What exactly is "Roleplaying", Do We Think?

[Bedrockgames]

If it seems so, it is because it is difficult to do anything else with the circular arguments that you and Mark are making. They are nothing but semantic attempts to sharly narrow the definition of "roleplaying" to be "first person characterization".

This is parallel to Chesterton's example of the man in the insane asylum who thinks he is the King of England. You can't assail his position because it is perfectly logical within the constraints of his premise. It's logical, but emprically foolish. All you can do is show a broader world, and suggest that there is more on heaven and earth than what is dreamed of in his philosophy.

Mark disagreed violently with Hobo's couple of suggestions as to why someone would so want to narrow the definition. Meanwhile, postings in good faith to show a broader world have been met with semantic arguments and what appears from this end to to have no good purpose. So show a good purpose why "roleplaying" should be limited to first person characterization. Then we can discuss that intelligently. Otherwise, there will always remain the suspicion of a hidden agenda that can't be discussed. I think "rollplaying versus roleplaying" as a concept is emprically foolish. Show us otherwise.

I actually agree with Hobo on these points. I think if you go back and exmamine what I said, you will see I spoke of context and was defending a common use of the term. The whole point is it is a versatile word, and while it can be used broadly in order to capture both first person dialogue and rolling diplomacy, there is a more narrow use of the term that has been very widely used and is useful, particularly in conversationa dealing with how deeply one is role playing the character. For me it has been important because it helps me establish what kind of game will be run. Inthe gaming groups I deal with, when we say we are going to have a role play heavy campaign, or focus on role play it means stuff like first person dialogue will be what we are shooting for.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think "rollplaying versus roleplaying" as a concept is emprically foolish. Show us otherwise.

Okay, fair enough. Concepts are more important than words in this case. First off, why do you think it is empirically foolish? It is simply a distinction between two different elements of play. One leans on mechanics, the other on playing your character. This distinction, has existed in the hobby since at least the 80s, but i am sure it goes back further. And it has been embraced broadly. Do you accept that speaking in character is a different thing than not speaknig in character and instead rolling a die?" if so there is clearly a distinction. And the distinction revolves around whether or not you are immersed in your character. Now you can do both, i wont argue against that. You could roll and have role play occuraround the edges. But if all you are doing is making skill rolls and not really interacting with the setting, or connecting to your character, I would put it more in the realm of roll play. I am not saying you shouldn't do one, or only do the other. I am saying there is a kind of built in dichotomy in the game that revolves around this. Most people play rpgs with an even mix of the two. Some people go to the extreme end of roll or role.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Okay, fair enough. Concepts are more important than words in this case. First off, why do you think it is empirically foolish?

It shuts down conversations instead of starting them. It creates certain bad impressions, frequently some that may be counter to the ones the speaker wants to create. At best, it can come across as a kind of "lazy snobbery" that instead of asserting a forthright elite proposition and defending that, seeks to drum related things out of the discussion. At worst, it smacks of an agenda separate from the thing itself. Those are all self-interested reasons why it is emprically foolish.

More philosophically, it excludes experiences that people are reporting, in some kind of tight loop--like that madman who thought he was the King of England. It's one thing for the madman to say that the authorities are against him. Of course they are--they are supporting some other King. This would be true whether the man was the rightful King or a madman. It's another thing entirely for the madman to exclude all the common citizens walking around living their lives as if the current King is King, and the madman is rightfully locked up. It's foolish to discount strong emprical evidence that whole swaths are doing some thing that they call "roleplaying" and then construct a definition that says they are not.

As a parallel example, I was once of those people who said that "rap isn't music". Now, if pressed even then, I'd have grudgingly admitted that was a tad extreme, and would have backed down to "rap isnt' very good music". Later, as I got more familiar with some other music that I also didn't care for, it finally dawned on me that I have a strong preference for melody over rhythm. If a piece doesn't have a strong melody, I will not find it very enjoyable, and extended exposure won't typically create an appreciation for it--beyond perhaps, "Hey, the rhythm in that is pretty interesting, if you like that kind of thing."

If the earlier me meets a rap enthusiast, we can't really have a productive discussion about "music". At best, we can pick something in music that has an overlap without current interests, and talk about that. But as far as he is concerned, my views on "music" as a whole are so fatally flawed that he might decide to discount them entirely. He might still enjoy talking to me about melody, but that's it. The later me, in contrast, still dislikes rap as much as I ever did. But now we have much more to discuss. He might find why I don't like it insightful when dealing with people like, well, the earlier me. In his vast collection of rap, he might have come across some with a stronger emphasis on melody, and be interested in what I thought of those. And so on. Moreover, you'll note that my "extreme" position was never so bold as to write everything but a narrow slice out of the definition. It never occurred to me in my "listen to nothing but Baroque to Mozart classical music" period to claim that they were the only music.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

It is simply a distinction between two different elements of play. One leans on mechanics, the other on playing your character. This distinction, has existed in the hobby since at least the 80s, but i am sure it goes back further. And it has been embraced broadly. Do you accept that speaking in character is a different thing than not speaknig in character and instead rolling a die?"

