Self-Revelation in Role-Playing (or Educational RPGs)

[Daredevil]

This thread came to my mind after I tied a few danglings threads together. First there was this thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5118 which was actually a follow-up to http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5031 and then this thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5374).

The thread about mysticism/initiation sparked something within me, but I couldn't quite articulate it at that point. I continued to mull over it, though. Finally, it was Fang's warning about schizoid behaviour that brought up the following thinking (as I started to ponder if there really is a schizoid-related component in role-playing behaviour -- albeit a more healthy one).

A while back, I was introduced to an article by Herminia Ibarra (Harvard University) titled "Provisional Selves: Experimenting with Image and Identity in Professional Adaptation." Instead of describing this at length I'll quote it from the beginning:

This article describes how people adapt to new roles by experimenting with provisional selves that serve as trials for possible but not yet fully elaborated professional identities. Qualitative data collected from professionals in transition to more senior roles reveal that adaptation involves three basic tasks: (1) observing role models to identify potential identities, (2) experimenting with provisional selves, and (3) evaluating experiments against internal standards and external feedback. Choices within tasks are guided by an evolving repertory that includes images about this kind of professional one might become and the styles, skills, attitudes, and routines available to the person for constructing those identities.

It is my suggestion the premise of that article is potentially very relevant to role-playing activity. There seems to be a component in role-playing that is a sort of initiation into a greater self-understanding, exactly by the process of developing alternative selves (characters) which are subsquently observed and evaluated and discarded or indeed potentially even taken into the fold of your person.

I am not saying this is what is happening in every game, but that it may be case many times and that it may be an actual goal of play (while certainly not the only goal of play) for some people within the role-playing community. Do the characters we play in the games teach us about ourselves or about various situations? I feel that this is often strongly happening. This is related to what the Forge concepts Exploration and the Narrativist Premise are about (see http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=56050#56050 for a thread on my thoughts on the ramifications of this idea on the GNS paradigm).

Considering the mystic/initiatory side of this issue (which I don't want to dig too deeply into to avoid the looming arguments, but I feel like making at least a nod in its direction considering that I sense a relevance to those threads), one could perhaps argue that there is a lack of true intent in the practisioner (or role-player, in this instance) that separates this played experience from an actual initiatory experience. However, one of the common themes (in varying manifestations) mystics often contemplate are the inherent dualisms of life and especially the tension between being an observer to life and being a participant in activity (identity split from the essential core unity of existance, the contemplative hermit vs. the active mystic fulfilling a social role, etc). This is a dynamic mirrored by the IC/OOC split.

I feel that the separation of IC and OOC provides a clear dividing line for a healthy excursion into this behaviour. Within game, you experience these issues and consider the characters depicted to be truly in existance and outside of the game there is a clear distance between these fictions. In essence, a player in the game is both within and outside of the gameworld, but I don't think there is any unhealthy association between the two realms.

Joachim Buchert

[Le Joueur]

Just to clarify, what I was talking about 'back there' was when the idea that role-playing game characters have their own independant motivations (like when you, the player, leave the room) and are not bound by your descretion in playing them and you do not have the ability to 'step away' from that, it begins to enter into the realm of mental illness.  This has only superficial relationship to the excellent point raised above.  Simplistically, it isn't schizoid if you can 'walk away.'

Besides, what you're describing sounds exactly the way I've heard child's play being described.  And that's childsplay.

Fang Langford

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Any social, leisure activity reveals ourselves to ourselves and to others.

Pickup volleyball, martial arts tournaments, classes in salsa dancing, striking up a conversation on the train, book-reading clubs ...

... whether formalized or spontaneous, competitive or non-competitive, imaginative or activity-based, "about" something or "just" experiential, highly demanding or not at all demanding, etc, etc.

I don't see how role-playing has any unique features in this regard. Sure, we find out more about ourselves and one another, new ideas get prompted, and relationships get formed or altered.

Joachim, is there some aspect to your topic that I'm missing?

Best,
Ron

[greyorm]

Ron,

I'm going to field this one from my experience: RPGs do it better.
Yes, you can learn about yourself playing volleyball, participating in martial arts tournaments, taking up classes in salsa dancing, striking up a conversation on the train, attending book-reading club meetings and so forth.

Differently from the above, however RPGs are more highly focused on the pyschological/mental intersection in such a way that they point naturally to examination of such and, in fact, encourage it in a manner that other social, leisure activities do not.

