Mmm, I think I'll roleplay some roleplay

[Callan S.]

Mike, fair enough. It's not really anything I could see myself until I started concentrating on SIS construction recently (Thoughts that spawned my 'The basic enjoyment of SIS' post).

When I was thinking about that, I was thinking about, funnily enough, what the basic enjoyment of SIS was. What would I enjoy, the essentials. To get to the basic part, I would have to strip away things that weren't basic.

So I stripped back. And stripped back. And stripped back.

And found what I would like to share in an SIS has been highly compromised to the point of being very much in the minority of focus, compared to the 'beurocracy'(as you might put it) designed to support it.

To give examples of beurocracy (and keep in mind, I'm not saying these are vital to play, but if you ditch them there's the question 'well, what are you going to replace them with?"): meta game Human resource management, system enforcement Vs user satisfaction, session design with open to player influence Vs containing my input with integrity, equal spot light time Vs charismatic/rule pushers, (unspoken) social contract enforcement, system direction Vs personal/group rules drift Vs perceptions of the importance of rules...etc etc.

All of these give RPG.net (and many other RPG boards) plenty of posts. And all of these have sub categories. And obviously the list can go on.

I'll quote DX here:

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.

I believe this may be true true and is thus why roleplay as we know it is a very small hobby. I get the feeling that the number of drivers who like to get under the hood are a small percentage of the overall driver demographic. The rest don't or they use a garage. Roleplayers don't really have a garage resource, they have to get their group going with the resources of that group. Thus RP becomes for those who like working under the hood, thus a minor percentage of the demographic who would like to RP, actually do game.

On a side note: I game for about 3 hours with good friends every two or three weeks (sometimes in spurts of once a week, depends on peoples work schedules). I'm also running a PBP that's (my gawd) been going for about a year now. I don't do as much gaming as I would like, but I do game. As for feedback, I really don't think I get enough (direct or indirect) even though I ask.

[Mike Holmes]

Let me see if I can restate the problem. You find that the overhead involved with how RPGs work is more than you like when you analyze it closely, and that many people don't play because they feel the same way.

I would agree that's true. In the Famous Five, I think, this was discussed a lot. Most people see RPGs as way too much work for the feedback provided. You may just be one of them. In which case, I'd suggest playing freeform, potentially, or doing some other activity that more closely matches what you're looking for.

Realize that for people like myself, that the "beaurocracy" is actually an attraction. Yeah, if by roleplaying to roleplay, you mean that we want dice, and paper, and list of skills, and mechanics, and all of that other overhead, then you're right, we do. These things all provide structure that we feel is important to making RPG play what it is - something somewhat different than storytelling, or improv theatre, or freeform, or...well all the other things that we could be doing with our time.

That overhead is a good thing for us. Yes, I suppose that there may be some people who actually don't enjoy what they do, and roleplay out of habit or a need to socialize or whatever bad reason that they do it. To them I say, do something else. But for the majority of the people here, I think that we're all very interested in those structures in a very legitimate way.

Now, if you want to talk about what it is that we enjoy about the structures in question, then maybe that's another thread. But beyond that, I'm not sure where to go with this. Does the above help at all, or am I still shooting in the dark?

As to your predicament, I think that you may just be analyzing too much in play. I personally do some when I play, but mostly I concentrate on playing and getting as much fun out of it as I can. So, it's hard to say what the problem is in your case. Are you just having a bout of "analysis paralysis," or have you discovered something fundamental about your preferences? Something that you'll have to decide on your own.

This all smacks to me of an existential crisis. Ya know a, "what's the point of all of this!" sort of moment. That wouldn't be it, would it?

Mike

[Callan S.]

Mmm, that wraps it up pretty well but a little off. Freeform isn't what I want, I want structure too. It's just that looking at what I want to group imagine, I realise I structures I'm using just aren't the ones to get their (too big). Its much like thinking all games have to have STR, DEX, CON, etc in them when really you don't need to (as we all know, of course). I think there's a lot of extra structure I've alowed to enter my gaming style so as to get to my prefered goal. I just hadn't noticed it was pushing my goal further away from me.

Anyway, it reminds me of Ralphs old 'shooting sacred cows' post. He was sort of labouring on with stuff he thought was cool, and it was, but it wasn't doing the job he finally realised, so it had to go (well, that's what I got from his post).

Anyway, I'm going to be totally hypocritical and keep playing D&D 3.x and other such games. But design wise I'll try something new with my group soon. I'd just wondered if other people had run into this same thing, perhaps seeing most of the structure as something interesting sometimes, but mostly just a means to an end rather than part of the fun. It's a marketing insight to me that it isn't.