IC Mode
Mary K. Kuhner
Barbara Robson <rob...@octarine.cc.adfa.oz.au> writes:
>I have a couple of questions for the deep-IC players here.
>Personally, I tend to play IC for the first session or two
>until I get a good feel for what the new character will do
>in any situation and then slip into a more Authorial mode
>as maintaining IC is too draining in the long run.
This is a little puzzling to me--let me make a try at what
you might be getting at. Are you meaning IC as "think the
situation through from the PC's point of view, in order
to figure out what he does" and Author as "use a previous
event or general principles to determine what the character
does, without going through the figuring-out steps"? If
so, I can see why Author mode is easier, but takes some
time to establish. Initially you don't have the general
principles on hand yet.
If that's not what you mean, perhaps you could make it clearer?
I'm puzzled because I tend to do Author when I don't know a
character well enough, and IC later on. There's a kind of "click" where
the character's emotions and (to a lesser degree) thoughts
fall into place; after that they're generally much easier to play
than they were before.
>But
>even for the short parts that I do play IC, I have run into
>a couple of problems:
>1) How do you stay IC when using skills that the character
>has that you, as the player, don't come close to?
[soldier character requires learning military theory]
> Now, this bothers me: I prefer to know as little as
> possible about the ways and means of killing people, but
> I found that I could not play IC without at least some
> grasp of what factors the soldier-character would be
> considering. Shortly after that, I had enough of a feeling
> for the PC to be able to work from an Authorial mode, so
> she didn't present a problem again.
There are really two things going on here: one is that it's
hard to do IC from a position of ignorance, and the
other is that it's probably unpleasant for you to be intimate
with this character's mindset in the first place (as she's
knowledgable about violence and you don't want to be).
I know of three things that can help with the first issue.
One, as you note, is research and experience. The second
is substituting knowledge of a game-mechanical representation
for knowledge of the actuality. For some players, player
thoughts along the line of "okay, cover is +2, that's better
than moving fast which is only +1" are a sufficiently good
analog of the character's "I don't fancy running across
that open space with this much fire going down; time to
dive for it and keep my head down" that they'll substitute.
I personally find learning an RPG combat system less
distressing than digging into books on modern weaponry.
The third approach is trying to abstract to a greater degree,
without dropping the IC stance. This means less attention
on the PC's thoughts and more on her intentions and feelings.
It also helps if the GM cooperates a lot (always a plus when
you're struggling with a character who knows more than you
do). For example, the GM can proffer something like "Ducking
for cover would be the conservative plan here." IC thought
then involves "Do I feel as though I should be conservative,
or should I be taking risks because the goal's so important?"
The PC can chew on this without requiring player knowledge
of combat.
>2) How do you stay consistently OOC between game sessions after
>you have been intensly IC for a few hours?
I don't even try. This requires, I think, doing deep IC play
only with characters whose viewpoint you find valuable in some way--
you don't have to approve of them in all regards, but you have
to find little flashes of their mindset worthwhile rather
than upsetting.
I had four wisdom teeth pulled last month. The dentist told me during
the evaluation session, "You know, there's no medical reason not
to use local anesthetics only, but most people don't like to be
too aware of the experience, so we use general." I opened my
mouth to reply, and got a very clear flash of one of my favorite
PCs saying "It's an *interesting* experience! Why would I
want to miss it?" So I said that--and the PC was quite correct,
it was an interesting experience, and not being sick as a dog
afterwards (I don't tolerate anesthetics well) was a huge
improvement. I'm quite happy with "leakage" of this kind.
I have one character in our current game, Vikki, who (like your
soldier) specializes in combat and security stuff that I don't
understand, and who is also obsessed with status and position.
I resort to Author mode with Vikki most of the time (frustrating
though this is for an IC junkie) in large part because her mindset
is not comfortable or congenial to inhabit. Once in a while I
dig in far enough to find out what she's *really* thinking, and
I'm almost always surprised.
On the other hand, I did a long run of deep-IC roleplaying once
with a PC who took a deep esthetic delight in violence--
she had the morals of a good person but the esthetics of
a serial killer. I understand how that works now, and it was
a disturbing thing to learn about myself, but worth it, I think.
I valued her mindset even though I didn't approve of all of
it.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Bridget Kromhout
Barbara Robson <rob...@octarine.cc.adfa.oz.au> wrote:
>1) How do you stay IC when using skills that the character
>has that you, as the player, don't come close to?
In one current story, I try to stay IC but for some deployment of
skills such as solving complicated mysteries i tend to ask the storyteller
if i can roll Int & Enigmas, since my character would be able to solve
a puzzle that I can't. Whether you use dice or not (I don't want to bring
that* thread in here) this principle holds. So sometimes, it's impossible
to stay IC. I'm not sure if this is what you are referring to, but for
me that is where the difficulty lies.
>2) How do you stay consistently OOC between game sessions after
>you have been intensly IC for a few hours? Can you really keep
>the character 'on call' for the next game without the risk of
>having her come to the fore when your mind drifts during the
>week? I find that if I get deeply IC, dropping the character's
>thoughts can sometimes be a problem, which is another reason that
>I prefer Author mode most of the time.
I don't pretend to be able to stay OOC all week. I find that when a character
starts coming to the forefront of my mind, it helps to journal about her
thoughts, plans, hopes, fears.. that way i can both exorcise her (to some
extent) and plan for the next session.
I have also, in the last week, found myself scribing an IC letter that
carried such emotion that i was literally sobbing on the freeway on the
way home from delivering it to the other player. That was a catharsis for
me as a player (as well as for the character) - I think i realized for the
first time that when i create a character, breathe life into her and get
to know her, she is a real person i have invited into my head. Like it or not,
she is going to be there between sessions, and I need to give her her space
to grieve, to write, and to express herself.
This mode of playing might not be to anyone else's preference, so please
don't feel that i am advocating it for anyone else. And if you are wondering,
no, i am otherwise sane and have some semblance of a life OOC. ;)
bridget
--
"solaris would rock a lot if it was under GPL. not
that I'd modify it, but cool people would." -dvorak
Jeff Stehman
Barbara Robson (rob...@octarine.cc.adfa.oz.au) wrote:
Interesting. I start out in Author mode and (if the character
eventually clicks) move to IC mode.
: 1) How do you stay IC when using skills that the character
: has that you, as the player, don't come close to?
When IC I don't attach to the knowledge of a character, but to the
emotions, philosophies, thought processes, etc. Knowledge is easy
enough for me to handwave (heck, I made it all the way through grad
school doing that. :-) I have done research a couple of times. The
first example that comes to mind is reading Art of War for a
character who was supposed to be a good strategist. It was more to
capture a mindset than to learn anything about strategy.
: 2) How do you stay consistently OOC between game sessions after
: you have been intensly IC for a few hours? Can you really keep
: the character 'on call' for the next game without the risk of
: having her come to the fore when your mind drifts during the
: week?
I don't and no, respectively. Which is why I can honestly say I've
spent thousands of hours in Sutekh's head (or he in mine-- whichever
it is). I think of this as a feature, not a bug.
--
Jeff Stehman Senior Systems Administrator
ste...@southwind.net SouthWind Internet Access, Inc.
voice: (316)263-7963 Wichita, KS
URL for Wichita Area Chamber of Commerce: http://www.southwind.net/ict/
Carl D. Cravens
On 21 Nov 1996 17:07:31 GMT, ent...@monopoly.cs.umn.edu (Bridget Kromhout) wrote:
>first time that when i create a character, breathe life into her and get
>to know her, she is a real person i have invited into my head. Like it or not,
>she is going to be there between sessions, and I need to give her her space
>to grieve, to write, and to express herself.
Now I've decided that I really have to ask this question... maybe it's
come up before and I've not seen it. This isn't directed at you, but
at the group in general; I'd like to hear comments from several
viewpoints. Some of this sounds negative... I don't mean to be
negative; I just want to *understand* what it is you mean and what
you're really experiencing.
I don't get this "deep IC" stuff. If you folks really mean this the way
you sound like you do, how can you do it without developing multiple
personalities? (To paraphrase a quote of something that someone
supposedly once said here, "No one with a stable ego is capable of
that.")
