RP'ing and Acting

[Doctor Xero]

If you want to act, there are plenty of outlets for it. Similarly if you want to write, or play (non-rp) games there's plenty of opportunities, but RPG's are a particular set of activities that share some qualities with those pasttimes, but are to my mind a poor substitute for them if that's what you'd rather do.

As with Ron's tough questions at the end of each essay, where the Nar player should ask themselves whether they'd be happier writing fiction, or the Gam player playing more traditional games, the actor in an RPG who is using RPG's as a substitute for "proper acting" is doing no-one any favours.

I'm not sure if I would agree with you that the sixty-plus people with whom I've roleplayed over the last twenty years were one-and-all "doing no one any favors" and were perhaps deluding themselves that they were playing RPGs "properly".

Well Doc, that seems to be leading into why people act, rather than why they role play, which may be interesting, but not for here...
---snip!--
But to try to wrench this back to something more constructive,

"Wrench"?  Taken in context with your comments discounting and delegitimizing those of us who enjoy RPGs in part for the theatre,
this was a surprisingly rude response, Pete.  I expect better on The Forge.

To continue with my being constructive by returning to the original thread rather than discounting its grounding as you had :

To me, theatre/acting proves something like that can work.
Why does a director enjoy directing?
Why does an actor enjoy acting?
Of course I'm looking more at community theatre than anything. But actors and directors know EVERYTHING thats going to happen, and yet we still have a blast and still want to do it over and over again.

I would suggest this predictability is also why genre traditions appeal to players.  If I know a  genre well enough, I know that there's a good chance the slowly opening door to the locked room in the House of Cthulhu Bed and Breakfast probably has a nasty hidden in it, but I also know my character will probably take a look in anyway.  And so forth.

A major motivation for at least some of us to play RPGs is to have fun in ways we could not in other parts of our lives.  Performing, hamming it up, singing strange songs, lethal battles of wit, jousting with gods, imagining being other races : all of these are activities we can experience and play out in an RPG in a fashion we can not easily do elsewhere -- except in improvisational theatre.  So I think the technique you mention might work well as one of the many tools in a game master/playing group's box of wonders.

Doctor Xero

[pete_darby]

Doc... the "this" I was trying to wrench back was my post, not yours.

But as for your original post, I stick by what I said: anyone playing RPG's as a poor-mans subsititute for acting, writing, directing, wargaming, whatever, should go and practice that hobby instead.

Yes, all of these activities are somewhat like rpg's, but the attitude I read into your post was that RPG's are a fine substitute for acting for those who haven't the inclination or talent, in your words, to pursue careers in theatre. Yet there are many amateur theatre groups, and I don't know if this is true of your area as it is of mine, who are desperate for new members. Why aren't these people acting? Why are they indulging in a substitute for theatre?

Because, I guess, acting is only a part of why they role-play, and they get more out of it than they would out of amateur theatre. In which case, it's not a substitute for acting, it's its' own thing.

But the player / GM who treats RP as a purely theatrical performance is as annoying to me as the GM who treats the game as his arena for ficiton writing and a game second, or for that matter the "hard core" gamist who ignores all exploration and treats the whole thing as a complicated board game. Now, I admit, that may be just me, but I play RPG's to get the RPG experience out of them, not the acting experience, or the writing experience, or the directing experience which, let's face it, are actually more common and easier to arrange in the present state of the hobby.

[daMoose_Neo]

Hm...
I was using my acting/theatre background as an example of how a group, knowing the plot, general/required outcome, can still have fun and still explore, but within boundaries outlined by the writer/GM.
My thought wasn't acting in RP'ing, you do need a special group of like minded folks to pull that off, but rather what RP'ing could borrow in some ideas and structure. My thought/example: The script, or the bulleted outline. The whole "put everyone on the same page" concept.

Granted, for someone experianced who's used to playing one way, it probably wouldn't go over very well. For someone who is new to the hobby, it might solve their questions of "What do I do?", as I've seen in several discussions on "newbies" around here as to why new players have such a hard time "getting it".
Just my two cents~

[Doctor Xero]

Yet there are many amateur theatre groups, and I don't know if this is true of your area as it is of mine, who are desperate for new members.

Desperate for actors?  In Los Angeles???

*laughter* No, there was no risk of a shortage of actors in L.A.

Why aren't these people acting? Why are they indulging in a substitute for theatre?

Because, I guess, acting is only a part of why they role-play, and they get more out of it than they would out of amateur theatre.

Exactly.

But the player / GM who treats RP as a purely theatrical performance is as annoying to me as the GM who treats the game as his arena for ficiton writing and a game second, or for that matter the "hard core" gamist who ignores all exploration and treats the whole thing as a complicated board game.

While the acting element is not the only component of one type of RPGing, it is still an important one.  In such gaming groups, we find those who neglect the acting component to be as annoying to our collective enjoyment as we find those who neglect the exploration component.

