Eidetic Reduction, is it only for LARPs?

[LordSmerf]

Split from Bricolage APPLIED (finally)!

A Husserl-derivative way of describing the difference between tabletop rpg (and larps very much like it) and experience-creation larps. In the former, the diegesis ("that which is true within the story", the in-game reality) is experienced by people through imagining it completely (maybe from source material, but still). Theyre in a state of epokhe, with the ability to analyze the entire game situation (as it is at that moment) and to apply any rules and narrative bricolage as needed, by way of player-player/player-GM negotiation.

In an experience-creation larp, the players create their view of the diegesis by selectively (by individual choice guided by GM instructions) refusing to see things that exist in reality as existing in the diegesis, or transforming those things into other things in the diegesis. ("the car isn't there in the game" or "in the game, there's a cart where the car is"). This latter approach, eidetic reduction, doesn't allow for bricolage because the players are essentially too far within the game, and therefore unable to neither perceive the entire game situation nor be in a position where they'd be able to negotiate on its premises.

In essence, "to negotiate on game elements, you have to have enough distance from them, and a holistic view about the game's current and intended state and form."

Which is expanded here:

Superficially, I'm inclined to disagree with you. What you see as a difference in kind I see as simply an additional technique: the reassignment of functional roles within the imagined space to real objects. Not much different than waving a pencil around as a magic wand, or handing out a 'scroll' or similar widget, in a tabletop game. Just a matter of degree.

This is a (hopefully small) sidestep from the topic, but you've hit one of the core debates of the intra-Nordic rpg theory discussion here: the viewpoint issue on whether the epokhe vs. eidetic reduction (my choice of description, but the core is essentially the same) is a matter of degree or two diametrically opposed ways of approaching role-playing. (I personally favor the latter, and thus approach the situation discussed here from that perspective.)

So anyway. I agree that in a certain kind of immersive LARP there's going to be relatively less bricolage-in-play than in an RPG, but it seems to me that it still happens, and has to.

This is where your (well-refined and presented, I must admit) interpretation is wrong. An accurate description would be that the possibility of negotiation exists, but is not availlable to the players, just the GM. Thus bricolage does not actualize. Think of it as the difference between a communal ritual where everyone may participare in their own way (tabletop rpg) versus a ritual where everything is up to the shaman who has esoteric knowledge he won't share (experiential larp). While both contain the same theoretical potential for negotiation, only one features the possibility of the negotiation really happening without a huge risk of the ritual being broken.

And followed with my question here:

Is this a feature exclusive to a type of LARP play, or do you see this in certain types of table top play? I think that this is a feature of extremely high Immersion table top games. Where the players are so deep into the characters that this is exactly what you're talking about. Or am I missing something about eidetic reduction?

Chris asked us to take this to another thread, so here it is.  I think there's some really cool stuff to be discussed with the idea of eidetic reduction.  Now I'm just waiting for Tuomas, who I designate as our resident expert on the subject, to chime in.

Thomas

[LordSmerf]

This is also pertinent to the discussion, from the same source thread (Note: "mud pies" is a reference to an earlier point in the discussion which I cut, it can be found in this single post):

Tuomas - if the players are robbed of all authority to negotiate stuff, then yeah, I guess I'd have to agree with you - only the GM is doing anything like this. But:

(1) Doesn't what's being said still hold for the GM?

(2) Wouldn't it be possible to give players in such a LARP the authority to do this for themselves? If I was immersed as, say, an alchemist, I'd much prefer to be able to pick up a coffee cup and say it was an alembic or the like - that would free me up like mud pies does.

(3) Some tabletop GMs arrogate similar authority to themselves, and likewise in the name of immersive play sometimes, or so it seems to me. It seems like the main difference in LARPs is just the whole-body character of it.

So I think I see a little better where you're coming from but I'm not persuaded. We should probably pursue this in a new thread if it's worth pursuing though.

Thomas

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

Is this a feature exclusive to a type of LARP play, or do you see this in certain types of table top play? I think that this is a feature of extremely high Immersion table top games. Where the players are so deep into the characters that this is exactly what you're talking about. Or am I missing something about eidetic reduction?

