Young Children: Actual role-play, Actual Play?

[Calithena]

- Anyone have any suggestions on helping them get used to sticking to this one mode?

My friend Malcolm recounts the moment he got hooked on D&D. The DM said: "You're an assassin!" while handing him a character sheet, and Malcolm was like "whoa, I'm an assassin", interpreting himself as the character.

Now, I don't know if you want a seven year old to fantasize about being an assassin just yet, but I think it's a pretty good method: getting people to think of themselves as the character in the story. "I'm a cat, a wizard, a knight, a pirate (arr!)", whatever it is, gives a certain kind of focus to their imagining. Or can. Probably this won't mean as much to some people as to others, but I thought it was worth suggesting.

[komradebob]

For myself and my daughter, the one player with one character idea never developed. She simply would never accept it, and so our games tend more toward collab story creation games. That probably isn't a big surprise, since I tend o GM more than play a character in rpgs and well, acorns and oaks, so...

I think kids also realize that roleplay type games allow freedom to be something else more honestly than adults often do. Sometimes, they're an excuse to be a bit "naughty" even. My daughter certainly enjoys having horrible bad guys threatening horrible things in our games. When she was younger, any number of hapless characters were gruesomely consumed while she was in her "angry were-tiger" phase. ( She was shocked when I told her about WtA. Clearly, in her opinion, WW designers were clueless about the really important lycanthropes!).

One other observation, Threnody seems to do better when I act more as a facillitator than a story director. Really, most games I'm only really there to help when action lags or to act as a sounding board. How much does that match up with everyone else's experience?

Bryan_T:

If you get a chance to play Shadows, that one is a kick as well, although it probably plays much better with a minimum of three players.

[David "Czar Fnord" Artman]

I knew I rushed that post... I will try to be more clear (and eliminate the trivial, semantic confusions).

...making the rules of the play more formalised to give more structure to the play experience. I think this is where it leaves the realm of make-believe play and becomes a game. I am particularly interested in enabling two things: creating possibilities to address premise in some form in order to deal with theme, however basic this might be, and using rules to help the children create their own stories.

(All emphasis is mine.)

This is the principle point onto which I latched, and I began to espouse (dictate) terms that might help narrow down what facets of existing child play can be used and what would be "rejected" as not germane to Richard's goals of "role playing" as emphasized in the above quote.

Thus, I proposed dichotomies between (a) originality v. re-enacting and (b) active v. descriptive. I then got onto my soap box and proclaimed that re-enacting is not role playing. I still do not think that it is: that's what makes LARP a game and Civil War re-enactment a drama. In my own (limited: only a year as a teacher, no kids) experience, I have noticed that younger children rarely play with originality (as I use the term above): they typically are re-enacting things they have seen or heard, even parrotting them line by line. Psychologists call this "role playing" and love to use this behavior as a way to gain insights into the child's home life, fears, etc. But that's not what gamers typically mean by role playing--in fact, such play style is usually considered "derivative" or "copycat" or just plain lame. Who wants to "role play" with a player who's every utterance is a line from Lord of the Rings?

Likewise, I thought it worthwhile to clarify whether Richard seeks active play or descriptive play. As others have noted, younger children comfortably switch back and forth between the two mode of that dichotomy. And both are valid in role playing: they are the Techniques whereby a player assumes a Stance, in Forge terminology. Now, after further discussion, it appears that descriptive play is the goal, not some kind of live-action game with rules to mediate credability (i.e. How To Play "Let's Pretend"). Further, from the above quote, it is clear he wants any rule mechanisms (System) to reveal theme and enable originality. While that can be accomplished in active play modes, it's more likely that the System itself will operate descriptively, at those levels of originality and creativity. Sure, the kids in game will take on the roles and "act" like their character (when they "get it"); but Richard's playstyle goal (unabashed Narrativism) is usually rife with descriptive aspects: Setting preparation, Situation and Stakes negotiations, relationships of characters and protagonists to Theme, and probably much more (chime in, NAR players!).

Apparently, I didn't make myself clear--or, if I did, folks generally disagree.

komradbob: Do you still disagree, or is your disagreement semantic, or have I cleared things up?

Calithena:

I think it's actually a very important transitional case between child's play and traditional art forms like painting and poetry. Which would be kind of neat, to have a persuasive argument that RPGs were a philosophically important art form.

I disagree: I think role playing as an art form stands alone, neither precursor nor antecedent, and it is certainly not merely important by virtue of the way in which it enables 'maturation' to another art forms. Where's your Gamer Pride? ;-)

If anything, its practitioners usually synthesize multiple arts, crafts, and sciences into their overall role playing: visual arts, acting, writing, costuming, rhetoric, logic, mathematics, psychology, sociology, biology, etc, etc. How could something so clearly combinatorial, creative, complex, and emergent be only a gateway to a minuscule subset of its techniques? Bah, I say! Picasso might not be able to role play a one-dimensional character, and Lawrence Olivier probably could not make up a simple dungeon crawl adventure. (NOTE: The artists were chosen at random; fans may sit back down and insert their most hated artist in place of these beloved; it's just an illuminating metaphor!)

