A psychological model of role-playing

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I've posted this on my weblog before, but it got about as much response as a newspaper boy at the front door. So, here's the "Clinton R. Nixon Real Deal About Role-Playing."

Anyway, on to the model. I think it's a requirement to be a moderator here to have one. I really am posting this for comments, unless they're like "You suck and so does your model and you've always been a disappointment to me." Because I already have enough women in my life that tell me that.



Why We Roleplay
We role-play for three reasons I have identified. There might be more, but these are the ones I know.

• Social reinforcement. We role-play to cement current relationships or build new ones. This is what you might traditionally think of when you think of role-playing: meeting regularly with a group of friends to have an evening of role-playing. Role-playing in this vein has no strong identifiable features in terms of play content. The dark side of social reinforcement is when it used to supplant normal relationships. Role-playing can become considered an activity where we must accept others involved in it, thereby enabling those with social maladjustments to believe that their behavior is acceptable.


• Escapism. We role-play to relieve tension through imagining a different world. This is role-playing's crossover with other media. Much like in movies or books we identify with, we have the ability to imagine what life is like in an elsewhere. Role-playing for this reason has identifiable features: one version of it often involves strong moral absolutism, good versus evil battles, and power fantasies. Another version is "immersion," which is akin to method acting without a script. The bad side of escapism is when this results in a rejection of real life. The steam tunnel stories we've all heard are classic dark escapism examples. An interesting if possibly irrelevant phenomenon is role-playing in which the content is escapism; like the old D&D cartoon, ordinary people escape into other worlds. Maelstrom and Multiverser are examples.


• Group therapy. We role-play to explore our problems and issues in a group context. The idea of a character is used as an insulator to explore moral situations and metaphors for real-world issues, usually personal in nature, compose the game's content. The outcome of these situations is scattered; two endgames observed are making the situation worse until something breaks, and the character being released from the situation. The negative side of group therapy is wallowing, brooding, angsty death fantasies. These are often characterized by the character - the player analog - actually being undead, someone trapped between the world of the living and the dead.
  

When I ask why we role-play, I mean "why do we role-play for a distinct portion of time, ranging from a session to a campaign?" I am emphatically not saying that each person that role-plays has one reason for role-playing. I'm saying that each person that role-plays has a reason for role-playing in a specific game. (I'm also defining game as the thing that happens when a group plays a role-playing game. The game, as such, doesn't exist until played, so the factors involved are the text and the people.)

Making goulash
I'm also not saying we choose one of the above. (I'm not really saying we choose anything, but that's a discussion for the future.) Generally, two of the above motivations for role-playing are mixed together. Let's look at the outcome.

• Social reinforcement + escapism. Relationships are established that normally cannot exist. This usually involves two people finding a way to have a personal relationship that is normally restricted by time or geography. Convention play and very long game sessions are examples of this.


• Social reinforcement + group therapy. The meaning of friendship is explored and the limits of current relationships are pushed in a safe context. A good example is two heterosexual friends of the same sex exploring an in-game romantic relationship with each other.


• Escapism + group therapy. Problems are explored from a point of view opposite or alien to real-life viewpoints instead of normal group therapy, in which problems are explored from a point of view thematically close to real-life viewpoints.

Thoughts for the future
Is role-playing an entity that stands on its own and is used to do these things? Or do these things compose roleplaying?

Is there a correlation between how we roleplay and why we roleplay? Using the Ron Edwards Big Model (tm) as an example, could we say that Gamism supports social reinforcement, Narrativism supports group therapy, and Simulationism supports escapism? If we could, isn't it interesting that "why" overlaps, and "how" traditionally is thought of as not overlapping so much?

Also related to the last paragraph, do we choose games to play based on why we want to play? Or do we play that way without thinking about what game we're in?

EDIT: Removed unnecessary and off-topic comments at the top.

[Judd]

Is there a correlation between how we roleplay and why we roleplay? Using the Ron Edwards Big Model (tm) as an example, could we say that Gamism supports social reinforcement, Narrativism supports group therapy, and Simulationism supports escapism? If we could, isn't it interesting that "why" overlaps, and "how" traditionally is thought of as not overlapping so much?

Also related to the last paragraph, do we choose games to play based on why we want to play? Or do we play that way without thinking about what game we're in?

Really interesting ideas here but I'd argue that your link-up to the Big Model is a little simplistic.  I think they can goulash together in any combination with any of the Big Three.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Really interesting ideas here but I'd argue that your link-up to the Big Model is a little simplistic.  I think they can goulash together in any combination with any of the Big Three.