One thing those of us who enjoy the art/craft of acting love to take into consideration is characterization fidelity (within character evolution).  I've noticed that characterization fidelity works well in sim campaigns and sim-narr campaigns, but that it can be (mis)interpretted as self-indulgently vexing in hardcore gamist campaigns since it misses the point of competitive efficacy and that it can work at cross-purposes in some hardcore narr campaigns since it focuses on actor over author/director stances, privileging characterization fidelity over plot or premise.

That said, I know enough not to utilize acting or characterization fidelity when I'm at a convention playing a war game or a dungeon delve.

Doc... the "this" I was trying to wrench back was my post, not yours.

I've encountered more than enough hardcore gamists in real life and hardcore narrativists via The Forge who almost foam at the mouth against acting (as one of the components of a specific style of RPGing) for the above reasons.  So I apologize for my misreading the intention behind your comments.

Doctor Xero

[Doctor Xero]

but rather what RP'ing could borrow in some ideas and structure. My thought/example: The script, or the bulleted outline. The whole "put everyone on the same page" concept.

West End Games even included introductory scripts to some of their adventures in their Star Wars RPG.  While it took initial characterization decisions away from the players, it set the scene and jump-started the plot for the players, which worked well for newbies, and the characterization granted by the templates was usually all the characterization the newbies were up to at first anyway, so taking the initial characterization decisions away from them was a minor loss.

I once used a script to set the scene for a time travel scenario in which players encountered alternate future selves (performed by the same gamers as the ones who played the "real game time presentday" characters).  It worked quite well on several levels.

Doctor Xero

[clehrich]

I too would tend to distinguish between stage-acting and RPG play, although my definitions are somewhat different from Ron's.  But the point here is what RPG players can learn from theater, I think.  

Why aren't these people acting? Why are they indulging in a substitute for theatre?

Because, I guess, acting is only a part of why they role-play, and they get more out of it than they would out of amateur theatre.

Exactly.

This response surprised me.  Pete, you've spun this question drastically.  Why do some actors also role-play?  Why not?  Why do some RPG players also act?  Why not?  I don't see that there's a connection here.  To be sure, I suspect that an actor who does a lot of RPG play draws upon his acting in play, but then again, I'm an academic and I draw upon my academic work in play.  Why wouldn't I?  You say that the actors "get more out of it than they would out of amateur theatre."  I don't see that this follows; it seems to me that they presumably get something different out of it.  Look at it this way: I love gaming, and I love being an academic.  I wouldn't game if it didn't provide something that academics does not.  But do I get more out of it?  Hell no.  If I had to ditch one, even disregarding monetary concerns and the like, RPGs would go out the window in a heartbeat.  I play them because I want to and I get something out of them, but I sure as hell do not get more out of them than out of my profession.

Getting back to the original topic of the thread, I do think that some pre-structured scenes can work very well.  As has been said, this can be very liberating.  One thing I've tried is to label scenes ahead of time, as "climax" or whatever.  Players can also use meta-tools (in my case Tarot cards) to announce in advance that a scene will run according to a rough outline, and that can't be broken.  Within the now rather constrained structure, players can do whatever they want.  I find that if everyone is on the same page, as Nate put it, you often get a more effective scene.

I do think, however, that this sort of thing can readily be overdone.  If everything is pre-structured, my experience is that players start to slip into a "fill in the blanks" mentality, such that gaming starts to become like very complicated Mad Libs.  This is fun in small quantities, but quickly gets old, unless (as in MLwM) there is a similar determinate structure to the whole campaign.

I like to swap back and forth within sessions, and that seems to work pretty well.  I do think it's important, in making this sort of thing run smoothly, that players have a lot of say (at least potentially) in the set-pieces and how they are pre-structured.

Nate, can you explain a bit more how your experiences with the unplanned on stage are useful to your gaming?  That sounds like something cool, but I'm not sure how to manipulate it.

[daMoose_Neo]

Basically is directed Improv. Event A needs to happen or Illusion B needs to be maintained (ie the wig). How it helps me in play? As a GM it keeps me on my toes, helps me react to players in an appropriate fashion while "steering" when needed- I do my damnedest to avoid railroading, but I don't walk into a session and let them go wherever and do whatever- there is a little form to the adventure, just that the improv helps me mold the scenerio's to fit what the players are trying to accomplish as well.

As a player, not so. Current campaign I'm in (D&D 3.5, basically a Forgotten Realm/homebrew) as a ranger I know some of what we are "supposed" to be doing as players and where the GM wants the campaign to go, but he's still leaving (sometimes too much?) information out. We've actually had three "starts" to the game, each time something different. Third time, I think this one is sticking, I charged off with my pack from a previous start just so that I could get the ball rolling and not look up loads of supplies. Instead I blow a Listen and Spot check in the middle of a field and get blindsided by a Bugbear. Unprepared with medical supplies and a couple lousy rolls end me with an arm out of whack about 20 miles from home. And that was the end of the session :P
SO - unable to read the GM or know what is or isn't at least in the slightest expected, the improv is generally useless.