How well this'll get articulated, who can say.

Do you think that it can get to the point where, instead of wanting to play a game so as to enter a tolkeen world, or a tolkeen like world, or a die hard sky scraper or star wars world or something else we think is so wicked shit, you end up roleplaying to enter roleplaying?

It's subversive. Possibly the most clear example are the people who wanna do an 'old school' game. They may have run the game back in the day so they could kill some orc just like Aragorn (sp?). Now they wanna do it for the feel of roleplay back then.

That's cool as a concious descision. But what if your goal is slowly subverted. Suppose you've wanted to enter into some literary work to game, nar or sim there. THEN, after awhile you pick up an RPG and it has a cool world and you want to enter that. Then as GM or player you start refining your delivery of a game, refining the art of roleplay....though you do so with the thought in mind of getting into that world better. You focus more and more on the roleplay so as to improve things, or your encouraged by the systems intricate design. You might even start thinking about game design. Alot.

Pretty soon the word roleplay encapsulates a bunch of rules working, social contract forging, and a whole bunch of other ra ra ra that I either can't describe shortly or could devote chapters to describing.

Pretty soon, instead of roleplaying some Tolkeen knock off, your roleplaying some roleplaying. And isn't that a downward spiral? The systematic understructure of RP is abstraction. What happens when you abstract abstraction?When you figure out rough ways of doing something which itself is rough. Its like photocopying a photocopy, fading each time.

I mean, when your thinking the technicalities more than thinking 'It'd be so kewl to swing a lightsaber', whats going on? The technicalities of delivering content are coming before content itself.

It sounds wack, but hack master is a deliberate example of this sort of thing. But really its also a reflection of something that is real, don't you think?

(I'm going to try to understand what you are saying here, so if I say something that you didn't mean, I apologize in advance)

So, what you are saying is that by abstracting the roleplaying systems that are already in use the new system is worse than the first? Or are you saying that by focusing entirely on rules and "systems" that you end up losing the whole idea behind roleplaying? (i.e. worrying about the technicalities of swinging a light sabre more than the "coolness" of delivering the actualy feeling of doing so)

I'm trying to understand your point here so as to expand on it.

Firstoff, I'll attest to your basic description of the phenomena is pretty common.

Second, I don't see why the road would nessecarily lead towards wanting to set up a shared-imaginary space that's about roleplaying. I don't see how "Playing us in high school playing D&D" could be a subsituite of the tried and true try to play D&D like in high school. I'll give that its a remote possibility, but I couldn't see it being a widespread thing.

Third, artforms can succesfully feed off of themselves. Don't think of it like a photocopy of a photocopy, think of it as using a picture in a work of art, and someone using that picture in a work of art, and on and on. Distorts the original picture pretty quickly, but its flux of new conetnt keeps it engaging.

orbsmatt: Damn, I did end up being obtuse. Thanks for posting anyway.

It's the latter thing you mentioned, followed up by the former. So its the focus on the rules and system of swinging a lightsaber. It's also the focus on when a player should be swinging it or not, or talking. What about using the force to impale someone on it, is that like the dark side. How many dark side points exactly? What about fumbles and accidentally killing other PC's, what to do about that?

The specifics don't really matter as much as the multitude of them. What I'm refering to is a butt load of management of things which are two or three degree's seperated from your original impulse to swing a light sabre around, or kill orc like Aragorn/whatever.

Such a thing is so unweildy that you can't keep it all in your head at once. So, in order to handle it you abstract it down. But its still pretty big, so you essentially start focusing on a system that handles a system (the game) that handles that original thing you wanted to explore/play. The best thing is, the system is never quite complete as it never quite handles everthing, so your also kept occupied in managing its design as well.

Basically you can see that the support BS of swinging a lightsaber starts to dwarf the actual imaginary act itself. When its so big by contrast, it starts to get more attention. Eventually it can get so much attention your wanting to play means wanting all this management stuff, instead of just shooting lasers at giant robots.

It's still a little fuzzy, but think about why you might buy a car. You might dream about cruising up and down, going camping anytime, picking up chicks, whatever. But when you buy it, say you end up having to fix it up a lot. You keep having to repair it, patch it, get it going, push it out of the way of traffic when it breaks down on the road. The needs of the medium/car have surplanted the reason you got it in the first place.

In terms of my title 'Mmm, I feel like roleplaying some roleplay', in the car example it would be 'Mmmm, I feel like going for a drive' and then walking out and spending the morning under the hood of your car. The medium to another goal has actually become the goal itself.

