exploration of self

[Emily Care]

Hello all,

So, another creative agenda that's pretty common is therapeutic exploration of self.  I'd say this occurs less frequently in recreational roleplaying, but could very easily be incorporated into the goals of a system or playgroup.  Too much, mind you, and you've got a primal scream session of co-counseling transactional therapy on your hands, but used with moderation and judiciousness and could give you a powerful experience.

So what do I mean by this? If it's not pattently apparent, I'm referring to roleplaying where the goal is to engage the emotional and cognitive faculties of the player using the imaginary elements and events to 1)stimulate a particular experience of emotion, 2) trigger the recollection of past events or inner experiences, 3) allow the person to have a greater understanding of their own responses, opinions or emotional attachments/projections toward concepts, people, objects, events etc perhaps with the eventual goal of modifying these responses and feelings.

What does it look like? What would it look like in a recreational, rather than purely therepeutic context?  Well, let's say I am someone who has been beat up a lot in life, or has been verbally harrassed and so tends to be shy and non-assertive.  If I was aware of this and wanted to use roleplaying to help me work with this aspect of my personality, I could do so by my choice of character.

Many options of characters useful to this purpose present themselves: I could choose to play a character much like myself, but perhaps even more so. The character could be a charicature of these traits of myself. I could enter into playing the character to help myself become more aware of how I respond to abusive treatment, since in my normal life the responses are so automatic that they are below my thresh-hold of consciousness.  Alternatively, I could choose to play a character who does not exhibit these traits, and put them into situations that simulate my experience but engage the support of the rules set I'm using, as well as the cooperation of the other game participants to help mirror and support my ability to choose other than I might be able to in real life.  Or, I could choose to play a character that is an extreme in the opposite direction from me an extremely, perhaps overly, assertive person, to give me an insight into the experience of those I may be choosing or allowing myself to be pushed around by.

Key to all of this is the emotional experience of these situations or traits. Narrating them in a distant fashion is lovely, but will most likely not engage the deeper parts of my subconscious and consciousness that power my choices in life.  

How is this distinct from simulationism or narrativism?  Someone adopting this standpoint would prioritize their inner experience of the game world over issues of imaginary content.  

I will have to think a bit more deeply on what distinguishes this from narrativist premise, but I need to run to class.

Thanks,
Emily

[Andrew Norris]

Emily,

I'm extremely interested in any possible responses to this thread (including your own expansion on it). I am preparing a small Sorcerer session for a friend who's never roleplayed before, and in our preparations I see a very strong emphasis on exploration of self. Her character is intentionally a darker version of herself, put in situations similar in theme to her own life crises but "cranked up to eleven". Hell, her character's Demons are arguably drawn from metaphors of her own inner struggles.

I've thought of all this input from her as powerful Narrativist leanings, and I think there's some truth to it. But after reading your thoughts, I feel that I should reconsider to what extent she is looking for a version of therapeutic roleplaying.

I wouldn't want to be a dunce and say something like "men roleplay like this, women roleplay like this", but I have noticed that many anecdotal experience with female players has included a heavy focus on exploration of character, with said character addressing some elements of the player herself. I wonder if that factors into this discussion. (If not, and it's off topic, please disregard, as I know this isn't a "gender issues in roleplaying" thread.)

Here's me playing the devil's advocate: Could the type of play you describe be considered Narrativist, with the Premise being some broad-sweeping statement about the human condition? I understand Premise has to be stated and answered for Narrativist play, but I feel like there's a largish grey area where a Premise about, for example, emotional committment to family shades into deep Exploration of Character with a character dealing with family issues. Does that sound at all on track?

[W. Don]

Hello Emily,

Have you heared of Dramatherapy? This seems to be along the lines of what you're describing; where the context and overiding goal of the activity is the therapy and not the roleplaying. Said therapy involving first and foremost the exploration of self as you've explained it above.  

In which case, maybe it's something outside the scope of the fora. (But very very interesting though.)

Edited to add:

Uhm. Sorry, Emily. I think I missed that part in your post where you're asking "What does it look like? What would it look like in a recreational, rather than purely therepeutic context?"

