Regarding the nature of roleplaying

[Tomas HVM]

I do not agree with the initial post of this thread, but the issues raised are important. My main objections are these:

1 - roleplaying is meant to be a game for amateurs.
The players are not meant to be professional actors. This fact is a serious challenge for the gamesmith. He need to create a game with easy to read instructions, and easy to use elements. His success may be measured in the way his game is played. The initial post may be read as adressing a symptom of gamesmiths not able to release the potential of the ordinary player. "The escapist" remains locked in his shell because the game is lame.

Sidenote ---> It may be argued that the actual roleplaying is not taking place over the table, but rather inside the players mind. The "shared imaginary space" may be said to be a theoretical construction, in relation to where the roleplay has it's outspring (the individual mind). The shared imaginary space is but a vehicle for the roleplay. It is not the roleplay itself.

2 - Roleplaying takes place in the "personal imaginary place",
- and not only in a "shared imaginary space". Our inner images of what goes on in the game, our visions of what our character see, is part of roleplaying. The player use his imagination to immerse himself in the character, thus involving himself with it, playing his role. This roleplaying is frequently caused by verbal communications on what the characters do or sense, and as often it is not visible on the surface of gameplay.

Sidenote ---> Gamers playing in-character, is something I have a strong enthusiasm for, but I think this is something that has to be fascilitated by game designers. They have to find the tools to release the potential of great character play, and inspired character conversations. I am convinced these tools are there, for us to find. Until then; we must bear that some players strive to get into character, with what little help we give them.

3 - Acting and roleplaying is not the same.
Two LARP-friends of mine participated in a medieval convention, held outdoors in some old ruins. They had two collegues at the convention, being professional actors. The four of them walked about as beggar monks, prying money from visitors at the convention, in-character all the time. I ran into them several times, and saw no apparent difference in their ability to be "monks".

However; after the convention I met with my friends, and they had an interesting observation to report. The actors tired much faster than the larpers. The actors had to rest every half hour, being quite exhausted each time, while the larpers could go on, in-character, the whole day.

This observation confirmed an old suspicion of mine; that acting and roleplaying is not the same. They may be related, but is certainly not the same.

4 - The ordinary Joe is likely to be a great roleplayer.
The way you relate to the character, in acting and in roleplay, is different. The abilities you make use of, is different. The likelihood of finding a great roleplayer in an ordinary Joe, is far larger than the likelihood of him ever being a mediocre actor.

Actors are in fact not as deeply involved with their characters. Their acting is a kind of conscious mannerism, intended to manipulate a public. They try to project the illusion of a character, doing so by hard-won and very demanding theatrical skills. The actor is performing to a standard set by a critical audience, his enjoyment of the act being secondary.

The larpers on the other hand, being roleplayers, are deeply involved with their character, immersing themselves in it's imaginary personality. The roleplayer make use of unconscious abilities, learned as far back as their first childhood. These abilities are as much a part of their natural self, that their potential for great roleplay may easily be awakened, and often carried out without significant effort. Their roleplay is not primarily directed at anyone outside themselves. It is an internal process with it's own rewards. It is play for the sake of play in itself.

5 - Playful involvement is good, and critical distance is bad, for the gameplay.
The difference of acting and roleplaying is essential, and it goes to show how great a potential the most ordinary roleplayer is in possession of. It also goes to show that the stanza taken in the initial post of this thread is far from innocent.

When holding acting and roleplaying up against eachother this way, it is obvious to me that the idea of introducing a critical audience in the roleplaying game (the other players demanding certain standards to be met) is very dangerous indeed.

I have speculated for years on the importance of group dynamics in roleplaying games, and have found that one important step towards positive dynamics, is to fascilitate playful involvement by the players. If any player are left to maintain a critical distance to the game, its theme and the characters, the entire game will suffer.

This last observation may be a way of meeting the initial post of this thread, from the other side; not arguing the exclusion of certain players, but arguing the importance of including all of them, in order to create better gameplay.

[aplath]

I'd like to share a differente point of view on this roleplaying definition thing.

First of all, as you probably may notice in my writing, english isn't my native language. And this  creates something that I find intriguing in this thread.

You see, I live in Brazil and we speak portuguese here. However, roleplaying games are still called RPGs, even in texts written in portuguese. That goes back to the time when the only gaming material availiable was imported from the US and was therefore written in english. By the time we started to have material wide availiable in portuguese, both the terms roleplaying and RPG were wide spread in use so nobody bothered translating it.

This creates an interesting effect on the definition of roleplaying for us.

First, the activity of playing an RPG is described as "jogar RPG" which means, well, playing an RPG. :-) But my point is that we don't say "roleplaying" to mean "playing an RPG". We don't do that because of many reasons and a important one is that there is no such word in portuguese. The words that come close to roleplaying are more easily translated to "acting" and, interestingly enough, simply don't feel right when describing the hobby.