Further:

...an adjunct/extension/improvement to something they already do. Selling someone tools for make-believe games is a great idea with all kinds of possible applications.

This might be true for young children, but I can assure you that most children over about 10 definitely are not spending much time in the rules-constrained, descriptive mode, originality of play that defines (most of) role playing. That's why they initially struggle with understanding Stances and Systems, why they get picked on by their peers, and why parents start to wonder at "odd" behavior. And that continues until some time late in high school/early in college. By that point, there has been enough clique formation and, further, more children are in similar modes of activity for their chosen arts, that it is less jarring behavior and less confusing to learn/adopt. To put it simply, once older children have seen drama and actors and student actors--and don't snicker at them or stare baffled by their oddity--gamers don't seem to be behaving all that strangely.

Now, perhaps on some tautological level, the mud pies making has "rules". But it falls rather short of all the aspects of Agenda, Rewards, and System. Unless you are going to see "every problem as a nail," with your role playing hammer, you have to accept that not every instance of kids imaginative play is role playing or a game. If you're a game theorist, EVERYTHING is a game, at some level of interaction: that's your occulus by which you view the world and systematize the interactions you see. But that doesn't mean my deciding what checking account to open is a "role playing game" (at least, not in a meaningful way on the Forge).

Pandelume: I think ours is a semantic "disagreement". Again, many of the words being used in this thread have rather specific meanings, on the Forge. By your example of the children's play corner and their style of play, if you claim that to be role playing then so is drama of every kind. So is playing with building toys. SO is telling a story about what Mommy said to Daddy last night. So is arguments about whether Superman would beat up Hulk.

I just don't think that's what we mean, here on the Forge, nor do I think that's what the average gamer means.

More to the point, having read the follow-ups, I do not think that gets Richard closer to the System for Narrativist play that he seeks: a structured rule system well suited to young children that encourages originality and maintains focus on theme rather than simulation or competition.

Bryan:

Is playing one character in a story (having to drive that character, but not driving the rest of the world) something that most kids are comfortable with?  When I see kids play just with themselves it seems they don't stay in this one mode much (then again, I'm ususally seeing play with my son, so I could have a very skewed sample).  Could this mode be a barrier to getting them to role play?

Not at all: in fact, you are merely talking about assignment of credability in the rule system, and there are many games that allow for flexability in that regard--even to the point of total empowerment (within the rule mechanisms) to control the entire imaginative space. Further, some games use BOTH modes at once! They might have a "setup" stage, followed by a "play" stage in the game system; and the former can be god-like GM power, while the latter is the most System-constrained, narrow empowerment for credability you've ever seen. In the same game. :-)

Anyone have any suggestions on helping them get used to sticking to this one mode?

First suggestion: don't. Find Narrativist games. Find games in which GM power is apportioned according to some System, and all the players "get a turn." Young children have remarkably flexable minds: let them enjoy them for as long as possible, before public schools, society in general, and the brute laws of physics force them into a narrowly constrained role--with almost no credability--for the rest of their lives.

Now, if you really want to ask how to get kids to share credability, or to respect the results of another kid's credability input, that will take a game that clearly systematizes that empowerment and exchange of control and the persistence of past assertions. In essence, you'd want to find a game that teaches them to share, not just items and objects FOR play, but the results and conclusions OF play.

Second suggestion (if you just gotta have them stay In Character): try to watch some TV--or better still, live drama--with the child and occasionally ask him or her things like "Why didn't Oggy Doggy just tell the cartoonist to erase the bad man chasing him?" or "Why does Hamlet fight with a sword, when he could run off-stage and get a gun from his dressing room?" The kid will look at you like you're an idiot, and explain why it would OBVIOUSLY be inappropriate. Then use that explanation later, at the game table. Simple, really. :-)

Third suggestion: negative punishment. Take something away from his character, each time he breaks role and assumes too much credability. Tell him it's the price of not staying in his own character's head and for taking control of the world. (In essence, you will be strapping a simple System onto whatever game you are playing, using that game's Reward system to drive a credability assignment system.) This one won't be fun or clever--it's a sort of brute-force-if-all-else-fails fallback--but he might get the point.

All the refutations and redirects above aside... Richard, are you being served? Do you have further clarifying or redirecting questions, or is this thread roaming out of control, or have you pretty much figured the answer to what started it?
David

[komradebob]

David:
I definitely understand better where you're coming from! I have no further semantic issues.

