And now, Plato

[ejh]

Ceci n'est pas un Half-Orc.

[Matt Snyder]

Christopher, I'm not sure I follow you. I can't see how there would be such a chance. Can you explain what you mean? Are you seeing some way for that to happen? When I read what you've quoted from Ralph, I'm unable to find or imagine any way to make a character "do" stuff outside of what you, the player, thinks he will or should "do."

Is your concern that Ralph is applying a blanket statement to all role-playing, which you may (or may not, I dunno) see as problematic? I see Ralph's statement as a pretty safe bet, unless we have some intensely radical RPG (or near RPG) in which characters aren't controlled primarily by one person. He's saying only that "Characters will do only what you the player have them do." That seems to me very cut and dry. Yep. How else will the character do anything at all, unless another human person puts it into motion (like, say, the GM).

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Matt,

Notice the word "think would do" in the quote.

Clearly the character can't take action without the player at least speaking on  his or her behalf.  But it's the "step" of thinking (which Ralph may not consider a step, I don't know, he's not here), that makes me think he and I approach this matter differently.

Is that any clearer?

Christopher

[Gordon C. Landis]

ChristopherK, I see your question to Ralph as collapsing two things you were trying to carefully to keep seperate a little earlier - the "act of manifesting" a character and the literal portrayal of that character to the audience.  IMO, Ralph's point is unquestionable when applied to the portrayal - it's only when you consider that act of manifesting that some wiggle room emerges.

Now, I personally find that wiggle room fascinating, and no doubt a big part of what I find so cool about roleplaying.  But it lives only in a very particular place, which, I'll submit, is NOT where the recent spate of posts have been trying to focus.  In fact, I thought you were trying to point this very thing out a bit earlier . . .

Gordon

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for keeping me on my toes.

The two matters are, in my view, consecutive, and both matter.  There's the "summoning" (dear god) and the "manifesting" (into the real world, to "reveal" the character to others.)

Ralph puts a step of "thinking" right there between the two.  I don't think it has to be there.

So I'm not trying to collapse them as examine Ralph's assumption about the process.

Christopher

[Matt Snyder]

What Gordon said. I see what you're saying, but have already stated what I think about that. That is, you seem to be concerned with both the "somewhere" that "stuff" came from AND the person "through" which the "stuff" actually happens. Ralph and I aren't interested in the "somwhere" bit as it relates to this dicussion. It's an infinite pool of inspiration. Many Muses, if you will. I believe, though he'll have to speak for himself, that Ralph is speaking ONLY about the human player that makes the character construct do "stuff."

Incidentally, I don't think you and he do anything differently at all. Ralph very likely takes inspiration for his characters and their actions from as many varied "somewheres" as you do. Curiously, then, I think that both you and he are describing ALL acts of role-playing in the sense that

1) everyone gets ideas for doing stuff, whether rational thought, emotional reaction, suggestion or apparent de novo idea and THEN

2) puts that idea into action in the game in a way that

a) defines the character over time and

b) explains to everyone at the table "what's going on" in an understandable fashion.

(EDIT) I think you're putting far too much emphasis on Ralph's alleged emphasis on rational thinking. This "intermittent" step that you claim Ralph performs yet you do not is, I believe, an misinterpretation of his terminology. He's not interseted in whether the "dear god" part was rational, specific, intellectual decision making paramount to strategy or whether it's emotional goo from which crazy thoughts spring. He's only interested in "manifesting" that though (whatever it's mental origin) into actual play.

[Valamir]

Hi Ralph,

When you make this statement...

" 'When the reality of the situation is that ultimately there is no such thing "what my character would do'. There is only 'what I the player think my character would do.' "

... is there just the teensiest chance that how you manifest the act of playing a character is different than how other people manifest playing a character?

ummm, sure...which is why the very next sentence was

Whether "think" in this sense is carefully calculated rational thought, or the impulsive improv ChristopherK was referring to, is ultimately irrelevant to the point.

Now earlier you said the following:

That’s the first part of this discussion. Where are the inputs coming from? I suspect that some people think they are from a) the miasma of thought floating in the players mind, b) external, measurable inputs such as other people, a movie the player saw last week and so on. I would have to add, c) I don’t know where the fuck it comes from, because I’ve been surprised too many times. I really, truly mean that, and I apologize for the slipperiness of it as we work our way through these early years of the twenty first century.

