Allegoric play

[pekkok]

Note: The following text is the first of two parts - I've lopped of the second half since the text was getting fairly long, and its structure offered a place for relatively painless dissection. This first part is mostly considered with allegory as a comparative - the next one, which I'll post in a day or two, focuses on its somewhat twisted twin sister, the differential basis of allegory.

Hi to everyone in an equal manner - pleasant airs to wherever you may be.

This post stems from heads-up Jason Morningstar sent concerning Vi åker Jeep, Swedish freeform collective (thanks to Jason for that). Included in that post was a link to the Jeep Dictionary outlining some of their concepts and techniques - a commendable and interesting list in itself.

One of the topics the list mentions is allegoric play, a concept I've used as regards to some of my game experiments (these have all been tabletop games). This inspired me out of my stance of "Imitations of the Loiter Kings", and to write up a few words on allegory as regards to roleplaying, from my own perspective. Also, since this post focuses on this very issue, I made it its own topic - maybe this will rustle up a couple of hardcore Arthurian roleplayers out of the bushes, if nothing else.

For reference and ease of access, I'll quote description from the Jeep-dictionary here:

Allegoric play

(Syn: Metaphoric play) Allegoric play is just as the name suggests, expressing parts of the story through allegories, playing a metaphor of something instead of the actual thing.

Allegoric play can be used for an entire game, as well as for one track of a story or and individual scene. An illustrating example, that might not be very inspiring, is playing WWII as a tea party (Mrs. America arrived late). More subtle, less tounge-in-cheek uses are of course possible. Unless the underpinnings of the scene are very good, telling your players that they are playing a metaphor for something (and what this something is) is generally a good idea. Interpreting allegoric play is generally harder, but generally, the different interpretations are non-conflicing and compatible.

I also throw in a couple of Wikipedia links on allegory for good measure. I have some reservations on the main definition (more on this below), and find the formal structure allegory of the Middle Ages (mostly Dante in the Wikipedia-article) fertile in terms of role-playing in general, hence I include it. Neither of these is "required reading", however, at least as regards to my main points - they are simply offered for interest and additional support.

Wikipedia on allegory (mediocre)
Wikipedia on the allegory in the Middle Ages (better)


Now, onto the ruminations proper...

Off the cuff, I would assert that the strengths of allegory in roleplay are fairly similar to its strengths in literature: While the interpretation of allegory might be more insistent in an ongoing roleplaying situation, as opposed to solitary reading (where one is the master of one's tempo), the behavior and nature of allegory seems to be similar in both - there are differences, but they seem neither dominant nor radical. (Of course, one might find more apt to compare roleplaying and theatrical drama on the issue of allegory. I'll concede the point, but since I'm currently leaning more towards literature, I'll stick to my guns.)

This similarity of strengths would be mostly beneficial: After all, that Old Crone of literature has her ass parked on material of considerable value - yours to be plundered. Hence, I would also assert that a historical skim on the concept of allegory might fairly beneficial in a general sense, and offer formal possibilities hitherto unseen in roleplaying.

Sadly, I will not be frolicking off to that direction, sorry - I offer my afore-mentioned preference to General Sloth as the likely reason for this, if the dear reader requires a culprit. I'm merely pointing it as a potential road sign (granted, it would be a rather arduous undertaking). Instead, I'll outline few structural elements of allegory - traits distinctive to allegoric play - and throw along some examples to juice things up a bit. More specifically, I'll look at allegory in roleplaying from two points of view: From its comparative, and differential basis.


The comparative basis of allegory:


First, a note of reservation (fairly pedantic, mostly by necessity I assure you - there'll be real meat later):

I am aware that many traditional definitions of allegory favor the structure where only the allegory "proper" (the tea party in the Jeep definition) is represented, while the root it stems from (WWII in the definition) is left in shadow, to the interpretation of the reader/observer/player. This "exclusion of the root" seems also to be underwritten in the Jeep-definition quoted (understandable, since they are mainly describing the idea of allegory on a rudimentary level).

