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Ask anyone why they role-play, and you'll get the answer, "Because it's fun." And, well, I can't argue with that, RP Gs are fun. But so is water-skiing, and watching TV. Why RP Gs, and not something else?

Ask a person this, and what you'll get is that they play because their friends play. OK, agreed again, RP Gs are social activities. But so is going to the movies with folks, or playing basketball. Again, what's specific to RP Gs?

At this point the person you ask will usually start to flounder and talk about something like the feeling that they're getting to be somebody else, or getting to be part of making a story. OK, now we're getting closer. The real question is what the person playing feels is their contribution to the game.

Now, RPG play falls, very roughly, into two parts, play for competition, and.that other stuff that people call "role-playing." Let's look at the first category, however. Can RPG play be entirely competitive? Well, it turns out that it can be, on occasion, but the question is why play RP Gs then, and not chess? Or Monopoly, or, well, basketball again?

To be sure, there are some few who do play RP Gs competitively simply because their friends do, but I'd argue that the number of groups that do this as the sole reason for the activity are very few (other sorts of games are actually superior for these purposes). There's almost always at least a nod to what makes RP Gs unique. That other stuff outside the simple competition. I mean, what's the point of portraying your characters laugh when defeating a foe, if it's just a competition? Have you ever seen anyone do that playing Monopoly?

OK, anyone you didn't think was crazy?

What makes RP Gs unique is something subtle and hard to define. But it comes down to the fact that you can do "anything" in a RPG. That's not literally true, actually, but what it means is that the limits on the actions of the characters in the game (or other active elements in the game) are set at what we can imagine them doing plausibly. As opposed to some smaller set of activities that have rules to adjudicate them. In Monopoly your theoretical landowner can only buy property, pay rent, mortgage properties, etc. Only the things that there are rules for. A player who says that his position in such a game is doing something like going to the park for a picnic is not really playing Monopoly like we'd expect them to anymore.

So RP Gs can be defined by the fact that they have methods of determining what's happening in the game that are potentially unlimited. Sometimes this is extremely subtle. That is, we're not talking about resolution systems here...often those can only resolve a small set of actions. But it's the general notion that a player can say, "My character crosses the room to get a closer look..." and that this actually is then deemed to have occurred in terms of having some meaning in play.

What meaning does it have? Well, a potentially bewildering variety of potential meanings, even in the case of our simple example. If a fight is about to break out, then it's relevant to his position in that fight. If the character finds out something because of his closer inspection, then he has whole new sets of plausible options open up to him. On the other hand it might mean very little, depending on how play progresses.

But each act that is narrated, and entered into our common set of agreements about the current state of the world (tacitly or explicitly or via mechanics), has some meaning for the characters involved.

So what does that have to do with why we play? What is it about this unique feature of RP Gs that make them something that somebody might do over other activities? Well, there's another important definition that needs to be addressed here.

We call them "games," role-playing "games." And, such that they are like Monopoly, this makes sense. And they do share an important definition of the term game with Monopoly that comes from a discussion of morality, interestingly. Is it that we play a role? No, in basketball we play no role, we are only ourselves. What's similar in all of these systems of interaction is that nobody involved is held responsible for the moral implications of the events that happen inside the game. In basketball, it's assumed that you will try to defeat your opponent - this being inside the set of events protected by the game; you can't be blamed for trying. In Monopoly, you're trying to break your brother's bank. In "real life" (often the term for what happens outside games) there would be moral ramifications to something like that. In RP Gs you can actually kill your opponent's character, something that would entail the highest moral ramifications, but it's all OK in a game, because...well that's what games are.

Before we go on, one might think that this is flawed, because people do on occasion find what others are doing in games as objectionable. This always comes down to one of several cases, however. Either the person has decided to renege on their promise to consider the elements in the game as in the game, or somebody is actually not playing within the bounds, etc. With RP Gs, in fact, given that people often closely portray their characters, this sort of thing is actually very likely to happen. One of the biggest problems with RP Gs, really. Humans are imperfect, and despite having theoretically agreed to what is in the game, and what is not, often the agreement is imperfect, which can lead to misunderstandings. But none of this changes this part of the definition of what a game is.

So what do we have so far? A unique way to explore what characters could possible do in an atmosphere that lacks any actual moral ramifications (note that there may be seeming moral ramifications, however). That definition, actually, could apply to fiction as well. Nobody cares if a character in a book kills another.

Or do they?

People can get quite worked up about fiction and RP Gs, both. Indeed if they didn’t move us, well, they wouldn’t get called fun, certainly. People do care about what happens to the characters, but the players are still protected from the actual moral ramifications of the events that are in the game. If I have my character kill your character’s mother, then your character may well reasonably kill my character in response, but you the player can’t kill me, the player, for doing so.

