Split from Bricolage APPLIED (finally)!

J. Tuomas Harviainen wrote: A Husserl-derivative way of describing the difference between tabletop rpg (and larps very much like it) and experience-creation larps. In the former, the diegesis ("that which is true within the story", the in-game reality) is experienced by people through imagining it completely (maybe from source material, but still). Theyre in a state of epokhe, with the ability to analyze the entire game situation (as it is at that moment) and to apply any rules and narrative bricolage as needed, by way of player-player/player-GM negotiation.

In an experience-creation larp, the players create their view of the diegesis by selectively (by individual choice guided by GM instructions) refusing to see things that exist in reality as existing in the diegesis, or transforming those things into other things in the diegesis. ("the car isn't there in the game" or "in the game, there's a cart where the car is"). This latter approach, eidetic reduction, doesn't allow for bricolage because the players are essentially too far within the game, and therefore unable to neither perceive the entire game situation nor be in a position where they'd be able to negotiate on its premises.

In essence, "to negotiate on game elements, you have to have enough distance from them, and a holistic view about the game's current and intended state and form."

J. Tuomas Harviainen wrote:

Sean wrote: Superficially, I'm inclined to disagree with you. What you see as a difference in kind I see as simply an additional technique: the reassignment of functional roles within the imagined space to real objects. Not much different than waving a pencil around as a magic wand, or handing out a 'scroll' or similar widget, in a tabletop game. Just a matter of degree.

This is a (hopefully small) sidestep from the topic, but you've hit one of the core debates of the intra-Nordic rpg theory discussion here: the viewpoint issue on whether the epokhe vs. eidetic reduction (my choice of description, but the core is essentially the same) is a matter of degree or two diametrically opposed ways of approaching role-playing. (I personally favor the latter, and thus approach the situation discussed here from that perspective.)

So anyway. I agree that in a certain kind of immersive LARP there's going to be relatively less bricolage-in-play than in an RPG, but it seems to me that it still happens, and has to.

This is where your (well-refined and presented, I must admit) interpretation is wrong. An accurate description would be that the possibility of negotiation exists, but is not availlable to the players, just the GM. Thus bricolage does not actualize. Think of it as the difference between a communal ritual where everyone may participare in their own way (tabletop rpg) versus a ritual where everything is up to the shaman who has esoteric knowledge he won't share (experiential larp). While both contain the same theoretical potential for negotiation, only one features the possibility of the negotiation really happening without a huge risk of the ritual being broken.

LordSmerf wrote: Is this a feature exclusive to a type of LARP play, or do you see this in certain types of table top play? I think that this is a feature of extremely high Immersion table top games. Where the players are so deep into the characters that this is exactly what you're talking about. Or am I missing something about eidetic reduction?

This is also pertinent to the discussion, from the same source thread (Note: "mud pies" is a reference to an earlier point in the discussion which I cut, it can be found in this single post):

Sean wrote: Tuomas - if the players are robbed of all authority to negotiate stuff, then yeah, I guess I'd have to agree with you - only the GM is doing anything like this. But:

(1) Doesn't what's being said still hold for the GM?

(2) Wouldn't it be possible to give players in such a LARP the authority to do this for themselves? If I was immersed as, say, an alchemist, I'd much prefer to be able to pick up a coffee cup and say it was an alembic or the like - that would free me up like mud pies does.

(3) Some tabletop GMs arrogate similar authority to themselves, and likewise in the name of immersive play sometimes, or so it seems to me. It seems like the main difference in LARPs is just the whole-body character of it.

So I think I see a little better where you're coming from but I'm not persuaded. We should probably pursue this in a new thread if it's worth pursuing though.

LordSmerf wrote: Is this a feature exclusive to a type of LARP play, or do you see this in certain types of table top play? I think that this is a feature of extremely high Immersion table top games. Where the players are so deep into the characters that this is exactly what you're talking about. Or am I missing something about eidetic reduction?

Sean wrote: (1) Doesn't what's being said still hold for the GM?

(2) Wouldn't it be possible to give players in such a LARP the authority to do this for themselves? If I was immersed as, say, an alchemist, I'd much prefer to be able to pick up a coffee cup and say it was an alembic or the like - that would free me up like mud pies does.