Folks talk about this deep IC stuff as if the characters were really
someone else... feeling "the character's" emotions, thinking "the
character's" thoughts. These things didn't come from outside you, so
where did they come from? They must come from inside you, and if they
came from inside you, doesn't that mean these things *are* you. These
characters *aren't* real people, they're creations of your own mind.
How can you experience emotions that aren't your own? (What do you
consider emotion? Physiological response to a mental state? I can
induce such a mental state that has nothing to do with my immediate
situation.)
Method actors put a great deal of effort into "becoming" someone else...
many of them to the point of trying to assume that personality off the
stage. They do this for a living, but roleplayers here claim to be able
to reach a state that the actor claims to often never achieve.
Mask technique in improv touches on this area... the idea is basically
induction of an altered mental state. Some "mask" personas are
radically different than their actors... some don't even know how to
talk. (I think mask technique is primarily release of inhibition, but I
don't have any direct experience in this area. Anyone have comments. I
know at least one other person here has read IMPROV.)
Is the deep IC player *really* developing multiple personalities? Or
could the character be a "mask" that helps release inhibition, allowing
the player to express private parts of their personality that are
normally hidden from others? (That was Filbert the Filcher, that wasn't
me.) Or is it something else entirely? I just don't see how you can
say that you're experiencing the thoughts and emotions of an imaginary
character. I can see getting emotional in sympathy with an imaginary
character (I do it all the time in fiction), but I don't understand the
claims being made unless you're purposely inducing a minor multiple
personality. (And if this is the case, aren't you taking a big risk
with deep IC'ing violent or otherwise "undesirable" characters?)
Or maybe you just don't really mean what I think you mean.
(I'm going out on a limb here... my boss is one of those making these
claims here. :)
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net) * Phoenyx Roleplaying Listserver
* http://www2.southwind.net/~phoenyx
It's not just a mistake, it's an adventure!
Scott A. H. Ruggels
Barbara,
Yopu ask such interesting questions, but my news service doesn't get
them. I just get peole's replies :-( However, to my favorte part about
gaming...
Barbara Robson <rob...@octarine.cc.adfa.oz.au> wrote:
>1) How do you stay IC when using skills that the character
>has that you, as the player, don't come close to?
I roll dice fr the skil, because I tend to abstract the research or
excercise of skills. Some people cannot habituate the mechanics. I can
ffor a bit. It isn't the skills that matter, but it is the character's
decision to when to use them, that is important. I see the results of a
die roll just to be a culmination of environmental, and timing factors,
and the roll just give me an Idea of how well the chaacter succedded,
and I filter the success and what may have happened down to him. The
character is a set of mental guidelines that after a while generate
their own concerns, and almost a life of their own.
>2) How do you stay consistently OOC between game sessions after
>you have been intensly IC for a few hours? Can you really keep
>the character 'on call' for the next game without the risk of
>having her come to the fore when your mind drifts during the
>week? I find that if I get deeply IC, dropping the character's
>thoughts can sometimes be a problem, which is another reason that
>I prefer Author mode most of the time.
I don't. Often as a I drift into sleep, the character will demand a
little processor time, and the character thinks and ponders about its
successes and failures, and plabs for the next session, trying to figure
out what to do next. often a visual or a situation, mau bring the
character to the fore, briefly, as what is in front of me, may relate to
the character's life experience. I have dreamt the character,
sometimes. Seeing it move with a semblance of life, makes it all the
more real later,because I can draw on the dream to build the little
movies in my head later, during the game.
I do however maintain a lot of distance, and can squash the character if
the surfacing is inappropriate or if I realy need to be concentrating on
something else like some boring but critical job realted task. So I do
not see it analogous to mental illness, but a choice, and a filter one
can choose to use or not. It is a lot of fun tho...
Scott
psych...@aol.com
Carl D. Cravens asks how people do deep in character roleplaying "without
developing multiple personalities".
The answer for me, and for many of my players, is that we do develop
multiple personalities.
Are we taking a risk? Perhaps, but I don't think it's much of a risk.
The raw inputs from our senses reinforce one of our personalities (the one
you probably think of as 'real') much more than the others. This mundane
personality is also better at using the player's body - it gets more
practice. I've never seen it overridden.
There is one deep roleplaying situation that doesn't involve creation of a
separate personality - where the character's personality is, in fact, the
player's personality. The character does exactly what the player would in
the character's circumstances. This is where most young players start.
(De)masking of inhibitions may be the next step towards more sophisticated
deep roleplaying. Examples I can think of involve the playing of opposite
sex characters. It's just a step, however, and not the end of the road.
I've definitely seen deep roleplayed characters with personality traits
that were absent from their players' mundane personalities.
Warren Dew
Mark Apolinski
Carl D. Cravens wrote>
Nice piece on "deep IC". I have the same misgivings, I think. My
personal theory about this is that it's the same phenomenon as
Empathizing with an Imaginary Character, like you say you do in fiction,
and as I do as well. But since the information is coming from inside
oneself, it produces a different reaction in the brain. I believe it has
been well established that the brain looks for order everywhere it can.
When one experiences a bout of intense creativity about one's character,
I think there are two major ways for the brain to react in order for it
to make sense of *what appears to be* an alternate personality. Either
one feels that they have "become" another character, "channeling" it as
it were; or one feels like they have a "telepathic link" to this
imaginary character. I get the latter reaction. I think it's because I
am a very self-conscious person and just don't like to loose control. (I
don't drink for this same reason.) The only way to handle both boundary
conditions is the "telepathic link" approach, so that's what it feels
like to me. Perhaps someone without such a strong self-conscious
attitude, or one who is more amenable to letting go, would generate the
"channeling" approach.
Now, remember, all this stuff about the brain making sense of stimuli
is unconscious for the most part. It's just part of who you are. I'm not
trying to knock anyone, this is just my idea of what is "really" going
on. What I'm saying is that the facts of the phenomenon are the same for
everyone, it's just that the interpretation differs. Just as with
everything else in life.
Mark
Andrew Finch
Carl D. Cravens (rave...@southwind.net) wrote:
<snip>
I have to agree, in that I've had some powerful in character experiences,
and had characters that 'take on a life of their own'. But that's really
just a way for me to say that the charcater conception is very clear to
me, and I'm interested and motivated by that concept.
I have no doubt that it's a role I've created, and a personal fantasy of
mine. No loss of self in playing that role. No doubt of who and where I
am, and what I'm doing. I can go from deeply involved in a bit of
roleplay, to grabbing the last slice of pizza, and back, without feeling
that I've just switched 'states of mind'. And I've never seen a character
played so well that I can't easily tell that it's Bob playing his
character. I've seen plenty of characters who lead different lives, and
make different choices, and respond differently to situations, than their
players would or do. However, I've still never met a charcater who is a
different person. It's still Bob playing the Emperor's lost son, returned
home after being brought up by Shaolin priests, etc.
As far as I can tell, deep IC is just thinking deeply 'about' your
character, but we are playing roles, and thnking about, and being, are
two different things. I'm always myself, although I may be myself deeply
involved in pretending to be someone else.
David
Mary K. Kuhner
rave...@southwind.net (Carl D. Cravens) writes:
>Folks talk about this deep IC stuff as if the characters were really
>someone else... feeling "the character's" emotions, thinking "the
>character's" thoughts. These things didn't come from outside you, so
>where did they come from? They must come from inside you, and if they
>came from inside you, doesn't that mean these things *are* you. These
>characters *aren't* real people, they're creations of your own mind.
>How can you experience emotions that aren't your own?
There's some kind of complex, semi-autonomous process that runs on
the same hardware, but is partially detached from the software of
my usual personality--that's the best explanation I can give. I think
this is a basic though underappreciated human capability--it's used,
in a much weaker form, whenever we maintain one persona for dealing
with, say, work and another for family.
There is a distinct subjective difference, for me, between a decision
made by the PC and a decision made by "me". I make a fair number of
the latter in most games. The difference is not just whether the
decision is appropriate; often it's fine, but I'm aware of the process
that produced it and that it didn't involve the IC mental construct.
Too much of this and I have the distinct sensation that the mental
construct packs up and leaves, and I can't do that character IC
anymore.