We do use the words "representar" or "atuar" which basically mean "act" to describe certain modes of play, in particular first person characterization. The more common term is the first that has a more loose meaning. It describes acting as in the theather but also means "pretending" or "feigning" (is this the right word?). The second word "atuar" is more strongly tied to acting as an art form and is less commonly used to describe a mode of play in RPG (though it still used, usually in LARPs).

But the more general used expression to describe running a PC, at least with the people I play here, is "jogar um personagem" which means "playing a character" but with a strong enphasis on playing as in gaming, since "jogar" is a verb in portuguese used to describe playing a game and the verb "play" in english has other meanings.

So, when we want to say roleplaying as in Aaron's definition we simply use one of the portuguese words for acting. When we want to say roleplaying as in playing a RPG we simply use the portuguese word for playing a game and associate it with RPG.

That said, we do use the english word "roleplay" to describe an aspect of the hobby. We use it to describe everything that happens during a RPG session that isn't resolution, metagame mechanics, setting or rules discussion (and eating and going to the bathroom). That leaves us with storytelling, roleplaying (as in Aaron's definition) and some other stuff I can't really define in english. We describe all these things, or to be more precise, the sum of all these things as "roleplay".

Hope this contributes to the thread.

Andreas

[contracycle]

It may well be that this controversy can be resolved by changing the initial position to: "there is insufficient interest in and attention paid to the act of driect portrayal in RPG".  I agree with that very strongly - I think there is as much if not more overlap between RPG and acting as there is between RPG and literature, but there is almost no study of methods and techniques of portrayal.

[pete_darby]

New thread then, michael? I for one would love to jump in on that one, drama queen that I am...

[joshua neff]

Muito interesante, Andreas. The verb "jogar" is the same verb used for sports & games like chess. Which ties RPGs linguistically more to soccer ("jogar futbol") & chess than to acting & art. As you said, acting ("representar" & "atuar") are a part of RPGs, but they aren't the sole part or, necessarily, the defining part.

You know, I've seen a lot of people argue that if you don't have "game" aspects--that is, aspects that they are familiar with & associate with "games," like dice & quantified stats for characters--you're not playing an RPG. Character immersion doesn't enter into it, but "game" aspects do. The argument against that, if I recall correctly, is that, again, "roleplaying game" doesn't necessarily mean "game" in the same sense as Axis & Allies or Risk. Similarly, "roleplaying game" doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as roleplaying in a therapist's office.

Which brings us back to the idea that Aaron's idea of "roleplaying" may be the defining thing for him, but it's not the defining one for RPGs in general. Not anymore than, say, using dice. What makes an RPG an RPG, historically, is much more than acting in character or using dice. Character immersion is one technique in roleplaying games, but it's never been what defines a roleplaying game, & I haven't seen any convincing arguments as to why it should be what defines a roleplaying game.

[brainwipe]

Welcome, Aaron!
I'm afraid I disagree with your definition of roleplaying. I even disagree with the motivation for it, which seems to be from the acting side of things.

I've acted on stage. To act, you need to do the physical and the verbal (except in the fringes of mine and shout plays). To me, it's the same with Roleplaying. To make the role come to life, you need to be able to give it words and body language. Otherwise, you're playing the role badly. You need both, to some degree.

To play the role, you need to do the verbal and you need to do the physical. The best way to do the physical side is in a 3rd person narration.

[I've really enjoyed reading everyone's posts, MJ, Chris, Alan, Jack and Aaron have all been smashing!]

[Blankshield]

Just to preface, I've found everything to be thought-provoking so far.  I want to start by saying that I've irresponsibly elided two things which I did not intend to elide... this goes to my cantankerousness about artistic mediocrity and whatnot.  I don't mean to include everybody who disagrees with me or who pursues the playing of roleplaying games (I'll just call them RPGs, like Rich suggested) in a way which my admittedly rarefied definition does not class as roleplaying strictly speaking.  I was still reacting, unfortunately, to things entirely outside the contents of this thread.  It's the people who pursue RPGs for reasons other than artistic excellence that I have no time for - people who just like to hide out in the fantasy worlds which they find more amenable than real life.  I didn't mean to make it seem as if I extend my contempt to those people who pursue RPGs seriously and thoughtfully, even if those folks don't agree with a word I've said and think I'm a total nitwit.  

Hi Aaron,

I don't think you're a total nitwit, but I do think you're unfairly marginalizing a fairly large chunk of the hobby.  Namely me. (...and people like me - I don't claim to be a demographic of 1)

I and most of the group(s) I regularly play with have a strong background in LARP, and many of us have also been involved in theatre to one degree or another.  I think that I can say with a minimum of bias that most of us are competent actors, and some of us are very good.  We bring this with us when we come to the table(1) and spend a lot of time in what you are calling roleplaying - first person perspective, pantomime, etc.

By this above, one would assume that we are the sort of people that you would encourage in the hobby - we are emphasizing what you want emphasized, and doing it, in general, well.  But according to your quote, we're just the sort of people who should be drummed out of the community because we don't approach it seriously, with the proper appreciation due an art.