I personally don't see any incompatability at all between C and A&B.  We are, after all, the sum total of our life experiences and sensory input.  Who knows how all of those disparate images and such combine and shatter and recombine in the miasma of our mind.  My own creative process works like this.  Whenever I'm stumped for an idea (in any creative field from writing a paper to designing a game) I let the half finished idea slip back into the depths of the ooze and the muck in my brain until days, weeks, or months later something new burbles to the surface.  "where the fuck did that come from...why didn't I think of that a month ago...?"  I'm familiar with the fickle ways of the muse.

So where do the inputs come from...they come from many places.  In acting they can come from the script and character notes.  For plays that have been run many times they might come from the performance of predecessors either in emulation, or to avoid emulation.  They may come from prompts from the director, they may come cues from twists on how other actors are portraying their character, they may come from the deep dark miasma of your mind.

The important thing is that ultimately all of that stuff gets expressed in the performance (actual play in an RPG).  And the party doing that expression is you the actor / player.

Now if by choice C above, you were really intending to imply the possibility of something more...supernatural...that some actual entity called a muse was putting things in your mind that absolutely never came from anything having to do with you at all...well, yeah that we'll have to disagree about.  It would make for an interesting topic, but ultimately no matter how foriegn the thought seems, unless one is capable of catalogueing and processing every piece of external stimuli you've ever received as well as the complete context it was received in, as well as the exact biochemical balance in you brain at the moment of stimuli....there really isn't any conclusive way to conclude that that idea (however foreign seeming) *didn't* come from you somewhere...even if you have absolutely no clue as to the convoluted process it took enroute to popping into your mind just then.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Ralph,

I am so sorry. I completely missed that sentence.  I don't know how.

My bad.

How the difference between "calcualated rational thought" and "impulsive improv" is irrelevent in a discussion is a matter I need to think more about.

Thanks,

Christopher

[Gordon C. Landis]

Christopher,

Thanks right back at ya - I think I now see just what you're getting at.  I'd say the step between is "deciding," and that you can have a preference NOT to decide i.e., to let the summoning flow directly into manifesting without a filter - but that is really just saying you "pre" decided, so the decision element is not actually removed from the process.

Which probably reflects my concerns about people using the character and/or the lack of thought/decision as a way to duck reponsibility.  

One thing that is somewhat different in an RPG character portrayal as opposed to a theatre performance is that once something is out there in the theatre, that's it.  It's pretty much set in stone (though I'm sure there are specific cases where this isn't true, it seems that way in general to me).  In an RPG - at least, in my ideal of how an RPG works - it's not actually set in stone until everyone else also agrees to it.  But maybe that belongs in a seperate thread, along with Vincent's notion of de facto shared character-influence.

Gordon

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Matt,

I think your summary of the process is excellent.

My one concern is I don't think *anyone* could disagree with it.

Thus, we've rendered the whole discussion moot.

Oops.

[Cemendur]

Surrealist role-playing- Summoning the character from surreality.
Manifesting the character in fantasy.

Playing the fantasy within reality. The character does not exist in reality. The character is manifested in the fantasy world, the world of play. The world of play, fantasy, is connected with reality through synchronicity. That is, their is an acausal principle, meaningful coincidences, connecting fantasy with reality.

Perhaps they are complementary opposing forces, like the Yin and Yang. Where surreality is symbolized by the Ying/Yang. Reality anologous to Yin and Fantasy analogous to Yang.

[Walt Freitag]

Um, say what?

The fantasy world of play (the shared imagined space) is created by actual living people communicating with each other in relatively straightforward ways: usually speech, text, body language, and manipulation of physical game tokens. So are characters, as they are one element of the shared imagined space.

I don't see what abstract (and to me, vacuously vague) concepts like synchronicity, acausality, and yin and yang have to do with anything.

- Walt

[Jason Lee]

I think the analogy of a computer program works well in explaining the procedures of an imaginary construct, but it's still just an analogy.  The logic sets the human brain uses are fundamentally different - how these procedures are created, integrated, modified and stored is different enough to break the analogy.  