However, I personally do not find that this "exclusion of the root" defines allegory, no matter how instituted it may be; indeed, I think this exclusion creates a susceptibility to contradictions: One is, sooner or later, bound to run into cases that seem intuitively allegoric, but where both allegory and its source are somehow present.

Such a contradiction is in fact present (well, currently at least) in the Wikipedia definition of allegory I linked to above: In the beginning it subcribes to allegory where "the principal subject" is "kept out of view", following the exclusion requirement I outlined above. Yet, when listing exemplary cases of allegories it includes Plato's allegory of the cave, which is heavily dependent on both the allegorical scenario imagined, and the represented exposition of the scenario's subject - the source of the allegorical cave. This dependency is supported by the fact that traditional summaries of this allegory (of which the linked wikipedia article on it is a passing example) present both sides in the interest of a whole (I have not seen a summary that would leave the interpretation parts in shadow).

So, in short, I think the Plato's allegory of the cave IS an allegory (and a fairly exemplary one at that) even though the explanation is an inherent part of it, and hence I tend to favor a somewhat broader, and differently balanced, definitional view of allegory. Indeed, I find the allegory of the cave exemplary especially in regards of roleplaying, for reasons outlined below. (Here's a link to a passable description of it, and here's a link to the text itself, which is about two pages.)

...thus ends the most pedantic part of my excursionary wanderings. Sadly, it is followed by a semi-pedantic one, of equal or greater importance as regards to my points.

There is a clear impetus for the above reservation: To me, one of the main properties of allegory, of any kind, is its extended systematization of the comparative structure, and consequently on comparative capability - and this especially true in the case of roleplaying. Because of this, I tend to favor allegoric play where both the allegorical presentation (the tea party again) and the root the allegory stems from (WWII) are present and played through - where both are represented as exposed comparisons of each other. I grant that allegoric play where the root is omitted can create a certain mythic or mysterical atmosphere (where we grasp only echoes) - if this very effect is desired, omission the root should certainly be considered. However, I still tend to think that the most versatile potential of allegoric play rests on the cases where all elements are offered as comparative in play.

Since I promised real meat, I support that argument through an example (granted, its is still fairly bony):

Think of the following three-part variant of the traditional "GM and players" task-division:

In addition to the Keeper (the GM with a more stylistically fitting name - the maintainer of the setting etc.) and the Players (who orient themselves by character, each of their own, as usual), one person is tasked to be the Bard: the one who constantly "translates" or retells the residue of play into a different representation. In the aftermath of a scene (with traditional characters in a worldly setting), the Bard might convey the actions taken, by narrating them as movements of civilizations through the time-scale of years and decades; or perhaps he describes them as a gallery of paintings, depicting the works currently installed on its walls, as a spectator walking through that gallery. The target of these retellings might be fixed (always the gallery of paintings) or changing, etc.

Additionally, one could further exploit the comparative by making the Keeper and Bard into "two sides of the GM coin" - alternating which setting is played, and which conveyed from the play of another. Also, the conversion does not have to be represented just through narration or play, as exampled here - there are always further variants.

Indeed, it is perhaps to be expected that roleplaying is quite receptive to the co-habitance of different forms of representation: After all, the traditional model of roleplaying even assumes different forms of representation, acting in correspondence through the acts of translation between them - namely, the rules and the setting. This emphasizes the compliant relationship between roleplaying (in most cases) and allegory in its comparative, root-included form: both rely on comparative translations between different representations.

One could even employ allegory as a supporting structure for the traditional rules-setting relationship: Take for example a chivalric setting where each conflict between knights would be translated into an encounter between mythic animals each knight stands for. In this case, the comparative would offer another viewpoint to embellish the possibilities, avenues of resolution. There is a point to be crystallized here (an essential one, in my judgment): The main contribution of allegory to roleplaying is not any specific, particular type of comparative structure, but rather a certain approach to these structures, and their generation - an alternative way of perceiving possible comparative structures.