The reason that thinking of them as people works for me is that it
lets me trust there will be coherent explanations for their behavior
that *I don't have to come up with.* My usual experience if the
game is going well is that the characters often do things I don't
expect or understand. Afterwards, we talk over their behavior and
I find it makes sense--often because something is going on in their
heads that I didn't "know about". (An hour's post-mortem revealed
that a PC in Tuesday's game had set himself to be more honest so
as to be a good role model for his daughter; suddenly his weird
behavior made sense to us.)
>(What do you
>consider emotion? Physiological response to a mental state? I can
>induce such a mental state that has nothing to do with my immediate
>situation.)
"Emotion" for me covers both cognitive and physiological states.
Playing multiple characters makes a clear distinction
because it is possible to switch cognitive states much faster than
physiological ones. I notice, in a stressful scene, that the
"gut-level" emotional responses of PCs other than the focal one
begin to get lost long before the cognitive-emotional ones do.
I just can't turn the adrenaline on and off that way--the body
won't cooperate. If one PC bursts into tears, I'm just not going
to get correct gut-level stuff from the others for a while (till
I stop sniffling, anyway).
I am personally baffled that it's possible to play characters IC
who have emotional ranges different from one's own--I guess it's
evidence that people have much bigger ranges than they think, and
suppress most of it most of the time.
>Mask technique in improv touches on this area... the idea is basically
>induction of an altered mental state. Some "mask" personas are
>radically different than their actors... some don't even know how to
>talk.
There was a great article by James Wallis in _IF_ (I forget which
issue) discussing modes of roleplaying; he made strong analogies between
what we've been calling "deep IC" and Mask improv, and described the
experience quite clearly (as clearly as possible, anyway).
Incidentally, I think that actors seldom get as far with this as
roleplayers for three reasons: (a) even method actors are always
concerned strongly with Actor mode, to make the performance work
for an audience, (b) the actor does not get to make major decisions
for the character, which is a great tool for IC understanding, and
(c) the amount of time involved is less than what one encounters
in a long campaign. (Most of the stories I tell on this group involve
2-3 year old campaigns.)
>Is the deep IC player *really* developing multiple personalities? Or
>could the character be a "mask" that helps release inhibition, allowing
>the player to express private parts of their personality that are
>normally hidden from others? (That was Filbert the Filcher, that wasn't
>me.)
I'm not sure these are mutually exclusive. In my experience, healthy
use of deep-IC roleplaying doesn't create much temptation to blame
Filbert for your out-of-game actions (in-game is another matter
entirely), but it does make you *much* more aware of the Filbert
tendencies in your own personality.
The only two times I've been "possessed" by an RPG character in real life
it was a very conscious, deliberate decision--I needed to deal with
a situation where the character's personality was much more appropriate
than my usual one, and chose to "invoke" them for that purpose. There
was no problem getting rid of them in either case. (One was doing
a performance in front of a hostile audience, the other was getting
wisdom teeth pulled.)
I suppose Duende and Markus must be implicit in my personality,
somewhere, but there was a big practical difference between having
the character as a handle on those qualities and trying to dredge
them up out of my own personality. I encountered an emotional state
while "doing" Duende during performance that I don't think I had
ever encountered before--obviously I'm capable but I could have gone
my whole life without knowing that.
One might want to read Walter Jon Williams' _Aristoi_ for a radical
look at useful multiple personalities.
>Or is it something else entirely? I just don't see how you can
>say that you're experiencing the thoughts and emotions of an imaginary
>character. I can see getting emotional in sympathy with an imaginary
>character (I do it all the time in fiction), but I don't understand the
>claims being made unless you're purposely inducing a minor multiple
>personality.
I don't think we understand what personality is, multiple or otherwise,
with any certainty. I don't know what's going on in roleplaying, but
"experiencing the emotions of an imaginary character" is the best
description I know for the way it feels, subjectively.
>(And if this is the case, aren't you taking a big risk
>with deep IC'ing violent or otherwise "undesirable" characters?)
The loss of memory continuity and the loss of volition involved
in multiple personality are things I've never experienced with IC
roleplaying, so I don't regard it as dangerous in that way. The
way it *does* lead to getting hurt is when you end up digging into
your own sore spots, which is extremely easy to do. Roleplaying a
character whose problems intersect with your own is a much more
emotionally charged experience than hearing about one, or seeing one
on film.
>Or maybe you just don't really mean what I think you mean.
No, I think I, at least, really do mean something that crazy-sounding.
Modern occultism has a fairly big repetoire of techniques for inducing
these sorts of mental states, as do religions like Santeria. I am
somewhat agnostic as to whether ritual possession involves an outside
entity or a construct of the participant's mind, but in any case
the subjective experience (if one remembers it) is quite a bit like
IC roleplaying, though with less "player" input. This is too kooky
an analogy for most gamers, though (looking around anxiously for
the radical right). In my opinion, Western society has shoved a lot
of what it could know about unusual mental states into the "occultism"
basket, to the loss of fields like acting and psychology.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
russell wallace
>Is the deep IC player *really* developing multiple personalities? Or
>could the character be a "mask" that helps release inhibition, allowing
>the player to express private parts of their personality that are
>normally hidden from others? (That was Filbert the Filcher, that wasn't
>me.) Or is it something else entirely? I just don't see how you can
>say that you're experiencing the thoughts and emotions of an imaginary
>character. I can see getting emotional in sympathy with an imaginary
>character (I do it all the time in fiction), but I don't understand the
>claims being made unless you're purposely inducing a minor multiple
>personality. (And if this is the case, aren't you taking a big risk
>with deep IC'ing violent or otherwise "undesirable" characters?)
Hmm. I understand what you're saying, and it really is difficult to
explain. I'll try an analogy:
Think of being in the cinema, watching a really good movie, the kind
that's so captivating you almost forget where you are and that the
events in the movie aren't really happening.
Now, are you deliberately inducing a minor out of body experience?
(Forget about the argument as to whether the latter are "genuine"
psychic phenomena - I personally believe they aren't - the point is that
*to the person undergoing them* they can be as real as multiple
personality disorders.) Suppose the cinema were to catch fire, would
you be in danger of burning to death in your seat because your
consciousness was off in a galaxy far, far away?
The answer is, no, not really. At no point did you come even close to
genuinely losing contact with reality, and if necessary you could dismiss
the movie and focus all your attention on the real world with no
significant delay. Actually losing contact with your real self and your
surroundings, when awake and not under the influence of drugs, is, as
you quoted earlier, something "no stable ego is capable of".
Yet, the experience of becoming so immersed in a movie that you almost
forget where you are is a real one, and one that would be almost
impossible to describe from first principles to someone who hadn't had
it. Deep IC roleplaying is sort of like that. Does that make it any
clearer?
(BTW, the bit about "no stable ego..." just suggested a question to me:
for someone with a sufficiently *unstable* ego, mightn't there be some
element of risk? My answer to that would be yes: I'm not a
psychologist, but my guess would be that deep IC roleplaying would be
contraindicated for anyone with serious psychological problems. David,
if you're reading this, any comments here?)
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwal...@tcd.ie
John H Kim
OK, a few words on this "deep In-Character (IC)" stuff. I speak
here as a trained but mediocre method actor, and a good role-player
(in my own opinions).
I tend to think that Carl's confusion is mostly with the way
of talking about IC as "other people" living inside one's head.
I think that there are good reasons to describe it this way, even
though naturally the characters *are* driven by our own minds and
imaginations.
I talk about my characters as if they were separate people,
because it fits with the game and the experience. Fictional
characters are more complete people than "masks" because they have
environment and history. For example, if I talk about Harkel solely
as an expression of my own arrogance, then I am ignoring his history
and situation which lead him to be that way (in the game-world). On
the other hand, if I describe him as a separate fictional character
(like one from a book I am reading) then I ignore how he springs
from my own understanding.
Carl D. Cravens <rave...@southwind.net> wrote:
>Is the deep IC player *really* developing multiple personalities? Or
>could the character be a "mask" that helps release inhibition, allowing
>the player to express private parts of their personality that are
>normally hidden from others? [...] I just don't see how you can
>say that you're experiencing the thoughts and emotions of an imaginary
>character.
