played her, I call that a "decision." Or a "judgment."
And in direct opposition to the concept that Amoraliana exists in some kind of independent fashion, I say that Amoraliana's behavior is up to Susan. Again, all in complete obliviousness of whatever experience Susan might be having in doing so.
As such, I see John Kim's objections to Ralph's points as thoroughgoing red herrings.
Best,
Ron
QuoteMy point is that there are methods of creating, especially in the context of performance, where, if you've done you're homework, you're better off just letting it come out "un-judged." My best acting teacher worked us through weekly improv exercises designed specifically to get us out of our heads when actually performing. (His exercises were just published as a book, "Book on Acting" by Stephen Book.)
Sure, but my point would be that this is just a construct you've created, one that through repetition has become habitual and comfortable. But I imagine that if you polled 1000 actors you'd find many different ways and techniques of accomplishing this. Point being that what you have is a methodology for making decisions about the character that works. But you haven't excised yourself from the picture, its still you and all of the subconcious "baggage" that you bring to the role that determines what the character does.
The character is nothing more than a set of inputs that you the player process. Just being a set of inputs does not IMO mean the character "exists" in any meaningful capacity. That's what I meant by my "scribblings on a piece of paper" comment. A character is nothing more than a set of inputs. Having a process that one uses to transform those inputs to actual performance is great, and not what I'm talking about at all.
Quote from: ValamirThe character is nothing more than a set of inputs that you the player process. Just being a set of inputs does not IMO mean the character "exists" in any meaningful capacity. That's what I meant by my "scribblings on a piece of paper" comment. A character is nothing more than a set of inputs. Having a process that one uses to transform those inputs to actual performance is great, and not what I'm talking about at all.
Aside from terminology, is there any disagreement, then? No one actually means that the character is embodied in the physical world. When I say that a character exists, I mean that it exists as a mental construct. As such, it may have different wants than I do.
There may be another way to phrase this, but I think this way is clear and understandable. When I say the villian wants your character dead -- I just mean that NPC wants your character dead, not that I the GM want your character dead. Is there anything wrong with my saying this? Sure, the character doesn't physically exist -- but within the fictional reality, that is what it is imagined as wanting.
Hi John,
All that makes perfectly good sense.
But let's try a quick thought-experiment ...
Susan plays Amoraliana, Elf-Princess and so forth. During play, Amoraliana slays her own newborn infant with the Dark Vampire Sword, amidst much turmoil and grief. (Let's say there's all manner of dramatic context.)
Does this mean Susan would kill her own child in real life? Horse-puckey.
Does this mean Susan secretly wants to kill her own child in real life? Double horse-puckey.
Does this mean Amoraliana is entirely independent, as an entity, from what Susan "means," or (God forgive me for using this phrase) is "trying to say"? Here's my point: this is horse-puckey too. It is a valid, interesting, and worthwhile question for us as observers, and Susan as a person, to reflect on her own behavior as a player in having Amoraliana perform this act.
During play itself? Speaking for myself, probably not. Some would say, emphatically not; others, maybe they're OK with that sort of reflection interspersed with play. This is a matter of taste.
Best,
Ron
Hi all,
I fear I'm going to come off as crazy here; or at least sloppy beyond belief, but here goes.
First, this is the thread where we don't argue about whether or not a character exists as an entity comopletely independent of the player. That was a vital premise in the first post. The issue: does the character exist completely independently of the player isn't up for grabs here. There's another thread for that.
That said, I'm as always grateful for all the input. It always makes me think through my assumptions to engage in conversation here at the Forge.
Now: The word I'm getting caught up on is the word "completely" independent from the player. Because, clearly, the character does not exist completely independent of the player.
Since it's not even the barest possibility, let's let it go, shall we? Since no one seems to be arguing this point of view, let's let it drop.
But there is this: in my first post I suggest that the imaginative process asks us to be more than ourselves. I suspect this is where Ralph and I part ways. Ralph knows that the character is simply a set of inputs, and thus has no independent life of its own at all.
I differ in my understanding of this matter. Since I lay no claim to knowing where all these inputs come from (sunspots being an option, for example), I'm left wondering on occasion, "Where did that idea come from?"
In other words, when you open yourself to the muses, you sometimes summon unknown inputs from unknowable sources. (Again, my view. Others might think differently. And I would say they are wrong.)