There are two different things here, actually. One is how the diegesis (recap: it means "that which is true within the story") is constructed: by imagining it into being entirely (tabletop) or by selectively editing your perception of the actual reality around you (eidetic reduction, the experientalist larp way).

The second is how the approach affects the possibilities of bricolage. In order to be able to fiddle with game elements in a negotiative manner, you need a certain level of detachment from what is happening in the game. (Since I'm basing the terminology on Husserl's hermeneutics, I'll call it epokhe, "standing back", i.e. analytical detachment.)

Achieving and/or sustaining the required level of epokhe is essentially incompatible with experientialist gaming, because such games attempt to affect both character and player.  Likewise, when everyone's sitting at a single table and imagining the diegesis, it's possible to form a social contract that permits bricolage without disturbing the experience. When everyone's scattered around the larp area and semiotically re-signifying everything they see in relation to the diegesis, any point of narrative or systems bricolage would be a break in continuity, as well as problematic due to the contract not affecting everyone.

Example, taken from actual games: Wizard X casts a Wall of Stone spell on a doorway, making it impassable. In tabletop, everyone knows it's there. In a larp, it has to be either marked (which means breaking the continuity) or someone has to stay there to tell everyone "here's a wall" (a break, again, especially for the one who is left behind; I've seen this happen). Otherwise anyone can create a dissonace in the diegesis by walking through the "wall" he doesn't know exists.

Now imagine this further: someone wants to use another spell - or just tools - to break the wall. At this point, bricolage makes its appearance. In tabletop, there is enough epokhe to permit discussing this until conclusion, in a larp it's either by player choice or by talking with a GM (if she happens to be present). If it's a player choice ("I just can") it's not bricolage. If it's negotiated with the GM, it's a step away from being in character. While for many larps the latter wouldn't be a problem, for experientialism it definitely is.

Now, to elaborate further with Sean's excellent questions:

(1) Doesn't what's being said still hold for the GM?

Yes. The GM is fiddling with the rules, and is essentially doing bricolage. But if the power to negotiate doen't extend beyond her, it's a question of GM omnipotence ("what i say goes, never mind how I made that choice") and not of actual bricolage. It's a different kind of social contract.

(2) Wouldn't it be possible to give players in such a LARP the authority to do this for themselves? If I was immersed as, say, an alchemist, I'd much prefer to be able to pick up a coffee cup and say it was an alembic or the like - that would free me up like mud pies does.

Absolutely true. This is how "Nordic" larps get made. But, again, it's no longer bricolage. It's applying a rule that has been laid down beforehand. That rule may have been created with joint negotiation - thus, through bricolage - before the game, but during the game there is no negotiation on it, just interpretation that follows the rules. How people get past this problem is through a process of shared diegesis (Loponen & Montola, 2004). By refering to the coffee cup as an alembic, you communicate the meaning you've given the cup to other players, thus making sure you share the same diegesis. (Usually you don't have to, people will just guess. But if it's an important element, you'll state it's symbolic value to make sure it's perceived correctly.)

(3) Some tabletop GMs arrogate similar authority to themselves, and likewise in the name of immersive play sometimes, or so it seems to me. It seems like the main difference in LARPs is just the whole-body character of it.

Indeed. And that difference is what I was refering to as detached imagining vs. eidetic reduction.

[Eetu]

I think bricolage happens in experientalist larps all the time. Not with the rules though, as there usually are few of those to fiddle around with anyway.

Actually, if I understand bricolage correctly (and I hope Chris can weigh in on this), eidetic reduction itself is a form of bricolage. We take a car, and make it a cart. Now, this isn't exactly like combining a helium balloon with an iron to make a light-weight heating element, but not too far either. In our imagination we paint the car to look like a cart and bolt it into our imagined space (incidentally, diegesis=imagined space in the Forge lingo). We get something with properties from both the actual car (location our fusion of the actual and imagined space, possibly the power of movement) and the concept of a cart (imagined form, shape, expectations of usability). But we are also constrained by our choice, as in the choosing of an iron - we can't really put a horse in front of our cart, and it retains many problematic qualities of its carness (ie. we always have to imagine it looking like a cart because it really doesn't).