Hmmm. I'm no expert, but based on the cases I have read
about, I would say that multiple personalities themselves express
private parts of the personality. From a layman's perspective,
I would say that multiple personalities are a pathological form
of these same masks.
In short -- yes, the character must be an expression of what
you already feel and understand. Thus people often complain about
how it is difficult to role-play IC someone who is completely alien,
or has skills/knowledge which you can't relate to, etc.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>These characters *aren't* real people, they're creations of your
>own mind. How can you experience emotions that aren't your own?
>(What do you consider emotion? Physiological response to a mental
>state? I can induce such a mental state that has nothing to do
>with my immediate situation.)
Hey! Just because they're creations of my mind doesn't mean
they're not real people. @-)
I would consider uncontrolled physiological response to be
a fair sign of "emotion". I don't see any clear distinction between
sympathetic emotion to a character and "In-Character" emotion. Yes,
sometimes I will feel flushed and angry at something which annoys
my character -- but I can get similarly worked up with a book or
movie.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>Method actors put a great deal of effort into "becoming" someone else...
>many of them to the point of trying to assume that personality off the
>stage. They do this for a living, but roleplayers here claim to be able
>to reach a state that the actor claims to often never achieve.
Well, speaking as someone who has tried method acting,
I feel much more able to contact characters in an RPG than I can
in traditional scripted theatre or improv. An RPG character is
much more developed in a personal way than someone who is written
into a story.
Also, an RPG is a much more relaxed setting. I did improv
as training exercises: it was always very demanding. In an RPG,
most of your time is spent Out-of-Character, and dropping in is an
unpressured choice.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Kim | "Faith - Faith is an island in the setting sun.
jh...@columbia.edu | But Proof - Proof is the bottom line for everyone."
Columbia University | - Paul Simon, _Proof_
Andrew Finch
Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
: There's some kind of complex, semi-autonomous process that runs on
: the same hardware, but is partially detached from the software of
: my usual personality--that's the best explanation I can give. I think
: this is a basic though underappreciated human capability--it's used,
: in a much weaker form, whenever we maintain one persona for dealing
: with, say, work and another for family.
Actually, I think that's exactly the process. And I wouldn't say that the
'me' at work is a different personality from the 'me' at other times.
Same me, I'm just operating under a different set of expectations and
social values. It's a game of pretend, and certainly 'roleplay'. In fact,
the term *roleplay* was developed to describe these changes.
: The reason that thinking of them as people works for me is that it
: lets me trust there will be coherent explanations for their behavior
: that *I don't have to come up with.*
I don't know about you, but I rarely come up with explanations for my own
behavior, and, when questioned on it, often am either at a loss, or have
a difficult time finding the words.
I don't believe in IC as such, and I still trust that what I come up with
for my character will work, without demanding too many explanations of
myself.
: I am personally baffled that it's possible to play characters IC
: who have emotional ranges different from one's own--I guess it's
: evidence that people have much bigger ranges than they think, and
: suppress most of it most of the time.
I agree again.
: The loss of memory continuity and the loss of volition involved
: in multiple personality are things I've never experienced with IC
: roleplaying, so I don't regard it as dangerous in that way. The
: way it *does* lead to getting hurt is when you end up digging into
: your own sore spots, which is extremely easy to do. Roleplaying a
: character whose problems intersect with your own is a much more
: emotionally charged experience than hearing about one, or seeing one
: on film.
Gestalt therapy places an emphasis upon 'acting out' any emotional
memory, to place it in the present, where it can be felt. Remembering a
memory, or thinking aboyt one, is not the same as experiencing it. So, I
agree.
: >Or maybe you just don't really mean what I think you mean.
: No, I think I, at least, really do mean something that crazy-sounding.
I don't believe there is any difference between what I do, or John does,
or Carl, or you, other than the metaphors we choose to encapsulate our
communication about it in.
David
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <575dp4$b...@crl.crl.com> bcks...@crl.com (Andrew Finch) writes:
>Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
[IC roleplaying as multiple personalities]
>: No, I think I, at least, really do mean something that crazy-sounding.
>I don't believe there is any difference between what I do, or John does,
>or Carl, or you, other than the metaphors we choose to encapsulate our
>communication about it in.
>David
Hard to say (though it seems unlikely to me a priori, since different
people have quite different cognitive styles). We really lack a way
to compare experiences without the excapsulating metaphors.
I will note, though, that based on your self-descriptions there do
seem to be some differences. You describe IC, for you, as something
that combines easily with other stances and can readily be entered and
left; you don't seem to have trouble with losing the IC viewpoint if
you make metagame-based decisions. You seem to be able to maintain a
detached, "author-omniscient" viewpoint the majority of the time
while gaming, even while also employing IC viewpoints. You're not
easily distracted by OOC information; you like dramatic irony (audience
knows something, character does not) and cut scenes. You don't tend
to internalize character success or failure (you've often commented
that it doesn't matter to you if the character succeeds or fails
as long as it's interesting).
These differences suggest some underlying difference of approach. My
experience on this newsgroup suggests that they tend to correlate,
too; some players are more like you or Mark, some are more like
me or John Kim, relatively few have a couple of traits from each group.
I would say that the most striking difference to me is the fact
that you don't seem to lose IC by making metagame choices, whereas
a large part of my gaming strategy is based around avoiding this
disaster. It suggests that I am using some kind of partitioning
which has to be maintained for IC to work for me, whereas you
aren't.
No value judgements implied in any of this.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Jeff Stehman
Andrew Finch (bcks...@crl.com) wrote:
: Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
: : No, I think I, at least, really do mean something that crazy-sounding.
: I don't believe there is any difference between what I do, or John does,
: or Carl, or you, other than the metaphors we choose to encapsulate our
: communication about it in.
David, based on postings you've made in the past, what you consider
an IC experience is not the same as what Mary and I consider an IC
experience.
Jeff Stehman
Carl D. Cravens (rave...@southwind.net) wrote:
: I don't get this "deep IC" stuff. If you folks really mean this the way
: you sound like you do, how can you do it without developing multiple
: personalities? (To paraphrase a quote of something that someone
: supposedly once said here, "No one with a stable ego is capable of
: that.")
IMO developing multiple personalities isn't far off what I'm doing.
It's simply a matter of breaking off a piece of your consciousness
and... oops. Sorry, wrong species.
: Folks talk about this deep IC stuff as if the characters were really
: someone else... feeling "the character's" emotions, thinking "the
: character's" thoughts. These things didn't come from outside you, so
: where did they come from? They must come from inside you, and if they
: came from inside you, doesn't that mean these things *are* you. These
: characters *aren't* real people, they're creations of your own mind.
: How can you experience emotions that aren't your own? (What do you
: consider emotion? Physiological response to a mental state? I can
: induce such a mental state that has nothing to do with my immediate
: situation.)
I've often described my characters as being me with a few traits
emphasized (sometimes to the point of caricature) or removed. Those
personality traits that I haven't considered generally default to my
own. The more the character develops, the more these traits deviate
from my own. It usually takes a fair bit of gaming before I can get
IC with a character-- until the character develops a personality
distinct from my own, running it feels very artificial. However, I
use roleplaying to explore emotions. Running a character radically
different from myself would make it difficult for me to learn
anything from it (too many variables changed, I guess). It's an odd
balance.
By character's emotions, I mean I'm feeling real emotions not in sync
with my own. By "real" I mean when Sutekh is feeling love, joy,
saddness, rage, etc. it feels no different than when I experience
them. There seems to be the same depth to them, the same
physiological effects, and just as much reason behind them. By "in
sync" I mean he can be depressed when I'm happy and happy when I'm
depressed. Think of it as a context swap. My emotional state is
saved and set aside, to be restored later. Once I get truly
comfortable being IC with a particular character, it only takes a few
moments for me to make the switch to that character, and a minute or
two to make the switch back.
By character's thoughts, I mean my thoughts seated in the context of
my character's personality and mindset rather than my own. It's a
little less frightening to some to say these are my character's
thoughts, not my own, but the same brain cells are being used. How
you view this is greatly affected by what you consider a person to
be.