That's the first part of this discussion. Where are the inputs coming from? I suspect that some people think they are from a) the miasma of thought floating in the players mind, b) external, measurable inputs such as other people, a movie the player saw last week and so on. I would have to add, c) I don't know where the fuck it comes from, because I've been surprised too many times. I really, truly mean that, and I apologize for the slipperiness of it as we work our way through these early years of the twenty first century.
In my view, the imaginative process summons something up that works independently of choices or thoughts I might have made about how to think things through if I hadn't begun the process of creating a character in the first place. So, in Ron's last example, until I had begun the process of feeling my way through the fictional character's feelings, the thought of infanticide might never have occurred to me. By my lights, then, yes, there's something independent of me out there. Not "totally" independent, but not wholly me either.
The second part of the discussion is the translation of these inputs (from whatever source), into play. (And we have to keep these two matter separate, or we're going to keep getting tangled forever.) There seems to be some sort of judgment mechanism going on. But let's say my judgment parameters are: "The first thought that pops into my head that doesn't involve physical violence." That's my thought experiment for the gang. At this point, who's at the wheel? Clearly, we need only say, "You Christopher. You're the one doing the talking as the character." But if we allow the first point of the summoned "other" I say, "Not so fast." There is, in my experience, collaboration with this other. I find myself delivering information found through creative empathy.
I know. It makes no sense. Yet is it how I've experienced my best work in different media. (And this, too, is why I brought up the word "rational" in my first post. Not in the context of "emotions" vs. "dry intellect" but, essentially, well, madness and muses.)
Do I believe in a character I'm playing wholly independent of me? No. But when I played Harrod Whithersap in a game run by Mike Nystul, I found myself speaking in a manner, thinking in a manner I'd never bumped into before. Yes, I chose to release it. But to do otherwise would have been denying an honest impulse that was the only impulse coming from somewhere.
Chrisopher
Quote from: John KimAside from terminology, is there any disagreement, then? No one actually means that the character is embodied in the physical world. When I say that a character exists, I mean that it exists as a mental construct. As such, it may have different wants than I do.
Ahh, but you see, there's the rub. Sure, when you ask someone point blank, of course "no one actually means that the character is embodied in the physical world". To say otherwise would require professional care.
But, when you look at the assumptions people make about what "role playing is", about what playing "in character" means, about what "my character thinks or feels or 'would do'", about the difference between "game mechanics" and "metagame" mechanics etc etc...
...you find that many people are discussing these things *as if* the character was a real independent entity with thoughts and needs and desires of its own.
When the reality of the situation is that ultimately there is no such thing "what my character would do". There is only "what I the player think my character would do" Whether "think" in this sense is carefully calculated rational thought, or the impulsive improve ChristopherK was referring to, is ultimately irrelevant to the point.
Once you remove the wall of this false dichotomy you can begin to discuss game play, techniques, stances, mechanics, in a much more homogenous manner...which is the reason why I continue to make an effort to knock that wall down.
Its NOT a simple semantic difference. Its a deeply ingrained, long held, oft repeated assumption that continues to color the way people think about role playing and its high time its revealed for the empty mantra that it is.
IMO, and what I was trying to get at in the other thread - the only thing that is wrong with saying the villain wants your character dead as opposed to I-the-GM-thinking-as-villain want your character dead is IF "the villian wants it" is used to close down options and divert "blame" from the (in this case) GM regarding the consequences of that choice. "The villian wants it, *I* don't want it" only makes sense to me if it translates to "I can see no way that makes sense in our shared, imagined environment for this villian to operate except for him to seek your death, despite the fact that I don't consider that a good place for play to go from here." Otherwise, you *are* saying I-as-GM want the villian to seek the characters death - I (the real person) think that's what this imagined construct would do, I (the real person) think this would make the most sense/most interesting situation/best story/whatever. The way you arrive at that conclusion may be entirely "inspired" - it might not even feel like coming to a conclusion to you. It may be important that it not feel like coming to a conclusion. But that's what you're doing.
I consider this an important point because I've seen many game situations where there clearly were MANY ways in which an alternate conclusion could quite reasonably be made, that would have been "better" in the minds of most of the participants, but the "my guy wouldn't" (where my guy can be either another PC or an NPC) was invoked, and that was the end of it. Remembering that there is no real "my guy" means the possibilities open up, rather than close down, and even if you end up at the same conclusion (due to individual and/or group shared sense of what's right), having alternate possibilities considered seems like a big deal to me.
Maybe it's misplaced paranoia - clearly the mere words "here's how my character responds" don't lead inevitably to a disfunctional My Guy defensiveness. Old habits die hard, though, and if avoiding a particular language useage helps avoid a common problem (which I think I've seen happen in one game I play in), I'm all in favor of it.