If there are no actual moral ramifications to what’s happening in a work of fiction, or play of a role-playing game, then why do we care? Well, because we identify with the situations that come about in these works, and with the statements that they make. And when I say identify, I don’t necessarily mean that we directly agree with the statements, we might even vehemently disagree. But we feel something about them.

This is, in fact, the manner by which society largely informs itself about moral codes. Through stories, that is. True or not, the stories told by religions, by books, even by TV, are all about informing each other about values in general, and what we all think. In fact morals may be too strong a word here in many cases – sometimes we’re just concerned with some fascinating experiment or something. The content really isn’t the point. The point here is that these are methods of communication that really speak about what’s interesting from one person to another.

Even simple competitive play could be said to have a meaning, which is that the winner can claim that they are superior to their opponent. But, again, role-playing games are wide open, and you can make any sort of statement you like given the right set of rules, and the right players.

At some point in the process of industrialization, western nations lost the tradition of storytelling. It may have started with the printing press, actually, which made verbal traditions unnecessary. But there’s something lost when you lose the verbal tradition. Storytellers do tend to repeat stories they’ve heard. But they often change them as they do – in fact to some extent it’s inevitable. One can only remember so many stories word for word. The usual method is to remember only the basic facts, and then use certain storytelling tools to make those facts come together, and for the story to make some statement. So stories change with the storyteller, and, inevitably, the biases of the storyteller are included in the telling.

But with books, the story written by one person (or very few people) is transmitted verbatim to a wide number of people. That’s fine, for what it is, but it means that there’s less and less of an audience for those who want to tell stories. And there are people who do want to tell stories, the same segment of people who would have before books and other media made storytelling disappear in modern industrial cultures.

Role-playing games may have started as a war game scenario, created by Dave Arneson, true. But they accidentally tapped into something that was sorely missing in our society. That will to have a group of people sit in a circle, and tell each other stories, to enable us to transmit meaning to each other. Have you ever felt odd sitting down with a bunch of strangers and playing a role-playing game? Well, that’s because it’s personally revealing. You tend to say something about yourself, even if accidentally. For those who may be a bit more timid, often they either don’t do much at all, or simply play competitively – after all, we’re all used to games where the statement your trying to make is “I win!” They’re familiar from very early on. And nobody can judge you for that statement. Whereas any other statement you make in play is subject to the players’ judgment.

Because, again, while play itself has no moral ramifications, the other players always judge the quality or nature of your play. This could almost be said to be the definition of calling the activity social. You’re hoping for positive social reinforcement. You’re hoping to find that you have common ground with the other players, or even that you’ve shown them something new and interesting.

Few supposedly leisure activities tend to cause as much vitriol in discussion amongst its practitioners as ours does. Have you ever heard antique collectors vehemently arguing about something? Oh, they probably do occasionally, but not at the rate that role-playing gamers do. Why is it that people are so defensive about the particular games they play? Or how they play them? Well, there are lots of places where play can get messed up. Again, it’s often hard to tell where the social part of the activity ends, and the game itself begins. For another example, social reinforcement for what players are saying in game isn’t always forthcoming (often because players don’t realize that this is a purpose of role-playing games, even when it’s what they ‘re looking for themselves). It’s a problematic medium in many ways, not the least of which is that people don’t seem to understand why we play.

So, essentially, role-playing games take a lot of effort to get to work right. Compare, again, Monopoly, which works correctly pretty much every time on the game level – failures of play tend to be players breaking the rules, cheating, which is a breach of the social agreement to play by the rules, not a problem with the rules themselves. By comparison, role-playing games are extremely difficult. This explains, to an extent, why more people don’t play role-playing games. Either they find them too difficult, or they don’t understand why they are playing, or the game has problems and breaks down. Only those who have an innate sense of why we play are willing to put in the effort to overcome these things. Without knowing it explicitly, it’s extremely difficult.

This is why people are so protective of their rules, their methods, and their product of play. If you say that yours are better, this is a personal affront to that massive effort that it takes people to play. But even more than that, you’re saying that what their game produces in terms of value statements is incorrect. There is no functional difference between this and telling somebody that their religion is inferior. Does it make more sense now why the subject of how to play can be so incendiary? People take such criticism personally, and with good reason.

I’m not going to go so far as to say that role-playing games are a religious medium. No more so than fiction is a religious medium. But it is a personal means of transmitting values in a small social environment. Again, this activity has always been desired by some small segment of society, and role-playing games have filled a gap left by the demise of storytelling (which was usually about religion, interestingly).