On the downside, I think I disagree even more than before :( . Sorry.

[Richard Campbell]

David, I understand your view that re-enacting is not role-playing, however, as I am trying to see this all from the point of view of enabling young children to become able to role-play as an adult gamer might understand it, I would argue that re-enacting would be a necessary part of becoming a role-player. Gamers and young children get their ideas from somewhere – and for children I think this re-enacting is an integral part of learning. This is the primary reason why the pretend play area is in the classroom. I think it is role-play, taking on adult-world roles to make sense of them that is the educational reason why the area exists in the classroom, just as you describe a psychologist's view of a child's role-playing, David. What I am asserting, however, is that this 'life-role rehearsal' play is very closely related to our understanding of role-play and can easily be manoeuvred in that direction. I think this type of play, explicitly presented as 'a game' can have an educationally valid use, and in addition, is also the focus of my interest – which you very succinctly summarised better than I could have done:

'a structured rule system well suited to young children that encourages originality and maintains focus on theme rather than simulation or competition.'

I think the links posted right at the start of the thread were most useful in this regard. I do think, however, that I am after something that might well be very difficult to get to – a system even more useable by pre-school children, and one which fulfils David's definition above. I do think that using inspiration from sources children have encountered, whether these are books, TV, or adult's behaviour is a necessary stage. I imagine role-players still get much of their inspiration like that – we have just learned to adapt our sources more than a child. My experience is that yes, pretend play can be based largely on regurgitating what has been seen or heard elsewhere but I don't think it is exclusively. For example, my son loves Charlie and the Chocolate Factory inspired (I think mainly) by the spectacle he saw in the film. His pretend play has for a long while centred on rebuilding Willy Wonka's factory with building blocks, Playmobil and other children's toys. Often he will re-enact the film, or parts of the film, at other times he will take the outline of the plot and add his own scenes and have his play-figures talk to each other sometimes very much in-character but not related to the events of the film – his imagination takes over. I am not suggesting this is role-play but it is the root that I am trying to grab onto to encourage children of around his age (four, five and six) to move to creating stories. I think a mixture of play styles is predominant and you can't say children most often re-enact what they have seen around them. I think its one facet of their play.

I have tried as far as I am able to stick tightly to Forge vocabulary with reference to the glossary article in particular. I may not quite have a grasp of all the terms, but I am attempting to stick as closely to the meanings used here as I can. Returning again to the example I game of play in my classroom which I believe to be role-playing, I still will argue that it was moving in that direction. The children were not re-enacting, they were involved in a game which involved both myself and them having control over – they could take control of in-game narration and did so (albeit in a very limited way) and we had some kind of agreement that this was a game in the way that I was obviously narrating some events. I would argue strongly that this made my example, and other instances of the same kind of play very much not drama but something very much on the way to being a role-playing game.

All of this, for me at least, has been helpful. I feel I am thrashing out in my head what is possible for young children to achieve. I think the discussion so far has brought up some good material for investigation. I don't think it is roaming out of control – actually I think it has stayed pretty much on-topic right through! My intention was to bring up some actual play examples, and I have not really managed to do that, but the examples offered of Gloranthan role-playing and Star Wars and then the Village Game have really given me inspiration to introduce system to the children more explicitly. I have to say I am clear (I hope) on what you mean, David, but like Robert don't agree. You have helped me get the difficult ideas straight about what role-playing means to children, or what we mean role-playing is in relation to what they actually do. I think that role-play can mean children taking on adult roles but it can also mean taking on roles and acting in character. And maybe even making that into a story based on their own experiences.

[David "Czar Fnord" Artman]

Thank you for replying, Richard. I think you have what you need already (from this particular thread), but I would like to hit some high notes of your reply, if I may impinge upon your generosity and do so without seeming argumentative.

...from the point of view of enabling young children to become able to role-play as an adult gamer might understand it, I would argue that re-enacting would be a necessary part of becoming a role-player. Gamers and young children get their ideas from somewhere – and for children I think this re-enacting is an integral part of learning.

Fair enough. I can readily concur with the last sentence above: it is a sort of "cognitive imitation" that parallels physical imitation as a learning mechanism.

Yet, I think you concur some with me, as revealed in the term "becoming." Does that not, indirectly, indicate that re-enactment/imitation isn't quite at the level of sophistication in role playing that you seek to encourage? (I.E. Wouldn't you have used the term "being" if you saw an equivalence between imitation and role playing?) I'm not trying to maneuver you around, using your words, but I think that reveals something that is more than merely semantic.

What I am asserting, however, is that this ‘life-role rehearsal’ play is very closely related to our understanding of role-play and can easily be manoeuvred in that direction. I think this type of play, explicitly presented as ‘a game’ can have an educationally valid use,

Oh, absolutely. Everything I know about theology, I learned from D&D. :-) (While I am being a bit tongue-in-cheek, I have no doubt that thinking about D&D's alignment system and god write-ups started me on the path of philosophy, which is still my avocation today).