The likelihood of self-discovery/self-revelation is, honestly, higher in the RPG activity than it is in more social or physical leisures, where you can often avoid or dismiss psychological stresses or the internalization of conflicting viewpoints with your own.

RPGs can break the safety bubble of personal belief by allowing the ego to transcend itself momentarily, providing a glimpse of the world that does not have to be in-line with the individual's own beliefs about such; as well, they allow exploration of situations that do not occur in real life, or occur rarely, and give the chance to develop a personal understanding of such situations and highlight our reaction to them.

Yes, all this can happen in the other venues you describe, but not as commonly or as easily because that is not encouraged by the activity's very nature.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Joachim,

There seems to be a component in role-playing that is a sort of initiation into a greater self-understanding, exactly by the process of developing alternative selves (characters) which are subsquently observed and evaluated and discarded or indeed potentially even taken into the fold of your person.

Its not directly about mysticism, but you might appreciate this thread: http://indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=1095">on making the same character over and over.

Paul

[M. J. Young]

This echoed in my mind of thoughts I was expressing a year or so ago. I remembered reading something about teenagers using MUD/MUSH/MUX/MMORPG games to play cross-gender roles as a way of exploring their own sexual identities in a safe environment. I've played cross-gender quite a few times, and have discussed that. My eldest sons play female characters in RPGs and MUDs quite a bit (and have broken a few hearts, I think, when they inform other players that they are in fact guys).

At the time, I wrote an article for Gaming Outpost entitled http://www.gamingoutpost.com/GL/index.cfm?action=ShowProduct&CategoryID=54411&ProductID=56754&publisherid=54849">Game Ideas Unlimited: Flirting, in which I talked about using role playing game characters as a way of exploring issues of who we are and what we fear and what we might become. The title came from the idea of "flirting with death", and the observation that teenage boys are often intrigued by death:

They take risks, challenging death, feeling the limits of their own mortality.  They drive too fast; they get involved in dangerous sports.  Those who don't do these things often write morbid poetry and lyrics and stories, watch horror movies and action flicks, collect medieval and modern weaponry.  There is a very real sense in which we males flirt with death, and particularly so in our teens.  Role playing games, at least those which are deadly to characters, allow us vicariously to touch death, almost to die, to die--but to do so safely, knowing that even when our character dies, we may continue.

The article went on to consider the cross-gender issue, and the exploration of who we are, what we like about ourselves, what we don't like about ourselves, what we might become instead.

For better or worse, you would need a ($1) Gaming Outpost subscription to read that article (and most of the near one hundred others I wrote there). However, I hit some similar ideas in a monthly series for the Christian Gamers Guild, near the same time, http://www.geocities.com/christian_gamers_guild/chaplain/faga014.html">Faith and Gaming: Characters, in which the discussion focuses more on the idea of becoming someone else during play, and so gaining a better understanding of others. That is, I might play a woman because I wonder whether I'm gay, or I might play a woman because I wonder what it's like to have to deal with the kinds of prejudices and issues that face women. This article mentions the aphorism about walking a mile in someone else's moccasins, about understanding others by trying to experience what they've experienced, and this, too, is an exploration of who we are and how we are different from other people.

Please note that I'm not using the word "exploration" in this context in exactly the same way it's used in game theory; I just don't have a better word for talking about this sort of intense self-discovery.

I also think that in playing Multiverser, because it is an I-game, there is a great deal of this examination of who we are as we try to express it. In fact, just tonight on the http://www.gamingoutpost.com/forums/index.cfm?Action=ShowForum&ccurrentforum=83">Multiverser Forum at Gaming Outpost there was a new thread about the ways our characters react to separation from home, and whether that expresses how we would actually react in the same situation or not. I think having a character do what you would never do tells you as much or more about yourself as having one do what you would always do. I do think that role playing encourages this sort of introspection, even if a lot of players don't find it.

I also think that role playing games are intensely social activities, as they involve people in interacting with each other in the creation of imaginary people who are also interacting with each other, thus requiring that the real people interact in determining how the imaginary people interact, exploring relationships and interaction on two connected levels at once. I've thought about this enough times I should probably try to organize my thoughts and write something concrete about it, but I'm not certain how much more there is to the idea than that.

--M. J. Young