: Is the deep IC player *really* developing multiple personalities? Or
: could the character be a "mask" that helps release inhibition, allowing
: the player to express private parts of their personality that are
: normally hidden from others? (That was Filbert the Filcher, that wasn't
: me.) Or is it something else entirely? I just don't see how you can
: say that you're experiencing the thoughts and emotions of an imaginary
: character. I can see getting emotional in sympathy with an imaginary
: character (I do it all the time in fiction), but I don't understand the
: claims being made unless you're purposely inducing a minor multiple
: personality. (And if this is the case, aren't you taking a big risk
: with deep IC'ing violent or otherwise "undesirable" characters?)
In my case I'd say inducing a minor multiple personality is pretty
accurate and, no, I don't consider it a risk for me. My personality
is supported by five senses that are not available to my characters'
personalities. If reality beats on my senses enough, I can't stay
IC no matter how hard I try. I have on occasion adopted a
character's mindset in a real life situation, but I've never adopted
a character's personality in a real life situation.
IC is a completely different experience from what I get reading a
book. When reading, I am very aware on both an emotional and
intellectual level that I am an outside observer. Although a book
can have a very powerful emotional impact, I never lose that feeling
of being on the outside looking in. When IC, I always know on an
intellectually level that I'm me, but on an emotional level I'm the
character and the character isn't me. However, if I put down the
book and roleplay the last scene in my head, using the character of
my choice, IC is not a problem.
Note that I'm strongly emphasizing emotions through all this. I
spent about a decade of my life suppressing my emotions to the point
where even those closest to me weren't sure I really had them. (If
you're wondering just how successful I was at it, Carl, ask Gwen or
Sieb about it.) I became very conscious of emotions during that
time, both in myself and in others. Experiencing them is a mind-
boggling thing to me, and at the very heart of what I enjoy about
gaming. No book or movie every came to close what I get out of
gaming.
Since you mentioned actors, for risk comparison I'll bring up the
coffee drinking exercise some use. Visualize the cup of coffee on
the table, smell the aroma, touch the cup, lift it and drink. My
theater prof said he could see the cup, smell the coffee, and touch
the cup, but when he tried to lift the cup, he only got it a few
inches before it fizzled out. He said he had met a few who claimed
to actually be able to taste the coffee.
Think of the possible applications in roleplaying! See the dragon,
hear his wings, smell the sulfur, feel the burn... :-)
: Or maybe you just don't really mean what I think you mean.
Most of us probably mean different things by it. Practically
speaking, I think Mary and I mean the same thing by IC. At least
we've had numerous conversations in which I assumed she meant the
same thing and I don't recall it causing any miscommunication. End
result aside, however, her approach to it may very well be different
than mine.
: (I'm going out on a limb here... my boss is one of those making these
: claims here. :)
Are you sure that statement is still true? ;-)
Karen J. Cravens
In article <577le0$h...@opal.southwind.net>,
ste...@jade.southwind.net (Jeff Stehman) wrote:
>Andrew Finch (bcks...@crl.com) wrote:
>: Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
>
>: : No, I think I, at least, really do mean something that crazy-sounding.
>
>: I don't believe there is any difference between what I do, or John does,
>: or Carl, or you, other than the metaphors we choose to encapsulate our
>: communication about it in.
>
>
>David, based on postings you've made in the past, what you consider
>an IC experience is not the same as what Mary and I consider an IC
>experience.
I think what David calls IC is what I call Authorial, but I'm
not sure what I call Authorial is what other people call
Authorial, so that probably doesn't help anybody but me. (Well,
and David, who now knows what I mean when *I* say Authorial, and
can hopefully do a mental search-and-replace with IC when we're
discussing it...)
--..............Karen Cravens .. pho...@southwind.net ...............
Phoenyx Roleplaying Listserver - majo...@phoenyx.net
Home of roleplaying-L, the Online (PBeM) Roleplaying list
http://www2.southwind.net/~phoenyx/rolelist.html#roleplaying
William Clifford
rave...@southwind.net (Carl D. Cravens) wrote:
>Folks talk about this deep IC stuff as if the characters were really
>someone else... feeling "the character's" emotions, thinking "the
>character's" thoughts. These things didn't come from outside you, so
>where did they come from? They must come from inside you, and if they
>came from inside you, doesn't that mean these things *are* you.
{This is just going to sound crazy I know it}
I wouldn't be so quick to assume that just because something comes
from "inside" a person that it means that it *is* them.
Now I'm not one of these "deep IC" players because I just haven't
played in those kind of games at all. But I have had analogous
experiences with stories, poems, and most particularly with dreams.
I've had some that may have come from "inside" me but that I didn't
feel came *from* me. They came from Something Else of which I won't
pretend to know what it was. What Mary has described in her "deep IC"
experiences sounds similiar to what I've experienced in the past with
stories if you take out her explainations.
I don't like talking about it much because some people have looked at
me like I was some kind of nut when I did. Others have taken it as an
excuse to fob off some vaguely New Age psycho-cosmological theory on
me (Zen philosophy and Jungian psychology don't mix nearly as well as
some people think In My Opinion). Of the two I prefer the first
reaction.
While I like to think I'm as grounded and down to earth as the next
person but I suspect that if I ever got into a game where "deep IC"
role-playing was required of me I could well find myself inhabiting
the same body as Someone Else. It's a weird world in there and I don't
know enough about it to try to explain it real well. But this is a
very interesting issue for me.
-William Clifford
Frank Pitt
In article <3295CD...@jpl.nasa.gov> Mark.Ap...@jpl.nasa.gov writes:
>
>Carl D. Cravens wrote>
>
> Nice piece on "deep IC". I have the same misgivings, I think. My
>personal theory about this is that it's the same phenomenon as
>Empathizing with an Imaginary Character, like you say you do in fiction,
>and as I do as well. But since the information is coming from inside
>oneself, it produces a different reaction in the brain. I believe it has
>been well established that the brain looks for order everywhere it can.
Hmm, I'd change "looks for order" to "matches patterns".
"Order" is a higher level concept.
Pattern matching is largely algorithmic and is
what our neural nets do best.
>When one experiences a bout of intense creativity about one's character,
>I think there are two major ways for the brain to react in order for it
>to make sense of *what appears to be* an alternate personality. Either
>one feels that they have "become" another character, "channeling" it as
>it were;
This how I think about getting into character, rather than
"channeling", I "put on the character's clothes". I look around the
room, I reinterpret what I see based on that character's experiences,
like putting on a pair of sunglasses affects what you see, I change my
posture to reflect the character's attitude, etc,
I begin planning my day as that character, I look at the other players,
and think of them as their characters (Aside: this is one area where
a player who has multiple characters is a difficulty )
>or one feels like they have a "telepathic link" to this
>imaginary character. I get the latter reaction. I think it's because I
>am a very self-conscious person and just don't like to loose control.(I
>don't drink for this same reason.)
I don't like losing control either, but rather than not drinking, I just
refuse to allow drugs to affect my mind any more than I want them to.
I don't, obviously, fully succeed, but after eleven years of pretty
heavy drinking most Friday nights in the Corporals Club and other assorted
watering holes, there have only been two occasions when I've been completely
legless, and both have involved a Tequila slammer school.
This has drawbacks, like the time when I went to the dentist, and they
pumped three or four times the normal amount of anaesthetic into me
because I was refusing to go unconscious.
Thing is, they didn't _tell_ me I was supposed to be knocked out until
the third shot as I thought it was supposed to be a local.
So I got completely blotto for the rest of the day.
These stories do have a relevant point, and that is that because I
can maintain firm control in some very trying circumstances, I know I
can snap out of the heaviest IC at will, so don't feel I've "lost control",
I'm merely allowing another application CPU time, and my kernel, running in
protected mode, can force a context switch whenever neccssary.
>The only way to handle both boundary
>conditions is the "telepathic link" approach, so that's what it feels
>like to me. Perhaps someone without such a strong self-conscious
>attitude, or one who is more amenable to letting go, would generate the
>"channeling" approach.
I would say that a mind is quite capable of understanding that you
are playing a role, just as it "understands" when you are dreaming.
There is no need for "it" to "rationalize" the experiences.
