Creator or fan?

[John Kim]

I don't think that RPGs have to be creative endeavors to be worthwhile. They do for ME, but not in general. Part of what I'm wrestling with is more - can fans and creators both participate in the same game happily? How? Under what conditions?

Well, I don't think your split is accurate.  That is, I think that immersive players can also be creative and artistic, controlling the game to intriguing ends.  While I always would have said this, what has particularly driven this home for me was playing larps with various Scandanavians at Knutepunkt 2005.  So there you have people who are extremely theory-literate, able to discuss on many levels about the games outside of them.  If you haven't read them, you should check out the three convention books: "As Larp Grows Up", "Beyond Role and Play", and "Dissecting Larp".  However, the majority of players there were also extremely immersive.  For example, Aksel Westlund and Martine Svanevik described their collectively-organized larp which lasted five days, staying in-character the entire time.  There were also many who preferred more visible artifice -- Tobias Wrigstad and Olle Jonsson ran their game "The Upgrade!" with wide-open scene framing and lots of character-switching. 

Offhand, I would say that there isn't a way per se to split this.  If you despise the idea of a game which doesn't have out-of-game discussion, then you will not enjoy an immersive game.  Conversely, if you hate the idea of visible artifice, then you won't like a game with lots of out-of-character discussion and narrational breaks.  I'm not sure this is any more fundamental than other artistic splits -- i.e. some people like violence in their games, others dislike it.  Some people like only fantasy, some like only sci-fi, etc.  On the other hand, I think that most people can enjoy either immersive or non-immersive if they put aside their prejudices. 

Both truly immersive games and narrational games are relatively new, and the subject of intense theory.  Several people have cited tabletop games like Call of Cthulhu and D&D -- which to my mind are not very immersive at all, at least that I've ever seen. 

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

A more-or-less empty post, to appreciate what both Raven and John have said. I agree fully.

Best,
Ron

[Mark Woodhouse]

And I'll follow Ron's approval of John's post - my own feeling is and has been that the majority of players do both, either in parallel or in sequence. I know I'm a bit of an outlier, and even I do something 'immersion-like' that involves strong identification with a character. But I have known and played with creative-immersive types in the past - I think that's part of the reason I've been so resistant to seeing and understanding the strong antipathy some players have to the creator role.

Up until very recently, I would have said "Of course there's no divide - there's a continuum, and people who try can work across it." I have more recently been confronted with stronger cases for exclusivity, and wanted to try to bring the split that I'd had such a hard time noticing into the light.

Does that make this a poll thread or one that's unlikely to go anywhere useful? I'm okay with dropping it if it feels un-useful. I feel I have at least some more understanding of how some of the Forgies feel about the issue.

[greyorm]

Ok, well, let's go back to your original question: "How can players and designers address these aesthetic differences?" To me, the question has nothing to do with "Immersive" vs. "Creator" -- instead it has to do with whether or not someone wants to understand what they are doing, with all the hows and whys and so forth.

As John points out, one can be "Immersive" and yet fully aware of all the various techniques, approaches to, theory regarding, and tricks of Immersion. As the Scandinavian Larp theorists are. As professional actors are.

One can immerse and understand fully well what it is they are doing, and how to best go about it to both have and provide the best immersive experience possible, and one can create ("metagame") and have no clue what it is they are actually doing or how to consciously go about it. Wasn't Ron's understanding of Narrativism developed this way? "Here's what I've been doing all these years, now how do I describe and understand what I was doing?"

So, can you design a game to a population that explicitly does not want to understand what it is they are doing, and design the same game to those who do want to understand what they are doing? I don't know if that's possible.

Otherwise, are you asking: can you write a game that will satisfy both Creators and Immersives? Good question. The behaviors of each seem diametrically opposed. In order to provide support for a Creator, one has to include rules that would offend an Immersive by disrupting the experience (forcing thought outside the character).

It might be easier to go the other route, creating a game that is focused towards Immersives, because one can always think on the meta level and create in-character behaviors to match those decisions (though I'm open to hearing arguments to the contrary). Of course, such rules will not provide enough freedom for certain types of Creator who want to really stretch their roles in a game, to beyond those of being a character.

[Marco]

Otherwise, are you asking: can you write a game that will satisfy both Creators and Immersives? Good question. The behaviors of each seem diametrically opposed. In order to provide support for a Creator, one has to include rules that would offend an Immersive by disrupting the experience (forcing thought outside the character).

This sounds true--and often it *is* true in practice ... but in theory? I'm not so sure.

1. I played a game of StarCluster (a game designed by a highly immersive player who is not interested in much/any metagame activity at the table) and found it extremely responsive to my meta-game intentions (I varried between immersion and meta quite a bit).

The design seemd to meet both modes very well--for my approach.

2. Meta-game is not necessairly "talk at the table" and Immersion is not necessarily the player making his character completely opaque to other people. These are techniques (and in some cases, extremes of techniques).

One of the biggest splits in meta/immersion is when the Character wants to succeed at something and the Player wants him to fail. A possible mechanic that could, for example, assist with this, is a choice of which color of die the player rolls to make the roll. A green one indicates success if the rolls is "made." A red one indicates "failure."

A fully aligned (immersive) player would never pick up the red die. A meta-gaming player might choose different colors at different times but there would be no communication and, if the dice weren't seen by the immersive player, no required indication of the player's intent.

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Wow, I was going to close this thread, because it is Not Good to bring other discussions on the net here, especially verbatim and when the original author isn't inclined to do so.