In which case, I can't imagine any difference from Narrativist play with strong character emphasis. With Premise here being customised to match those elements or landscapes of the self that the player wants to explore. The way Premise is addressed during the course of play become the means for that self-exploration.

- W.

[lumpley]

Disclosure: Emily and I have talked about this in person, too.

Emily, my take is that explo:self roleplaying isn't Narrativism, but that it also isn't incompatible with Narrativism.  Narrativist play might or might not give a player the experience you're describing.  (Where Gamist or Simulationist play won't, because of the necessity of player authorship + problematic human issue.)

My take further is that explo:self play isn't a kind of Narrativism, but rather that Narrativism can serve the explo:self goal.  Exploration of self is above, outside Narrativism.  It's in the "why are we doing this?" section of the social contract.

It's like this: "Why do you write fiction?"  "To exorcise my demons and grow past the pain of my experiences, by reliving bits of them and examining them from other points of view."  Writing fiction doesn't equal exorcising and growing, but serves it, in this particular person's case.  Narrativism doesn't equal explo:self play, but can serve it, if that's what the players want from it.

A Narrativist game designed with explo:self in mind might have a very different look and feel and sensibility, at the Technique level, from a Narrativist game designed with I-am-the-sword-of-God in mind (for random example).  That's cool.  A short story written to exorcise demons will be very different from a short story written to cut through an issue.  The advice an experienced writer would give to someone wanting the first would be different from the advice she'd give to someone wanting the second.  (That's like a game design: game design = advice.)

So!  Explo:self is fascinating, powerful, potentially frightening, good.  I don't think it's a competing CA, I think it's a big deal agenda at the social contract level.

-Vincent

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'm with Vincent. In fact, It seems to me that this sort of self-analysis, catharsis, therapy, call-it-what-you-will, could see applications in any of the three currently-acknowledged Creative Agendas.

Best,
Ron

[Scourge108]

I do know of many roleplayers who consider their hobby therapeutic, and do roleplay as a means of self-exploration.  It can be very useful to "play out" certain emotions or issues in the context of a game.  In fact, I'd say most people do this to a certain degree.  The classic hack-n-slash munchkin, to me, seems to be the player's way of working out his frustration at being bullied and looked down upon as weak and insignificant.  Gaming gives him a chance to be a hulking barbarian who will kill all the orcish bullies and take their lunch money.  But many people give their characters events and issues to work through in their background that the player is also struggling with.

Usually this is done within the context of the game, is not disruptive, and nobody even knows about it.  I'd say most of my characters have come about by some philosophical issue that they represent to me and a way to resolve it.  Like my cavalier character was a result of my questioning whether or not Chivalry was a good moral code or a barbaric throwback.  I wanted to make it both.  But I think you can learn a lot from characters.  For one thing, you learn more from mistakes than from successes, and RPGs are a safe place to make mistakes, since the worst that can happen is you have to make a new character.  I think this is one of the surprise benefits of roleplaying games.

Of course, I've also seen people take it too far, and if you're serious about using RPGs as therapy, you should make sure your group is aware of and comfortable with this.

[Jason Lee]

I'm sure you all remember these (particularly considering two of these are Vincent's fault)...

Spawned from big ball of 'character existence' threads:  Character and Our Weird Gamer Friends
Split from above, talking about the stuff in this thread: Characters as Therapy (split)
More on the above, but unfortunately it didn't develop:  Personal Relevance and Multi-PC Play

I think I'm in agreement with Emily that this is something at the creative agenda layer.  It's very much a reason for making specific in-game choices, not just a reason to roleplay in the first place.  It is also an observable behavior, not present in all roleplayers.  Since the threads above I've seen more of this behavior lately.  I think that's largely because of some personal growth a couple members of my gaming group are struggling through, but it may also in part be the insights in the above threads helping to identifying the priority and my continual infusion of more heavy Nar into our group.

I do see Nar serving a personal issues agenda, but I don't see it conflicting.  This implies to me that it is simply a style of Nar.  

