Class in RPG Theory

[Mike Holmes]

Best for last...

On 2001-09-17 05:27, contracycle wrote:
All in all, theres a fair amount of game-orient science around these days, and I'm confident a lot of it can be well exploited;

Yep, the groundwork has been there for a while now.

the voluntary submission of the actual personality to an artifical personality in order to vicariously experience the inputs, prompts and strokes experienced by a human in a radicaly different context to our own

The dialectic description of RPGs at last!

I suppose some of my reading in this direction is what prompts me to see "premises" emerging of their own accord from the game context, much as drama theory recognises that games properly occur in a material, dialectically-realised circumstance derived from the history that lead to this moment; no sequence of transactions can be syudied in isolation from their context.

Subject for a great new thread, I'd think.

Equally, it is worth bearing in mind that while it might be "only a game" in a truly objective sense, the very act of constructing an internally consistent environment, with plausible and consistent strokes and counter-strokes passing between "people" (PC's and NPC's) within that environment, does generate a suprisisingly persistant perception of the "reality" of that environment.

Again, another whole thread. Too much here not to break it down some. But I like the direction that your analysis is going. Here we have the basis for a couple more classes I think. And this is where I'm going, in general with all this. I think that there is easily enough to cover enough classes to at least minor in Game Science, and we haven't even considered board games, sports, etc. It doesn't have to be specific to RPGs.

Mike

[ This Message was edited by: Mike Holmes on 2001-09-17 13:11 ]

[Paul Czege]

Hey Tor,

This semester I'm teaching a course on RPG theory, centering around GNS.

Whatever happened with this? Did the class go the full semester? I kind of thought we might see a few of your students appear on The Forge.

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Paul,

I think Tor might be busy with holidays and moving and so forth, so I'll tell you what I know.

They did indeed finish out the class, and at least one student has joined us at the Forge.

Best,
Ron