Now if by choice C above, you were really intending to imply the possibility of something more...supernatural...that some actual entity called a muse was putting things in your mind that absolutely never came from anything having to do with you at all...well, yeah that we'll have to disagree about.  It would make for an interesting topic, but ultimately no matter how foriegn the thought seems, unless one is capable of catalogueing and processing every piece of external stimuli you've ever received as well as the complete context it was received in, as well as the exact biochemical balance in you brain at the moment of stimuli....there really isn't any conclusive way to conclude that that idea (however foreign seeming) *didn't* come from you somewhere...even if you have absolutely no clue as to the convoluted process it took enroute to popping into your mind just then.

With no scientific proof, I believe one of the key differences between the kind of procedures produced by a computer and the procedures produced by thought is mutation.  I doesn't hurt my head too much to think of the muse as a mutation and evolution process.  So, the way I see it inspiration can spring from nowhere...well, sort of.  A mutation can be random, it doesn't have to be based on what a person has experienced or really anything else calculable.

[John Kim]

I'd say the step between is "deciding," and that you can have a preference NOT to decide i.e., to let the summoning flow directly into manifesting without a filter - but that is really just saying you "pre" decided, so the decision element is not actually removed from the process.

Which probably reflects my concerns about people using the character and/or the lack of thought/decision as a way to duck reponsibility.

Well, my counter-concern is that this desire to place blame amounts to wanting to micromanage the creative process.  For example, suppose my character does something which you don't like.  You then say "Hey John, why did Arabella snub Dr. Westbrook?"  I say, "Er...  because that's what she wanted to do."  You claim that I am dodging responsibility by pointing to the character, but that is the closest answer I can come to the truth.  I'm not saying that I was possessed by some supernatural power.  I am saying that there is no tidy rational explanation outside of the mental construct that I have for Arabella.  

If someone is in certain creative states, she can't come up with a rational "why" answer for everything she comes up with.  In fact, trying to do so may be destructive to the creative process.  Often, it seems to me, people calling for "responsibility" want to have a rational, pat answer for why -- and furthermore expect that the player can make arbitrary changes to his creative process to match what they want.

On the one hand, I think there definitely do need to be limits.  I have seen players do things, particularly in live-action games, which cross the line of what I consider acceptable.  On the other hand, I have also seen people who try to reduce everything to a reasoned process in order to place blame.

[Mike Holmes]

It's precisely the frame of mind we're talking about here.

When I listen to music, I can do so analytically, or deconstructively, or self-reflectively, or just let most of the conscious mental processes drop away, and just be carried away by the music. Each of these frames of mind renders the experience of listening to the music a different experience.

Role-playing is the same. If I address the idea of decision making for a character as one in which I am an author dictating the actions of a character, this is a very different frame of mind than thinking instinctively as though I were the character (even though we all know I'm not).

The character fucking exists.

If I have love for somebody are you going to tell me that that love doesn't exist because it has no external decision making ability? Yes, that love, and yes, that character, are all part of me. But they are things that don't have to exist, and only do because of circumstance. We say, "I have a character" and then you say, "Ah, but the character does not exist." Of course he does, he just doesn't have any will outside your own.

I totally agree that the character makes no decisions without my making them exist. But that act of creation on my part, as Chris says, is not inconsequential. In fact, it's the point of play. And it can be accomplished in many ways, and with many mind sets.

More importantly, however, no matter what you believe about existence, the fact remains that I, the player, will feel differently about the act of creation if I do it in a more observably (to myself if nobody else) authorial way, than if I try to put myself into a state of mind where I delude myself for a moment that I am the character.

So existence doesn't matter for characters, it's only about how the player feels in creating the character. When a player says, "I'm doing what the character would do." they're actually saying, "I'm putting my mind in a frame where the decisions that I make feel as though I'm simply chanelling the character."

Note that actual channeling is not neccessary (and ranting that it's impossible is missing the point, as Chris points out). Just the feeling is all that's required. And that feeling can't be had when in the authorial frame of mind. They're antithetical, unfortunately, for the people who produce the feeling in this manner. I won't even argue that other's don't get it when using Authorial modes. Perhaps they do. But that doesn't mean it works for us. Sorry.

I won't get into any arguments about whether or not it makes sense to play this way in terms of overall play, because it's become very political. I'm an ecumenicist, and always have been. As such, I say live and let live. There's nothing about this play style that's inherently problematic if the group agrees to it's use (the same stipulation that applies to all other modes of play).

Mike