Noon wrote:
It's still a little fuzzy, but think about why you might buy a car. You might dream about cruising up and down, going camping anytime, picking up chicks, whatever. But when you buy it, say you end up having to fix it up a lot. You keep having to repair it, patch it, get it going, push it out of the way of traffic when it breaks down on the road. The needs of the medium/car have surplanted the reason you got it in the first place.

In terms of my title 'Mmm, I feel like roleplaying some roleplay', in the car example it would be 'Mmmm, I feel like going for a drive' and then walking out and spending the morning under the hood of your car. The medium to another goal has actually become the goal itself.

Noon wrote: The specifics don't really matter as much as the multitude of them. What I'm refering to is a butt load of management of things which are two or three degree's seperated from your original impulse to swing a light sabre around, or kill orc like Aragorn/whatever.
---snip!--
Basically you can see that the support BS of swinging a lightsaber starts to dwarf the actual imaginary act itself. When its so big by contrast, it starts to get more attention. Eventually it can get so much attention your wanting to play means wanting all this management stuff, instead of just shooting lasers at giant robots.

ADGBoss: I'm not sure what shut and play means, but the rest of your post I get. I guess at times it can feel like one will never find a way out of the jungle, so to speak.

Doctor Xero: It's a very good analogy, but imagine that you watched one of your favorite films for a film class and submitted what you thought the meanings were and what you thought of the technicals. But you were told, no, you didn't get it (with little/no feedback on what you did get) and to go watch it again. And again. And again. Until your almost sick of the damn movie, since its so highly associated now with this frustrating analysis.

The analogy is good, but courses that analise movies have a fairly structured way of doing that. Once you figure out the majority of that structure, learning to do that and enjoy the movie for its self is the next skill you'll most likely pick up intuitively.

In an environment where there is far less structure, where its typically based around the individual tastes of your gaming group (and indeed the design shouldn't fight this but actually relish in the possibilities of what they as individuals can contribute) and games and feedback are far apart because of work or poor male self expression, respectively, its bloody hard to get anywhere with the structure at all. Because there really isn't any...most GM's I've seen who have adopted some particular structure tend to go on and commit glaring errors (but not acknowledge them in the interests of holding onto their prefered structure). BTW, excuse my long sentence! :)

There is a phenomenom in most other mediums where the abstraction necessary in art is used while removing or turning down the representational aspect.

McCloud refers to this as the "Picture Plane" in Understanding Comics, where the artwork represents what it is, ink on paper.

McKee refers to Antiplot or Antistructure in film. Some typical elements are breaking the fourth wall or multiple endings. Wayne's World used these techniques by having characters talk into the camera, addressing the audience and the film had three ending and none of them are the "real" ending for the story.

Works that use these sort of techiniques are drawing attention to the medium it appears in. It says to the audience, hey, you're reading a comic book or hey, you're watching a movie.

I could see it possible for a RPG to use this same sort of techinique, possibly unique to the medium, that draws attention to the medium itself.

Is this what you're talking about with "roleplaying some roleplaying?"

Dr. Xero's right on this one, I think. The thing is, you can experience a work of art (including an RPG) on a lot of levels at once; the human mind is a very flexible thing. It just isn't true that, because you know a lot about film technique, you can't watch a film and pay attention to other things. On the contrary, what happens is that your knowledge of technique adds to your total experience of the film.

The same goes for literature, for example. You can read a novel and enjoy it. If you know a lot about the novel's history, that adds something. If you also know a lot about the history of literature surrounding the work, that adds something. And so on. All this means that when you read the novel in a very informed way, you get a lot more out of it.

This is the "simple pleasure of reading" notion, one which I disagree with strenuously. I don't think that you read better or with more enjoyment when you don't know anything. Frankly, I don't think you do anything better or with more enjoyment when you don't know anything. Ron likes to use the sex example: was your very first time really the best? I hope not!

Okay, I admit it, I'm a theory-head. I think that having vast ranges of abstract structures running constantly in the back of my head helps me to experience the right-now more deeply. And I am vehemently opposed to the romantic notion that ignorance is bliss.

No, I still don't agree.

Ignorance may not be bliss, but it is nice to just drive a car, for example, instead of having to learn how to repair one and then spend time under the hood on a regular basis. And the analogies of enjoying two things at once...err, for my analogy you don't get two things at once, its a lot of hood work THEN some drive. The hood work dwarfing the drive.