But this happens also purely within the imagined space too. Larp background information is necessary at least as incomplete as roleplaying background information. Even in a tightly knit game, one can't prepare for every possible situation or conversation. And that leads to people creating bricolage from what they have. Say, for example you are talking about the affairs of the state in the game, and someone asks if your province has had any trouble with robbers recently - and the background material doesn't tell you. You have to make something up, and you'll probably try to make up something by combining some of the separate facts that you know of the imagined space, and also maybe take input from the others in the conversation by cleverly hidden additional requests for additional info ("Why do you ask, have you had trouble with them lately?"). In the course of the conversation, all participants have added functionality and explanation to the world. And there really is some negotiation going on there too.

And of course, in such a larp, this can be problematic, because that part of the imagined space is shared only by those participating in that conversation. Fortunately, people are often clever enough to limit their additions to things that are anyway in their sphere of influence, and so probably actually won't break anything elsewhere.

Okay, so, after that quite lengthy sidetrip, I'll give some comments to the actual prior discussion:

I disagree with Tuomas on the basic premise that detaching temporarily from the SIS is incompatible with experientalist gaming. Therefore I can't comment on Tuomas' individual points, but I can try to make my own case:

As can be evident from the previous, I see small amounts of detaching as happening to a small extent all the time - mostly we are just able to block ourselves even thinking about it. And I actually have real experience with a larp in which the desired goal was no less than for the actual participant to learn something new about life from immersing into a character. Now, so far, nothing special, but the game made heavy use of Out-of-SIS techniques directly at the player level such as scene framing and Out-of-SIS methods for stating what the characters felt toward each other, and what the people playing the characters wanted to happen in an interaction.

Now, we actually had the hypothesis that these Out-of-SIS methods would hurt the immersion, thereby hindering learning, but player commentary surprised us. It became evident that all of our methods provided people with a great ability to focus thoughts on important aspects of the character. What was created was a potential for powerful spot immersion into a particular aspect of the character, with a known fixed frame that allowed the players to only focus on only that aspect. For me, it was a revelation.

So, while traditionally I think the methodology of Nordic style larps has not allowed for rules or narrative bricolage, I don't think they're at all incompatible. In fact, I'm hoping more and more Nordic larps will break their chains and start aggressively pursuing methods for hightening the players' experience on all levels, not just simulationary.

- Eetu

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

Actually, if I understand bricolage correctly (and I hope Chris can weigh in on this), eidetic reduction itself is a form of bricolage.

This is actually a question of what one wants to include in the definition. I'll leave it to Chris to decide whether he sees gaming bricolage as containing solitary negotiation (which would include both eidetic reduction and all forms of GM omnipotence) within it, or not.

(incidentally, diegesis=imagined space in the Forge lingo)

Almost correct. Diegesis, in rpg theory context, equals Forgean SIS in the case of tabletop, but a combination of SIS and Winnicottian potential space in the case of larp. ("Potential space" is the form in which the SIS of child's play overlaps and transforms real space and elements within it.)

Say, for example you are talking about the affairs of the state in the game, and someone asks if your province has had any trouble with robbers recently - and the background material doesn't tell you. You have to make something up, and you'll probably try to make up something by combining some of the separate facts that you know of the imagined space, and also maybe take input from the others in the conversation by cleverly hidden additional requests for additional info ("Why do you ask, have you had trouble with them lately?"). In the course of the conversation, all participants have added functionality and explanation to the world. And there really is some negotiation going on there too.

This is exactly the difference between the two approaches I described. In eidetic reduction, the player invents something, if possible through bricolage, but if not possible, just by random preference. In an epokhe state, that player would ask the GM "has there been such trouble?" and then answer based on that. This is only seen as truly breaking continuity in the first case, that of interrupting in-game thought to deduce an answer.

As can be evident from the previous, I see small amounts of detaching as happening to a small extent all the time - mostly we are just able to block ourselves even thinking about it. And I actually have real experience with a larp in which the desired goal was no less than for the actual participant to learn something new about life from immersing into a character. Now, so far, nothing special, but the game made heavy use of Out-of-SIS techniques directly at the player level such as scene framing and Out-of-SIS methods for stating what the characters felt toward each other, and what the people playing the characters wanted to happen in an interaction.