There may be a need for _you_ or _I_ as the dominant personality
applications supported on our minds to rationalize it, (for the reasons
you give above) but the underlying operating system is personality
neutral, and is untroubled by task switches.
It's only those running non-premptive OS's that have problems.
Sorry, wrong jargon. :-)
Frankie
Lea Crowe
In article <u8TlywIe...@southwind.net>
rave...@southwind.net "Carl D. Cravens" writes:
> I don't get this "deep IC" stuff. If you folks really mean this the way
> you sound like you do, how can you do it without developing multiple
> personalities? ... [snip] ...
>
> Folks talk about this deep IC stuff as if the characters were really
> someone else...
Authors do the same thing all the time. Most of the authors I've heard
talking about their work ascribe personalities, motivations, emotions,
*independence* to the characters they create. "I started up planning to
write about X, but the characters kept pulling me towards Y." "All of
a sudden I knew where Z had come from and where she was going."
A character really *can* be someone else. (Some characters never quite
grow wings and fly: they remain a struggle to play all their lives.)
The player can experience the character's thoughts and emotions on a
much more visceral and direct level than the non-IC analytical one.
The character ceases to be someone whom you ask, "What would you do?" and
report the answer to the GM; instead, you just *know* what the character
is doing.
When you get involved in a character to this extent, they can be difficult
to shut out (if you like). The character's voice is always with you; you
become able to adopt the character's perspectives whenever you want,
even outside the context of the game. I used to take some of my characters
shopping, to see what they made of things.
You can call this "multiple personality" if you want, though I wouldn't.
Although the character does offer a quite distinct personality to the
player, and one which is not under player control, the player remains
himself. The distinction between "me" and "them" remains, as does the
distinction between fantasy and reality.
> They must come from inside you, and if they
> came from inside you, doesn't that mean these things *are* you. These
> characters *aren't* real people, they're creations of your own mind.
Yes. Your point is...?
Characters, to a deep IC gamer, *feel* like real people. We can taste
their fear, their despair, their joy as if it were happening to us...
but, if we don't like it, we can ask the group to break for munchies, and
when the game is over we can put the imaginary people back in their box.
I *know* my characters are not real, but I enjoy pretending that they are.
Much more than I enjoy insisting that they're not.
> How can you experience emotions that aren't your own?
Practice? Natural talent? Taking huge amounts of mood-altering drugs?
> (What do you
> consider emotion? Physiological response to a mental state? I can
> induce such a mental state that has nothing to do with my immediate
> situation.)
I consider emotion to be a mental state, though I don't see that it
necessarily matters.
> Method actors put a great deal of effort into "becoming" someone else...
> many of them to the point of trying to assume that personality off the
> stage. They do this for a living, but roleplayers here claim to be able
> to reach a state that the actor claims to often never achieve.
I'm sure professional actors have a much more demanding definition of
"becoming" someone else than roleplayers do. I have "been" an American,
in the deep-IC sense, but couldn't name the 50 states--or even do a
convincing American accent. Deep-IC, for me, involves a totally convincing
experience of the character: enough to fool *me*, the player, but *not*
necessarily an audience (even the other players). An actor must fool
a highly critical audience, and that's a very different matter.
> Is the deep IC player *really* developing multiple personalities? Or
> could the character be a "mask" that helps release inhibition, allowing
> the player to express private parts of their personality that are
> normally hidden from others?
Good question, and one I've been arguing for years. (My first experience
of the Bangor crowd was people who said, "You can't play anyone other than
part of yourself. It's impossible. Because you can't *know* anyone other
than yourself." My response to that argument was that I can imagine. But
your point is a little more subtle.)
I believe that the personalities I experience in deep IC are not part of
me. Many of them are certainly not parts I recognise--and, because I've
heard this question many times, I have looked! I've seen hidden parts
of my personality in some of my characters, but only as elements.
Ultimately, what difference does it make? If I *feel* that I am experiencing
a different personality, what does it matter whether its origin is
psychological or something else?
> I just don't see how you can
> say that you're experiencing the thoughts and emotions of an imaginary
> character.
It feels as though I am. It feels that way at the time, and when I look
back later, from my normal perspective, it still feels that way. I could
find other ways to say it, but none so simple and none that get the
experience across.
Here's an analogy: spend two weeks in France, speaking French all the
time. Before too long, you'll find yourself thinking in French. When
I did this, I'd only just starting learning French, so my vocabulary was
pretty poor. By the end of those two weeks, I had a lot of difficulty
formulating complicated ideas, because I would start in French, run up
against a word I didn't know, and have to stop and remember I was English.
Thinking like a character is like that. You know you're English, but
because you're talking French, your natural instinct is to think in French
as well.
> I can see getting emotional in sympathy with an imaginary
> character (I do it all the time in fiction), but I don't understand the
> claims being made unless you're purposely inducing a minor multiple
> personality. (And if this is the case, aren't you taking a big risk
> with deep IC'ing violent or otherwise "undesirable" characters?)
No no no no no... this is where the verbal nature of roleplaying is
critical. When a deep-IC player's character swings from the chandelier,
this is expressed by *saying* "I swing from the chandelier." When such
a player's character goes to sleep, the player says "I go to sleep" (the
player may also lean over or curl up or whatever, but almost certainly
doesn't actually nod off).
You are, consciously I hope, borrowing the lunatic fringe's false claim
that roleplaying blurs the distinction between fantasy and reality, and
asking if deep-IC really does blur things to that extent. It doesn't,
any more than "AD&D" does. The personae may have more life to them--and
I like them that way--but they're still imaginary.
--
l...@hestia.demon.co.uk Ka ao, ka ao, ka awatea!
Mark Apolinski
russell wallace wrote:
>
> Hmm. I understand what you're saying, and it really is difficult to
> explain. I'll try an analogy:
>
> Think of being in the cinema, watching a really good movie, the kind
> that's so captivating you almost forget where you are and that the
> events in the movie aren't really happening.
>
> forget where you are is a real one, and one that would be almost
> impossible to describe from first principles to someone who hadn't had
> it. Deep IC roleplaying is sort of like that. Does that make it any
> clearer?
>
I wouldn't call this kind of experience, deep IC at all. If it's like
watching a movie, then you aren't IC, you're in Audience mode. Isn't
Deep IC similar to this, but you are also channeling the characters
thoughts and feelings? I think it's a more personal connection than just
watching.
Mark
Scott A. H. Ruggels
Carl D. Cravens wrote:
>
> On 21 Nov 1996 17:07:31 GMT, ent...@monopoly.cs.umn.edu (Bridget Kromhout) wrote:
> >first time that when i create a character, breathe life into her and get
> >to know her, she is a real person i have invited into my head. Like it or not,
> >she is going to be there between sessions, and I need to give her her space
> >to grieve, to write, and to express herself.
>
> Now I've decided that I really have to ask this question... maybe it's
> come up before and I've not seen it. This isn't directed at you, but
> at the group in general; I'd like to hear comments from several
> viewpoints. Some of this sounds negative... I don't mean to be
> you're really experiencing.
>
> I don't get this "deep IC" stuff. If you folks really mean this the way
> you sound like you do, how can you do it without developing multiple
> supposedly once said here, "No one with a stable ego is capable of
> that.")
Well I do not know about that quote. but for me. it starts with a
filtering process. I build up the character's background and a thumbnail
of the personality. I build (mentally) a set of decision filters based
on the character, and force my thinking along those paths. After a
while this thinking becomes habitual, and the character, comes 'alive'.
at that point the concious controlling of the thinking paths is not
needed, and the character reacts with the speed of thought, and with a
different set of assumptions than your own perhaps. it isn't an easy
trick, and the state is fragile, but it is worth the effort to achieve
it. You the player can sit back, and enjoy the ride. It take s a lot of
thought, and a lot of work to build the prsonality piece by piece. MPD
might jjust be uncontrollable IC :-)
>
> Folks talk about this deep IC stuff as if the characters were really
> someone else... feeling "the character's" emotions, thinking "the
> character's" thoughts. These things didn't come from outside you, so
> where did they come from? They must come from inside you, and if they
> came from inside you, doesn't that mean these things *are* you. These
> characters *aren't* real people, they're creations of your own mind.