Jack Spencer Jr: Err, no, I'm not refering to that. But as a different topic its pretty interesting, feel free to drift further that way if you want. :)

Actually, I'll just add this to clarify. Enjoying something at a technical and straight up level is possible, I might not have been clear.

I'll just quote DX

For a while, I find that knowing all this disrupts my ability to enjoy films -- instead of thinking how kewl that light-saber battle was, I'm noticing the special effects and camera angles and speculating about the symbolic import of the use of sword images in the film.

If I remain at that stage, I'm going to have to forget all that analysis junk if I ever want to enjoy film again.

Noon wrote: What I talking about here is where you can't leave that sort of stage because the knowledge is uncomplete. Because with the film you can resolve it as you learn a pretty standardised evaluation system. Roleplay, however, is so inherantly about the other users contribution that getting past the above stage by learning it all just isn't going to happen. So instead of learning anything concrete because you can't handle the situation that way, you have to juggle a whole bunch of vague wisdoms, tricks learned from the past, and HR tricks. This tend to get in the way of the light sabers and the lasers stuff.

Noon wrote: imagine that you watched one of your favorite films for a film class and submitted what you thought the meanings were and what you thought of the technicals. But you were told, no, you didn't get it (with little/no feedback on what you did get) and to go watch it again. And again. And again.

Noon wrote: Until your almost sick of the damn movie, since its so highly associated now with this frustrating analysis.

Noon wrote: The analogy is good, but courses that analise movies have a fairly structured way of doing that. Once you figure out the majority of that structure, learning to do that and enjoy the movie for its self is the next skill you'll most likely pick up intuitively.

In an environment where there is far less structure

clehrich wrote: The thing is, you can experience a work of art (including an RPG) on a lot of levels at once; the human mind is a very flexible thing. It just isn't true that, because you know a lot about film technique, you can't watch a film and pay attention to other things. On the contrary, what happens is that your knowledge of technique adds to your total experience of the film.

clehrich wrote: The same goes for literature, for example. You can read a novel and enjoy it. If you know a lot about the novel's history, that adds something. If you also know a lot about the history of literature surrounding the work, that adds something. And so on. All this means that when you read the novel in a very informed way, you get a lot more out of it.

clehrich wrote: And I am vehemently opposed to the romantic notion that ignorance is bliss.

Noon wrote: it is nice to just drive a car, for example, instead of having to learn how to repair one and then spend time under the hood on a regular basis. And the analogies of enjoying two things at once...err, for my analogy you don't get two things at once, its a lot of hood work THEN some drive. The hood work dwarfing the drive.

clehrich wrote: Outside of GNS, the thrust of what you're talking about here seems to me, at least, to call for greater examination of the academic study of culture. That may seem way out in left field, but what I mean is that you can experience an RPG as a cultural event, i.e. as an interaction among people within various competing structures and so forth, and that adds to your enjoyment of participation. Anthropologists talk about this in terms of the participant-observer, particularly with respect to ritual: you're not a totally distanced outside viewer keeping things totally clean and scientific, but a warm body interacting in that complicated fuzzy way that people do, and at the same time you've got this little voice in your head that keeps trying to analyze in totally different terms. That's a very full experience of the situation, and it's something I think would be very useful for gamers as well.

Noon,

If i understand you correctly perhaps this will be useful.

Using your car analogy... You buy a new car because you have this dream of speeding through some deserted mountain road with the wind in your face. You don't know much about cars so you go to the lot and buy one that looks cool. Turns out that the car you have purchased is poorly engineered so you have to open it up each time you want to take it out. You have the wrong vehicle for fulfilling your dream.

If your dream had been to open up your car every day and tweak it so that it will make it to work and back then you have the right vehicle.

Since the dream you are putting forward as being impaired here is "dang, it sure would be cool to swing a lightsaber" it seems that Sean (ADGBoss) is correct here. We are still in the early days of design, to stay with the car analogy we have the Model T. The Model T is the wrong vehicle for someone who wants to speed through deserted mountain roads with the wind in their hair. We are designing better and better vehicles for accomplishing the "swing that lightsaber" dream.

I believe we have successfully designed systems are easily understood and don't require a secondary level of abstaction to keep track of. As we continue develop more advanced vehicles we continue to make the first level of abstraction more and more transparent (which, i believe, helps accomplish the "swing that lightsaber" dream).

I guess i'm trying to say: "Your complaint seems to be with the specific car not the idea of cars or the automobile industry."