As larps like Hamlet (and several of my own works) easily show, there isn't any problem with using out-of-SIS or extradiegetic methods to create experiential content. What I was aiming at is that such elements can not be re-negotiated or restructured during a game without breaks in contunuity, and that in the case of certain types of heavily experiential games, any break is harmful to the goals of the game.

So, while traditionally I think the methodology of Nordic style larps has not allowed for rules or narrative bricolage, I don't think they're at all incompatible.

This isn't exatly true. Most of them do allow narrative bricolage, but several examples exist of successful games that were utterly bricolage-prohibiting. That's one of the reasons I designed a game (Honeybees Arrive) with an illusion of free will for characters, just to see if it's possible to allow players to think they can negotiate story elements while they actually couldn't, to railroad without appearing to do so at all.

What I'm after with all the typology and explanations is that by naming limitive and enabling game phenomena (the things I describe aren't obstacles, just limitive tendencies inherent in the methods of gaming) and by acknowledging them as such, we can try to find ways of bypassing those limits and/or taking advantage of their preconceptions ("illusion of free will" being one of the latter.)

[Eetu]

While waiting for Chris to chime in on our primary point, I just want to say that I think we're in the main agreed, as long as we're talking about tendencies, typical or even certain games and not hard overall limits.

That's one of the things I'm most interested in currently, finding out the commonly perceived limits to the common forms of playing and then finding ways to break those limits productively. On that note, I'd really like to hear more about your experiments with hard-core illusionism (illusion of free will), but that's probably material for another thread or PM.

A minor quibble still: I haven't seen this definition of diegesis before, only Hakkarainen & Stenros's and Montola's versions in As Larp Grows Up. By my reading, the first equates diegesis directly with shared imagined space and the second mostly with individual imagined space (or, I think actually says that shared imagined space and individual imagined space are both diegeses, but that the former is necessarily a watered down version of the latter). That's also why I like the Forge terminology on this matter more, I think the meaning of diegesis has already been muddled up. If you can point me at a more recent generally accepted definition, I'll be very happy.

Definitions aside, I think that the practice in larps of essentially bringing physical real world objects into the SIS, or anchoring SIS objects into physical objects and vice versa is a really interesting subject and certainly worthy of more talk (and it is in fact one of the subjects currently being discussed in the Nordic circles).

- Eetu

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

That's also why I like the Forge terminology on this matter more, I think the meaning of diegesis has already been muddled up.

...and I see the "IS" definition as too fixed and immutable to permit necessary speculation on content. :)

"Diegesis" does have the additional benefit of corresponding to cultural studies terminology - academic compatibility being something I see rpg theory too often ignore.

The terminological correspondence has been recently under debate on several mailing lists. I plead guilty to originally introducing the Winnicottian extension of it to the discussions. The word's meaning is currently in process, shall we say.

And I couldn't agree more on the fact that we're after gaming (and game costruction & design) style tendencies here, not absolutes.

Now, let's wait for a word on how Chris intended rpg bricolage to be interpreted on these occasions.

-Jiituomas

[clehrich]

This is a fascinating discussion, guys!  I've only got a few minutes, but here's a brief remark on the current holdup:

Actually, if I understand bricolage correctly (and I hope Chris can weigh in on this), eidetic reduction itself is a form of bricolage.

This is actually a question of what one wants to include in the definition. I'll leave it to Chris to decide whether he sees gaming bricolage as containing solitary negotiation (which would include both eidetic reduction and all forms of GM omnipotence) within it, or not.

This is an exceedingly difficult and (in the large scale) important issue.  Real short answer: humis is right, but I beg you to forget that and get back to gaming in a simplistic sense.

Five-part longer answer (please read headers)

First the immediate theoretical answer:

Eidetic reduction must indeed be taken as bricolage, but so too must the formulation of an epokhe stance or perspective.  In short, bricolage necessarily implies a total episteme.  Because of the totalization, every event must be translated into structure, ensuring that no cognitive break occurs by asserting the non-exteriority of the event.

