Mmm, I think I'll roleplay some roleplay

[Callan S.]

How well this'll get articulated, who can say.

Do you think that it can get to the point where, instead of wanting to play a game so as to enter a tolkeen world, or a tolkeen like world, or a die hard sky scraper or star wars world or something else we think is so wicked shit, you end up roleplaying to enter roleplaying?

It's subversive. Possibly the most clear example are the people who wanna do an 'old school' game. They may have run the game back in the day so they could kill some orc just like Aragorn (sp?). Now they wanna do it for the feel of roleplay back then.

That's cool as a concious descision. But what if your goal is slowly subverted. Suppose you've wanted to enter into some literary work to game, nar or sim there. THEN, after awhile you pick up an RPG and it has a cool world and you want to enter that. Then as GM or player you start refining your delivery of a game, refining the art of roleplay....though you do so with the thought in mind of getting into that world better. You focus more and more on the roleplay so as to improve things, or your encouraged by the systems intricate design. You might even start thinking about game design. Alot.

Pretty soon the word roleplay encapsulates a bunch of rules working, social contract forging, and a whole bunch of other ra ra ra that I either can't describe shortly or could devote chapters to describing.

Pretty soon, instead of roleplaying some Tolkeen knock off, your roleplaying some roleplaying. And isn't that a downward spiral? The systematic understructure of RP is abstraction. What happens when you abstract abstraction?When you figure out rough ways of doing something which itself is rough. Its like photocopying a photocopy, fading each time.

I mean, when your thinking the technicalities more than thinking 'It'd be so kewl to swing a lightsaber', whats going on? The technicalities of delivering content are coming before content itself.

It sounds wack, but hack master is a deliberate example of this sort of thing. But really its also a reflection of something that is real, don't you think?

[orbsmatt]

(I'm going to try to understand what you are saying here, so if I say something that you didn't mean, I apologize in advance)

So, what you are saying is that by abstracting the roleplaying systems that are already in use the new system is worse than the first?  Or are you saying that by focusing entirely on rules and "systems" that you end up losing the whole idea behind roleplaying?  (i.e. worrying about the technicalities of swinging a light sabre more than the "coolness" of delivering the actualy feeling of doing so)

I'm trying to understand your point here so as to expand on it.

[sirogit]

Firstoff, I'll attest to your basic description of the phenomena is pretty common.

Second, I don't see why the road would nessecarily lead towards wanting to set up a shared-imaginary space that's about roleplaying. I don't see how "Playing us in high school playing D&D" could be a subsituite of the tried and true try to play D&D like in high school. I'll give that its a remote possibility, but I couldn't see it being a widespread thing.

Third, artforms can succesfully feed off of themselves. Don't think of it like a photocopy of a photocopy, think of it as using a picture in a work of art, and someone using that picture in a work of art, and on and on. Distorts the original picture pretty quickly, but its flux of new conetnt keeps it engaging.

[Callan S.]

orbsmatt: Damn, I did end up being obtuse. Thanks for posting anyway.

It's the latter thing you mentioned, followed up by the former. So its the focus on the rules and system of swinging a lightsaber. It's also the focus on when a player should be swinging it or not, or talking. What about using the force to impale someone on it, is that like the dark side. How many dark side points exactly? What about fumbles and accidentally killing other PC's, what to do about that?

The specifics don't really matter as much as the multitude of them. What I'm refering to is a butt load of management of things which are two or three degree's seperated from your original impulse to swing a light sabre around, or kill orc like Aragorn/whatever.

Such a thing is so unweildy that you can't keep it all in your head at once. So, in order to handle it you abstract it down. But its still pretty big, so you essentially start focusing on a system that handles a system (the game) that handles that original thing you wanted to explore/play. The best thing is, the system is never quite complete as it never quite handles everthing, so your also kept occupied in managing its design as well.

Basically you can see that the support BS of swinging a lightsaber starts to dwarf the actual imaginary act itself. When its so big by contrast, it starts to get more attention. Eventually it can get so much attention your wanting to play means wanting all this management stuff, instead of just shooting lasers at giant robots.

