Antimimetics - Gaming in practice
This section is for discussion of how the text might interact with our playing ttrpgs at a table.
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Again, I have lots of thoughts. I'll start with the first couple I had:
1) Can we roleplay forgetting while "immersed / entranced" by our PC, or does requiring players to run PCs who do and then forget interfere with immersion and enchantment? How can we improvise forgetting without following a script? I know that in music improvising can only be reliable after a lot of practice, but do players (everyone at the table) practice ttrpgs?
2) What about just ordinary forgetting? In the past I played with someone who had some memory issues, and I thought it really helped bring the table together because it provided an "outside" discussion of what happened during previous sessions. This forgetting helped the production of a common understanding of the game's mythos. But forgetting is often mechanically presented as a problem to overcome, leading to people looking at "scripts" e.g. PC sheets, maps, crib notes. In my other posts today I talked about weird / cosmic horror and stress cycles. I think one of the themes of cosmic horror is that the cycle is not "closed," the horror continues, but I find it hard to imagine how to this is produced at the table in a way that doesn't entail the destruction of the PC, whether through death or madness. Any one have any experience with unresolved horror that does not interfere with satisfactory table play?
Thanks BC
1. Yes one can roleplaying memory loss. One of my players did an amazing job of this when his character was possessed by a forgetfulness spirit and lost short term memory. While I can show you the result (the session was documented) I couldn’t being to tell you how he remembered what his character was supposed to forget! This was improvised.
2. We do practise RPGs. We both learnt rules by rote, but we also practice becoming comfortable with improv.
3. Currently, we have a summary at the beginning of every session. This is thanks to one player who is very practiced at taking notes. Before we started relying on him, I used to type up my own session summaries the day after, with the help or recordings I had made during play,
4 I don’t think I’ve ever seriously played campaigns without making notes.But they’ve become indispensable in my grey years.
Same comment as for the "theory" discussion
Yeah it's funny. I did my undergraduate degree in music, and that has shaped me I guess. I expect I will need to practice everything, but I noticed in my slight foray into gaming with people I don't know, public gaming, that the people in that public sphere practise to perform for others, while in music school we the practice was the performance for ourselves. In music school it took about 3 semesters for everyone to get to know each other well enough for learning to occur. When I played ttrpgs when I was younger I played with people I already knew. I think the challenge for rpgs now is in the practice of them. They seem to be turning into media properties. I worked in the music business for quite a while, and that is not a sustainable model.
I was thinking about what you said @Apocryphal and it strikes me that it really presents a challenge to the idea that games and entertainment are simply items to be consumed. There's a skill in using them that isn't quite the same as what happens when things are consumed, evaluated as nutritious, etc. I'm trying this new format because I want to talk more about how we are skilled in using these as tools, and evaluating them as tools, rather than artifacts.
For my part, I’ve largely avoided avoided collecting games or game product. I do have some that I’ve never read or played, but I’ve always intended on at least reading them for ideas, even if I’ll never play them.
It’s also a worth mentioning that one doesn’t need to buy anything whatsoever to play an RPG. You can play free form and without dice - just imagination, communication, and pencil and paper helps.
1) I'm actually going through this a little bit in the game I run right now. One of the players has created an elaborate backstory for their character with all of this history to it, but the character isn't supposed to actually know any of it. The real person of course does, so how do they play this character who doesn't know this stuff, but the real person does? Bit of a challenge. We have settled into a pattern where I have been reading all of their backstory stuff they keep info dumping me between sessions over Discord, and then when they successfully commune with their patron, I have been drip feeding them their own backstory back to them - but I decided to do it cryptically in ways that the REAL person is going to have to do some connecting the dots and lateral thinking to figure out WHY I said the things I said to them. It's been a pretty fun shared experience that has given the player some AHA! moments, but has also led to some kind of dud moments where the things I have tried to lay out had fallen flat.
2) I am with @Apocryphal here in that as a player or DM I have to heavily rely on notes. My memory is not what it used to be.
Roleplaying amnesia seems to fit in the same category as roleplaying other forms of dramatic irony. If I, as a player, know that your character has some hidden agenda, or secret backstory element, or whatever, I can engineer scenes to have that appear in play, even if my character doesn't know about the secret. Yes, it's difficult to do in pure in-character stance, but most gaming doesn't sit in one pure stance all the time.
As for practice and skill development in RPGs, that's an intentional blind spot in the hobby. There are various books and things about how to be a better GM, very few about how to be a better player, and there's a culture that actively resists criticism and a desire to improve, when people are talking to each other.
As for consumption... at their best, RPGs are a performance art, the same as the other more established ones. There's skill in the execution, and the art can communicate ideas and prompt changes in thinking.
Sorry about the brief absence - I had a failing hard drive, and it has taken me a few days to get my machine back in order.
I also wanted to ask about the drug use (mnetics - what were they called?) in the text. In terms of rpgs thought of it as a required consumable whose absence ensured a fail state for most of the players (actually were there players, or just one player?) in the game, which led to the TPK at the end of the first part. They were a potential fail state in other words, kind of like magic entering a no magic field, or light entering a black hole. This reminded me of Dune, but the basic idea (meme?) is easily extensible, e.g. failing torches in OD&D. Has anyone ever used these kind of resources in their gaming? Do you continue to do so?
Related to this, there is a lot of opportunity for book-keeping (irony) in ttrpgs, but I notice that since the rise of CRPGs more and more of this is being off-loaded to computers, e.g. VTTs. I have recently made an effort to play with Foundry and Discord voice chat, and found that the experience did not really suit me. Turns out I like face-to-face gaming, although Play-by-Post is okay. So two questions here:
1) How important is book-keeping for the roleplaying experience? I feel like the player who is GM is required to do a lot, but there is an effort to enable people who don't like it to play anyway. This leads me to question whether literacy is a requirement for ttrpgs - it certainly was when I began playing, but I think it may no longer be. Thoughts?
2) I'd like to hear about your experience with computers and roleplaying. WHat are the pluses, minuses, and changes they have made. How are they related to your experience of face-to-face gaming? What would make them better in your opinion?
1) A certain level of literacy still seems to be required. I suppose it would be possible to use some sort of app to create a character but it would lead to a pretty bad experience for the others players and GM if you didn't have the literacy levels required to keep up with how to play your own character after the fact. I think you can get away with not having to take a lot of notes if the group is playing a much more laid back game where you just sort of show up and play some combat, eat snacks, and are really light on the story.
2) I joined my first game as a player this year where we are using Foundry and Discord, and playing entirely virtual. One of the advantages seems to be that you can streamline some of the combat stuff - though you need to get over the hump with knowing how to use the software at first - I found it only took a couple sessions for that to stop being an issue. It made some overland travel stuff a little better in my books as well, but I imagine there would be some good ways to run that in person as well. I just have not experienced it. I certainly prefer the in-person experience, but I only have an N of 1 when it comes to online, so it could just be the group.