To put that in English, the specific moment of bricolage activity necessarily presumes that it was already negotiated fully.  In other words, no change or rupture has occurred.  Socially speaking, the acceptance of any ruling as valid asserts that the answer was already implicit in the system we have seen unfolding without our interference.  Thus the social reinforcement effect: what appears to us here as exterior analysts as outside the system must, in order for it to be fully accepted within play, be assumed not to come from a social but from a systematic source.

Second, let's put that sort of practically:

When the player, having (as a character) cast the "impassable wall" spell, affixes the note to the door (or alternatively leaves a person to stand guard), he is clearly making one object stand in for another.  When the second player approaches the door and is warned, by the note or the guard, that the door is not a door but an impassable wall, he is expected to accept this transposition of objects.

Now let's assume for the moment, since I think this is part of the example and it certainly makes things clearer, that the second player has not already been told in advance of the potential existence of notes on doors carrying this meaning.  He knows how the system works in general, but not of this specific implementation.

In order for that to work seamlessly, and that is certainly the claim in these games you're describing, the second player must affirm that he has not learned anything new about the system, only about an event interior to the game.  That is, what he claims to have learned in this moment is not that notes may be used in this fashion, but that the wall is impassable.

Thus an event at the level of system has been translated into an event within the world encompassed by the system.  The system has not changed, and has been proven capable of fully encompassing all changes to the world.  For that player, event has been transmuted into structure.

This appropriation of event into structure is central to all bricolage.

Third, the broader theoretical answer:

The problem is that fully to explicate the entailments of such a position, we cannot ourselves even heuristically use the kind of exterior position implied by epokhe.  To do so, we need to assert a hierarchical distinction that is invalid within the system being described, thereby denying the epistemological claims of that system.  In fact, we need to assert the primacy of event over structure, thereby announcing that the historical has a kind of truth-value denied to the bricoleur.

This is the deep root, and not the much deeper analysis, of Levi-Strauss's arguments about history; it was deepened yet more in Derrida's famous lecture "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," in Writing and Difference.

Before Ron points out that we are wandering into deep waters---and these are the deepest of deep waters---let's try to bring it back home to gaming.

Fourth, what if anything this means for Forge discussion:

Unless and until we decide to take on the really large methodological and ultimately philosophical significance of gaming, I think this entailment of bricolage, though not only accurate but deeply necessary, needs to be set aside heuristically.  There can be no logical, formal, or philosophical justification for such a move; it is solely practical.

To take on the full weight of bricolage as episteme, as deep structuring of knowledge and understanding and indeed thought itself, would deny the possibility that we can analyze bricolage on a small level at all.  Every examination of bricolage in narrative structuring, mechanical fiddling, or character interaction will necessarily require a full account of the total system embedded within cultural context.  That is surely a project well worth doing, but it cannot be done piecemeal.

To put that differently, I myself want to see more discussion like what's happening here, where we stick very close to the simply concrete and look at instances of manipulation---of objects, systems, words, mechanics, characters, narratives.  Unlike the anthropologist, we have only rather sketchy anecdotal data for how this works and has worked.  Unlike the anthropologist, too, we have no necessary reason to suppose that gaming does manifest an episteme different from the historical consciousness; to whatever degree that would be the case, it would always already be conditioned by the historical, not (as with tribal peoples) as a result of colonialism but in its very formation---which formation would then have an historical origin.

I keep wandering into abstractions, I realize.  I'm sorry; this issue is so deep and so complex that I know of no one apart from Derrida and Levi-Strauss who has fully understood it (though there are a few other names who might).  I am still grappling with the basics of this myself, and it's an issue that haunts my professional work.  So I have a great deal of trouble trying to explain concretely---and I am not sure that this can be explained so.

Finally

My basic suggestion is that you consciously sidestep the issue.  Put it in brackets, as Husserl would say.  Stick to the small, the specific, the concrete example.  Don't step back from that.

The more we narrow focus to the specific, the more precise and rigorous we can be.  If we want to stick to talking about games, rather than some of the deepest waters of philosophy, we need to keep locked on what can be connected to the practical at all, even hypothetically.