By the same token, saying "here's how I'm gonna have my character respond" doesn't lead to a souless, un-inspired portrayal of a character. It can/might, though, and I share enough of ChristoperK's experiences to agree that that's sometimes a bad thing.
I guess, another way of saying it - a "received" inspiration (which I assume is basically you talking to yourself, via channels you don't neccessarily fully understand) about a character action should be neither privlidged nor penalized for being received rather than carefully considered.
Hope that makes sense,
Gordon
QuoteDo I believe in a character I'm playing wholly independent of me? No. But when I played Harrod Whithersap in a game run by Mike Nystul, I found myself speaking in a manner, thinking in a manner I'd never bumped into before. Yes, I chose to release it. But to do otherwise would have been denying an honest impulse that was the only impulse coming from somewhere.
That it came from "somewhere" seems to me irrelevant. It's an imponderable, I think. We as players don't much care if this comes from your subsconscious, last week's movie, or something someone else at the table just suggested you could/should do.
But that it came
through you is entirely relevant. This is what "making a decision" is. You make "stuff" in the game happen through you character. You may have no conscious or earthly idea where the idea to do "stuff" came from, but you put it into motion.
Wonderfully, this happens in a communal manner, as Vincent suggested above (EDIT: whoops, Vincent mentiosn this in the "other" thread, Who Cares (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=7896&start=30)). Does the character exisit "outside" your understanding of that character? Of course. Everyone has their own mask they see when they perceive your character. Even more interesting to me is that everyone also has their own
interpretation of what's going on in the session,
especially after the session ends and we all sleep on it.
I submit that this act of interpretation is largely ignored in how people generally understand RPGs. It's a subtle thing. We're not talking about the facts of play, as in "I did X." ... "No, you did Y because you rolled a 12."
Rather, we're talking about things like "I recall Event X in last week's game to be particularly meaningful/insighful/rewarding to me." while the other person might say, "Huh, that's funny, I don't remember that being a big deal, but I sure thought Event Y was pretty important." This process is going on both Right Now, and as folks recall their experience and rewards after-the-fact.
Hello,
It may appear that Christopher's and Ralph's latest posts present wholly contradictory outlooks and conclusions.
And to most sophomore philosophy or literature classes, that would be that, and at the end of class, the prof would say, "Go ye forth and suffer in the still dark hours of the night about these and related issues."
However, to me, all is well. Why? Because Christopher still acknowledges that the process of bringing forth the inspiration into artistic form, regardless of its origin, rests with the real, human person.
Best,
Ron
Hi Ralph,
When you make this statement...
" 'When the reality of the situation is that ultimately there is no such thing "what my character would do'. There is only 'what I the player think my character would do.' "
... is there just the teensiest chance that how you manifest the act of playing a character is different than how other people manifest playing a character? Or are you really, absolutely certain that you really know how everyone else goes about doing this.
I mean, we're talking about the act of sitting around making up people who simply don't exist. The true nature of the creation might be kind of slippery...
Christopher
Ceci n'est pas un Half-Orc.
Christopher, I'm not sure I follow you. I can't see how there would be such a chance. Can you explain what you mean? Are you seeing some way for that to happen? When I read what you've quoted from Ralph, I'm unable to find or imagine any way to make a character "do" stuff outside of what you, the player, thinks he will or should "do."
Is your concern that Ralph is applying a blanket statement to all role-playing, which you may (or may not, I dunno) see as problematic? I see Ralph's statement as a pretty safe bet, unless we have some intensely radical RPG (or near RPG) in which characters aren't controlled primarily by one person. He's saying only that "Characters will do only what you the player have them do." That seems to me very cut and dry. Yep. How else will the character do anything at all, unless another human person puts it into motion (like, say, the GM).
Hi Matt,
Notice the word "think would do" in the quote.
Clearly the character can't take action without the player at least speaking on his or her behalf. But it's the "step" of thinking (which Ralph may not consider a step, I don't know, he's not here), that makes me think he and I approach this matter differently.
Is that any clearer?
Christopher
ChristopherK, I see your question to Ralph as collapsing two things you were trying to carefully to keep seperate a little earlier - the "act of manifesting" a character and the literal portrayal of that character to the audience. IMO, Ralph's point is unquestionable when applied to the portrayal - it's only when you consider that act of manifesting that some wiggle room emerges.