(However, I also don't see Sim conflicting with Nar, so maybe there's nothing wrong with the lack of conflict.  I do not want to derail this thread by dragging in that ancient debate, I just want to state the perspective I'm coming from so communication is clear.)

[AnyaTheBlue]

Emily,

I'm with Ron and Vincent.  This goal is definitely far more of a personal goal for a player than it is part of a group's Creative Agenda, at least in my experience.  And I've seen it done, with varying levels of dedication, in games and groups with all sorts of creative agenda.  I think it tends to be something the player brings into play rather than something the group brings to the table.  That being said, there's no reason a recreational game couldn't have self exploration as a purpose or premise of some sort.

In fact, I think that was perhaps one of Ron's goals with Sorcerer.  I read a thread here somewhere saying that Demons in Sorcerer represent disfunctional relationships.  I think everybody has really had those in real life, and I get the impression that Ron was trying to build in the tools for reaching a kind of self-exploratory play level into the game by focusing on this kind of a social interaction as the primary struggle in the game.  Not that you have to play Sorcerer in this manner, just that it lends itself rather well to doing so, in my opinion.

As for playing out power trips and working out frustrations, I always preferred Superhero games.  I'm a bit of a pacifist, and in Superhero games the general consensus is that killing is actually wrong.  Plus, you get the added bonus of playing in the modern day with godlike powers and abilities, mowing down henchmen and throwing cars at people.  This is a bit off topic, though =)

[Emily Care]

Thank you for posting those threads, Jason. I have two to add:

Self-Revelation in Role-playing (or Educational RPGs)
Exploration of Player
Reading these reminds me that using exploration in this context is confusing. I'll use inquiry instead.

I found a paper on the topic available on the web to add to the mix:
Therapy is Fantasy: Roleplaying, Healing and the Construction of Symbolic Order by John Hughes.  Anya, this contains an example of a play group making it their goal. I'd say Sorcerer is right on for self-inquiry. Puppies too, sneaky-sneaky.

This is from 1988. Not so new. Let me quote from it anyway:

Malori has gained more than a cognitive understanding of her gender models through her use of Jack. In a roleplaying environment, she uses the character to experience some of the personality attributes she is trying to develop within herself. This is achieved through her actions within the game, with the support and cooperation of her gamesmaster and fellow players.

(I swear I read this after I wrote my earlier post.) Malori is a person interviewed for the paper who found roleplaying to have a therapeutic effect for her with respect to debilitating depression she experienced.  After noticing this, she began to consciously use role play as a tool to this end.

Malori is quoted as saying:

"You practice facing things that bother you. Whatever happens in a game you're physically safe, although obviously, having such a strong emotional identification, it would hurt me very much if he [her character Jack] were killed.

"I actively seek out things that bother me, that challenge me. I'm leading the party and so the decision is mine, and nobody else's. If it goes wrong, it goes wrong, and I take responsibility for that. If it goes right, everybody's pleased and they're pleased with me as well. That for me is a terrifying situation, having to make a decision and stand behind it, to take the responsibility if it fails. Through Jack, I also have to deal with physical danger, to overcome passivity, and to stay cool in a crisis. It's very challenging."

To my mind, this supports Ron's feeling that aspects of each of the current ca's could be useful for this goal.  Malori seems to be harnessing step on up to help herself work through the blocks she experiences in her day to day life.  "If it goes right, everybody's pleased and they're pleased with me as well" = Step on up.  So her agenda here is congruent with gamism--she is seeking character challenge, and is herself facing step on up.

Malori is also a gm, and has used her experiences to offer the same to others:

With two friends, Malori has recently begun a campaign especially designed to challenge them as individuals rather than as characters. Malori, of course, plays Jack. A friend seeking to overcome shyness and social inexperience has designed a character to challenge her own inhibitions. The GM has introduced a new rule especially for this game, which is called the "psychodrama" campaign. The rule is called "The Rewind". If one of the players feel that a given situation has gotten out of hand or that they have not responded as they should, they can request a "rewind" and the scene is played out once again. With the introduction of such techniques, roleplaying moves away from being a purely recreational milieu into something that is pedagogic and explicitly therapeutic.