We could look deeper into particular sorts of play, and why they exist, too. Genres, for instance, are largely means of categorizing groups of meanings to discuss. Fantasy and Western genres are about looking at morals in the context of a simpler time and place, where things tend to be black and white, and easy to understand (this is why killing monsters is so much fun). Horror is about taking an uneasy look at our most primal natures and what we are like when survival - the ultimate value - is on the line. Science fiction is about looking at what we might become, or what to do as society inevitably changes.

But the most important point is that all genres are about people, and about what interests we players of the game in some way. Whether it’s the mathematics of bullet impacts, or a question about when it’s right to kill, or simply reveling in the splendor of some fictional place of mystery – these are all about saying something about what we feel, who we are. To the extent that people understand this, and understand how deeply they want to look, and understand what they want to look at, I find that role-playing games are successful. To the extent that people leave these things unexamined in their play, it seems to me that play disintegrates (if it even starts in the first place). To the extent that people have understood that this is what role-playing games are about, even instinctively, they tend to be far more successful than ones that haven’t.

I don’t expect this statement not to be controversial, of course. As I’ve said above, people may take this as an affront to the way that they play. I’m sure that somebody will want to say, “This is rubbish, Mike, it’s all just good fun, and you’re making too much of it!” But that just puts the person replying at the first question I ask at the beginning of this essay. By all means, if you’re having fun playing, then you don’t need to bother buying into what I’m saying. To me, you’re one of those people who understand this all instinctively, though you may disagree.

But…if you find that your game has some problems, that you sometimes start games only to have them fail shortly thereafter, if players drop out either unsatisfied, or seemingly without reason, or, worse, if they stay, but seem to contribute nothing, and don’t seem to be having fun, if you can’t figure out why arguments always seem to be breaking out in your games and you never feel like you’re getting anywhere…. if you’re not having as much fun as you imagine you could have, essentially. If that’s the case, then consider what I’m saying above, and that what you really need to do is examine what you’re playing, and who you’re playing with to determine the method by which you’re trying to create meaning. So that you can get all of your players on the same sheet of music in terms of this goal. Because as long as this remains unexamined, your play will continue to lack something.

Tweaking your game’s hit point mechanic isn’t going to cut it. Oh, that’s actually on the right track, the rules are what inform us about what we’re going to play about. But unless you know where you’re going, you can tweak till doomsday, and never get any closer to play that you really enjoy. Once you have understood what it is you’re after, then it becomes a relatively simple thing to either find a system that delivers that, or to adjust one so that it does.

Just as this essay is probably going to cause people to dismiss it, it’s also going to be misconstrued in several ways. So here are some other things I’m not saying: Ø Only the game master creates meaning. Ø The meaning is set by the rules. Ø The meaning is set before play by what we agree to play. Ø This is about Narrativism, a particular sort of play.

No, no and no. Every participant in the game must have the ability to make the sort of meaning that you’ve all agreed to make. The game master is a participant and does have his say. But the players must also have a way to make statements that they find relevant. The rules do inform how you’re allowed to make meaning, constraints on the channel, and they even can inform on what sort of things you’ve agreed to make meaning about. But the particular meaning must be up to the player. If that meaning is set before play, then why bother playing? There must be a means by which the participants have regular ways to create meaning. In fact, the rate at which these points of decision on what meaning to make is probably a good way to rate the quality of the game.

And this isn’t about any sort of “–ism” or playing a particular way. I’m saying that all RPG play that isn’t exactly equivalent to a board game of some sort in terms of its limitations is about creating some sort of meaning. This meaning isn’t necessarily equivalent to plot, story, parables, characterization, or any of that, necessarily. It can be about anything you want it to be about.

It’s really actually a pretty simple concept, but one that’s missed because people tend to think of “games” in the competitive context, and role-playing games have never admitted to being about sharing meaning with the other players. That said, the consequences of the concept are pretty complex potentially. Often it’s hard for us to figure out what sorts of meanings it is that we want to bring out in play. Or what sort of system and methods will bring that sort of thing out.

But it’s a start. Again, maybe your game is just fine, and you don’t need to do any soul searching about why you play. But consider taking a deeper look at these things, and you just might find your game improving significantly. My games certainly have since I started thinking about these things. And watching other people stumble around in the dark on these issues, I can only think that there are many people out there who may benefit from taking a closer look.

The ideas in this article are not at all new; I’ve merely cobbled them together from the ideas of people like Ron Edwards, Chris Lehrich, Vincent Baker, and many, many other folks who’ve all worked to prove that this sort of examination of play is beneficial. For a much deeper treatment of individual issues, I wholeheartedly suggest checking in with the community at www.indie-rpgs.com AKA The Forge.

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Page last modified on April 04, 2008, at 01:14 PM by Mike Holmes

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