Now, I personally find that wiggle room fascinating, and no doubt a big part of what I find so cool about roleplaying. But it lives only in a very particular place, which, I'll submit, is NOT where the recent spate of posts have been trying to focus. In fact, I thought you were trying to point this very thing out a bit earlier . . .
Gordon
Hi Gordon,
Thanks for keeping me on my toes.
The two matters are, in my view, consecutive, and both matter. There's the "summoning" (dear god) and the "manifesting" (into the real world, to "reveal" the character to others.)
Ralph puts a step of "thinking" right there between the two. I don't think it has to be there.
So I'm not trying to collapse them as examine Ralph's assumption about the process.
Christopher
What Gordon said. I see what you're saying, but have already stated what I think about that. That is, you seem to be concerned with both the "somewhere" that "stuff" came from AND the person "through" which the "stuff" actually happens. Ralph and I aren't interested in the "somwhere" bit as it relates to this dicussion. It's an infinite pool of inspiration. Many Muses, if you will. I believe, though he'll have to speak for himself, that Ralph is speaking ONLY about the human player that makes the character construct do "stuff."
Incidentally, I don't think you and he do anything differently at all. Ralph very likely takes inspiration for his characters and their actions from as many varied "somewheres" as you do. Curiously, then, I think that both you and he are describing ALL acts of role-playing in the sense that
1) everyone gets ideas for doing stuff, whether rational thought, emotional reaction, suggestion or apparent de novo idea and THEN
2) puts that idea into action in the game in a way that
a) defines the character over time and
b) explains to everyone at the table "what's going on" in an understandable fashion.
(EDIT) I think you're putting far too much emphasis on Ralph's alleged emphasis on rational thinking. This "intermittent" step that you claim Ralph performs yet you do not is, I believe, an misinterpretation of his terminology. He's not interseted in whether the "dear god" part was rational, specific, intellectual decision making paramount to strategy or whether it's emotional goo from which crazy thoughts spring. He's only interested in "manifesting" that though (whatever it's mental origin) into actual play.
Quote from: Christopher KubasikHi Ralph,
When you make this statement...
" 'When the reality of the situation is that ultimately there is no such thing "what my character would do'. There is only 'what I the player think my character would do.' "
... is there just the teensiest chance that how you manifest the act of playing a character is different than how other people manifest playing a character?
ummm, sure...which is why the very next sentence was
QuoteWhether "think" in this sense is carefully calculated rational thought, or the impulsive improv ChristopherK was referring to, is ultimately irrelevant to the point.
Now earlier you said the following:
QuoteThat's the first part of this discussion. Where are the inputs coming from? I suspect that some people think they are from a) the miasma of thought floating in the players mind, b) external, measurable inputs such as other people, a movie the player saw last week and so on. I would have to add, c) I don't know where the fuck it comes from, because I've been surprised too many times. I really, truly mean that, and I apologize for the slipperiness of it as we work our way through these early years of the twenty first century.
I personally don't see any incompatability at all between C and A&B. We are, after all, the sum total of our life experiences and sensory input. Who knows how all of those disparate images and such combine and shatter and recombine in the miasma of our mind. My own creative process works like this. Whenever I'm stumped for an idea (in any creative field from writing a paper to designing a game) I let the half finished idea slip back into the depths of the ooze and the muck in my brain until days, weeks, or months later something new burbles to the surface. "where the fuck did that come from...why didn't I think of that a month ago...?" I'm familiar with the fickle ways of the muse.
So where do the inputs come from...they come from many places. In acting they can come from the script and character notes. For plays that have been run many times they might come from the performance of predecessors either in emulation, or to avoid emulation. They may come from prompts from the director, they may come cues from twists on how other actors are portraying their character, they may come from the deep dark miasma of your mind.
The important thing is that ultimately all of that stuff gets expressed in the performance (actual play in an RPG). And the party doing that expression is you the actor / player.
Now if by choice C above, you were really intending to imply the possibility of something more...supernatural...that some actual entity called a muse was putting things in your mind that absolutely never came from anything having to do with you at all...well, yeah that we'll have to disagree about. It would make for an interesting topic, but ultimately no matter how foriegn the thought seems, unless one is capable of catalogueing and processing every piece of external stimuli you've ever received as well as the complete context it was received in, as well as the exact biochemical balance in you brain at the moment of stimuli....there really isn't any conclusive way to conclude that that idea (however foreign seeming) *didn't* come from you somewhere...even if you have absolutely no clue as to the convoluted process it took enroute to popping into your mind just then.
Ralph,
I am so sorry. I completely missed that sentence. I don't know how.
My bad.