I didn't link up to the Big Model. I asked if we could. In fact, by saying "why" overlaps way more than "how," I pretty much said we couldn't link up.

[Judd]

Really interesting ideas here but I'd argue that your link-up to the Big Model is a little simplistic.  I think they can goulash together in any combination with any of the Big Three.

I didn't link up to the Big Model. I asked if we could. In fact, by saying "why" overlaps way more than "how," I pretty much said we couldn't link up.

I thought the link you were drawing between them was much stronger.  My apologies.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I thought the link you were drawing between them was much stronger.  My apologies.

No problem - I was just clarifying. My writing's usually unclear, as a hundred critics will tell you on the Internet.

[SlurpeeMoney]

Hi, Clinton.

As one of those strange individuals who just walked in one day and stuck around, perhaps mine is a response you'd rather not have. Having been in your shoes with a few online communities I've created, though, I can only offer this: we build online communities to facilitate meaninful communication. In creating the Forge, you created a community; by helping to facilitate meaningful communication, you remain a valuable member of the community.

Then again, it was pointed out to me in a thread in Publishing
"You want someone to pat you on the back and give you some kind of unspecified support. We don't specialize in that here." - (You)

So on to the concrete.

Why do we role-play?
As a medium for creative endeavors. Sometimes, the point is simply to create something. It is something akin to the reason we write, especially those authors that choose to write collaboratively. While it is certainly true that writing also allows for escapism and, occasionally, singular therapy (the old addage that people write to figure out how they feel about something), for the most part, we create stories to channel our creative energies. Role-playing provides a framework in which our creativity is not singular; those gaps in our storytelling that might ruin a good story on paper can (and usually are) filled by other people. One could almost generalize that Game Masters are writers who fail in characterization (note: all generalizations are inherently false, including this one).

Fictionalized Self-Actualization As an addendum to escapism, one is capable of doing things in a role-playing construct that one is otherwise incapable or unwilling to do. I could not pack a backpack and walk to Mexico, not because it is impossible, but because I have percieved responsabilities that keep me from taking that course of action. I would like to pack a backpack and walk to Mexico, but I will not. In a role-playing game, I can. I can actualize that goal and gain a sense of accomplishment from that, in a context that is utterly removed from my real life.

Is role-playing an entity that stands on its own and is used to do these things? Or do these things compose roleplaying?

I personally think role-playing simply facilitates these things; it is a medium, occasionally an artistic medium, and as with any medium it often provides a structure open to many interpretations. One can do what one likes with role-playing, making it as thereputic, escapist, or socially reinforcing as we choose, or incorporating completely different psychological ideas. Do the ideas presented and explored in a medium compose the medium, or is the medium seperate from the ideas?

Is there a correlation between how we roleplay and why we roleplay?

Well, yeah. Achieving specific goals requires specific types of action. While there are many ways to achieve a particular goal with your gaming experience, some ways work better than others. I could, conceivably, play a 100% simulationist game that was, at its heart, group therapy; in fact, that level of external consistency could actually help in the relation of the problem to the world at large. Psychological role-playing (the sort psychologists use to help develop empathy) usually requires the participants to take on real-life personalities and attempt to understand their feelings in a real-life context. But a simulationist game lends itself most strongly in the area of escapism, maintaining external consistancy in order to help the players suspend disbelief. Concrete correlation? Not so much, but similarities can be found mostly in how we most easilly achieve the why.

If we could, isn't it interesting that "why" overlaps, and "how" traditionally is thought of as not overlapping so much?

I'm not sure I follow. I mean, I think of myself as a Sim/Nar gamer, attempting to simulate reality as much as possible within the context of the story (for both internal and external consistancy). A good friend of mine is a Sim/Gam gamer, simulating reality as best he can while attempting to win the game. I think "how" overlaps as much as "why;" as to whether there is a correlation between how and why, I think that is always the case. In attempting to reach a goal, we utilize particular behaviors that have proven successful in the past. When I try to realize my creative aspirations in role-playing, I run a fairly narrativist game. When I'm actualizing my self in a fictional context, a simulationist style is more prevailent. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't overlap; often, when attempting to realize my creative potential in a game, I am also attempting to actualize a goal through my character, making my game (as stated earlier) narrative simulationist.

Also related to the last paragraph, do we choose games to play based on why we want to play? Or do we play that way without thinking about what game we're in?