> How can you experience emotions that aren't your own? (What do you
> consider emotion? Physiological response to a mental state? I can
> induce such a mental state that has nothing to do with my immediate
> situation.)
The emotions are real, and the player experiences them, but what
triggers them may be things that would >not< trigger them normally OOC.
But there for me is a slight sense of distance and that is enough for
me to beable to turn off the emotions if they get too intense. I tend
to do this in Combat out of habit, so that i do not take the events of
the fight 'personally', or seem, to.
>
> Method actors put a great deal of effort into "becoming" someone else...
> many of them to the point of trying to assume that personality off the
> stage. They do this for a living, but roleplayers here claim to be able
> to reach a state that the actor claims to often never achieve.
Not all gamers do it wither. Small things can derails this feeling, and
it is fragile. and probably not that common,. buy for me, the best
gaming moments have been deeply I.C.
>
> Mask technique in improv touches on this area... the idea is basically
> induction of an altered mental state. Some "mask" personas are
> radically different than their actors... some don't even know how to
> talk. (I think mask technique is primarily release of inhibition, but I
> don't have any direct experience in this area. Anyone have comments. I
> know at least one other person here has read IMPROV.)
I do not know about this.
>
> Is the deep IC player *really* developing multiple personalities? Or
> could the character be a "mask" that helps release inhibition, allowing
> the player to express private parts of their personality that are
> normally hidden from others? (That was Filbert the Filcher, that wasn't
> me.) Or is it something else entirely? I just don't see how you can
> say that you're experiencing the thoughts and emotions of an imaginary
> character. I can see getting emotional in sympathy with an imaginary
> character (I do it all the time in fiction), but I don't understand the
> claims being made unless you're purposely inducing a minor multiple
> personality. (And if this is the case, aren't you taking a big risk
> with deep IC'ing violent or otherwise "undesirable" characters?)
>
> Or maybe you just don't really mean what I think you mean.
>
I think when a character gets annoyed at another character, for
something that the player would have no problem with. there is
something different going on here.
Mary? want to add anything?
Scott
Scott A. H. Ruggels
Andrew Finch wrote:
>
David wrote:
> : The loss of memory continuity and the loss of volition involved
> : in multiple personality are things I've never experienced with IC
> : roleplaying, so I don't regard it as dangerous in that way. The
> : way it *does* lead to getting hurt is when you end up digging into
> : your own sore spots, which is extremely easy to do. Roleplaying a
> : character whose problems intersect with your own is a much more
> : emotionally charged experience than hearing about one, or seeing one
> : on film.
>
> memory, to place it in the present, where it can be felt. Remembering a
> memory, or thinking aboyt one, is not the same as experiencing it. So, I
> agree.
>
>
> : No, I think I, at least, really do mean something that crazy-sounding.
>
> or Carl, or you, other than the metaphors we choose to encapsulate our
> communication about it in.
>
the metagame, and your playing of the authorial stance suggest that you
have not achieved deep, unselfconcious I.C. You play all the stances,
for an I.C. player, there is only one worth doing. I definately think
there is a difference in approaches.
Scott
Martin Mertens
rave...@southwind.net (Carl D. Cravens) wrote:
>I don't get this "deep IC" stuff. If you folks really mean this the way
>you sound like you do, how can you do it without developing multiple
>personalities?
I think that roleplayers are, in a way, developing multiple
personalities. However, there are crucial differences to the mental
disease.
The important thing is that roleplayers do it voluntarily and have a
reasonable amount of *control* over the process. A person suffering from
multiple personalities or shizophrenia...
..might not be able to switch back and forth as desired.
Roleplayers may not be able to switch to IC as they like; but switching
to reality happens all too easily. Going IC is a bit like self-hypnosis,
but there are many, many (often deeply imbedded) triggers that shock one
back to reality. In fact, it is seen as desirable to defuse as many
triggers as possible (e.g. not having non-participanst come in and ask
about real issues). With some triggers (e.g. having one's name called
out) that's (fortunately) impossible.
..might not have memories about what happened while in a certain mode.
Roleplayers may forget about their surroundings and time during play (as
with a good book or movie), but only to the extent that they fail to
perceive superfluous details. They will afterwards know what they have
been doing, where, with whom, approximately for how long etc.
..might not be able to distinguish between various personalities.
Roleplayers may go IC to the extent that they forget about reality and
reach SOD, but when (not if) they return, they can certainly make the
above distinction and say during what parts of the game they have been
(deeply) IC.
Incidentally, I think that the entire Multiple Peronalities issue is
given undue attention. After cholesterol, child-abuse etc, it seems to be
the hysteria that's currently en vogue. Don't get me wrong, though. The
above mentioned issues are very, very serious and have unfortunately been
neglected/undiscovered before; but it just seems to me that the extent to
which they are said to apply to the population have been blown out of
proportion by the media. I remember a recent article that claimed that 3
out of 5 Americans suffered from multiple personalties...
None of this is meant as a put-down, Carl - in fact, I think that RPGs
seem like a natural choice when discussing this phenomenon.
>Folks talk about this deep IC stuff as if the characters were really
>someone else... feeling "the character's" emotions, thinking "the
>character's" thoughts. These things didn't come from outside you, so
>where did they come from? They must come from inside you, and if they
>came from inside you, doesn't that mean these things *are* you. These
>characters *aren't* real people, they're creations of your own mind.
They might be said to come from outside to some extent. The gameworld,
the GM and the other players all create input for one's character and
might actually impose certain standards and requirements, usually to make
one create character that fits in. Thus, the player will occasionally be
in Auhor Mode. As RPGs are joint-story creations in a way, alien
influence is inserted here.
But basically, characters are creations of our minds. After all, we
decide how to react to the outside influence and incorporate it.
Characters can develop a life of their own, insofar as we cannot
neccessarily predict in which direction we will take their development.
This happens to novelists as well: They create a character and a plot,
and then find out that the two don't fit together, i.e. it wouldn't make
sense for such a character to have such and such a reaction (demanded by
the plot) in a given instance. In this case, either the
believability/quality of the novel is sacrificed or the author modifies
character or plot (choice depending on what is more important).
>How can you experience emotions that aren't your own? (What do you
>consider emotion? Physiological response to a mental state? I can
>induce such a mental state that has nothing to do with my immediate
>situation.)
Of course they're my own! I do identify with imaginary characters to the
extent that I share their feelings. I can weep along for lost love with a
movie character, experience the thrill of victory with a dragon-slayer in
a rpg etc. These emotions are based on make-believe and thus rarely as
intense as emotions based on real things happening. But I felt depressed
for weeks after reading 1984... ...and a good evening's roleplaying makes
my night!
>Is the deep IC player *really* developing multiple personalities? Or
>could the character be a "mask" that helps release inhibition, allowing
>the player to express private parts of their personality that are
>normally hidden from others? (That was Filbert the Filcher, that wasn't
>me.) Or is it something else entirely? I just don't see how you can
>say that you're experiencing the thoughts and emotions of an imaginary
>character. I can see getting emotional in sympathy with an imaginary
>character (I do it all the time in fiction), but I don't understand the
>claims being made unless you're purposely inducing a minor multiple
>personality. (And if this is the case, aren't you taking a big risk
>with deep IC'ing violent or otherwise "undesirable" characters?)
This is a matter of how deeply you identify with a character.
Theoretically, I could identify with James Bond to the extent where I
start thinking like him (subconsciously drawing on my/his memories
created during all those prequels).
Roleplaying is (like theater, novels, movies) a way to experience certain
emotions. Many of these are positive, but the negative ones are part of
the package and also desirable. I guess this leads to the age-old
question of why we 'enjoy' tragedy (or horror etc)... Now what was
Aristotele's answer again!? :-)
Apart from that, roleplaying is a valuable tool for self-exploration (and
is used as such in psychotherapy). It's a great exercise in putting
yourself in someone-else's shoes and could (I hope) lead to more
tolerance. And it can certainly lead to valuable considerations about
important issues.
A good example of this is what happened to me in a campaign early this
year:
Our group had caught murderers in the act and captured them. The problem
was that justice had to be dealt out on the spot. We were in the middle
of nowhere, away from any law-enforcment agencies, and there was another
pressing issue at hand that demanded our attention and prevented us from
taking prisoners along. The options were: Corporal punishment (possibly
crippling), freedom, execution.
