Sudden Moment of Clarity:
I don’t want to build Role-Playing Games, I want to build Role-Portraying games. Role-Playing as it is used in modern parlance implies “Play” as in game, something with extrinsic value, such as a win-state. Role portraying emphasizes portray as in a character, and the intrinsic value of portraying a character that mirrors the player in depth and meaning.
Pardon my pedantry.
I think this I’d an interesting disusion to have. I do not know if we need.to start changing the name of the craft, maybe we do, but it certainly is an idea that should be explored. The clarity of word usage creates a very different idea of purpose in the mind.
This sounds like the old roll-play vs role-play issue in a new coat. I totally get the concept, and all the levels of immersion/realism that it implies, and I think folks will find the creative expression they most want. To portray a role is to act it out – this seems perhaps a LARPy thing, where you have a given role to portray. I know that my portrayal of a character from Previous Occupants or Inheritance is different than other people portraying the same character in different occurrences of those LARPs.
Vincent Baker has a world of articles about goals in RPGs.
I’m personally all about:
play (as in theatre) + game = symbiosis
I love how “portrayal” inspires “the game” and vice versa.
There is a good start off, if you like a video on the topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8-9xr65c3w
My catchphrase on these matters is “if your understanding of ‘play’ as a concept does not include the imagination games of children, you’re doing it wrong”.
I’d totally disagree with you Grady Wright, sorry. Colter Hanna’s comment resonates more with me. Play only connotes a “win-state” for those who play as grown-ups. Children play to play with no thought of winning.
I often find story-gamers get overly critical of more traditional gaming and some of the concepts that gave become attached to it (roll-play, for example). But those draconic (forgive the pun) judgments of traditional RPGs is a judgment against how some have interpreted them, not how they were intended to be played. D&D has always included the specific caveat to ignore rules you don’t like and play however it is fun for you. It’s just that many people ignore that must important rule.
While I understand your interest in changing the paradigm, I’d argue that the problem isn’t with the word “play,” but with the limitations your own misinterpretation of that word has placed on your world view.
“Portray” actually limits even more, linguistically. Actor’s “portray” roles that they often have very little input or control over, in stories with prescribed outcomes, with arcs that cannot be changed. That sounds like the opposite of your stated goal.
Thank you all for your care and attention. I concede that Colter’s definition of “play” is the better one: it’s sincere. My statement about extrinsic value was grasping at best. I think it’s because I was too afraid to really examine my own rhetoric. Sorry about that.
What I want to critique/reform is “antics culture” and to a lesser extent self-preservation as unstated goal. Colter Hanna first pointed out to me that every DnD story is about antics: the hi-jinks players get up to messing with the rules, rather than the stories they’re telling. Legendary examples include Los Tiberon [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Los_Tiburon] and Sir Bearington [http://i.imgur.com/aK08jJo.jpg]. These are incredible stories, but they’re not about a moral dilemma or philosophical quandry. It’s not Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Man, or Man vs. Self, it’s Man vs. System, a sort of meta-conflict. This isn’t wrong! But I’m not sure I want those stories to be the only ones to ascend to mythic status.
I’d like to think we’ve all arrived at a point in tabletop role-play where there was a dissonance between what we as a player wanted and how our character would be portrayed given their culture, heritage, ethnic and racial background, etc. When portraying the character bravely and honestly becomes second fiddle to gold, treasure, or some such, that is a problem. Imagine a play where an actor ignores blocking and direction to impress an audience member or a director cuts lines because they have an affinity for a certain cast-member.
Maybe it’s not even the word “play” that creates this condition, I would place it on the community. It’s the three words in RPG, it’s the term “Arr-pee-gee” as a whole.
Post-script: This is Socratic as hell and asinine, but if you have a piece of text that says “ignore certain rules”, couldn’t a party ignore the “ignore rules” clause? The documentation could, in theory, become self-redacting.
No need to apologize for starting a conversation. 🙂 I totally understand where you’re coming from and I also hate when mechanics and gaming supercede story.