For now, let me say that I think the difference is where you see a dichotomy, I see a continuum. It is precisely the area between speaking in character and simply rolling the die that interesting things in roleplaying happen.

I'll also note here, as good a place as any, that I was recently a supportive bystander in a therapy session where the therapist used roleplaying (in the clinical sense--but very similar to what we do in some ways) to help the client. It was in no way limited to first person visualization, but jumped sharply and deliberatey between first person, third, occasional second person. And not only that, but also key bits of narration that sequed into the roleplaying on fuzzy boundaries, use of props, deliberately dropping out of character to reinforce going back in (i.e. analogous to metagaming), shallow and deep immersion, and probably some other things that I missed. Everything was centered on "get the clients' person into that imagined space".

This in all ways conforms to what I have read about "roleplaying" in that environment. It also conforms to how "visualization" techniques are used by all sorts of people to boost performance--something else that grew out of a rather positive branch of the clinical techniques.

 

[Bedrockgames]

For now, let me say that I think the difference is where you see a dichotomy, I see a continuum. It is precisely the area between speaking in character and simply rolling the die that interesting things in roleplaying happen.

I'll also note here, as good a place as any, that I was recently a supportive bystander in a therapy session where the therapist used roleplaying (in the clinical sense--but very similar to what we do in some ways) to help the client. It was in no way limited to first person visualization, but jumped sharply and deliberatey between first person, third, occasional second person. And not only that, but also key bits of narration that sequed into the roleplaying on fuzzy boundaries, use of props, deliberately dropping out of character to reinforce going back in (i.e. analogous to metagaming), shallow and deep immersion, and probably some other things that I missed. Everything was centered on "get the clients' person into that imagined space".

This in all ways conforms to what I have read about "roleplaying" in that environment. It also conforms to how "visualization" techniques are used by all sorts of people to boost performance--something else that grrew out of a rather positive branch of the clinical techniques.

I agree it is a continuum. When i said dichitomy, i was realoy thinking about the extreme ends of a specrtum. However for me, the interesting part of rpgs is when you are more on the far end of RP (speaking in character, etc).

With regards to therapy, roleplaying in RPGs is not the same thing as theraputic role play. But like I said, there is broad role play, whic includes peaking in third person and rolling dice, and there is the more narrow sense which has been used by gamers for a long time to highlight things like 1st person dialogue and exploration.

 

[Balesir]

Whew - a lot of very good food for thought, here! I'll add a few more of my own thoughts:

Without 'system' what is the difference between 'roleplaying alone' and 'daydreaming'?

The content of the dream! Roleplaying alone is a subset of daydreaming, for sure - but I'm talking about roleplaying, here, as opposed to talking about a roleplaying game. I regard these as distinct but very much related concepts.

Here Goes:

A roleplaying game is a social form of entertainment characterized by a shared, imagined space, a way to resolve conflicts within that shared space, and division of responsibility with regards to events within that space.

I think that is broad enough to encompass most every RPG, while still having hard edges that makes it different than any other form of entertainment.

Nice definition of a roleplaying game - but, as I said just above, I think that is not identical to 'roleplaying', the activity.

No, it isn't system because i am talking about speaking in character. Free roleplay is not system by any way I or most people understand that term. To me you are just playing semantics here. The gm doesn't bluff you with dice (roll playing), he bluffs you by actully trying to bluff in character.

Far from semantics, I think this is a critical conceptual point: the GM making stuff up or using his or her own skill to manipulate the view a player has of the imagined space is absolutely a resolution system. Systems don't need to involve dice (or any other explicit randomiser), tables or written rules in order to be "systems". Any mechanism used to resolve the outcome of an event in the game world is a game system - to claim otherwise really is semantics. The game world does not exist, ergo any resolution that is made and shared about what happens in that game world must use procedures or mechanisms in the real world to make that happen. Just because that mechanism does not use dice or other real-world tools as determinants does not make it any less a "system".

I can see, from a visceral viewpoint, what [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] is getting at, in that it's tempting to think of negotiation as nothing more than a sequence of decisions (and, as I said in the first post, I think making decisions for the character from their point of view is the very core of roleplaying). But there are things going on with a "bluff" that are not simply "decisions" - if there were not, the very concept of a "bluff" would not exist. If negotiations were simply a matter of the two parties to the negotiation making decisions, there would be no such thing as "great negotiators" - any pair of people would do (picked, presumably, for the way their personalities affected the non-rational decisions they make).

On the "system is part of the roleplaying" angle, I think [MENTION=10479]Mark CMG[/MENTION] put it well; it's like the blend of singing and acting that makes opera. Or the fact that I concentrate when I'm reading. The fact that the reading and the concentrating, or the singing and the acting, are tightly bound together in the same act does not mean they are not separate things. In intense, dramatic scenes I will often be both roleplaying and rolling dice (or, more generally, invoking and using systems to make resolutions) - the two activities bound tightly one to the other - but I would still see them as separate. Just as the acts of envisioning the character's situation as the character understands it and making decisions based on that is not part of the "system", the die rolling and/or whatever else are not part of the "roleplaying".

