Sense of Wonder: What is it to you?

[zacharythefirst]

For me, I think it's always just been the thought there are still great deeds to be done, incredible adventures to be had, and this idea that you and your friend are undertaking this amazing tale of some other story or world, and no one is sure how it will end, what will happen, what the next session will hold, or even if your character/cause will rise/fall. Possibility, and being able to be play in a game where EVERYTHING is possible, has kept me riveted all these years.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think this nails it. "Sense of wonder" actually requires you to... wait for it... wonder. When everything is a known quantity, there is no wondering and it all becomes dry.

You can have that sense when things are mysterious. "What will happen next?" As a personal example, I can give you my reaction to Firefly and Serenity. Firefly (which at first I did not even see from the beginning episode) gave me a sense of wonder: I wanted to learn more about the universe in which it took place, about the characters, etc. I couldn't get enough of it. Then when I saw Serenity, the big reveal left me saying "meh" and the possibilities had been reduced to a rather uninteresting actuality. I felt that we were left with few relevant questions, and so I lost all interest in it.

Regardless of whether you had the same feeling, the point is that wonder comes from a feeling of virtually limitless possibility. A lack of a sense of wonder comes from an experience of an arid actuality.

This is one reason why I prefer old school D&D (Classic and 1e): it is so open and 'inelegant' that it fosters creativity - it's not a well-oiled machine wherein everything works predictably and according to the same transparent rationale. 3E and its hand-wringing about movement grids and stacking modifiers seems like it was designed by and for engineers or accountants. Old school D&D is a weird Rube Goldberg device that could produce practically any result.

Example: In 3E the Wand of Wonder becomes the Rod of Wonder. Why? Because Rods and Wands were standardized in 3E: wands are for spellcasters and rods are for everybody. But I ask you: what part of "Wand of Wonder" suggests standardization? It's magic, people, not Trigonometry! If the way it works is totally obvious, intelligible and standardized... it's no longer magical.

That answer does it for me.

(And, may I add, I recently dragged out my 2e Encyclopedia Magica and if I have to call whatever I use a "minor artifact" to satisfy the nay-sayers, I'm willing and able to do that!)

 

[Melan]

Example: In 3E the Wand of Wonder becomes the Rod of Wonder. Why? Because Rods and Wands were standardized in 3E: wands are for spellcasters and rods are for everybody. But I ask you: what part of "Wand of Wonder" suggests standardization? It's magic, people, not Trigonometry! If the way it works is totally obvious, intelligible and standardized... it's no longer magical.

Completely outside the question of 3.*'s merits - that's one great point. If you standardise it, measure it and dissect it, it is no longer wondrous. It is a commodity. That's why I don't like overregulated magic items, ecologised dungeons and settings which are too "colour within the lines". Kingdoms of Kalamar has plate tectonics, the Wilderlands of High Fantasy have fallen starships and serpent-cults under tropical islands!

 

[howandwhy99]

Completely outside the question of 3.*'s merits - that's one great point. If you standardise it, measure it and dissect it, it is no longer wondrous. It is a commodity. That's why I don't like overregulated magic items, ecologised dungeons and settings which are too "colour within the lines". Kingdoms of Kalamar has plate tectonics, the Wilderlands of High Fantasy have fallen starships and serpent-cults under tropical islands!

rep+

 

[jonathan swift]

Meeting something or someone new in game and not thinking "Hey, let's kill it."

 

[Agamon]

I'm not sure Sense of Wonder has anything to do with how analytical a game is, not for me, anyway. It's more the discovery of something new. Roleplaying as a whole was completely new when I started in the hobby 20 years ago, that was the biggest sense of wonder for me. Then, when I learned of running a shared world experience with the players, creating a true campaign setting, that was another, lesser sense of wonder. When trying new games, there's sometimes a little sense of wonder, but it sometimes becomes overhadowed by frustration. There was even some sense of wonder with the anticipation and release of 3E, which I think was a big reason Eric's site took off like it did.

 

[Irda Ranger]

This is it for me too, almost. "Sense of Wonder" is the feeling that anything could be around the next corner, that something really terrible or really wonderful could happen. In order for me to keep that going though, those things do, occasionally, have to happen. If what is around the corner is exactly the same every time or never takes me by surprise, the game gets boring. So having the unexpected happen occasionally is integral.

Yes. This is why Random Encounter Tables are key to the Sense of Wonder. It's also imperative that the Encounter Tables be wildly CR inappropriate (both high and low), to remind the PC's that the world was not made for their adventuring benefit, but is a real and dangerous place.

It took me a long time to realize this, but the sad truth is that I am predictable. I'm smart, have a good imagination, and put a lot of work into my adventures, but I also have preferences and sub-conscious prejudices. My players know this (and know me), and therefore, after years and years, I have become predictable. So have the overly market-tested published adventures. No Sense of Wonder.

BUT, if I have the courage to cede control of my adventure to the dice, and let adventures "happen", rather than try to "tell" them, ... wow.

The best feeling as a DM is after the game, days or weeks later, when your players are going "Whoa, that was so cool - I totally nailed those troglodytes; and where the hell did they come from, anyway? I was totally taken by surprise there, but I handled it." because you know that they had that Sense of Wonder.

3E and its hand-wringing about movement grids and stacking modifiers seems like it was designed by and for engineers or accountants. Old school D&D is a weird Rube Goldberg device that could produce practically any result.

You win the thread.

There are advantages to the former system (the players have much firmer understanding of what their characters are capable of), but I totally miss the SoW (as I now call it) that the latter inspires. I won't go back though. Inspiring the SoW is more about gaming technique than rule set...