However, just because priorities may be congruent at times does not rule out conflict. The Rewind would cause problems for a gamist agenda. Replaying an event that didn't go how you wanted or needed it to undercuts challenge.  

So, is she really playing a kind of narrativism? She's addressing questions, but the ones she's engaged with are specific and pressing ones: how does it feel to do this? what could I do in this situation? what would someone with different attributes than I possess do instead? how does it feel for me to fail? how does it feel for me to succeed? These are not a broad-sweeping issues of the human condition that she's addressing, as Andrew suggested, nor moral questions she's addressing. They are problematic human issues, but this kind of play can happily jettison dramatic and narrative concerns: if it rejects Story Now can this it still be said to be narrativist?  Story now is about the engagement of the participants with the shared imaginary elements, not about the experience of the participants based on those events.  It may be that instead, player authorship + a problematic human issue may be features of both narrativism, and self inquiry.

Story Now has a great deal in common with Step On Up, particularly in the social expectation to contribute, but in this case the real people's attention is directed toward one another's insights toward the issue, rather than toward strategy and guts.

Similarly for self-inquiry, the attention would instead be on what's happening inside each player rather than on the imaginary events collaboratively created. It's the effects of the events that is of interest instead.

Those are my thoughts.

yours,
Em

[M. J. Young]

I'm definitely with Ron on this. Self-examination is what I would term a social agendum, not a creative one, and although narrativism is particularly good for it, it is not inconsistent with simulationist or gamist play.

To put into perspective this idea of using play to explore who I am, let me step away from it. I've known players (one in particular, but others as well) who have used game play to explore the psyches of the other players, to try to understand what makes them tick, even perhaps where their hot buttons are and how to manipulate them. That has nothing to do with CA, and can be done in any CA you like. So, too, if you're focused on discovering your own psyche, this is what brings you to the table, and it certainly influences your play as any social agendum would (if you're there to get laid, that is going to impact your in-game choices, but it's not going to determine whether you're playing gamist, narrativist, or simulationist).

Not Creative Agenda; something above it--that's my view.

--M. J. Young

[M. J. Young]

I cross-posted with Emily, but wanted to comment on this:

The Rewind would cause problems for a gamist agenda. Replaying an event that didn't go how you wanted or needed it to undercuts challenge.

I don't think so; at least, not necessarily. What you are creating, if it is still gamist play, is low-impact gamism.

For comparison, I remember playing softball as a kid when no balls or strikes would be counted--you stood at the plate until you hit a fair ball.

That's hardly how they do it in the majors, is it? In baseball, there is competition right there at the plate--can you hit it at all? Fans think that some of the best games are those in which no one hits the ball at all for nine innings (they call it a no-hitter, usually only one team does it because eventually someone has to score for the game to end). The dial is set high there. For kids, the dial is set low--we'll wait for you to get a hit.

The rewind rule is very like that: we'll wait for you to get a hit. If you don't like the way it went, hit the rewind button and we'll play it over again, and you can try to do better.

It doesn't matter how many times you swung and missed; if you hit it over the right field fence when you finally do connect, that glory is there--you're commended, socially rewarded, and you've stepped up to it and succeeded.

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Dana (Anyatheblue), you wrote,

I think that was perhaps one of Ron's goals with Sorcerer. I read a thread here somewhere saying that Demons in Sorcerer represent disfunctional relationships. I think everybody has really had those in real life, and I get the impression that Ron was trying to build in the tools for reaching a kind of self-exploratory play level into the game by focusing on this kind of a social interaction as the primary struggle in the game. Not that you have to play Sorcerer in this manner, just that it lends itself rather well to doing so, in my opinion.

Actually, this wasn't one of the goals at all, not as such. I think that the cathartic or self-revelation aspect of playing Sorcerer, when present, is exactly the same as might be found for an emotionally-committed film director or fiction writer, and for exactly the same reasons.