How the difference between "calcualated rational thought" and "impulsive improv" is irrelevent in a discussion is a matter I need to think more about.
Thanks,
Christopher
Christopher,
Thanks right back at ya - I think I now see just what you're getting at. I'd say the step between is "deciding," and that you can have a preference NOT to decide i.e., to let the summoning flow directly into manifesting without a filter - but that is really just saying you "pre" decided, so the decision element is not actually removed from the process.
Which probably reflects my concerns about people using the character and/or the lack of thought/decision as a way to duck reponsibility.
One thing that is somewhat different in an RPG character portrayal as opposed to a theatre performance is that once something is out there in the theatre, that's it. It's pretty much set in stone (though I'm sure there are specific cases where this isn't true, it seems that way in general to me). In an RPG - at least, in my ideal of how an RPG works - it's not actually set in stone until everyone else also agrees to it. But maybe that belongs in a seperate thread, along with Vincent's notion of de facto shared character-influence.
Gordon
Hi Matt,
I think your summary of the process is excellent.
My one concern is I don't think *anyone* could disagree with it.
Thus, we've rendered the whole discussion moot.
Oops.
Surrealist role-playing- Summoning the character from surreality.
Manifesting the character in fantasy.
Playing the fantasy within reality. The character does not exist in reality. The character is manifested in the fantasy world, the world of play. The world of play, fantasy, is connected with reality through synchronicity. That is, their is an acausal principle, meaningful coincidences, connecting fantasy with reality.
Perhaps they are complementary opposing forces, like the Yin and Yang. Where surreality is symbolized by the Ying/Yang. Reality anologous to Yin and Fantasy analogous to Yang.
Um, say what?
The fantasy world of play (the shared imagined space) is created by actual living people communicating with each other in relatively straightforward ways: usually speech, text, body language, and manipulation of physical game tokens. So are characters, as they are one element of the shared imagined space.
I don't see what abstract (and to me, vacuously vague) concepts like synchronicity, acausality, and yin and yang have to do with anything.
- Walt
I think the analogy of a computer program works well in explaining the procedures of an imaginary construct, but it's still just an analogy. The logic sets the human brain uses are fundamentally different - how these procedures are created, integrated, modified and stored is different enough to break the analogy.
Quote from: ValamirNow if by choice C above, you were really intending to imply the possibility of something more...supernatural...that some actual entity called a muse was putting things in your mind that absolutely never came from anything having to do with you at all...well, yeah that we'll have to disagree about. It would make for an interesting topic, but ultimately no matter how foriegn the thought seems, unless one is capable of catalogueing and processing every piece of external stimuli you've ever received as well as the complete context it was received in, as well as the exact biochemical balance in you brain at the moment of stimuli....there really isn't any conclusive way to conclude that that idea (however foreign seeming) *didn't* come from you somewhere...even if you have absolutely no clue as to the convoluted process it took enroute to popping into your mind just then.
With no scientific proof, I believe one of the key differences between the kind of procedures produced by a computer and the procedures produced by thought is mutation. I doesn't hurt my head too much to think of the muse as a mutation and evolution process. So, the way I see it inspiration can spring from nowhere...well, sort of. A mutation can be random, it doesn't have to be based on what a person has experienced or really anything else calculable.
Quote from: Gordon C. LandisI'd say the step between is "deciding," and that you can have a preference NOT to decide i.e., to let the summoning flow directly into manifesting without a filter - but that is really just saying you "pre" decided, so the decision element is not actually removed from the process.
Which probably reflects my concerns about people using the character and/or the lack of thought/decision as a way to duck reponsibility.
Well, my counter-concern is that this desire to place blame amounts to wanting to micromanage the creative process. For example, suppose my character does something which you don't like. You then say "Hey John, why did Arabella snub Dr. Westbrook?" I say, "Er... because that's what she wanted to do." You claim that I am dodging responsibility by pointing to the character, but that is the closest answer I can come to the truth. I'm not saying that I was possessed by some supernatural power. I am saying that there is no tidy rational explanation outside of the mental construct that I have for Arabella.
If someone is in certain creative states, she can't come up with a rational "why" answer for everything she comes up with. In fact, trying to do so may be destructive to the creative process. Often, it seems to me, people calling for "responsibility" want to have a rational, pat answer for why -- and furthermore expect that the player can make arbitrary changes to his creative process to match what they want.
On the one hand, I think there definitely do need to be limits. I have seen players do things, particularly in live-action games, which cross the line of what I consider acceptable. On the other hand, I have also seen people who try to reduce everything to a reasoned process in order to place blame.