I hope that was useful.

Thomas

Callan, I normally wouldn't post this, but I think it's actually viable in this case as a form of input. Take it in the spirit in which it's intended, not as some sort of a criticism or anything:

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Now, this could mean a lot of things, including that I'm just too dumb to understand what you're getting at (maybe I'm blessed). But consider it a data point that some of us don't seem to have run into the particular problem that you have. Including myself who probably does as much playing and analyzing of RPGs as anybody else.

Let me ask you this: are you currently playing something regularly?

Mike

Mike, fair enough. It's not really anything I could see myself until I started concentrating on SIS construction recently (Thoughts that spawned my 'The basic enjoyment of SIS' post).

When I was thinking about that, I was thinking about, funnily enough, what the basic enjoyment of SIS was. What would I enjoy, the essentials. To get to the basic part, I would have to strip away things that weren't basic.

So I stripped back. And stripped back. And stripped back.

And found what I would like to share in an SIS has been highly compromised to the point of being very much in the minority of focus, compared to the 'beurocracy'(as you might put it) designed to support it.

To give examples of beurocracy (and keep in mind, I'm not saying these are vital to play, but if you ditch them there's the question 'well, what are you going to replace them with?"): meta game Human resource management, system enforcement Vs user satisfaction, session design with open to player influence Vs containing my input with integrity, equal spot light time Vs charismatic/rule pushers, (unspoken) social contract enforcement, system direction Vs personal/group rules drift Vs perceptions of the importance of rules...etc etc.

All of these give RPG.net (and many other RPG boards) plenty of posts. And all of these have sub categories. And obviously the list can go on.

I'll quote DX here:

That all depends upon whether one enjoys learning automotive repair!

Both the hood work and the driving are part of the joys of car ownership.

Let me see if I can restate the problem. You find that the overhead involved with how RPGs work is more than you like when you analyze it closely, and that many people don't play because they feel the same way.

I would agree that's true. In the Famous Five, I think, this was discussed a lot. Most people see RPGs as way too much work for the feedback provided. You may just be one of them. In which case, I'd suggest playing freeform, potentially, or doing some other activity that more closely matches what you're looking for.

Realize that for people like myself, that the "beaurocracy" is actually an attraction. Yeah, if by roleplaying to roleplay, you mean that we want dice, and paper, and list of skills, and mechanics, and all of that other overhead, then you're right, we do. These things all provide structure that we feel is important to making RPG play what it is - something somewhat different than storytelling, or improv theatre, or freeform, or...well all the other things that we could be doing with our time.

That overhead is a good thing for us. Yes, I suppose that there may be some people who actually don't enjoy what they do, and roleplay out of habit or a need to socialize or whatever bad reason that they do it. To them I say, do something else. But for the majority of the people here, I think that we're all very interested in those structures in a very legitimate way.

Now, if you want to talk about what it is that we enjoy about the structures in question, then maybe that's another thread. But beyond that, I'm not sure where to go with this. Does the above help at all, or am I still shooting in the dark?

As to your predicament, I think that you may just be analyzing too much in play. I personally do some when I play, but mostly I concentrate on playing and getting as much fun out of it as I can. So, it's hard to say what the problem is in your case. Are you just having a bout of "analysis paralysis," or have you discovered something fundamental about your preferences? Something that you'll have to decide on your own.

This all smacks to me of an existential crisis. Ya know a, "what's the point of all of this!" sort of moment. That wouldn't be it, would it?

Mike

Mmm, that wraps it up pretty well but a little off. Freeform isn't what I want, I want structure too. It's just that looking at what I want to group imagine, I realise I structures I'm using just aren't the ones to get their (too big). Its much like thinking all games have to have STR, DEX, CON, etc in them when really you don't need to (as we all know, of course). I think there's a lot of extra structure I've alowed to enter my gaming style so as to get to my prefered goal. I just hadn't noticed it was pushing my goal further away from me.

Anyway, it reminds me of Ralphs old 'shooting sacred cows' post. He was sort of labouring on with stuff he thought was cool, and it was, but it wasn't doing the job he finally realised, so it had to go (well, that's what I got from his post).

Anyway, I'm going to be totally hypocritical and keep playing D&D 3.x and other such games. But design wise I'll try something new with my group soon. I'd just wondered if other people had run into this same thing, perhaps seeing most of the structure as something interesting sometimes, but mostly just a means to an end rather than part of the fun. It's a marketing insight to me that it isn't.