I think what you want to use as a good criterion for selecting a System, then, is one that can prompt the transition ("manoeuver") of which you speak. Perhaps a System which closely couples its Reward mechanism to originality and creativity, and has disincentives to derivative or "copycat" play? (At first blush, I wonder how such a System would distinguish valid causal conclusions--which can seem "derivative" in the context of originality--from imitation. One wouldn't want the Reward/Punishment system to discourage making logical connections or seeing the consequences of events, because they are not "creative" enough for Reward....)

I do think, however, that I am after something that might well be very difficult to get to – a system even more useable by pre-school children, and one which fulfils David’s definition above.

Do not be discouraged. Their youth will curtail some aspects of System; for example, you won't want to use a System which requires complex handling of randomizers or resources. You may also not want one which leaves too much credability control in their hands: that's requires a delicate balancing act between structure (to get at Theme, their must be some persistence and focus) and empowerment (which lets their originality and creativity loose but can be the bane of structure).

...his imagination takes over. I am not suggesting this is role-play but it is the root that I am trying to grab onto to encourage children of around his age (four, five and six) to move to creating stories.

Hehe... and I would say he has just hit on "true" role playing. He has taken the plot as a constraint--his System, if you will--and is creatively recombining elements, extending the behaviors of characters beyond what he's seen them actually do in the movie, and even speaking in their voices (acting), to drive his "own" plot within the overarching plot of the movie that he's elected (even if unconsciously) to conform to. You have Agenda, System, Setting, and Techniques. That's a role playing game (even if a solo one, in this instance). :-)

I think a mixture of play styles is predominant and you can’t say children most often re-enact what they have seen around them. I think its one facet of their play.

Conceded. I have limited experience, and can only go on that and my own youth. Rest assured I intended no indictment of children's activities, with my (semantic) distinctions.

The children were not re-enacting, they were involved in a game which involved both myself and them having control over – they could take control of in-game narration and did so (albeit in a very limited way) and we had some kind of agreement that this was a game in the way that I was obviously narrating some events. I would argue strongly that this made my example, and other instances of the same kind of play very much not drama but something very much on the way to being a role-playing game.

I misunderstood. I did not realize you were guiding the narrative aspects of their play--I presume even presenting kernels of conflict or decision gateways--and thought they were squarely centered in re-enactment mode. In that case, you had a game: you were the System (and likely the Reward mechanism, through your encouragements), your guidance provided (some) Agenda, and the conclusion was not predetermined but was amorphous (not critical, but distinguishes a game from a cooperative writing project).

All of this, for me at least, has been helpful. I feel I am thrashing out in my head what is possible for young children to achieve. I think the discussion so far has brought up some good material for investigation. I don’t think it is roaming out of control – actually I think it has stayed pretty much on-topic right through!

Then I am glad I interjected. I was afraid I was being the "terminology troll" on this thread; it is good that working through these distinctions has helped you determine what you need in a System.

I have to say I am clear (I hope) on what you mean, David, but like Robert don’t agree. You have helped me get the difficult ideas straight about what role-playing means to children, or what we mean role-playing is in relation to what they actually do. I think that role-play can mean children taking on adult roles but it can also mean taking on roles and acting in character. And maybe even making that into a story based on their own experiences.

Fair enough. As long as the net result is that you are better able to gauge a game (System, Setting) in terms of its utility for small children and for evoking Theme.

But terminology (in my last ditch defense) is supposed to be a social agreement, the better to efficiently communicate. Thus, I think it useful (for you, at least here at The Forge) to be careful in the use of terms that this community has carefully... uh, forged... over the years. An example I use, when I try to encourage friends to get onto this site and learn from it, is that The Forge is like the first wave of scientists entering what was a "soft" or artistic field. (Much like, say, the first literary theorists descending upon fiction and giving birth to many of our modern critical tools.) The nomenclature/lexicon is solid and functional, and it eliminates a lot of confusion when properly employed.

I am glad we could help. I think that you would do well, now, to attempt a poll thread, to ask for "light handling, narrativist" Systems for your kids. This is one case where that type of (normally disdained) thread would be a good application of The Forge: you will get a HUGE list of useful examples--or ready-to-run Systems--that you can peruse to find the best balance for your particular user base and educational goals.

Or we can enjoy further discussions of general theory. ;-) As you can see, I am content with that (part of why that 10 year old D&D player that I was now holds a BA in Philosophy). :-)

Yours;
David

[komradebob]

Okay, so we've all got slightly different preferences- no big deal!

Is anyone interested in brainstorming some technique level stuff that Richard could use with the situation he has to get some good roleplaying in with the kids?