It's precisely the frame of mind we're talking about here.
When I listen to music, I can do so analytically, or deconstructively, or self-reflectively, or just let most of the conscious mental processes drop away, and just be carried away by the music. Each of these frames of mind renders the experience of listening to the music a different experience.
Role-playing is the same. If I address the idea of decision making for a character as one in which I am an author dictating the actions of a character, this is a very different frame of mind than thinking instinctively as though I were the character (even though we all know I'm not).
The character fucking exists.
If I have love for somebody are you going to tell me that that love doesn't exist because it has no external decision making ability? Yes, that love, and yes, that character, are all part of me. But they are things that don't have to exist, and only do because of circumstance. We say, "I have a character" and then you say, "Ah, but the character does not exist." Of course he does, he just doesn't have any will outside your own.
I totally agree that the character makes no decisions without my making them exist. But that act of creation on my part, as Chris says, is not inconsequential. In fact, it's the point of play. And it can be accomplished in many ways, and with many mind sets.
More importantly, however, no matter what you believe about existence, the fact remains that I, the player, will feel differently about the act of creation if I do it in a more observably (to myself if nobody else) authorial way, than if I try to put myself into a state of mind where I delude myself for a moment that I am the character.
So existence doesn't matter for characters, it's only about how the player feels in creating the character. When a player says, "I'm doing what the character would do." they're actually saying, "I'm putting my mind in a frame where the decisions that I make feel as though I'm simply chanelling the character."
Note that actual channeling is not neccessary (and ranting that it's impossible is missing the point, as Chris points out). Just the feeling is all that's required. And that feeling can't be had when in the authorial frame of mind. They're antithetical, unfortunately, for the people who produce the feeling in this manner. I won't even argue that other's don't get it when using Authorial modes. Perhaps they do. But that doesn't mean it works for us. Sorry.
I won't get into any arguments about whether or not it makes sense to play this way in terms of overall play, because it's become very political. I'm an ecumenicist, and always have been. As such, I say live and let live. There's nothing about this play style that's inherently problematic if the group agrees to it's use (the same stipulation that applies to all other modes of play).
Mike
Thank you Mike. Their truly are a multitude of ways we think of playing in roles.
I am in the process of studying Constanin Stanislavsky's Method Acting (The Method) and how it applies to role-playing games. Sorry no essay now, just a few thoughts.
For now, here are some quotes on this.
"I call sensibility that faculty of exaltation which agitates an actor, takes possession of his senses, shakes even his very soul, and enables him to enter into the worst tragic situations, and the most terrible of the passions as if they were his own. The intelligence, which accompanies sensibility, judges the impressions which the latter has made us feel: it selects, arranges them, and subjects them to calculation." 18th century by French actor Francois-Joseph Talma cited on the Lee Strasburg Theatre Institute website http://www.strasberg.com/defacting.html
"(Constanin or Konstanin) Stanislavsky's contribution. It is in this context that the enormous contribution in the early 20th century of the great Russian actor and theorist Konstantin Stanislavsky can be appreciated. Stanislavsky was not an aesthetician but was primarily concerned with the problem of developing a workable technique. He applied himself to the very problems of developing a workable technique. He applied himself to the very problems that Diderot and others had believed insoluble: the recapture and repetition of moments of spontaneity or inspiration, which could not be controlled and repeated at will even by many of the greatest actors. Stanislavsky dedicated himself to the central problem of how to stimulate the actor's creativity. Even early in his career, while watching performances by great actors, he had felt that all of them had something in common, something he encountered only in greatly talented actors. In his later work, as director of the Moscow Art Theatre, he often experienced those flashes of intuition or inspiration that stimulate the imagination and turn something that one understands with the mind into an emotional reality and experience. Stanislavsky described such a moment occurring at a low point in the rehearsals for Anton Chekhov's drama "Three Sisters", when the "the actors stopped in the middle of the play, ceased to act, seeing no sense in their work." Suddenly something incomprehensible happened: an accidental sound, of someone nervously scratching his fingernails on the bench on which he sat, reminded Stanislavsky of a scratching mouse, setting off an entire sequence of previously unconscious memories that put the work at hand into a new spiritual context." cited on the Lee Strasburg Theatre Institute website http://www.strasberg.com/defacting.html
"In the creative process there is the father, the author of the play; the mother, the actor pregnant with the part; and the child, the role to be born.", Konstanin Stanislavsky
"Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors." Konstanin Stanislavsky
"When I perform the play his spirit takes me over. I don't know if I am channeling him. But I am not acting Harold Clurman. Harold Clurman is acting me." Ronald Rand http://www.fasca.net/fascanet/actorsupdate/clip_actorsoul.html
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Here's some notes on Method actors.