Mostly, we're drawn to those games that present themselves as fulfilling our why, not because we consciously think about it, but because those games will provide us the best opportunities to realize those gaming goals. Most of the time, we don't think about why we want to play a game, it just "clicks" with us, subconsciously presenting a solution to a gaming problem, or matching with our set gaming style (which is, as we said, is correlative to why we play). I am personally drawn to games with a strong narrativist potential, but that attempt to maintain external consistancy. I play Palladium games not because I think they are particularly well made, but the potential for good storytelling is there, with a large number of rules that are based on many real-life situations. Many games are more streamlined, more playable, but it is the storytelling within realistic boundries that attracted me to the system, and it is something I look for in most of the games I buy. I will, it should be noted, buy games that are not specifically engendered to my style of play (my most recent purchase was Little Fears, which maintains very little for the simulationist, but is heavilly narrativist), but I am much more inclined to buy games that fit my whys. When a game does not fit my personal whys, I don't rethink what I'm going for; instead, I play that game with different intentions in mind. When my group plays Vampire, I work toward different goals than when we decide to play Tribe 8, and when we play 7th Sea, it's something else entirely.

Whew. I appologize; the thoughts I had at the beginning of this post were not, neccessarilly those that I ended with. I've begun to ramble, which I think is a good sign that, for now, I should stop typing and go look at something else for a while.

Best Regards,
Kris
"Who views himself as a valuable member of the Forge community."

[ewilen]

Clinton,

I can think of a couple reasons that might be hard to categorize within the three you have so far.

1. Exhibitionism, or enjoying performing. Of course this is social (you can't perform without an audience) but the goal isn't just to hang out with friends or establish a proxy for social interaction.

2. Competing with others and with the system, not much different from wargames or other board games. In fact, there's a continuum between roleplaying games and "free kriegspiel" (wargames played with adjudication instead of rigid rules).

You could possibly group both of these under a single category of exercising one's abilities.

[John Kim]

I tackled similar issues a while back in a thread in the GNS Forum, Classifying by Social Function . 

I would cite Learning as a very important reason, meaning learning about real-world things.  This could broadly be divided into social learning (i.e. learning about your friends and about social interactions generally) and content learning (i.e. learning about cultures, history, technology, and so forth). 

Also, you suggest moral absolutism and immersion as identifiable features of escapism.  I'm not sure about the first, and I would disagree with the second.  Immersion is a tool for emotional connection, and I think can be used just as well for therapy as for escapism.  Certainly immersive games like Mellan Himmel Och Hav seem very clearly to be therapy of a sort.  Then again, I'm not terribly fond of labeling certain fiction as "escapist" in non-roleplaying context, either.  So on reflection, I think it's a more fundamental issue with the category. 

I guess I might cast this slightly differently as "supporting" versus "challenging".  So, gaming to relieve tension, provide emotional support, and deepen social bonds would be, broadly, supporting.  Whereas gaming which criticized norms and exposes interplayer conflicts would be challenging. 

[Callan S.]

I'll drag in GNS first. To me, GNS represents three big problem solving mechanisms for humans.
1. Learn about the problem
2. Use what you learned to beat the problem and win
3. If there is no clear cut win available and only shades of grey, make a call about what winning is and go live with that.

On a side note I'm pretty sure the third is mostly only done by humans.

Anyway, then you have play. Play is prepping your skills in advance, like a kitten chasing its mothers tail or pretend killing another kitten. That's escapism...even the kitten knows it's just pretend. For social animals, play also means learning to work/hunt as a group without bickering. So there's your socialising. And group therapy, because there are so many shades of grey it's crushing unless you prop each other up in making some sort of choice and affirmatively going with that.

[Larry L.]

I'm gonna side the the Learning/Enlightenment/Exploration motive. Role-playing is a fun variation on the Socratic method. A group of people can attempt to answer big questions in a "Given this situation..." framework. Which serves to explain why the bulk of games remain in fantasy or science-fiction genres. (Plato's Republic clearly contains the original exercise in world-building.) If by role-playing, I can understand even a little slice of how someone else thinks about the world, then that's really freakin' cool.

...Unless you're actually arguing that all philosophical discourse is just a form of group therapy or escapism. I suppose an argument could be made for that.

I guess my observation has been that roleplaying that exists solely to fulfill one of those three psychological needs in the players' lives tends towards the negative aspects you describe. It's hard to really have fun with a game you believe is propping up some void in someone's life.