I realize this may sound odd coming from me.  It sounds like I'm saying "why can't we be more practical and stop with all this abstract theory?"  I do mean that, but those terms have shifted valence in this context.  When I assert the opposite, as I usually do, I mean theory in the sense that the scientist ordinarily means it: one step removed from experimental concreteness, but always in a potential constructive relationship to experiment.  Here, however, "abstract theory" means that which cannot, by its very nature, ever be applied concretely, which in fact denies concreteness as a condition of its thinking.  Everything we have ever done on the Forge, so far as I am aware, would by this definition be deeply embedded in the practical.  Some of what I just touched on in this post, and what you guys are rubbing up against, is genuinely not so, genuinely antithetical to practicality itself.

As they say, "don't go there."

(I seem to have a habit of giving non-answers lately.  Sorry.)

[LordSmerf]

Okay... bricolage is cool, but I want to talk about eidetic reduction...

Must it be concious?  This is a little bit of a side-track which I want to discuss in a bit, but it's something to think about.

Judging by what little I've read (here and in the Bricolage Applied thread) eidetic reduction is not actually an artifact of LARP play so much as it is an artifact of RPG play that involves props.  In fact, to some degree eidetic reduction may be necessary in any game involving props, but I'm not sure about that.

Now, it must be admitted that LARP play is much, much more prop intensive than any table-top play that I have seen or heard of to date.  I'm not sure that this is true based on inherent qualities of the two types, effeciency issues, or just historically reinforced play, but while that's something else I wouldn't mind discussing, I'm pretty sure that this isn't the thread for it.

So: eidetic reduction is actually a property of RPG play involving props and LARPs are prop heavy.  This can easily result in the conflation of LARP play and eidetic reduction.  Does this make sense so far?

I'm not sure where I'm going here, but I wanted to clarify this... am I right?  Is eidetic reduction actually a property of prop-based play which is associated with LARP play rather than being a property of a specific kind of LARP play itself?

Thomas

[Eetu]

At least I'm completely with you.

On eidetic reduction, I think most of it happens on a subconcious level, or can at least be effectively experienced as such.

As I said, there's some stuff already published about the matter in the Nordic scene. A Semiotic View on Diegesis Construction by Loponen & Montola was published last year in Beyond Role and Play. There's also material on the subject in the previous year's As Larp Grows Up, in the form of the article The Diegetic Rooms of Larp, by Carsten Andreasen.

(on the subject of Bricolage, I'm in favor of dumping delving into further abstract theory)

- Eetu

[Walt Freitag]

An interesting question. When I think of eidetic reduction in the range of varieties of LARP play I've experienced (which is quite broad), it's not props that seem to be of primary importance, nor real-space game spaces. I've organized and played in LARPs with and without significant use of props, and with and without those props being representational (real objects or models of real objects, as opposed to abstract tokens such as item cards). And I've organized and played in LARPs with and without any attempt to alter or overlay the physical playing space with imagined elements.

The clearest distinction between LARP and tabletop play appears to me to be the inclusion of the players' persons in the in-game world (imagined space).

I've never seen a LARP in which a simulated attack directed at a player's person would not be indicative of an attack directed against that player's character in the imagined space. I'm not saying that such simulations of attacks are permitted in all LARPs, or necessarily happen even if they are permitted, just that when they are permitted and do happen, they invariably have that meaning. On the flip side, I've never seen an occurrence in tabletop RPG play in which a player indicates that a character is a target of an attack in the shared imagined space by simulating, through any physical action or gesture, an attack against the person of the character's player. I'm not saying it couldn't happen -- I'm sure it does, and I have seen it happen in board game play -- just that I've never seen it myself in a tabletop RPG.

The distinction is even clearer when I look at constraints on a player's physical movements (usually rules constraints consensually obeyed, rather than physical restraints, though I've seen exceptions) in LARP play, representing limitations on the character's mobility in the imagined space, versus the complete absence of any such representation in tabletop play.