But, well, it's worked out very well. Now I'd like to close it out of courtesy for John Morrow - it's simply not fair to talk about what he's saying in his absence.

Mark, please understand that I greatly appreciate your excellent take-responsibility approach to this thread, in that it's been about what you like/understand, not "hey let's talk about John."

Perhaps if you cast your current thinking into a new form, authored by you, and then we can proceed from there in a new thread?

Best,
Ron

[John]

I never played in a game I'd call immersive again. (To note, and this might be important, I started working with Ron on the Forge that year.) I missed it, too, for about a year. But my play experiences since then have been better and better. My games now are anything but immersive - we pause the game and talk about what just happened and its implications, or why I chose as GM to make certain things happen, all the time. But we're making art.

And that's the part that kills. Someone's going to read that one line and run off to their dark little weblog or corner of a forum and build that up and say, "Look at those elitists! Making ART! It's a game! What's wrong with them?" But I think role-playing game playing is a process, and you can't stay in one of these modes forever, or you stagnate. The stories you hear about scary gamers: they're stuck in the first mode, something that you should grow out of. The people who flip their pancake of reason every time theory or "meta-gaming" (whatever the heck that is) gets brought up: they don't want the bubble of immersion broken. But it's going to get broken if you're healthy: you can't keep that up; you'll either be fooling yourself that it's happening, or driving yourself disassociative.

Sooner or later, adulthood comes along. And what was childish games has to fall aside or be examined. Examination and then creation produces art, plain and simple.

I'm a highly immersive player who decided to look in on the discussion here, and can definitely say you are incorrect.  Not only do I have no objection to you calling gaming art, I also do.  I game in an exceedingly immersive fashion and have absolutely no interest styles of play that emphasize dealing with the artfice of gaming, and I consider gaming to be an art - an art that is (for me at least) very similar to that of the many novelists who talk about their characters having a "life of their" own.

Samuel R. Delany describes a parallel (and I suspect actually identical) creative divide between artifice and unconscious inspiration in Part VI of his wonderful essay The Politics of Paraliterary Criticism.

In any case, while I have absolutely no objections to your use of the term "ART", I have extremely strong objections to your suggestions that immersive players like myself are "immature", "childish", or mentally unbalanced.  Those sorts of attacks do nothing to help any discussion.  I understand that some people prefer games and styles of play that I find completely unenjoyable.  However, despite the fact that I wish to avoid playing with people who prefer such styles of play (in large part because their style of play actively hampers my own), I do not consider them to be ignorant or mentally damaged.  My "art" is different from yours, but it is not in any way inferior.

-John Snead
Professional RPG author and avid player 

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I never played in a game I'd call immersive again. (To note, and this might be important, I started working with Ron on the Forge that year.) I missed it, too, for about a year. But my play experiences since then have been better and better. My games now are anything but immersive - we pause the game and talk about what just happened and its implications, or why I chose as GM to make certain things happen, all the time. But we're making art.

And that's the part that kills. Someone's going to read that one line and run off to their dark little weblog or corner of a forum and build that up and say, "Look at those elitists! Making ART! It's a game! What's wrong with them?" But I think role-playing game playing is a process, and you can't stay in one of these modes forever, or you stagnate. The stories you hear about scary gamers: they're stuck in the first mode, something that you should grow out of. The people who flip their pancake of reason every time theory or "meta-gaming" (whatever the heck that is) gets brought up: they don't want the bubble of immersion broken. But it's going to get broken if you're healthy: you can't keep that up; you'll either be fooling yourself that it's happening, or driving yourself disassociative.

Sooner or later, adulthood comes along. And what was childish games has to fall aside or be examined. Examination and then creation produces art, plain and simple.

I'm a highly immersive player who decided to look in on the discussion here, and can definitely say you are incorrect.  Not only do I have no objection to you calling gaming art, I also do.  I game in an exceedingly immersive fashion and have absolutely no interest styles of play that emphasize dealing with the artfice of gaming, and I consider gaming to be an art - an art that is (for me at least) very similar to that of the many novelists who talk about their characters having a "life of their" own.

Samuel R. Delany describes a parallel (and I suspect actually identical) creative divide between artifice and unconscious inspiration in Part VI of his wonderful essay The Politics of Paraliterary Criticism.

In any case, while I have absolutely no objections to your use of the term "ART", I have extremely strong objections to your suggestions that immersive players like myself are "immature", "childish", or mentally unbalanced.  Those sorts of attacks do nothing to help any discussion.  I understand that some people prefer games and styles of play that I find completely unenjoyable.  However, despite the fact that I wish to avoid playing with people who prefer such styles of play (in large part because their style of play actively hampers my own), I do not consider them to be ignorant or mentally damaged.  My "art" is different from yours, but it is not in any way inferior.

-John Snead
Professional RPG author and avid player 

Hi John,

I'm not certain that you're familiar with our standards of conversation on the Forge. We've got two standards that I need to remind you of:

1) Posting solely reactions devoid of content is frowned upon.
2) More important, when Ron closes a thread, it stays closed.

If you'd like to expand your point past "you're wrong," you are more than invited to start a new thread on the matter.

[Alan]

EDIT: Aw crap, I missed the fact that the thread was closed. 

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Hey, lest someone think I was being overly assholish above, seriously, I want a new thread with John's thoughts - on immersion, not just on "Clinton's wrong." This one just already happened to be closed. This was one of those cases where moderator and user mixed to a bad taste, and I wanted to clear the air on that.