[MUD-Dev] You, the game of philosophy.

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Tuesday, December 09, 1997 5:40 PM, coder at ibm.net [SMTP:coder at ibm.net] 
wrote:
>
> On 19/11/97 at 09:49 PM, Adam Wiggins <nightfall at user1.inficad.com> said:
> >[Richard Woolcock:]
> >> Derrick Jones wrote:
>
> >> This may be going a little off-topic, but if your 'puppet' can exist 
without
> >> you, is it really a puppet?  In your mud, is your character:
> >> (a) A 'mud' person, who's personality you temporarily replace with 
your own
>
> >If you *replace* their personality with your own, it's not role-playing,
> >which is (I thought) the whole point.  The idea is that you create a
> >personality for them and then play that personality to the best of your
> >abilities.
>
> Are we really recreating the whole method acting debate in RP guise?
> Whether method acting is really acting has been debated futily for years.

Perhaps we should clarify the words 'your own' as they relate to RP... as I 
see it, 'my own personality' can be several things, much as 'my own book' 
can be several things. I can write a book, and that book is my own -- just 
as the personality reflected in my day to day life is my own personality. I 
can buy a book, and that book is my own -- just as a personality I create 
out of whole cloth but do not effect in my day to day life is my own. And I 
can simply provide the name of a book in response to a question, making it 
my own book as opposed to someone else's book (assuming multiple people are 
asked the same question, such as 'what book would you most like to see 
burned?') even though I may not own it and may not even have read it -- 
just as a personality I have seen effected by others might be something I 
choose to play in a game, even though I have neither created it nor 
effected it myself.

The analogy, I admit, is imperfect. But really, there are at least three 
meanings to 'my own' -- something of my own practice, something of my own 
creation, and something of my own choice.

But to bring this into perspective in terms of the discussion, I would say 
that role playing involves a lot more than just the personality of the 
character. As an example, were I to play someone of my exact physical, 
mental, and social characteristics in a game set in a world very much like 
the modern world, I am probably going to encounter different people. 
There's a very big game of what-if going on here; I'm probably never going 
to run into a time traveller or a dragon or a vampire or a passel of 
bloodthirsty rampaging smurfs in my day to day life, and even if I react to 
those events in a game *exactly* as I think I would in real life, there's 
still roleplay involved. I will have opportunities in the course of the 
game that I won't have in my real world existence, such as the potential to 
learn how to speak the secret language of the smurfs, which I sincerely 
doubt will never happen in my real life. As soon as that ability presents 
itself in one context and not another, the roles diverge; my character will 
always have a different set of experiences and a different set of social 
and physical resources to draw on.

The real question of roleplaying is whether you have a separation kept in 
mind, I think. If the two personalities are distinct, and you find yourself 
thinking something like "It would be *best* to cast the lightning bolt 
here, but Manaphest would probably prefer to throw the fireball even though 
it will be less effective... after all, it makes a much bigger noise and 
looks a lot more impressive", then I think there's a definite roleplaying 
aspect there. The razor I use is what the final effect is; if you 
deliberately make a choice which has no or negative benefit based on your 
character's personality, that's definite evidence of roleplay. The question 
which must be asked is what the player is being faithful to: the game's 
rules and inner operations, or the character's personal views, goals, and 
beliefs? Regardless of whether those views, goals, or beliefs are shared by 
the character *and* the player, if the fantasy takes precedence over the 
game's machinery it becomes roleplay rather than 'win condition' gaming.

It's common for roleplay and win condition gaming to coexist with a 
character. You may play your character as a real living and breathing human 
being (or other race) when in the company of others around town, and slip 
the personality into your hip pocket as soon as you step out of town -- 
becoming a heavily macro'd, partially automated, silent killing machine 
that scours the area for any damn thing it can make a few bucks or XP off 
of and methodically slaughters without regard for morals, ethics, or any 
other such concepts. This is much like an elite military unit operates, in 
truth; there's plenty of laughing and joking and just hanging out during 
downtime, but when the fit hits the shan all of that goes out the window 
and it's strictly business.

You can see this in most tabletop sessions, if you watch for the change in 
attitude when something looms up to threaten the party. A trek through the 
wilderness is simple enough, and taken lightly; the party talks and argues 
and displays their respective personalities, but as soon as the ground 
shakes with the sound of an approaching giant's footsteps you'll see that 
character speech ceases almost entirely as the players become immediately 
concerned with what they've got in hand, and where everyone is, and what 
the tactical situation will be when the giant gets within attack range. 
Once the situation is dealt with, the characters return to their funny 
accents and different speech patterns and go about their roleplay as usual. 

What I find on most MUDs is that the latter operation (low speech, no 
roleplay, pure 'win condition' gaming) is consistently rewarded, while the 
actual roleplay activity is *not* rewarded... effectively punishing the 
roleplayer and rewarding the powergamer. The roleplayer is further punished 
by the unwillingness of the powergamers to support what they consider 
'useless' activity -- which, to be honest, it essentially *is* in real game 
terms -- and the general perversity of human nature which leads these 
powergamers to deliberately disrupt that activity, much as you might giggle 
and make snide comments about the guy next door to you painting racing 
stripes on his house's gutters and drain spouts. "So, Fred, how much faster 
*will* the house go once you've finished this?"

Bluntly, roleplay is either something you enjoy or something you don't. If 
you don't, well, it looks awful silly, and it's funny to watch. And 
roleplayers, myself included, take themselves so SERIOUSLY. (Here's a 
corollary. Ask some annoying, detail-obsessed person whether 'anal 
retentive' has a hyphen. While he's thinking about it, ask "How about a 
colon?" and see if he picks up on that. This is the same sort of fun that 
powergamers like to have with roleplayers. It's hilarious. Even more so 
when they don't catch on.) We get so offended when someone goes "What in 
God's name is so interesting about standing around in the town square 
talking funny and making strange gestures at each other?", but really when 
you consider it the whole idea *is* rather strange. Can't you just see the 
original pitch for D&D? "Hey, instead of going out and partying tonight, 
let's just sit around in the dorm and pretend we're different people." 
(What frightens you more... the idea itself, or the fact that evidently 
several people said "Hey, that sounds like fun"?) The powergamer comes back 
from a twenty-minute trip into the wilderness and goes "I leveled" and 
everyone applauds. The roleplayer sits around in the square for three hours 
and has nothing to show for it except a vague idea that he enjoyed himself. 
"Doing what? What do you mean, 'doing what'? I had fun, didn't I?"

I think there are some really good money corollaries here. You can work in 
a bookstore and make $6 an hour while you read the latest books; or you can 
work at a newspaper and proofread articles, and make $15 an hour while you 
read... the newspaper. In the first case, you don't make a lot of money, 
but in the second, you get good money for your effort. However, in the 
first case, you go to work and actually enjoy yourself... while in the 
second your day consists of several hours of tedious eye-straining effort. 
Is the glass half empty or half full? It depends. Is it worth $9 an hour to 
you to enjoy your job? Or is boring, tedious work something you're willing 
to take in exchange for $9 an hour?

Roleplaying is like that. You like it, or you don't. And you can't really 
have a system where people can have it either way, I don't think.

I Could Be Wrong(TM).

=+[caliban at darklock.com]=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=[http://www.darklock.com/]+=
"It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a
new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by
the preservation of the old institution, and merely lukewarm defenders in
those who would gain by the new one."                      -- Machiavelli
=+=+=+[We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams]+=+=+=+=