It's still a little fuzzy, but think about why you might buy a car. You might dream about cruising up and down, going camping anytime, picking up chicks, whatever. But when you buy it, say you end up having to fix it up a lot. You keep having to repair it, patch it, get it going, push it out of the way of traffic when it breaks down on the road. The needs of the medium/car have surplanted the reason you got it in the first place.

In terms of my title 'Mmm, I feel like roleplaying some roleplay', in the car example it would be 'Mmmm, I feel like going for a drive' and then walking out and spending the morning under the hood of your car. The medium to another goal has actually become the goal itself.

[ADGBoss]

It's still a little fuzzy, but think about why you might buy a car. You might dream about cruising up and down, going camping anytime, picking up chicks, whatever. But when you buy it, say you end up having to fix it up a lot. You keep having to repair it, patch it, get it going, push it out of the way of traffic when it breaks down on the road. The needs of the medium/car have surplanted the reason you got it in the first place.

In terms of my title 'Mmm, I feel like roleplaying some roleplay', in the car example it would be 'Mmmm, I feel like going for a drive' and then walking out and spending the morning under the hood of your car. The medium to another goal has actually become the goal itself.

Noon,

Seems a lot like a "shut and Play" kind of thing, which to a degree I have no problem with.  The issue that brings many to places like the Forge though is the idea that we have spent so much time under the hood of the various RPG cars, that we are looking to build better ones.  RPG's that we would want to play / drive.

Its an evolutionary step.  We had steam and trains and still rode the streets in buggies pulled by horses. So we develop the car to supplant horse drawn buggies. Just as we had make believe but found that other games had evolved (war games) and so we evolved rules for make believe as well.

So places like the Forge are here for the next evolutionary step: better, sleeker, less problematic vehicles for the imagination.  To come to a place like this means spending a great deal of time under the hood.  Yes in some ways it spoils play, spoils the innocence of play, but when play becomes more mature and satisfying, I would say its an equitable trade off.


[Edit for spelling]

Sean

[Doctor Xero]

The specifics don't really matter as much as the multitude of them. What I'm refering to is a butt load of management of things which are two or three degree's seperated from your original impulse to swing a light sabre around, or kill orc like Aragorn/whatever.
---snip!--
Basically you can see that the support BS of swinging a lightsaber starts to dwarf the actual imaginary act itself. When its so big by contrast, it starts to get more attention. Eventually it can get so much attention your wanting to play means wanting all this management stuff, instead of just shooting lasers at giant robots.

Forgive me, Callan, but I'll have to disagree with you on this one.

What you describe is something like what happens with my students at first when I teach them film and literary analysis (it also happens sometimes when I teach them gender analysis but not nearly so frequently).  Please indulge me as I personalize the process they go through.

At first, I merely watch films and enjoy how kewl the light-saber battle is.

Then I learn film analysis and recognize such factors as acting, directing, camera angles, editing, and the more abstract factors such as themes, symbolism, etc.

For a while, I find that knowing all this disrupts my ability to enjoy films -- instead of thinking how kewl that light-saber battle was, I'm noticing the special effects and camera angles and speculating about the symbolic import of the use of sword images in the film.

If I remain at that stage, I'm going to have to forget all that analysis junk if I ever want to enjoy film again.

But if I continue to learn to understand film analysis . . .

I reach a point at which I can simultaneously watch films and enjoy how kewl the light-saber battles are with all my heart while also thoroughly analyzing the film.  (And now my ability to enjoy a film has been multiplied from that of my original pleasure at merely watching without analytic awareness.)

Just as I get to the point as a driver at which I can simultaneously roar down the street in my convertible, wind in my hair, exulting in the freedom of a fast car, while also noting gas mileage and car performance and traffic laws and safety precautions and pedestrian traffic.

Just as I get to the point as a gamer at which I can simultaneously launch into my best Jedi play-pretend theatrics while also keeping track of my hit points, my die rolls, my attack factors and defense factors, and the comments given by the game master to clarify further the imagined setting, all without any disruption of my ability to feel the kewlness of the imagining.

Doctor Xero

[Callan S.]

ADGBoss: I'm not sure what shut and play means, but the rest of your post I get. I guess at times it can feel like one will never find a way out of the jungle, so to speak.

Doctor Xero: It's a very good analogy, but imagine that you watched one of your favorite films for a film class and submitted what you thought the meanings were and what you thought of the technicals. But you were told, no, you didn't get it (with little/no feedback on what you did get) and to go watch it again. And again. And again. Until your almost sick of the damn movie, since its so highly associated now with this frustrating analysis.