To sum up, first-partish:

(While I'll happily refrain from biting into the history of allegory, as promised, I can't resist the following emphasis). Without specific knowledge of history of literature, it is easy underestimate the role of allegorical structures in the scaffolds of the western culture. As a type of story development (giving rise to new stories through systematic comparisons with an earlier source), allegory is a monumental background presence in the history of fiction: Arguably, it was the one of the main "enablers" of the marriage between the biblical and the fictious (Dante's employment of allegorical structure, knightly romances as biblical allegories, which later served as the source for Cervantes' allegorical irony of Don Quixote etc.). This marriage was critical for the fiction to find new feet for itself, and the eventual development of literature, such we know it.

As such, I think that the concept of allegory has to be deemed worthy of review, evaluation of its placing in the province of roleplaying. But in order to employ allegory in it, one should take a reconstructive view, and apply allegory where it is both compliant and fertile with the structure of roleplaying: While traditional stories strived for the storyline structure, and mayhaps for this reason emphasized allegorical tales with only allegory proper present, roleplaying might well find the comparative situation more natural to it, and benefit from keeping both the allegory proper, and the root it stems from, represented in play. Indeed, both the short history of roleplaying, and its resilience to comparative structures, even accommodation of them, seem to support this point of view. In terms of possible reconstructions of allegory honed to roleplaying, though, that should be a mere starting point - not a final result.


More on this in the second part, which focuses of the differential basis of allegory...

[M. J. Young]

I was not certain whether I was supposed to wait for the second part before replying, and I'm not even certain whether my thoughts are at all on point, but lest this thread slip to the second page before I return I thought I'd jump in with my thoughts.

It is my impression that most of the World of Darkness games are inherently allegorical. The vampire is an image of a human struggling with a nature that tends toward inhumanity, as perhaps the clearest example (V:tM is the only game in the group with which I have any direct experience, and that so far removed as a Multiverser player character who versed into an ongoing V:tM game in which all the players were running hunters). By creating mechanical tensions within the chosen monsters which reflect real tensions within people, White Wolf attempts (whether or not successfully) to create stories about those tensions.

This is a different kind of allegory, I think, from the sort you're describing, but I wondered how it related or whether perhaps there is a language problem such that I'm not really getting what you mean by allegory such that it would exculde this sort of thing. I raise it because I think it is a much more common approach to allegory in games, and its relation to what you are discussing might be important to making the jump from this to that.

--M. J. Young

[pekkok]

I was not certain whether I was supposed to wait for the second part before replying, and I'm not even certain whether my thoughts are at all on point, but lest this thread slip to the second page before I return I thought I'd jump in with my thoughts.

Sorry about the delay - overestimated my free time, got tied up in another thread, was a little underwhelmed by the response, or the lack of it, etc. But I'll try to finish the second part this evening.

It is my impression that most of the World of Darkness games are inherently allegorical. The vampire is an image of a human struggling with a nature that tends toward inhumanity, as perhaps the clearest example (V:tM is the only game in the group with which I have any direct experience, and that so far removed as a Multiverser player character who versed into an ongoing V:tM game in which all the players were running hunters). By creating mechanical tensions within the chosen monsters which reflect real tensions within people, White Wolf attempts (whether or not successfully) to create stories about those tensions.

I would agree with your depiction of V:tM. The potential for this type of allegorical play is inherent, even somewhat strong, in the design. Whether the players take it into account is sometimes a different matter (not that one necessarily should take it into account - there are interesting ways of playing V:tM without addressing the character's human values in peril).

But for a typical V:tM character, I agree that the game contains allegorical potential for thinking about vampires as perils facing human values "made flesh" - and I also think that considering vampires as such can give both depth and backbone to playing them.

Furthermore, the issue you underline here can be used to scrutinize rpgs in general: While that particular trait in V:tM is a clear, and probably intentional, case of allegory, one can reflect on other games in terms of their allegorical potential - even if the games themselves don't advocate them. For example: Tolkien might not have thought of Sauron and Mordor in terms of expanding industrialization - but that does not mean that one can't; heavily exploiting this angle might actually produce fairly interesting take on Mordor.