Where I think I disagree with Mark CMG is that he sees the 'roleplaying' element as being very bound up with imagining the sensory experience of the character (I think? Correct me if I'm wrong). I don't think an immersive pseudo-sensory experience is at all necessary - although it is optional. Edit to be clearer (I hope): there is a first-person element required, in order to envision the character's situation as s/he sees it, but that "picture" can be conceptual, rather than imagined-sensory.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I get what you are saying but this isn't what I meant by system (nor is it what most peope mean when they use the term). Here i am talking about crunch, mechanics. They dont need dice, but they attempt to provide a ehanical framework to resolve things. Whereas in the case of in character resolution, you are going more by feel (a feel for the charaters, motives, perceptions, etc). If system is an unacceptable term, we can create a new one, the point is this is a very different way of handling social skills than using dice, cards, or paper-rock-scissor. That is why this was a semanric argument, it hinges on defining system in such a way, that the distinction between social skills and handling social situations in character without such dissapear. It focuses in one word, deconstructs, and ignores that a distinction still remains. At least that is the impression it creates for me.

 

[Mark CMG]

Where I think I disagree with Mark CMG is that he sees the 'roleplaying' element as being very bound up with imagining the sensory experience of the character (I think? Correct me if I'm wrong). I don't think an immersive pseudo-sensory experience is at all necessary - although it is optional. Edit to be clearer (I hope): there is a first-person element required, in order to envision the character's situation as s/he sees it, but that "picture" can be conceptual, rather than imagined-sensory.

Yeah, that's true that I feel that is part of the experience. The input you get is most immersive when from the point of view of the character. It's why a lot of folks don't feel that as much when using the battle mats and minis, they get a overhead view and thus are more removed from the character. Some can jump in and out, make the trade off in favor of gaining some added satisfaction on the "game" side of the roleplaying game equation. As a lifelong wargamer, I often like that myself, particularly with systems that are well written on the "game" side of the roleplaying game equation and with those systems that have the better combat rules. 3.XE and 4E are like that for me. I prefer to play out the combats in either using the grid (and I have tried with and wthout) because both have very good combat mechanics. This oscillation between roleplaying and gaming, between first person and third person, has great advantages when the system is geared toward both.

On a related note, there's a difficult step writers have to take in transitioning from light fiction to literary fiction while in the first person. To use a film analogy, if you can imagine the difference between a camera being a few feet behind the head of the protagonist as opposed to being actually in the head of the protagonist, you can picture how the difference manifests. It is certainly fair to say that both are first person but one is more immersive than the other and can lead to a more satisfying roleplaying exerpience and perhaps even a more interesting one. Again, this takes nothing away from either, they are just different roleplaying styles that can be measured in (not good or bad) depth of immersion.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Regarding bluff, i wasnt trying to reduce negotiation to a simple matter of the character making choice. The point is you weigh the buff from the point of view of the character. This is really getting more into the specific topic of 1st person dialogue, but this is somethign I dont consider a system in the game system sense. You do it enought and it becomes very intuitive. The purpose of course isn't to simulate reality but to feel like you are there. For me the greatest moments for me as a GM are when I am playing Strahd orn equally interesting NPC and you feel for a momemt like you are strahd. Not to the point of insanity, not so you literally cant distinguish between reality and the game world,but you are immersed in the way you might be with a book or movie, except the immersion is in the characters.

So if the pcs try to bluff Strahd, i am thinking in terms of what strahd values, what he wants, what he doesn't want, how well the player is making the case, how charismatic his character is, etc. It is a trade off though, because you give more weight to player performance. So it isn't as simulative of characters in that respect. But the experience is to me more fun than rolling diplomacy rolls and adding your modifiers.

 

[Balesir]

I get what you are saying but this isn't what I meant by system (nor is it what most peope mean when they use the term). Here i am talking about crunch, mechanics. They dont need dice, but they attempt to provide a ehanical framework to resolve things. Whereas in the case of in character resolution, you are going more by feel (a feel for the charaters, motives, perceptions, etc). If system is an unacceptable term, we can create a new one, the point is this is a very different way of handling social skills than using dice, cards, or paper-rock-scissor.

Right - it is a very different type of system, that is not really disputable (well, not reasonably!)

The thing is, though, that by calling it "roleplaying" because it is different from "crunch mechanical" systems, you go one step beyond what is necessary and thereby label any system that uses "crunch mechanical" methods "not roleplaying" (or, at least, "less roleplaying"). I think this is both inaccurate and a problem in terms of slighting other players.

I don't know what the terms should be, but I think what we are talking about is a different quality of "system" - one that suits some styles of play (sensory-picture immersive play as an obvious example) particularly well. The characteristics of the system type would be that it has player skill either directly (you bluff in character by bluffing your friends) or indirectly (you simulate a bluff by acting as you imagine a character would when bluffing, including one or two "tell-tales" if you either want your friends to twig to it or think they are a bit dim in the bluff-detection department and need some help - or if you need to bluff constantly just to play, so need to telegraph a bit more when the character is actually supposed to be bluffing...)

With very skilled players, I can see this producing a very fine, immersive session. Which is a fine thing - but not what every roleplayer requires or necessarily even wants.