I will state flat out that I pursue RPGs for reasons other than artistic excellence.  I play RPGs because they're a load of fun, and it's a kind of shared vision that I haven't found anywhere else.  The high that comes from a good session of gaming is like the high from a good performance on stage, but it's *not* the same.  So yes, I pursue RPGs for escapist reasons, fundamentally, not as art.  

I'll leave the disagreement about your definition to others; they've countered it more proficiently than I could, but suffice to say I also find it too narrow to be useful.

James
1: amusing anecdote: one of my friends, going back to D&D after several years of LARP was told, partly amused and partly exasperated: "Stop it!  Stop moving!  Sit down and roll the damn dice!"

[Christopher Weeks]

Christopher:  Yes, I think you see what I'm saying.  Though I'm curious... what part of the "snooty shit" do you substantially disagree with?

I disagree with your attitude of smug superiority.  I disagree that you have the right to brand others based on your own personal aesthetic.  You are doing two things simultaneously here.  You're asserting a definition, with which I so far agree, and you're asserting a qualitative ranking of activities.  And the way that you have carried yourself in presenting these opinions degrades your message, I think.  Following are some specific comments.

...many seem to treat roleplaying games as boardgames without boards. Would you play tennis without rackets? It would seem to be needlessly hobbling oneself.

It is more fun to just relax and play.  People could do improve theater if that was there bag.  They can even get paid for it!  RPGs include many stances mixed in a dynamic way.  And many of us think they're superior for it.

But if it is worth doing, it presents a challenge.

Do you really mean this in as general a sense as you have presented it?  I think lots of nonchallenging things are worth doing.  I like to urinate, for instance...no challenge there.

Thinking in character contributes nothing to the game, which is a shared phantasy, per se. If these thoughts are wholly internal, your audience (the other players) will have no knowledge of it.

Except as it manifests through your direction.  While I agree that roleplay is playing a role, I couldn't disagree more with the notion that only roleplay contributes to the shared imagined space.

for thoughts, intentions, inner struggles, etc. to be useful additions to the roleplaying experience, they must be communicated to your audience

These communications can be very, very indirect.  So much so that it's silly to call it communication.  Your claim is analagous to stating that all the behind-the-scenes processing that a computer does in facilitating your use of an application is valueless.

a lot of people actually can't act. But they still want to be roleplayers and think of themselves as doing it well

Lots of people don't measure up to your (singular, personal, unknown, subjective) standards of acting, but have fun playing RPGs all the time.  If they're routinely having fun, aren't they doing it well?

they really don't want to hear that roleplaying is a definite thing, which requires intellect and talent

I suspect that virtually everyone, as I think some of your readers here are doing, assumed you meant RPGing when you said roleplaying.  And I disagree that it requires intellect and talent unless you're diluting those words so much that they're essentially meaningless.  Everyone(!) can enjoy acting.

Though if this pursuit is to be taken seriously as art, I think perhaps we'll have to give the layabouts their walking papers.

You've already expressed concern about this choice of words.  But I can't help myself...How dare you?  First, who appointed you keeper of the serious?  And what exactly do you think art is?  And who do you suppose thinks that this pursuit even should be taken seriously as art?  Not I!  I think this pursuit is all about having fun.

And I don't think it's worth doing unless done well. Why waste one's time with mediocrity?

Well, that's not what any of the inferior masses by which you are surrounded are doing.  They're trying to have a good time.  And maybe they're doing it very well.  It's fine that you have your own agenda for your own roleplay.  Great!  Maybe it is even neat for the rest of us to read about.  But why would you possibly think that most of us hold the same, pretty rare as far as I can tell, agenda?

But further, I think there are a lot of people in our hobby/artform/pursuit for the wrong reasons. Like people who take Life Drawing just to ogle the naked people.

How can there even be a wrong reason?  Everyone gets to select their own motivations.

Their actions not only detract from the pursuit but also tend to make legitimate folks look bad (if you've spent any amount of time at a gaming store you know what I'm talking about).[/red]

So now, according to you, one's very legitimacy is dependent on your personal aesthetic vision?  What a crock!

Chris

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

It's time to close this thread. No warning, no "going going," no nothing.

Over 50 posts, people. Go reflect on it, or ignore it, whatever. But that's enough to work with.

Various substantive sub-topics, especially those raised by new posters, should be taken to their own threads.

Best,
Ron

[Philomousos]

Hello,

It's time to close this thread. No warning, no "going going," no nothing.

Over 50 posts, people. Go reflect on it, or ignore it, whatever. But that's enough to work with.

Various substantive sub-topics, especially those raised by new posters, should be taken to their own threads.

Best,
Ron

Excuse me?

Is this customary around here?  Because I see other threads that are longer than 50 posts.

Is this an appropriate decision for a moderator to make?  With all due respect, this isn't Kabul.

[Rich Forest]

Edited because this was an accidental post to the thread instead of a PM to explain bits of etiquette :-)