Story and Narrative Paradigms in RPGs

[peejay]

Hi John,

At first scan it looks like an interesting exploration of the area. I will need time to peruse further in order to do it justice.

As a fairly new member here at the Forge I am not sure if the following has been covered elsewhere or not but ...

It might be interesting to explore issues of collaborative, implied and perceived narratives in RPG's with reference to the work that has been done on Narrative Therapies and Systems Theory (particularly Social Constructionist models) in the mental health/counselling fields. Much of my work in my old job was working with families (or a 'group' in the RPG sense) where each member has their own perceived 'narrative' that overlaps but differs with others. It's a fairly large field of interesting insights that IMHO might have some input into your own work.

Cheers,
Peejay

[John Kim]

It might be interesting to explore issues of collaborative, implied and perceived narratives in RPG's with reference to the work that has been done on Narrative Therapies and Systems Theory (particularly Social Constructionist models) in the mental health/counselling fields. Much of my work in my old job was working with families (or a 'group' in the RPG sense) where each member has their own perceived 'narrative' that overlaps but differs with others. It's a fairly large field of interesting insights that IMHO might have some input into your own work.  

If you could bring some insight on those models, that would be great!  

I have always thought that there should be a good psychological perspective on RPGsm, but I have essentially zero knowledge of mental health/psychological theory.  My impression is that role-playing is a well-known tool in certain psychology techniques.  However, I've never seen a good comparison of role-playing in RPGs with role-playing in, say, counseling.