The corresponding difference in eidetic reduction, then, would be that in LARP a player must be imagined as physically representing that player's character, which depending on the techniques in use for casting, costumes, and acting, might be a small or large shift. While this still might be in principle a difference in degree rather than in kind, in practice it's a pretty clear distinction of tabletop versus LARP. Even if, for example, a tabletop GM starts physically acting out the movements and gestures of a villain as a means of description, the distinction remains clear. If the GM has to leave the room to use the bathroom, it wouldn't normally be interpreted as the villain having left the area within the shared imagined space.

- Walt

[LordSmerf]

Walt, thanks for weighing in.  You have way more LARP experience than I do, so it's good to see your view on this.

I wonder if by "prop" what I really want to say is "Physical things that represent other things within the SIS."  The players represent the characters in a LARP in a way that just doesn't happen in table-top play.  But the players aren't the characters, so you utilize eidetic reduction to maintain deep immersion.

But, is eidetic reduction only found in LARP play?  Or is it instead simply more common (maybe even more useful) in LARP play?

Thomas

[M. J. Young]

Expanding a bit on Thomas' questions, would miniatures play involve eidetic reduction, as the statuettes on the table come to represent the characters in the shared imagined space?

If so, is there a sense in which in LARP play the players themselves are the miniatures, sort of like those fantasy stories in which characters take the positions of chess pieces in a game (the most recent being Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but I'm sure I remember it from earlier, perhaps Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, and I know that I've encountered others in which chess moves were constraints on the characters for part of the story)?

Thus I'm suggesting that miniatures are props for the characters in miniatures play, and people are props for the characters in LARP play. But I've never done either, so I'm really extrapolating from the comments of others.

--M. J. Young

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

Bricolage definition accepted. Moving on now to further eidetic reduction issues:

Expanding a bit on Thomas' questions, would miniatures play involve eidetic reduction, as the statuettes on the table come to represent the characters in the shared imagined space?

A brilliant example. Thank you. (The thought so far hadn't occured to me, but it makes a lot of sense.)

My personal view is that miniature play encompasses both views. If a player sees it as "moving pieces on the board", it's epokhee at its coldest. If, howevere, the player thinks of it as "moving military units on the field", he's doing eidetic reduction. What counts is the semiotic meaning given to the pieces, whether they are transformed or not.

The same goes for larps, where I think eidetic reduction is most common (but not unique to it). The mandatory physical presence, a combination of representative elements ("physical things and agreed-upon symbols that represent objects within imagined/potential space") and a shared culture (which Mike Pohjola calls "interimmersion", each player's imagined space supporting and strengthening that of everyone else's) create a situation that heavily favors eidetic reduction and the attempt to "be" as much as possible within the imagined/potential space.

In essence, I'm suggesting that eidetic reduction is caused (perhaps "required" would be a more precise word?) by the presence of physical elements within the game's internal reality, the most influential of which is the player's own body.

I think the general psychological pattern of eidetic reduction in games is that an inexperienced players "transforms" the elements consciously, then later starts to do it more and more subconsciously as she learns to experience the game more intensely. Still later on, some players (the ones that are called "immersionists") find a way to consciously flip a mental "switch" that moves them to a state in which they start translating the elements automatically.

Side note: my tabletop players often emphasize physical attacks by gestures directed towards the players of the targeted characters. But I'm secretly hoping it's a part of the game's influence (intensity flowing from narrative and SIS to the players and affecting them) and not just a tool of habit.

-Jiituomas

[LordSmerf]

Okay, "interimmersion" sounds interesting, where can I read more about that?

Now, back to the topic at hand.  Here's a question that I keep coming back to because I see eidtetic reduction so closely tied with immersion: In a high-immersion table top game can the players be said to eidetically reduce all of their physical surroundings away?  In order to fully experience what they are trying to experience, do they do the same sort of "imagining things not to be there"?

My guess is yes.  Is it the same sort of eidetic reduction that we commonly see in LARP play?  I think so, but I'd be interested in hearing other takes on the subject.

One final question (for now): Do we ever see the technique of eidetic reduction utilized for any prupose other than immersion?  I'd be curious to explore what other applications we can come up with for it...  That may be a bit problematic since the technique is so intensely personal.  How might we apply eidetic reduction to the group?  How might we factor it into design?

Thomas