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<blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 8244031" data-attributes="member: 16586">Fundamentally what we disagree on is the concept that play is an act of active creation. I do not believe that anyone is really experiencing what their character experiences or that fantasy worlds have an independent existence in anyone's minds. Actually I know that they do not and it is always something I am mindful of. We may want to feel like we are experiencing that imaginary situation, but it is a shared illusion maintained through a dramatic amount of effort on everyone's parts. Perception is not reality no matter how we might wish it to be so.I contend that even the simple act of playing a character is an actively creative act throughout every moment of play. That there is no real version of the character that I am channeling or portraying. I am not making decisions as Ariel Matan when I play him. I am making decision for him. I want to feel like I am literally experiencing what he does, but I am not. I am sitting around a table or on a Zoom call with a group of friends and we are having a conversation where we construct a shared illusion of an imaginary place and time. Our perception, our shared illusion, and the reality are all very different things.What I am interested in talking about when it comes to RPGs is how we really construct that shared illusion, what the conversation looks like at the table, and how that impacts our experience of the shared illusion. There are a significant number of people who want to only speak to the experience of that shared illusion and want to maintain their experience of it. I see that as a fundamentally limited conversation because it will never teach us how to do this thing or even acknowledge that how we actually do this thing matters a great deal.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Campbell, post: 8244031, member: 16586"] Fundamentally what we disagree on is the concept that play is an act of active creation. I do not believe that anyone is really experiencing what their character experiences or that fantasy worlds have an independent existence in anyone's minds. Actually I know that they do not and it is always something I am mindful of. We may want to feel like we are experiencing that imaginary situation, but it is a shared illusion maintained through a dramatic amount of effort on everyone's parts. Perception is not reality no matter how we might wish it to be so. I contend that even the simple act of playing a character is an actively creative act throughout every moment of play. That there is no real version of the character that I am channeling or portraying. I am not making decisions as Ariel Matan when I play him. I am making decision for him. I want to feel like I am literally experiencing what he does, but I am not. I am sitting around a table or on a Zoom call with a group of friends and we are having a conversation where we construct a shared illusion of an imaginary place and time. Our perception, our shared illusion, and the reality are all very different things. What I am interested in talking about when it comes to RPGs is how we really construct that shared illusion, what the conversation looks like at the table, and how that impacts our experience of the shared illusion. There are a significant number of people who want to only speak to the experience of that shared illusion and want to maintain their experience of it. I see that as a fundamentally limited conversation because it will never teach us how to do this thing or even acknowledge that how we actually do this thing matters a great deal. [/QUOTE]

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