The point is, one does not have to wait for allowance of allegorical angle from the game: One could make an Ars Magica character with the full intention of making him an allegory of an "uncle that went more than a bit nutty with his postage stamp collection, over the years" (perhaps by making him a scroll or manuscript collector, whatever).

This is a different kind of allegory, I think, from the sort you're describing, but I wondered how it related or whether perhaps there is a language problem such that I'm not really getting what you mean by allegory such that it would exculde this sort of thing. I raise it because I think it is a much more common approach to allegory in games, and its relation to what you are discussing might be important to making the jump from this to that.

Different? Yes and no. I find many definitions of allegory somewhat narrow, and too concerned with defining the surface, without looking at the "mechanics" or operations of allegory. The point I made in the first post about Plato's allegory of the cave being actually excluded from the realm of allegory, if you read many definitions faithfully, highlights the poverty of this approach, at least to my mind (the allegory of the cave is clearly two sides represented in parallel - rather than allegory represented, and its source left in shadow, a structure which many definitions use as the measure of allegory).

Instead, I think that Plato's allegory of the cave is one of the more fertile allegories as regards to roleplaying: Using allegory to generate another representation (explanation in the case of Plato - but it could be something else) is a different kind of comparative - but it is based on a similar operation as the traditional allegory

Think back to your earlier point of V:tM - someone playing a vampiric character, and "thinking allegorically" of the actions of that character. At times the player perceives "resonances" between the nature of the vampire, and the nature of man (a delicate being painted with primitive colors - so to speak): The vampire underlines the frailty of humanity, makes it explicit. This enables one to think of the situation both as taking place in the gameworld, and as the behavior of man - perhaps even imagining a situation parallel to what's happening in the game.

But what if we capitalize on this ability to see resonances? What if we, at times, halt the game to think about, discuss these resonances that we see? Can we not bring these allegorical reflections back into the play, express them to others - even to the point of creating an allegorical setting, parallel to the setting we play in, if we so desire?

In short, can we not bring this allegoric ability of thinking to the level of the system, designing where and how we reflect the game allegorically, where and how we express it? And, is not this possibility something that rpgs excel in, where they can offer something no other form can offer?

This is why I emphasized the often overlooked form of allegory, where we do not only think about the possible allegorical forms entailed by the story/play/game, but seek to represent this possibilities as well (I pointed out Plato's cave because it has this very structure): If we present both sides, the possibilities of systematization, and variation by system, seem much greater.

Hence, I ventured to argue that this form of allegory might be more fertile to roleplaying. But I am not trying to exclude the (popularly understood as) traditional allegory (such as the V:tM example). Rather I'm trying to look allegory in an expansive sense, emphasis being on the expansions - and roleplaying, of course.

Oh, and thanks much for commenting - appreciated.


Cheers,

[pekkok]

Hi honored whoever, here's the promised second part of my post. Here I try to explicate the concept of differential as it relates to allegory and roleplaying. Once again, I will pepper the theory with several examples to offer a stylistic counterpoint, and outline potential cases of roleplaying design.


The differential basis of allegory:


Semi-knotty explanation to a knotty concept

The differential is a sister concept of the comparative. It refers to position of interpretation, and the nature this position brings. To be more specific: when representations (whether characters, settings etc.) are interpreted as comparatives of each other, meaning does not localize on the representations themselves (this character or that one etc.) but takes place "in-between", as a concern between their differences and similarities.

Some concrete counterweight to that, perhaps a bit hermetic, description:
Let's assume a game with similar scenario as the example given in Jeep definition I mentioned in the first post (relevant part quoted here for ease of reference): "An illustrating example, that might not be very inspiring, is playing WWII as a tea party (Mrs. America arrived late)." Even from that short sentence, we can glean choices and features that specify the allegoric structure tailored for that game: People are comparative of countries, the timeline imitates the source in its changes (its sequence), but it is probably compressed to the scale of a realistic tea-party (the party will likely last hours, not years).