So there, Nixon. And you smoke too much.

[ethan_greer]

I agree with everything you said. But then I'm pretty easy to get along with.

I feel that drawing links to the GNS creative agenda would be erroneous. I think these might be along the lines of the social context stuff that Ben Lehman's been going on about.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I tackled similar issues a while back in a thread in the GNS Forum, Classifying by Social Function . 

I would cite Learning as a very important reason, meaning learning about real-world things.  This could broadly be divided into social learning (i.e. learning about your friends and about social interactions generally) and content learning (i.e. learning about cultures, history, technology, and so forth). 

Also, you suggest moral absolutism and immersion as identifiable features of escapism.  I'm not sure about the first, and I would disagree with the second.  Immersion is a tool for emotional connection, and I think can be used just as well for therapy as for escapism.  Certainly immersive games like Mellan Himmel Och Hav seem very clearly to be therapy of a sort.  Then again, I'm not terribly fond of labeling certain fiction as "escapist" in non-roleplaying context, either.  So on reflection, I think it's a more fundamental issue with the category. 

I guess I might cast this slightly differently as "supporting" versus "challenging".  So, gaming to relieve tension, provide emotional support, and deepen social bonds would be, broadly, supporting.  Whereas gaming which criticized norms and exposes interplayer conflicts would be challenging. 

John,

I think I'm going to run into the same problems as the Big Model - that is, I expect the reader to strip away connotations from words. "Escapism," for example, which sounds negative, but I don't mean it that way.

I totally agree that immersion is a useful technique in using games for therapy. I do think that immersion's a process, though, not a reason. It's important when discussing the above not to put process in it except maybe to say that "reason X often is expressed in process Y," which is cool and you did. I just want to beware of saying "I do this, and it isn't there." I'm asking why we do it in the first place.

I do want to (in a friendly manner, really) take you to task over "immersion as emotional connection." While it seems off-topic, it's not, really. I've been all over immersion recently, and I'm not going to let up. I think it's great and useful, but it's being made out as lots of things it's not. Fer instance, an emotional connection. With who? An imaginary character? One must remember they made up this character. I'll give that you can connect with yourself and understand yourself better than you did before, but I'm not certain that's what you meant. Or maybe you mean connect with others in a way you normally couldn't - but that's covered above, too. But if you mean connect with someone who isn't real, that's where you and I got to get out the boxing gloves.

[John Kim]

I guess I might cast this slightly differently as "supporting" versus "challenging".  So, gaming to relieve tension, provide emotional support, and deepen social bonds would be, broadly, supporting.  Whereas gaming which criticized norms and exposes interplayer conflicts would be challenging. 

I think I'm going to run into the same problems as the Big Model - that is, I expect the reader to strip away connotations from words. "Escapism," for example, which sounds negative, but I don't mean it that way.

Independently of what you meant to say, I think that the connotations of words should express meaning rather expecting people to ignore it.  If you don't want connotations, then I think it would be better to coin new words, like "farfelism" or somesuch. 

In any case, what do you think about the functional differences of category here?  I group them differently, because to me the emotional issue of tension is pretty much hand-in-hand with other issues like anger and insecurity.  Can you suggest a reason why tension is different than other emotional or social issues? 

I do want to (in a friendly manner, really) take you to task over "immersion as emotional connection." While it seems off-topic, it's not, really. I've been all over immersion recently, and I'm not going to let up. I think it's great and useful, but it's being made out as lots of things it's not. Fer instance, an emotional connection. With who? An imaginary character? One must remember they made up this character. I'll give that you can connect with yourself and understand yourself better than you did before, but I'm not certain that's what you meant. Or maybe you mean connect with others in a way you normally couldn't - but that's covered above, too. But if you mean connect with someone who isn't real, that's where you and I got to get out the boxing gloves.

It might be time to strap on your boxing gloves.  Emotional connections are always a property of the person with emotions, not the object.  Perhaps you're confused by the word "connection" in here, but obviously these aren't real physical connections of ectoplasm or whatever.  You can love someone who doesn't love who back or possibly who doesn't even know that you exist.  Similarly, you can be "attached" to a non-living thing like a stuffed animal or blanket. 

Apropos of fiction, yes, I believe that fictional characters can elicit real emotions.  In fact, I think that this is a large part of the narrative craft -- getting people to drop their guards and feel real emotions about things which don't exist. 