The analogy is good, but courses that analise movies have a fairly structured way of doing that. Once you figure out the majority of that structure, learning to do that and enjoy the movie for its self is the next skill you'll most likely pick up intuitively.

In an environment where there is far less structure, where its typically based around the individual tastes of your gaming group (and indeed the design shouldn't fight this but actually relish in the possibilities of what they as individuals can contribute) and games and feedback are far apart because of work or poor male self expression, respectively, its bloody hard to get anywhere with the structure at all. Because there really isn't any...most GM's I've seen who have adopted some particular structure tend to go on and commit glaring errors (but not acknowledge them in the interests of holding onto their prefered structure). BTW, excuse my long sentence! :)

[Jack Spencer Jr]

There is a phenomenom in most other mediums where the abstraction necessary in art is used while removing or turning down the representational aspect.

McCloud refers to this as the "Picture Plane" in Understanding Comics, where the artwork represents what it is, ink on paper.

McKee refers to Antiplot or Antistructure in film. Some typical elements are breaking the fourth wall or multiple endings. Wayne's World used these techniques by having characters talk into the camera, addressing the audience and the film had three ending and none of them are the "real" ending for the story.

Works that use these sort of techiniques are drawing attention to the medium it appears in. It says to the audience, hey, you're reading a comic book or hey, you're watching a movie.

I could see it possible for a RPG to use this same sort of techinique, possibly unique to the medium, that draws attention to the medium itself.

Is this what you're talking about with "roleplaying some roleplaying?"

[clehrich]

Dr. Xero's right on this one, I think.  The thing is, you can experience a work of art (including an RPG) on a lot of levels at once; the human mind is a very flexible thing.  It just isn't true that, because you know a lot about film technique, you can't watch a film and pay attention to other things.  On the contrary, what happens is that your knowledge of technique adds to your total experience of the film.

The same goes for literature, for example.  You can read a novel and enjoy it.  If you know a lot about the novel's history, that adds something.  If you also know a lot about the history of literature surrounding the work, that adds something.  And so on.  All this means that when you read the novel in a very informed way, you get a lot more out of it.

This is the "simple pleasure of reading" notion, one which I disagree with strenuously.  I don't think that you read better or with more enjoyment when you don't know anything.  Frankly, I don't think you do anything better or with more enjoyment when you don't know anything.  Ron likes to use the sex example: was your very first time really the best?  I hope not!

Okay, I admit it, I'm a theory-head.  I think that having vast ranges of abstract structures running constantly in the back of my head helps me to experience the right-now more deeply.  And I am vehemently opposed to the romantic notion that ignorance is bliss.

[Callan S.]

No, I still don't agree.

Ignorance may not be bliss, but it is nice to just drive a car, for example, instead of having to learn how to repair one and then spend time under the hood on a regular basis. And the analogies of enjoying two things at once...err, for my analogy you don't get two things at once, its a lot of hood work THEN some drive. The hood work dwarfing the drive.

Jack Spencer Jr: Err, no, I'm not refering to that. But as a different topic its pretty interesting, feel free to drift further that way if you want. :)

[Callan S.]

Actually, I'll just add this to clarify. Enjoying something at a technical and straight up level is possible, I might not have been clear.

I'll just quote DX

For a while, I find that knowing all this disrupts my ability to enjoy films -- instead of thinking how kewl that light-saber battle was, I'm noticing the special effects and camera angles and speculating about the symbolic import of the use of sword images in the film.

If I remain at that stage, I'm going to have to forget all that analysis junk if I ever want to enjoy film again.

What I talking about here is where you can't leave that sort of stage because the knowledge is uncomplete. Because with the film you can resolve it as you learn a pretty standardised evaluation system. Roleplay, however, is so inherantly about the other users contribution that getting past the above stage by learning it all just isn't going to happen. So instead of learning anything concrete because you can't handle the situation that way, you have to juggle a whole bunch of vague wisdoms, tricks learned from the past, and HR tricks. This tend to get in the way of the light sabers and the lasers stuff.