(3) Some tabletop GMs arrogate similar authority to themselves, and likewise in the name of immersive play sometimes, or so it seems to me. It seems like the main difference in LARPs is just the whole-body character of it.

I think bricolage happens in experientalist larps all the time. Not with the rules though, as there usually are few of those to fiddle around with anyway.

Actually, if I understand bricolage correctly (and I hope Chris can weigh in on this), eidetic reduction itself is a form of bricolage. We take a car, and make it a cart. Now, this isn't exactly like combining a helium balloon with an iron to make a light-weight heating element, but not too far either. In our imagination we paint the car to look like a cart and bolt it into our imagined space (incidentally, diegesis=imagined space in the Forge lingo). We get something with properties from both the actual car (location our fusion of the actual and imagined space, possibly the power of movement) and the concept of a cart (imagined form, shape, expectations of usability). But we are also constrained by our choice, as in the choosing of an iron - we can't really put a horse in front of our cart, and it retains many problematic qualities of its carness (ie. we always have to imagine it looking like a cart because it really doesn't).

But this happens also purely within the imagined space too. Larp background information is necessary at least as incomplete as roleplaying background information. Even in a tightly knit game, one can't prepare for every possible situation or conversation. And that leads to people creating bricolage from what they have. Say, for example you are talking about the affairs of the state in the game, and someone asks if your province has had any trouble with robbers recently - and the background material doesn't tell you. You have to make something up, and you'll probably try to make up something by combining some of the separate facts that you know of the imagined space, and also maybe take input from the others in the conversation by cleverly hidden additional requests for additional info ("Why do you ask, have you had trouble with them lately?"). In the course of the conversation, all participants have added functionality and explanation to the world. And there really is some negotiation going on there too.

And of course, in such a larp, this can be problematic, because that part of the imagined space is shared only by those participating in that conversation. Fortunately, people are often clever enough to limit their additions to things that are anyway in their sphere of influence, and so probably actually won't break anything elsewhere.

Okay, so, after that quite lengthy sidetrip, I'll give some comments to the actual prior discussion:

I disagree with Tuomas on the basic premise that detaching temporarily from the SIS is incompatible with experientalist gaming. Therefore I can't comment on Tuomas' individual points, but I can try to make my own case:

As can be evident from the previous, I see small amounts of detaching as happening to a small extent all the time - mostly we are just able to block ourselves even thinking about it. And I actually have real experience with a larp in which the desired goal was no less than for the actual participant to learn something new about life from immersing into a character. Now, so far, nothing special, but the game made heavy use of Out-of-SIS techniques directly at the player level such as scene framing and Out-of-SIS methods for stating what the characters felt toward each other, and what the people playing the characters wanted to happen in an interaction.

Now, we actually had the hypothesis that these Out-of-SIS methods would hurt the immersion, thereby hindering learning, but player commentary surprised us. It became evident that all of our methods provided people with a great ability to focus thoughts on important aspects of the character. What was created was a potential for powerful spot immersion into a particular aspect of the character, with a known fixed frame that allowed the players to only focus on only that aspect. For me, it was a revelation.

So, while traditionally I think the methodology of Nordic style larps has not allowed for rules or narrative bricolage, I don't think they're at all incompatible. In fact, I'm hoping more and more Nordic larps will break their chains and start aggressively pursuing methods for hightening the players' experience on all levels, not just simulationary.

- Eetu

humis wrote: Actually, if I understand bricolage correctly (and I hope Chris can weigh in on this), eidetic reduction itself is a form of bricolage.

(incidentally, diegesis=imagined space in the Forge lingo)

Say, for example you are talking about the affairs of the state in the game, and someone asks if your province has had any trouble with robbers recently - and the background material doesn't tell you. You have to make something up, and you'll probably try to make up something by combining some of the separate facts that you know of the imagined space, and also maybe take input from the others in the conversation by cleverly hidden additional requests for additional info ("Why do you ask, have you had trouble with them lately?"). In the course of the conversation, all participants have added functionality and explanation to the world. And there really is some negotiation going on there too.

