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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CarlZog" data-source="post: 1590451" data-attributes="member: 11716">This sounds like it could be fascinating research. I too would love to hear more about your thesis.I started playing about the same time you did. At first it was all the typical hack-n-slash, but it was when I got into college that I started thinking more about the game as a combination of interactive storytelling and improv theatre. Mind you, I never had any acting or theatre background, training or interest. Playing with a group of friends that had very little RPG experience, I began to focus on really bringing NPCs to life with facial expressions and accents. I quickly discovered that doing so made a big difference in how the players interacted with the NPCs. They took things more seriously and began to interract with the NPCs in character. It was great to watch. As they were all pretty new to the game, I also started the campaign giving each of them detailed character backgrounds that were tied to the plotlines I expected to come up in the campaign. I wanted them to understand what motivated their characters, and I hoped they would run with it. They did. The other element was ensuring that each player had exclusive knowledge about his character (call it "personal secrets") that he could choose to share or not to share with the others. Without going into extensive story details, the campaign's primary evil foe cornered the party in an alley and each character thought it was only him personally that the bad guy was after. And each for a different reason! But they were all terrified! I mean every player was legitimately scared, as if the threat to his character constituted a real-life threat to the player himself! You could see it on their faces: This was real. Looking around the table, I was stunned that I had been able to evoke this powerful, genuine, raw emotional response. It was an amazing feeling for me, and the players talked about that encounter for many years after. That's when I first realized that that the unfolding play of the game was, in itself, an kind of narrative artform in which we were the creators AND the audience. I don't know of any other form or art or entertainment that can lay that claim in quite the same way. zog</blockquote>

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