[ADGBoss]

Clinton

I love the thinking but I have always felt that there is a more fundamental urge that brings people together. Well I guess I should say that there is a step between Psychological Factors and Creative Agenda, or between Why & How. In fact my personal opinion is that it comes before Why and I guess we can call it What. What is playing a game. Any game.  I think Humans are constantly measuring themselves, measuring every aspect of themselves. They find creative ways to measure their minds and bodies and maybe even their souls (if you believe in such). Creativity, escapism, and group interaction are the means to this end. They are ways in which we push our own boundaries and solve our own personal dilemmas.

So my personal idea of the Play Process is

Human Need (What) – Psychological Factors (Why) – Creative Agenda (Ron's Big Model™ or How)

However, it may be that the process is:

Why – What – How

So a person would say "I need to escape, I know I will play a game." In the second model here, all parts are likely to be conscious decisions. In the First model, I believe that What is partially an unconscious decision.

Two things I want to address before I go on:

1) Although What does infer a level of competition and I believe that this is inherent in most Humans, I believe that it is a different level of competition then you find in Gamist activity & desires. This is NOT Gamism.

2) Someone (Mike Holmes I think...) asked a long time ago in one of my Why We Fight threads if this was going to be helpful in creating / designing an RPG. At the time I was not 100% sure and doubted if knowing what truly motivated people was worth the effort. Wella s time has worn on I think that indeed knowing this or understanding why people game is very important. I have no idea if Alien races, should they exist, play RPGs. I can say that Humans do and that understanding the Human motivations can only help us be better game designers. YMMV of course.

Triumverate?

Why do all the theories come in threes? I think that one problem that has already to an extent raised it's head is trying to find correlation between this idea and GNS. This could cause confusion where there is a great deal of "Your Peanut Butter is in my Chocolate" kind of talk. I believe they are and should be two separate entities.

I am also having a bit harder of a time separating Social Interaction from Group Therapy. Are these hard and fast definitions or can there be some leakage between them? Could the three Why's even be condensed into one idea?

What are we doing? Human Measuring as RPG Play i.e. playing a game
Why are we doing it? We do it because RPG Play allows us to take a look at an aspect of ourselves or solve Human relation issues in a way that satisfies the basic Human need to compete / measure one self and to satisfy a curiosity. This curiosity could be about ideas, people, or situations.

After all, RPGs are very much about Human interaction, even solo games (if you consider them to legitimate Play experiences).

I could prolly blather on even more but I suppose I shouldn't. I am not a psychologist or sociologist and am sure I am using terms wrong etc...

Sean

[Matt Snyder]

It might be time to strap on your boxing gloves.  Emotional connections are always a property of the person with emotions, not the object.  Perhaps you're confused by the word "connection" in here, but obviously these aren't real physical connections of ectoplasm or whatever.  You can love someone who doesn't love who back or possibly who doesn't even know that you exist.  Similarly, you can be "attached" to a non-living thing like a stuffed animal or blanket. 

John, I'm with Clinton on this one. It's the old "the character doesn't exist" routine. The character is a representational idea created by human beings. It's a medium that communicates emotions and ideas between or among people. I think we're not looking hard enough if we say "But I do love Juliet!" I think we need to look harder and figure out that what we really love is the idea of Juliet and all (or some) that she contains. And, we look hard to realize that the ideas were created -- consciously or not -- by at least one other actual human being (maybe the writer, or maybe someone in your life whom Juliet reminds you of, or maybe yourself). Juliet created nothing, nor did she come up with any ideas. She's only a medium for ideas created by real people.

Similarly, we don't love the teddy bear. Our mind has fooled us into thinking we do love the teddy bear, the thing. What we love is what WE imagine the teddy bear to be; we love the ideas the teddy bear has come to represent (friendly, comforting, etc.). The teddy bear is a bunch of cotton that feels soft. But, the teddy bear possesses nothing like the human contact we wish it to possess. So, we love the idea we created in the teddy bear, not the teddy bear itself.

Unless, of course, we just love its softness. Now, I love my shoes. They're comfortable. But, clearly, that "love" is not the kind of emotional connection we're talking about.

Apropos of fiction, yes, I believe that fictional characters can elicit real emotions.  In fact, I think that this is a large part of the narrative craft -- getting people to drop their guards and feel real emotions about things which don't exist. 

That's a technique of fiction, sure. It's craft, as you say.  I'll agree with that. It doesn't say much about the point of fiction, why we want to read or write it. It doesn't explain what the emotional connection is, just how to get 'em there.