As can be evident from the previous, I see small amounts of detaching as happening to a small extent all the time - mostly we are just able to block ourselves even thinking about it. And I actually have real experience with a larp in which the desired goal was no less than for the actual participant to learn something new about life from immersing into a character. Now, so far, nothing special, but the game made heavy use of Out-of-SIS techniques directly at the player level such as scene framing and Out-of-SIS methods for stating what the characters felt toward each other, and what the people playing the characters wanted to happen in an interaction.

So, while traditionally I think the methodology of Nordic style larps has not allowed for rules or narrative bricolage, I don't think they're at all incompatible.

While waiting for Chris to chime in on our primary point, I just want to say that I think we're in the main agreed, as long as we're talking about tendencies, typical or even certain games and not hard overall limits.

That's one of the things I'm most interested in currently, finding out the commonly perceived limits to the common forms of playing and then finding ways to break those limits productively. On that note, I'd really like to hear more about your experiments with hard-core illusionism (illusion of free will), but that's probably material for another thread or PM.

A minor quibble still: I haven't seen this definition of diegesis before, only Hakkarainen & Stenros's and Montola's versions in As Larp Grows Up. By my reading, the first equates diegesis directly with shared imagined space and the second mostly with individual imagined space (or, I think actually says that shared imagined space and individual imagined space are both diegeses, but that the former is necessarily a watered down version of the latter). That's also why I like the Forge terminology on this matter more, I think the meaning of diegesis has already been muddled up. If you can point me at a more recent generally accepted definition, I'll be very happy.

Definitions aside, I think that the practice in larps of essentially bringing physical real world objects into the SIS, or anchoring SIS objects into physical objects and vice versa is a really interesting subject and certainly worthy of more talk (and it is in fact one of the subjects currently being discussed in the Nordic circles).

- Eetu

humis wrote: That's also why I like the Forge terminology on this matter more, I think the meaning of diegesis has already been muddled up.

This is a fascinating discussion, guys! I've only got a few minutes, but here's a brief remark on the current holdup:

J. Tuomas Harviainen wrote:

humis wrote: Actually, if I understand bricolage correctly (and I hope Chris can weigh in on this), eidetic reduction itself is a form of bricolage.

This is actually a question of what one wants to include in the definition. I'll leave it to Chris to decide whether he sees gaming bricolage as containing solitary negotiation (which would include both eidetic reduction and all forms of GM omnipotence) within it, or not.

Okay... bricolage is cool, but I want to talk about eidetic reduction...

Must it be concious? This is a little bit of a side-track which I want to discuss in a bit, but it's something to think about.

Judging by what little I've read (here and in the Bricolage Applied thread) eidetic reduction is not actually an artifact of LARP play so much as it is an artifact of RPG play that involves props. In fact, to some degree eidetic reduction may be necessary in any game involving props, but I'm not sure about that.

Now, it must be admitted that LARP play is much, much more prop intensive than any table-top play that I have seen or heard of to date. I'm not sure that this is true based on inherent qualities of the two types, effeciency issues, or just historically reinforced play, but while that's something else I wouldn't mind discussing, I'm pretty sure that this isn't the thread for it.

So: eidetic reduction is actually a property of RPG play involving props and LARPs are prop heavy. This can easily result in the conflation of LARP play and eidetic reduction. Does this make sense so far?

I'm not sure where I'm going here, but I wanted to clarify this... am I right? Is eidetic reduction actually a property of prop-based play which is associated with LARP play rather than being a property of a specific kind of LARP play itself?

Thomas

At least I'm completely with you.

On eidetic reduction, I think most of it happens on a subconcious level, or can at least be effectively experienced as such.

As I said, there's some stuff already published about the matter in the Nordic scene. A Semiotic View on Diegesis Construction by Loponen & Montola was published last year in Beyond Role and Play. There's also material on the subject in the previous year's As Larp Grows Up, in the form of the article The Diegetic Rooms of Larp, by Carsten Andreasen.

(on the subject of Bricolage, I'm in favor of dumping delving into further abstract theory)

- Eetu

An interesting question. When I think of eidetic reduction in the range of varieties of LARP play I've experienced (which is quite broad), it's not props that seem to be of primary importance, nor real-space game spaces. I've organized and played in LARPs with and without significant use of props, and with and without those props being representational (real objects or models of real objects, as opposed to abstract tokens such as item cards). And I've organized and played in LARPs with and without any attempt to alter or overlay the physical playing space with imagined elements.