But this is, of course, just one of the innumerable ways of building up an allegory, even from the same WWII root. Countries could be allegorized as issues debated during the tea-party, and each comment could present an offensive; time could be made of fragmented scenes, while positions in the tea-party room could represent situations on a map, etc.

In other words, looking at things allegorically presents a continuum of potential meaning. If we have selected two general contexts as allegoric comparatives of each other (WWII and the tea party), exploring this potential offers us innumerable ways to build details "in-between" the comparatives. Also, building up further details does not exhaust this potential; these details offer comparatives of their own, hence opening up further potential.

In fact, this potential is there if we are seeking an allegorical comparative to a "single" representation (how do we want to allegorize WWII?) - in this case, we continuously "test out" comparative situations, and explore the potential of meaning they might offer.

In sum, there's an operative meaning present in these comparations, an operative that is not limited to either end of the comparison, but nevertheless is "something" that has characteristics of its own. In short, it is a sense of differential, meaning as potential created and directed by the act of comparison. The fact that we perceive this differential meaning is often present in our expressions, perhaps in the form of a question (how could this be presented in the tea party?) or as an expression of recognition ("so that's how he converted that - typical, he always emphasizes verbal expressions").


Back to semi-meaty concreteness

To concretize this issue by a further example, let's consider a similar case to that I used in the first post (the player, keeper, bard division), but this time looking at it from a differential angle.

Think of a game with two settings in an allegorical relation; first, a group of people locked in a small space (say, a house), some semi-defined peril threatening them with eventual death if they don't find a way out; second, same-sized, but different group of people inside a workspace, toiling as a team to complete an assigned project (perhaps deciphering something). I refer to these as Peril and Project settings, for short.

Here, the allegorical relation (the comparatives) would be set mainly on the characters, and their sequence of actions: Each player has a character in both settings. First, a scene in Peril is played out, the actions of the characters produced and interpreted in a traditional way; additionally the players make notes of their character's actions, perhaps by writing summative sentences: "Got into an argument with Henry and made a disparaging comment on his inability of action, then stormed out of the room. Walked around to cool off and found a shovel in a closet."

A scene of Peril is immediately followed by a scene of Project: Here, the players base their actions on the sequence that just took place in Peril, and try to "translate" it to the Project setting in a way that they see as fitting: Some might follow the general gist of the character's attitudes in the preceding scene Peril, some might lay stress on the dialogue (matching the questions the character made with questions, assertions with assertions) - in the summarized case above, the player might replace the discovery of a shovel with an abstract, mental discovery. After this, a scene of Peril would once again be played in a normal manner - and so on.

Now, this would represent the players with an interesting (to my mind at least) allegorical situation, with an emphasis on the differential nature of comparison:

The traditional process of play in the first setting would turn into a discourse, something to be read, interpreted, in order to transform, "translate" it into the second setting. Moreover, in order to come up with the "translation" of an action, from Peril to Project, the player would have to develop an understanding of the nature of each comparative he produces: To produce a "translation" one must somehow understand why and how it is a "translation" - even why he prefers just such a translation. Hence, the emphasis of play is more on the in-between than the poles at the end - the players are likely to observe how the others convert their scenes, appreciate clever "translations" and unexpected solutions of conversion.

Differential meaning is of course crucial for roleplaying in general, whether systematically allegorical or not. But using allegory allows one to design games and scenarios that bring this differential meaning "closer to the surface". Indeed, I would venture to guess that there are fairly interesting and surprising game designs buried under the issue of differential meaning. Of particular interest is the affinity between the differential meaning and the general concept of play, which seems to actually depend on the presence of differential meaning. Allegory could be a way to explore this relationship.


Comments? Ideas? Questions? Threats and hate mail? (If I don't comment back in short order, the reason for that is that I'll be in Russia through next week. Given the spottiness of net-access there, it might take a couple of days before I get to read your posts. But I will answer once I return, at the latest.)