It's magic, people, not Trigonometry! If the way it works is totally obvious, intelligible and standardized... it's no longer magical.

... but there are exceptions. This is a good one. I think Random Item Tables are a good idea too. You get results that are weird, but you'd never have thought of them yourself. For instance: the Dagger of Wonder. On a critical hit, roll on the Wonder table. Oh boy. I bet the PC's will be surprised the first time that thing goes off.

The Sense of Wonder is:

* narrowly escaping a CR-inappropriate encounter.
* flooding the tunnels of the random Kobolds who insult your parents and run down a tunnel you can't fit in.
* solving the riddle of the NPC druid who can cast 5th level Weather spells, but seems to be a 2nd level character in all other respects.
* learning the secrets of the monster you don't recognize.
* meeting that old foe who kicked your ass when you were 1st level - and wiping the floor with him.

What these all have in common:
1. Uncertainty
2. Risk (read: Not CR appropriate)
3. Accomplishment

Really, the "Sense of Wonder" is just Flow, as described in this book.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I think "Sense of Wonder" is used to describe an emotional experience when entering the hobby that virtually all of us who have developed a longstanding interest in gaming had at one time. That "sense of wonder" is experienced in the first few years of playing RPGs.

While some players experience this "sense of wonder", many, perhaps even most players, don't.

The difference is that the players that never experience that "sense of wonder" don't become passionately attached to the hobby and so don't stick with it. Accordingly, it's not surprising that when the topic is discussed among gamers who DID stick with the hobby over a course of years, we all find we had a similar emotional excitement in our first few years of play.

Like all emotional states, a "sense of wonder' is inherently subjective and hard to define. You have to have lived it to "get it". And like all emotional states, you can't describe it or analyze it on a logical basis while you are in it.

The analysis of what a "sense of wonder" means when we share our experience with one another becomes murkier still, as for most of us that time occurred when we were adolescents, and long ago at that. But I don't believe that a "sense of wonder" requires a player to be introduced to gaming during adolesence to experience it. It simply worked out that way for most of us.

Moreover, I know what I have said above is true, because I have experienced it after gaming with something else. And like the "Sense of Wonder" which we are grappling with here, it's a shared emotional experience that has been written about and analyzed.

It's not unique to gaming.

In all seriousness, a similar emotional state is used to describe the experiences of virtually all law students in their first year and a half (or so) in Law School too. It doesn't matter which common law Law School you are talking about either. Because all common law Law Schools all teach first year law in the same essential way, the shared experience among lawyers is a very real one. All lawyers here will know what I am talking about.

Lawyers call it "learning to love the law". Scott Turow wrote about it in his book One L. Yes. I'm dead serious.

And it had a "Sense of Wonder" to it as well. The exact same thing.

And yes, I think falling in romantic love has similar passionate and all consuming interest and wonder about it as well. It's vastly more intense that gaming - or learning to love the law for that matter - but it's an experience that has many similarities, albeit on a very different scale.

Like all things experienced for the first time, that first experience changes you. And while that passion for gaming can return to all of us (and perhaps, never really left for most) - nothing can make you a "gaming virgin" again.

So no, you can't really experience it again in the same way. Sorry.

The best you can hope for is to recapture the experience in fleeting moments every now and then, like a ghost in the room or a light that looms over a great gaming session or even a great campaign from time to time.

It isn't the same - but it suffices.

 

[Harmon]

Brother - "you make up a character, a fighter or a cleric or something."

Me - "make them up? You mean like making up pretend people?"

Brother - "ya, like you are making up a person to put into a movie or a story or something like that."

Me - "and they don't have to be me? You mean I can pretend to be someone else?"

Brother - "ya."

Me - "I'll try it I guess."

Couple days later, an hour into it.

Me - "so I am this other person?"

Other Players - "ya."

My sense of wonder was being someone else; escaping this crappy life, leaving it behind. Being able to kill, and saving the day, being a hero, and being someone more capable, someone that could venture into a setting and settle the evil into its grave. Cause no matter what I did in this life I couldn't do it here. :\

 

[Irda Ranger]

In all seriousness, a similar emotional state is used to describe the experiences of virtually all law students in their first year and a half (or so) in Law School too. It doesn't matter which common law Law School you are talking about either. Because all common law Law Schools all teach first year law in the same essential way, the shared experience among lawyers is a very real one. All lawyers here will know what I am talking about.

There was an "emotional state", all right, but I'm not sure "Wonder" is the word.

So no, you can't really experience it again in the same way. Sorry.

The best you can hope for is to recapture the experience in fleeting moments every now and then, like a ghost in the room or a light that looms over a great gaming session or even a great campaign from time to time.

I'm gonna disagree with this. It's not "newness" that you're talking about, it's "flow", when all of your mental resources are dedicated to a single task, and you're "in the moment" and suddenly it's 2 AM.

It's easier to achieve flow when you're first learning something because the act of learning uses more of your brain. Once you've learned the system, the only thing that remains to challenge you is the adventure and role-playing, and that's usually not enough to involve 100% of your mental resources, so you find yourself being distracted by stuff. You never mentally escape the gaming room into the gaming world.

But that doesn't mean its impossible. You can achieve flow at any level of skill. You can have it back. If you know how.

Read the book.

This isn't cheesy pseudo-science, but hard, fact-based neuroscience. The brain really does "shift gears" under certain circumstances. Check it out. Dr. Csikszentmihalyi has spent a lifetime studying it.