[clehrich]

What I talking about here is where you can't leave that sort of stage because the knowledge is uncomplete. Because with the film you can resolve it as you learn a pretty standardised evaluation system. Roleplay, however, is so inherantly about the other users contribution that getting past the above stage by learning it all just isn't going to happen. So instead of learning anything concrete because you can't handle the situation that way, you have to juggle a whole bunch of vague wisdoms, tricks learned from the past, and HR tricks. This tend to get in the way of the light sabers and the lasers stuff.

Okay, now I get you, Callan.  I still don't quite agree, but I see your point.

At one level, I do think that a wide knowledge of the hobby, in the sense of having read and if possible played a lot of games, will go a long way by itself.  Further, there are indeed all the "vague wisdoms" and such that you mention, and there I agree that the field is sufficiently in its infancy that it's not clear it will be intrinsically helpful.

But there are some more cohesively formulated theoretical structures out there, and I do find that they add to my enjoyment.  The most obvious around here, of course, is GNS.  To give a concrete example of how this can help, I was in a gameplay situation recently where I found myself mentally at loose ends, having a little trouble keeping focused; I think I was just tired, but I'm not sure.  At any rate, it suddenly occurred to me that I could think of the situation as having a Premise, and that if I simply cleaved to that I would at the very least not impede others' enjoyment.  Two or three years ago, I think I would have either faded out somewhat or else flailed around and been annoying.  That's a rather practical point, but the same goes for a different (for me better) session of the same game, in which it suddenly occurred to me at a really intense moment, "Hey, you know, this is exactly what Ron means about Story Now," which was a kind of mental "click" that made the moment all the better for me.  And let's bear in mind here that I am by no means a committed GNS-head; it's just that having that additional set of categories and lenses through which to view things added something intellectually to what was going on.

Outside of GNS, the thrust of what you're talking about here seems to me, at least, to call for greater examination of the academic study of culture.  That may seem way out in left field, but what I mean is that you can experience an RPG as a cultural event, i.e. as an interaction among people within various competing structures and so forth, and that adds to your enjoyment of participation.  Anthropologists talk about this in terms of the participant-observer, particularly with respect to ritual: you're not a totally distanced outside viewer keeping things totally clean and scientific, but a warm body interacting in that complicated fuzzy way that people do, and at the same time you've got this little voice in your head that keeps trying to analyze in totally different terms.  That's a very full experience of the situation, and it's something I think would be very useful for gamers as well.

[Doctor Xero]

imagine that you watched one of your favorite films for a film class and submitted what you thought the meanings were and what you thought of the technicals. But you were told, no, you didn't get it (with little/no feedback on what you did get) and to go watch it again. And again. And again.

Well, I would know that he or she was a bad instructor.

Until your almost sick of the damn movie, since its so highly associated now with this frustrating analysis.

There is seldom if ever only one correct interpretation of a film or literary work, and a good instructor will help you recognize how best to explicate your own interpretation such that, if it is faulty, it will collapse on itself naturally and in such a way that you are better able to replace it with a more accurate analysis.  Permit me to indulge in a teacher's rant : few things aggravate me more than an instructor who has ruined Shakespeare for students by imposing his or her pet analysis of the plays on students instead of teaching students how to find meanings within the plays on their own!  Comprehension, not conformity to canon!

The analogy is good, but courses that analise movies have a fairly structured way of doing that. Once you figure out the majority of that structure, learning to do that and enjoy the movie for its self is the next skill you'll most likely pick up intuitively.

In an environment where there is far less structure

Well, but gaming systems tend to be more structured, and part of what you are writing about is the impact of game design structure on the sheer joy of playing.

That said, yeah, we don't take courses or read books on how to game ; we learn by playing.

The thing is, you can experience a work of art (including an RPG) on a lot of levels at once; the human mind is a very flexible thing.  It just isn't true that, because you know a lot about film technique, you can't watch a film and pay attention to other things.  On the contrary, what happens is that your knowledge of technique adds to your total experience of the film.

Precisely!

The same goes for literature, for example.  You can read a novel and enjoy it.  If you know a lot about the novel's history, that adds something.  If you also know a lot about the history of literature surrounding the work, that adds something.  And so on.  All this means that when you read the novel in a very informed way, you get a lot more out of it.