In other words, such a therapeutic process may or may not be part of the author-process, and as such, may or may not be present during Narrativist play.

Insert "esteem-challenge process" for author-process, and it still stands. Is playing sports a kind of therapy? Martial arts? Sure, for some people, some of the time. So Gamist play qualifies too.

Insert "imaginative-daydreaming process" for author-process, and it still stands. Is enjoying a fantasy or visualizing "how it goes" a kind of therapy? Sure, for some people, some of the time. So Simulationist play qualifies too.

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

I'm with Ron and Vincent.  This goal is definitely far more of a personal goal for a player than it is part of a group's Creative Agenda, at least in my experience.  And I've seen it done, with varying levels of dedication, in games and groups with all sorts of creative agenda.  

OK, I'm trying to separate out "personal goal" from "group creative agenda" in my mind.  i.e. Suppose that others know about this as a personal goal and try to act to support it.  Does that make a difference?  

By allowing in personal goals at a higher level than Creative Agenda, it seems to me that this makes the CA modes into "Meta-Techniques" of a sort.  i.e. If the real personal goal is exploration of self, then a GNS mode like Narrativism would be a tool to be used for that purpose.  But that tool might be kept or discarded depending on the circumstances.  

It seems to me that there isn't any natural split here, though.  i.e. If my real personal goal for playing is psychological inquiry, then I will use Techniques as suits my purposes.  Having a "middle layer" of Creative Agenda seems superfluous.  If I have a real goal, I don't care whether or not my play falls into one of the GNS modes, and the mode may freely shift based on the circumstances even though I am consistent in pursuit of my goal.

[Jason Lee]

MJ,

I think I'd hesitate to call the baseball example addressing challenge.  It seems to be a learning tool.  There is no risk associated, other than the social reward of how many swings it takes to hit the ball.  That may be what the kids are after, the challenge of how many swings it takes, but that doesn't seem to be the purpose behind the rules.

*****

I'll expand...

I dunno if this analogy will make sense to my audience, but I'm going to try.  The rewind technique is like learning break falls.  Break falls are a technique learned in martial arts, primarily of the grappling nature, where you learn how to safely hit the ground without rolling (most styles, but I don't want to get into details).  The goal is to impact the ground with a maximum surface area that does not endanger your joints and vital organs, therefore reducing the actual amount of force that impacts any single area (according to those laws of physics things) and protecting you from injury during the fall.

Anyway, when you do a break fall wrong you should correct your body position after the fall before doing anything else.  Why?  You've already hit the ground right?  What's the point?  The point is to train your mind and body - to correct your error rather than accept it, so you do it right next time.

This applies to how you learn a great many things (do the math over again until you get it right), but break falls really stuck out to me because seemly there is no point in making the correction.

This is what's happening with the rewind.  The decisions you made were not what you wanted, not what you wanted to express.  You do over.  You train yourself to behave in the correct manner if the need arises for you to respond to the stimulus in a real situation.  The rewind is learning a social break fall, learning to react to social pressure (as the break fall teaches you to respond to physical danger).  The rewind seems like a really powerful therapeutic tool to me.

Now, could this be the only agenda a rewind works for?  No, because techniques do not equate 1:1 with creative agendas.  However, this technique I would definitely include as a facilitator of a therapeutic agenda.

[Jason Lee]

It seems to me that there isn't any natural split here, though.  i.e. If my real personal goal for playing is psychological inquiry, then I will use Techniques as suits my purposes.  Having a "middle layer" of Creative Agenda seems superfluous.  If I have a real goal, I don't care whether or not my play falls into one of the GNS modes, and the mode may freely shift based on the circumstances even though I am consistent in pursuit of my goal.

I'm wondering exactly where the line is being drawn in this thread between a creative agenda and a non-creative agenda.  Social Contract agendas (hanging out with buds, hitting on chics, eating food, etc) are very clearly independent of the SIS.

What Emily seems to be proposing is an agenda that is directly served by the events in the SIS, and hence a creative agenda from my point of view.