The clearest distinction between LARP and tabletop play appears to me to be the inclusion of the players' persons in the in-game world (imagined space).

I've never seen a LARP in which a simulated attack directed at a player's person would not be indicative of an attack directed against that player's character in the imagined space. I'm not saying that such simulations of attacks are permitted in all LARPs, or necessarily happen even if they are permitted, just that when they are permitted and do happen, they invariably have that meaning. On the flip side, I've never seen an occurrence in tabletop RPG play in which a player indicates that a character is a target of an attack in the shared imagined space by simulating, through any physical action or gesture, an attack against the person of the character's player. I'm not saying it couldn't happen -- I'm sure it does, and I have seen it happen in board game play -- just that I've never seen it myself in a tabletop RPG.

The distinction is even clearer when I look at constraints on a player's physical movements (usually rules constraints consensually obeyed, rather than physical restraints, though I've seen exceptions) in LARP play, representing limitations on the character's mobility in the imagined space, versus the complete absence of any such representation in tabletop play.

The corresponding difference in eidetic reduction, then, would be that in LARP a player must be imagined as physically representing that player's character, which depending on the techniques in use for casting, costumes, and acting, might be a small or large shift. While this still might be in principle a difference in degree rather than in kind, in practice it's a pretty clear distinction of tabletop versus LARP. Even if, for example, a tabletop GM starts physically acting out the movements and gestures of a villain as a means of description, the distinction remains clear. If the GM has to leave the room to use the bathroom, it wouldn't normally be interpreted as the villain having left the area within the shared imagined space.

- Walt

Walt, thanks for weighing in. You have way more LARP experience than I do, so it's good to see your view on this.

I wonder if by "prop" what I really want to say is "Physical things that represent other things within the SIS." The players represent the characters in a LARP in a way that just doesn't happen in table-top play. But the players aren't the characters, so you utilize eidetic reduction to maintain deep immersion.

But, is eidetic reduction only found in LARP play? Or is it instead simply more common (maybe even more useful) in LARP play?

Thomas

Expanding a bit on Thomas' questions, would miniatures play involve eidetic reduction, as the statuettes on the table come to represent the characters in the shared imagined space?

If so, is there a sense in which in LARP play the players themselves are the miniatures, sort of like those fantasy stories in which characters take the positions of chess pieces in a game (the most recent being Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but I'm sure I remember it from earlier, perhaps Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, and I know that I've encountered others in which chess moves were constraints on the characters for part of the story)?

Thus I'm suggesting that miniatures are props for the characters in miniatures play, and people are props for the characters in LARP play. But I've never done either, so I'm really extrapolating from the comments of others.

--M. J. Young

Bricolage definition accepted. Moving on now to further eidetic reduction issues:

M. J. Young wrote: Expanding a bit on Thomas' questions, would miniatures play involve eidetic reduction, as the statuettes on the table come to represent the characters in the shared imagined space?

Okay, "interimmersion" sounds interesting, where can I read more about that?

Now, back to the topic at hand. Here's a question that I keep coming back to because I see eidtetic reduction so closely tied with immersion: In a high-immersion table top game can the players be said to eidetically reduce all of their physical surroundings away? In order to fully experience what they are trying to experience, do they do the same sort of "imagining things not to be there"?

My guess is yes. Is it the same sort of eidetic reduction that we commonly see in LARP play? I think so, but I'd be interested in hearing other takes on the subject.

One final question (for now): Do we ever see the technique of eidetic reduction utilized for any prupose other than immersion? I'd be curious to explore what other applications we can come up with for it... That may be a bit problematic since the technique is so intensely personal. How might we apply eidetic reduction to the group? How might we factor it into design?

Thomas

LordSmerf wrote: Okay, "interimmersion" sounds interesting, where can I read more about that?

In a high-immersion table top game can the players be said to eidetically reduce all of their physical surroundings away? In order to fully experience what they are trying to experience, do they do the same sort of "imagining things not to be there"?

Is it the same sort of eidetic reduction that we commonly see in LARP play? I think so, but I'd be interested in hearing other takes on the subject.

Do we ever see the technique of eidetic reduction utilized for any prupose other than immersion? I'd be curious to explore what other applications we can come up with for it... That may be a bit problematic since the technique is so intensely personal. How might we apply eidetic reduction to the group? How might we factor it into design?