"Marlon Brando Biography: An influential, eccentric stage and screen actor, Marlon Brando first made his name as an exponent of 'The Method', an acting style based on the teachings of Constantin Stanislavsky. Method acting rejected the traditional techniques of stagecraft in favor of an emotional expressiveness ideally suited to the angst-ridden atmosphere of postwar American society. Brando studied the Stanislavsky technique in the 1940s, first at the New School and later at the Actors Studio."
http://www.hollywood.com/celebs/bio/celeb/1678211
"Lee Strasberg: One of America's leading proponents of Method acting. Strasberg arrived in the USA at age nine, co-founded the influential, left-leaning Group Theater in 1930 and became artistic director of the newly formed Actors Studio in 1948. Strasberg and his associates, through their teaching of the Method at the Studio, heavily influenced the course of American screen acting; students included Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman and Shelley Winters. In 1969 he set up the Lee Strasberg Institute, with chapters in Los Angeles and New York. He himself acted in only a handful of films (his first and best part was as a workaday Jewish mobster in 1974's "The Godfather, Part II" for which he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination)."
http://www.hollywood.com/celebs/bio/celeb/1674685
Paul Newman discusses the Method: http://www.reel.com/reel.asp?node=features/interviews/newman/2
"Those who knew Corey's teaching process said he was a Stanislavsky Method teacher but with a small "m." His process was eclectic and involved one-on-one work with an actor. He created improvisational exercises that allowed actors to engage their imaginations and subconscious minds in pursuit of a theme that they could apply to their roles.
"Corey was always pursuing a current underlying emotional and psychological theme in the actor's work. And in doing that, he was trying to help the actor relate to the here and now rather than the arcane notion of the character's circumstances. His list of students makes up a who's who of the Hollywood elite since the 1950s and includes James Dean, Anthony Perkins, Shirley Knight, Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda, Robert Blake, Leonard Nimoy, Robin Williams, Rob Reiner, Robert Towne, Roger Corman, Penny Marshall, Taylor Hackford and a young Jack Nicholson." http://theforbidden-zone.com/coreynews.shtml
Their seems to be an unclear division within Stanislavsky and his students. A division between what is described as the use of emotional memory projected into a character and what is described elsewhere as spiritual ecstacy, trance, possession, or any host of other spiritual terms. Corey seems to be an example of the emotional memory path, Strasberg while seems to be taking a more spiritual route.[/url][/u]
John,
So, if Arabella snubs Dr. Westbrook, and somehow this is a problem for me as a player (no reason it has to be, but we're supposing for the moment it is) - what do we do? As long as you and I are able to maintain a dialogue about the issue - perhaps in OOC conversation, or perhaps simply by play continuing, you noticing the scrinchy look on my face, and play teasing out more details of this snubbing . . . as long as that's happening, no problem.
But if you go into "it's what Arabella would do, and how dare you react to it in a negative way"- we're screwed.
Mike,
I've found "the character exists" without the caveat "only as an expression of the player" to be a bit more pernicious than you seem to think - and I'd say that's because you almost always have that caveat in place. And my thought is not that folks who DON'T have the caveat in place have carefully thought through the issues and trully believe the character exists outside themselves - they just fall into a pattern of acting as if that were true, and thus are prone to certain problems and can't even comprehend some of the solutions that might help solve those problems.
I'm a have your cake and eat it too guy here - I don't think you lose that wonderful, I-don't-know-where-it-came-from-but-WOW-is-that-COOL-and-so-SO-right stroke of inspiration when you acknowledge that there is not "really" a character outside of yourself. I've seen players who thought they had to operate in this "as if the character were outside me" mode realize that not only don't they have to do that, but they lose NOTHING by abandoning it . This may not be true of everyone, and I'm not saying it should be. But I am agreeing with Ralph that the habitual assumption that one should operate as if the character were an outside entity, even though we know it's not, really, certainly NEED not be core to roleplaying, and has some negative consequences when adopted uncritically. And adopting it uncritically (which is obviously not what you, or John, or ChristopherK are doing), is, I think, very, very common.
Gordon
Quote from: Gordon C. LandisBut I am agreeing with Ralph that the habitual assumption that one should operate as if the character were an outside entity, even though we know it's not, really, certainly NEED not be core to roleplaying, and has some negative consequences when adopted uncritically. And adopting it uncritically (which is obviously not what you, or John, or ChristopherK are doing), is, I think, very, very common.
