Be sombody.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Another example is groups who struggle to gain their Holy Grail of play -- frex, that moment of Narrativism they once stumbled across -- by using mechanics from traditional play and traditional styles are falling into this hole. They're thinking, "This is what role-playing is about, so we do it this way. But that cool moment of play I experienced/want to experience isn't happening (again)! Time to tweak the rules, again."

This bit is bloody profound, especially the tweaking the rules bit. This would explain why so many roleplayers are also armchair game designers and why they designs basically boil down to doin D&D (or some other game system) 'better.' Compare the standard homebrewed D&D knock-off with, say, Donjon which turns up the volume on the dungeon crawl style of play.

Bloody profound. Profound and bloody.

[Mike Holmes]

Heh, Raven, when we were putting Universalis together, this was a concern of mine. Note that Ralph's secondary label is "the Game of Unlimited Stories" not "the Unlimited Role-Playing Game of Stories". We still refer to it as an RPG occasionally, but that is definitely, in some senses, inaccurate. As such we try to indicate to people what it cannot do as well, and one of those things is "immersion" or whatever.

Strangely, some oddballs like myself can actually immerse in the actor stance way ina game like Universalis. But I can understand how some would not. As Mike's wife says, the thrill that Universalis is designed to give is much more like writing than escapism. That said, I think that it's not precisely like writing (amongst other things it's collaborative), and as such it's unique from writing and could appeal to even the most overloaded writer. Still, I can also understand where it might not appeal.

Or, rather, RPGs do provide a unique opportunity to feel deepy involved in exploring. As such, I think that there is a basic appeal for some people to allow that part of RPGs to come forth. Fortunately for them, there are a plethora of games that feed this need. As to whether the one is more "innate" than the other, I think that they are probably evenly split. Consider that the Gamists are also "Authors", not "Actors" for purpose of this discussion.


As I've said before to Paul Czege, some of us are Michaelangello's and others of us are Columbus's. This dichotomy of urge goes far beyond RPGs.

Mike