Tuomas -

I'm a little surprised that you emphasize religion wrt Husserl. Certainly his work (and moreso Heidegger's extension of it to the social) has been very influential among some theorists of religion, but Husserl's work that I'm familiar with is mostly concerned with 'pure phenomenology' and science and mathematics.

Also, I see how you're using Husserl's concepts, and it's not _wrong_, but it does seem to be a pretty major extension out of the kind of thing the phenomenologists were interested in. For phenomenologists, these techniques (bracketing and eidetic reduction) are about getting to the 'core' subjective experience (they would reject the label, but I'm not a phenomenologist) one has of a thing. So that you don't experience e.g. a tree through the lens of Cartesian analytic geometry or (with Heidegger early and late) experience a forest through the social lens of material accumulation, but rather just 'take it for what it is', where 'what it is' is 'how it emerges to your consciousness once you get rid of all the assumptions etc. you have about it'.

(I think this whole approach is methodologically hopeless in philosophy, incidentally, but I make it a point not to go one step farther into debates on abstract subjects than I have to to keep the material rpg-relevant.)

Anyway, the point I wanted to make about your use of Husserl and phenomenology for rpging is that the objects and world to which the experiencer-player is oriented on your view is manifestly not anything 'real', but rather something emerging in the imagination (singular or collective, let's not go there except to note that if you're a Heideggerian phenomenologist there's no reduction of the 'shared' in the SiS to the individual, since being-with-others is a basic way of being for Dasein). So that it's pretty radical to say that people are (a) constructing something in their mind and then (b) using phenomenological techniques to strip everything innessential from that something. This is a big step away from Husserl exhorting us to understand the differences between the geometrical intuitions of the lifeworld and the world of science or even Heidegger radically misinterpreting van Gogh's boots.

It's also one that seems to need a lot more theoretical clarificaiton at a pre-RPG level. I mean, superficially, if we're constructing all this stuff, how does the extra baggage that we add to it get stripped away through the reduction? How do we determine what's 'essential' and 'inessential' with respect to the contents of our own imaginings? And what does it mean to hold something in epoche which is in your head, rather than out there in the clearing or the lifeworld or whatever phenomenological term of art floats your boat?

I think though that you're partly, with all this high vocabulary, circling around a point we've discussed a lot here - what is immersion, as a technique? How does it work and how is it similar to and different from other techniques?

Your claim seems to be that immersion is incompatible with the bricolage-like reassemblage of elements that Chris is exploring.

I remain unconvinced, because (a) I've known real-life 'schizophrenics' (scarequotes because I don't know if that's their technical classification) who seem to effortlessly reassemble elements of the 'real' world into tokens in their own private fantasy, without breaking out of the mindset that constitutes their madness, and (b) I just don't see why there's anything more breaking of the immersion for a player to resignify some object on his or her own authority than for a player to have to accept some GMs ruling, or even just to remember that some real object has already been given some signification in the game, etc.

But I've never been in a Nordic LARP. I hope I have the experience someday so that I can at least see more clearly what you and other practicioners think you're getting at. Even if I'm not persuaded by your theoretical arguments, I'm very open to the idea that some really powerful and interesting techniques, which have not or perhaps even cannot be used in tabletop gaming, have evolved in the Nordic LARP style of play.

P.S. Xenopulse, if you're reading this, I got your PM and the computer ate my reply. I'll try again later.

Sean wrote: I'm a little surprised that you emphasize religion wrt Husserl. Certainly his work (and moreso Heidegger's extension of it to the social) has been very influential among some theorists of religion, but Husserl's work that I'm familiar with is mostly concerned with 'pure phenomenology' and science and mathematics.

Also, I see how you're using Husserl's concepts, and it's not _wrong_, but it does seem to be a pretty major extension out of the kind of thing the phenomenologists were interested in.

I think though that you're partly, with all this high vocabulary, circling around a point we've discussed a lot here - what is immersion, as a technique? How does it work and how is it similar to and different from other techniques?

b) I just don't see why there's anything more breaking of the immersion for a player to resignify some object on his or her own authority than for a player to have to accept some GMs ruling, or even just to remember that some real object has already been given some signification in the game,