I'd go along with that. Really, there is very little critical understanding of roleplaying in general -- which is why it is great to have a forum like this where these questions can really be discussed. Personally, I have encountered uncritical people on either side of this split. That is, there are also people who habitually operate as if the character does not exist, and they do not realize the negative consequences of that approach. It may be that the other kind are more common. I don't claim to know what most gamers are like, so I couldn't say.
One of the most annoying things about being a comedian is people asking you where you get your jokes.
One of the annoying things about being a musician is people asking you where do you get your song ideas from.
Creativity seems to be some kind of mystery to the general public.
Where do you get your ideas?
There is no mystery, really. I get my ideas from living my life. It's just that simple. It's just that complex.
What I have noticed about creativity and how it works is you notice something you think "what if.." and this builds.
This is the Psychodrama as described in DeProfundis BTW. Look at all the digging. They say it's for a new highway. No, they're looking for something.
Creativity is the ability to squish several thoughts together and make something new out of them. It seems to require a quickness of thought. Often I find improvised jokes fall flat because I had gone six degrees of separation for one spoken line to the second spoken line in my head making the two lines non-sequiter and not very funny.
So this is where the character comes from. Is this special? Hell, yeah. I just want to demystify it without losing the magic.
OKay, I'm playing catch up again...
For starters, I've always preferred Johnstone to Stanislavsky, if only becuase so many theatre teachers turn the method into "How many children had Lady MacBeth?" Contrariwise, teachers using Spolin seemed tied into the thirty games: I'm guessing that, once again, it's more bad teachers than bad technique.
Curse you, ChristopherK, for recommending another book on improv for me to read!
But to highlight one major difference between impro(v) and rpg's: Johnstone & Spolin both operate on the assumption that everyone involved in an improvisation is focussed on producing the best improvisation, regardless of the effects on each character, or a long term story beyond the individual session (though Johnstone has more to say than Spolin on developing interesting stories).
There's generally a license given in an improv session that anything up to but not including physical harm may be permitted; the guardian at the gates of the mind is given the night off.
I submit that this is not the case in the vast majority of rpg sessions: there are other agendas at work beyond completely free form improvisation, constraints including, but not limited to, the mechanical restraints of game systems, the generic constraints of the setting, and, probably most importantly, the social constraints of the social contract.
Furthermore, playing exclusively to the strongest motivations of the characters without "editing" the responses tends, in play, to have characters behaving like little bundles of id, focussed on their own agendas entirely without consideration of other characters. Not that isn't fun (it's the basis for Paranoia, amongst other games), but I worry about priveliging it without more co-operative modes being considered.
The question of whether a character is an independent entity, a place holder for the subconcious desires of the player, or an inbetween combination is an impossible one, as any answer is patently true for some characters, true for some players, false for others, and the answers can change within a session. It's also irrelevant, as it doesn't tell us anything about how or why people play, nor how to improve play for even a small fraction of players.
Getting to the "problem solving" aspect of this: If Arabella snubs Dr Westbrook "because that's what Arabella would do," the player has priveliged the prompting of the character model of Arabella over other concerns. What "that's what Arabella would do" tells us about play is, frankly, nothing. For a sim player, it may be a simple as that, within the simulation, any other reaction would break the illusion of reality. For a gamist player, "that's what Arabella would do" may be a euphemism for "it's the optimal course of action strategically." For a narrativist, it may be that the snubbing exemplifies the characters' theme. Without knowing why "Arabella would do that," we can't address a possible solution to the frustration of Dr Westbrook's player.
That being said, my advice to the good doctors player is suck it in and roll with the punches. Games, like life, are more fun that way.
Oh and the question of where do I get my ideas from? Irellevant. It's what I do with them that counts.
I wanted to post a public "thanks" to ChristopherK for this thread - among other things, it was for me a reminder that what *matters* is the act of play and creation of cool characters and stories.
John, I'm not going to claim anything about what's more common among gamers in general - when I say "very, very common" I can only refer to what I've seen personally and read about. And you're certainly right about the two-way street - perhaps an unintended, extreme "Avatarism" (as ranted about by Ian Millington) is the outcome of an uncritical assumption that the character is nothing more than scrawls on a sheet of paper?
Everyone, thanks for some great posts, and I can't think of much else to say on the subject right now . . . but I'm sure that will pass :)
Gordon