So I decided to do a little philosophizing here. Which is in answer to this question; what do you do in an role playing guide?
That’s really very simple; while playing the role of another you have adventures. How do you do that is up to you and the guide you employ. How the guide does this depends on how the guide is designed to do this. And how that is done pretty much depends on how the designer wants matters to be handled. In times of crisis the sequence of events can be confusing. So I design determining the sequence of events in a crisis to be confusing. But learning becomes simpler as you get used to how you do it.
So what it comes down to is, how you do things has an impact on how you approach doing them. It has an approach on the feel of play. My approach in making fighting a hard matter to handle is to get you to try other ways of handling conflict. My purpose in making it hard to create your Persona in DJ is to discourage you from using violence to solve a problem without thinking about it.
And there we’ll be pausing for awhile because I’ve got an essay to compose. That’ll take awhile, but while I’m composing think about this: How would you handle crossing a street in the face of heavy traffic?
I am overdrawn at my bank by 11 dollars. By Friday with additional penalties the amount will be some 60 dollars. I need a donation of about 15 dollars to cover what I owe and what PayPal charges for handling donations. Or I’m on the street. Please send a donation. Pretty please with sugar on top.?
Now as I’m listening to this it occurs to me that what Edwards to doing is describing what Tolkien was describing in his scene with Eru and his chorus at the very beginning of his Silmarillion.
Essentially what Tolkien is doing is what the guide in an RPG does, present his creation to his players, and they in turn cooperate and collaborate in fleshing it out.
With the exception of Morgoth. Morgoth has to have things his way. Morgoth is a disruptive player. The angel doesn’t want to cooperate or collaborate, he wants to make it his. Morgoth is a brat.
So Eru does absolutely the worst thing he can do, he incorporates the changes Morgoth makes in Eru’s creation, which is not what Morgoth wants.
This applies where disruptive players in any RPG session are concerned, it has to be theirs. Should you deny them this outright it’s bad enough. But what’s even worse is when the guide finds a way to may the player’s work part of his. The disruptive are not out to make an experience better they are out to make it theirs even when it makes the experience worse for the other players.
Then Ron points out something I hadn’t thought of before. For the most part the events in an RPG are indeterminate. That is, it’s a matter of luck. The diceless RPG is very much a cooperative/collaborative storytelling game with guide and players deciding on what is going to happen and how. You get right down to it, a storytelling is determinative, events are set down. It may be the decision of one, it may be the decision of the many, but it is a decision and one deliberate decided on.
In a role playing guide (to use my phrasing) what might occur can be up to chance. Player says he’s tossing a bag of poison inside a dragon’s mouth. The guide rolls a 1 on a d20 and the dragon dies . Changes things, don’t it? Not entirely, but to some extent luck will change the course of events.
That’s pretty much what I got out of this, but before I go I have this to say.
As far as I can see fiction really has nothing to do with story. The fact it can’t happen in reality doesn’t mean it can’t happen in fiction, that it can’t happen in our imagination. What it comes down to is that events happen in play pretty much as they do in life. A choice is made, you get run over a car when its brakes fail. Nobody expected it, just bad luck. In a story it’s not a character who decides he’s not dropping a nuke on Moskva, it’s the writing who decides his character who’s not dropping the bomb because he doesn’t see that character doing it. To make this simple, storytellers have control over what they are doing, players in an RPG don’t, and that includes the guide.
I’ve got more video to watch, more thinking to do, and more composing.
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First, be sure you listen to the whole thing. He does go into some detail, and it really is a subject you need to take in and think about..
The main focus, as far as I can tell, is that there are two main elements to RPGs. One has to do with the guide’s sub-creation; with his adaptation of his world as best to present an imaginary version to his players.
The other has to do with how his players handle his presentation, which can have a lot to do with what they know of the guide, how he see things, how they see things, and how they are able to handle matters.
Ron does talk in some part about story, and as far as I can tell he does see them as being story. I don’t agree. I understand story as being an account of what has happened (my emphasis), whether the account be factual or fictional. In contrast what occurs during play is what is occurring. It doesn’t have to actually be occurring in all reality, it just needs to be taken as real in your imagination.
And then there is the matter of narration, which can include a witness relating what he sees as happening, as it happens. What you can call “description.”
Be sure to read the comments below the video, but do so after you’ve seen the video. This is the sort of things you’ll need some background on.
Thank you for your time, and feel free to leave a comment or observation.
I can get Vitamin D from meat, fish, and milk, and that I need D to get calcium from milk. I think a gallon of whole milk a day will suffice, but my refrigerator isn’t big enough for one gallon jugs, so I have to get a half gallon. That makes it 2 dollars a half gallon from the one store, or 4 dollars a day.
Keep in mind that I do have naturally low cholesterol.
And since I’m asking I do need leads to food distribution sites in San Diego which include milk. I know of one location, but somewhere I can get 2 or 3 gallons in half gallon jugs would be nice.
There is a donation button in the sidebar you can use.
Did it again and now I need your help. That help would be in the form of donations, any amount you can spare. I could also use help getting my place straightened up, so that I can demonstrate I can be trusted with an apartment.
I also have appointments coming up regarding my kidneys, my heart, and my teeth.Medicaid is covering that, but I’m afraid I may not have the cash to cover rent in August. Help as you can and thank you for that help.
Lately I’ve run into people who keep insisting that when we play in an RPG we have to be telling a story. In case you hadn’t heard, I disagree.
Their Rationale
As far as I can tell in their way of thinking the fact events in play are imaginary—that is, fictional—it means that it has to be story. That is not how I understand story. How do I understand story?
As I understand it, a story is an account of events that have occurred. A narration is an accounting of those events. Whether those events are real or imaginary is irrelevant, what matters is that they have occurred. When they are occurring you don’t have a story, you have events.
And it doesn’t matter if they are real events or make believe, they are happening in one sense or another.
The Society
In the Society for Creative Anachronism—SCA—the members get together on occasion to pretend to be living in the Middle Ages as they should’ve been. They’re really not, they just pretend they are. And in that the events are happening at that moment, they’re not telling stories. For all that the lives are imaginary, they are still living lives.
RPGs?
And what are you doing in an RPG—Role Playing Game? You are living a life. For all that it is an imaginary life in an imaginary world, it is still a life.
Think of it as a sort of virtual reality. In all reality it has no reality, just the appearance of reality. You want to get right down to it, it’s a fraud. But it’s close enough to being real that we can pretend that it is. We can treat it as real, and in our treatment handle it as if we were actually living the life we pretend we are.
Closing Thoughts
I may have more to say on this, but first I have to think some more.
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