That is what I try to teach my students : not the drudgery of producing a literature paper using analysis but the delight of adding another level of one's enjoyment of a novel or short story.

And I am vehemently opposed to the romantic notion that ignorance is bliss.

I think the reference refers to the bliss of lazy helplessness -- if I don't understand, I am incapable of being responsible for doing anything to change my situation, and therefore I have the mindless powerless bliss of the fetus in utero.

it is nice to just drive a car, for example, instead of having to learn how to repair one and then spend time under the hood on a regular basis. And the analogies of enjoying two things at once...err, for my analogy you don't get two things at once, its a lot of hood work THEN some drive. The hood work dwarfing the drive.

That all depends upon whether one enjoys learning automotive repair!

Both the hood work and the driving are part of the joys of car ownership.

And yes, many of us can and do enjoy doing both simultaneously.  After all, in actual fencing, one enjoys simultaneously both the visceral pleasure of holding and swinging and the weight of the sword and the intellectual play of intuiting and calculating the manipulations of the epee.  Once a person becomes a decent fencer, one also enjoys the practice sessions leading up.  No advanced martial artist resents the kata regimen as taking away from his or her moments in actual competition.

Outside of GNS, the thrust of what you're talking about here seems to me, at least, to call for greater examination of the academic study of culture.  That may seem way out in left field, but what I mean is that you can experience an RPG as a cultural event, i.e. as an interaction among people within various competing structures and so forth, and that adds to your enjoyment of participation.  Anthropologists talk about this in terms of the participant-observer, particularly with respect to ritual: you're not a totally distanced outside viewer keeping things totally clean and scientific, but a warm body interacting in that complicated fuzzy way that people do, and at the same time you've got this little voice in your head that keeps trying to analyze in totally different terms.  That's a very full experience of the situation, and it's something I think would be very useful for gamers as well.

I think it is not only useful but necessary!

To return to the over-relied-upon G/N/S model, without that little voice, there can be no focus on laser-fencing tactics (and not just lightsaber swinging) for the gamist, no focus on whether I should or should not kill with my wondrous weapon (and not just lightsaber swinging) for the narrativist, and no focus on sharing as a group the wonderful dream with which I am enmeshing in this Star Wars fantasy (and not just lightsaber swinging) for the simulationist.

Chris, what you're referring to has been studied directly and indirectly by the likes of such scientists/scholars as C. G. Jung, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, and most importantly Henry Jenkins, who has written the definitive work on the interactive elements of fandom (which I highly recommend).

Doctor Xero

[LordSmerf]

Noon,

If i understand you correctly perhaps this will be useful.

Using your car analogy...  You buy a new car because you have this dream of speeding through some deserted mountain road with the wind in your face.  You don't know much about cars so you go to the lot and buy one that looks cool.  Turns out that the car you have purchased is poorly engineered so you have to open it up each time you want to take it out.  You have the wrong vehicle for fulfilling your dream.

If your dream had been to open up your car every day and tweak it so that it will make it to work and back then you have the right vehicle.

Since the dream you are putting forward as being impaired here is "dang, it sure would be cool to swing a lightsaber" it seems that Sean (ADGBoss) is correct here.  We are still in the early days of design, to stay with the car analogy we have the Model T.  The Model T is the wrong vehicle for someone who wants to speed through deserted mountain roads with the wind in their hair.  We are designing better and better vehicles for accomplishing the "swing that lightsaber" dream.

I believe we have successfully designed systems are easily understood and don't require a secondary level of abstaction to keep track of.  As we continue develop more advanced vehicles we continue to make the first level of abstraction more and more transparent (which, i believe, helps accomplish the "swing that lightsaber" dream).

I guess i'm trying to say: "Your complaint seems to be with the specific car not the idea of cars or the automobile industry."

I hope that was useful.

Thomas

[Mike Holmes]

Callan, I normally wouldn't post this, but I think it's actually viable in this case as a form of input. Take it in the spirit in which it's intended, not as some sort of a criticism or anything:

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Now, this could mean a lot of things, including that I'm just too dumb to understand what you're getting at (maybe I'm blessed). But consider it a data point that some of us don't seem to have run into the particular problem that you have. Including myself who probably does as much playing and analyzing of RPGs as anybody else.

Let me ask you this: are you currently playing something regularly?

Mike