As I was a high priest of the godess of law, honor and combat, it was my
responsibility. Tial-by-combat would have been a farce: the highwaymen
were injured and my character's skill way beyond theirs.
A decision in keeping with the medieval/fantasy setting and the office of
my character demanded execution. However, my charcter had only recently
been initiated into the order and didn't feel up to the task.
The entire issue really cut deep for me, both on a player and a
character level. As a player, I realized I had to opt for execution, much
as I hated the idea, to prevent a major campaign-threatening crash of
SOD. As a character, I just didn't feel up to the task. My PC ended up
executing the leader and letting the rest get away, but he certainly
didn't feel good about it.
Anyway, the bottom line is that RPGs involve really interesting issues
that one considers in a different fashion from, say, in a podium debate.
The whole issue preyed on my mind for days afterwards. I came to deeply
consider the issues of crime & punishment and power & responsibility,
with an involving example to boot and from new angles.
I don't consider the experience enjoyable, though, but certainly
valuable.
uh-oh, this seems quite a jumble of thoughts, unfortunately, i gotta go
Bye, Martin
Mary K. Kuhner
Barbara, if the IC-period before you can play a character Authorially
bothers you, maybe there are some techniques to shorten it? (Bear
in mind that I'm an IC junkie and giving advice way against type here.)
If the character has a lot of technical expertese you don't have,
you can sometimes map out their decisionmaking in advance by discussing
it with someone who is a bit more experienced. They don't have to
be terribly knowledgable, since the goal is convincingness, not
realism--even someone on your own level of expertese can help,
for the second perspective.
The two people involved (this works great if you can get the GM to do
it, but another player or an outsider works too) pose situations and
ask "What would a trained professional do in this situation?"
For example, "How would a security person like Vikki check a site
to see if it was secure?" Then you work together to try to find
answers. Later, in play, you'll already know some basic principles,
and it gets much easier to figure out what the character should
do.
This seems less likely to be emotionally draining than working out
the strategies in actual play, and as a bonus might make your play
more convincing. It may be less distressing than library
research because it's more focussed--you don't have to suffer through
a lot of unneeded and possibly unwanted details.
This technique also works to give some content to completely
fictional professions like starship engineer; it's how we decided
what Valentine will try when the drive engines fail, since we
wanted a little detail there.
I'm amused to look back over what I've written and realize that
this technique's common name, as used in job training seminars and
so forth, is "roleplaying".
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Irina Rempt
I've picked an article more or less at random to hang my comments on,
because I got mixed up doing patchwork. I'm another of these weird
deep-IC people, and though I probably have nothing new to say, I
nevertheless want to say it :-)
Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
> rave...@southwind.net (Carl D. Cravens) writes:
> >How can you experience emotions that aren't your own?
> There's some kind of complex, semi-autonomous process that runs on
> the same hardware, but is partially detached from the software of
> my usual personality--that's the best explanation I can give. I think
> this is a basic though underappreciated human capability--it's used,
> in a much weaker form, whenever we maintain one persona for dealing
> with, say, work and another for family.
That's why it's so strange to meet someone you know very well in a
situation where either you or they are using a different persona, for
instance when people from work come to your home, or you suddenly have
to visit your spouse at work.
The software metaphor works very well; you can view the different
personas as a set of overlays where there are defaults, global options
and local options. The global options, valid for the world, override
the defaults (it's OK to kill someone in revenge, which it isn't in the
real world, at least not the one that I live in) and the local options
override the global options (it may be OK to kill people in this
society, but Lavinia will not kill anyone for any reason because that's
not in her nature).
> The reason that thinking of them as people works for me is that it
> lets me trust there will be coherent explanations for their behavior
> that *I don't have to come up with.* My usual experience if the
> game is going well is that the characters often do things I don't
> expect or understand. Afterwards, we talk over their behavior and
> I find it makes sense--often because something is going on in their
> heads that I didn't "know about".
[good example snipped; here's one from me]
We had an NPC prince suspected of trying to kill his sister and seize
her throne in Saturday's game, being questioned by Aylin (PC) in the
presence of Jeran (NPC), an 11-year-old psychically gifted boy who had
been allowed in to see if the prince was lying or holding anything
back. Jeran was under strict orders from his mother (the local noble,
NPC) not to say anything until he was out of the prince's earshot, and
to talk only to Aylin.
It was a very strong and gripping scene, with the prince first sullen,
then violently angry, and finally pleading (after a full confession) to
be allowed to fight instead of being summarily executed. Aylin thought
he wanted to fight for the throne; *that*, of course, was out of the
question. She left the dungeon and 'accidentally' dropped a dagger
within the prince's reach.
When they had closed the door behind him, she asked Jeran what he had
seen (the prince had only held back some names, probably because he
knew those people were not using their real name and didn't know the
real names himself). When she asked him whether the prince had killed
himself yet, Jeran said "no, he's too scared for that, he's sitting
there being scared".
The PCs debated whether to let the prince stew until the next day and
then execute him publicly, or to do it quietly themselves. Aylin was in
favour of making it quick and not letting him suffer needlessly. Jeran
suddenly volunteered "can I say what I would do? Can't you let him
fight someone he has no chance against?" Suddenly Aylin understood that
the prince and Jeran were using the same little-boy heroic mindset and
that the prince *had never really grown up*.
This was not a conscious decision on my part as GM; I was deeply IC as
the prince and as Jeran, and *only then* realized why they'd had the
same reaction.
> I am personally baffled that it's possible to play characters IC
> who have emotional ranges different from one's own--I guess it's
> evidence that people have much bigger ranges than they think, and
> suppress most of it most of the time.
I have experienced that roleplaying helps to open up those parts of my
range, not only of emotion, but also of my other capabilities, that I
didn't know how to use before. Strangely enough it doesn't work for me
if the roleplaying is *meant* as a training exercise; perhaps because
then I have to play myself, and my self is exactly the part that has
the inhibitions. If I can have a character 'clear the way' as it were,
my self (who has been lurking beneath the character all the time) also
knows what it feels like. (I send Lavinia, who is much less
self-conscious than me and doesn't tend to start full of confidence and
then clam up completely when she suddenly gets aware of what she is
doing, to difficult meetings: "you handle this, please, I can't")
> Incidentally, I think that actors seldom get as far with
> [altered mental states IC] as
> roleplayers for three reasons: (a) even method actors are always
> concerned strongly with Actor mode, to make the performance work
> for an audience,
Yes! That's exactly the difference between acting and roleplaying that
I couldn't put into words when explaining to people who know nothing
about roleplaying. They say "but you *do* have an audience - you're
playing for each other". But the others are not just outsiders
observing you, they're in the same world that you are, and though I
*am* extraverted (a strong ENFT) I don't like being watched. This makes
me a lousy actress (but a good roleplayer, or so people say). I can't
stand people sitting in on a game who don't play, it keeps me from
getting IC.
When roleplaying, I don't have to think all the time "does this get
across?" I don't do that in real life, and my characters don't know
that what they find themselves in is not real life - or rather, what my
characters are in *is* real life for them.
As for loss of self, I'm not a developmental psychologist, but I've
read that infants, somewhere in their first year of life, develop a
sense of 'object permanence' - I've seen it happen to all three of my
children. It suddenly clicks that when you hide a ball under a cloth,
the ball is still there. (This was hilarious with the twins - Rebecca
had discovered it, and Menna hadn't, and Rebecca had a great time
hiding things from her sister and then bursting out in giggles when
Menna couldn't for the life of her find them).
So, does a table disappear when you put a different tablecloth on? Are
your feet gone when you put your socks on? Do you lose your own
underlying personality when you let a character use your brain and
body?
Of course, if your self is so weak that it *is* lost by letting a
character 'take over' from time to time, you probably shouldn't be
roleplaying. In me, and most IC roleplayers I know, it's the other way
around: the sense of self is strengthened by using it in different
ways.
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Martin Mertens
bcks...@crl.com (Andrew Finch) wrote:
>And I've never seen a character
>played so well that I can't easily tell that it's Bob playing his
>character.
>As far as I can tell, deep IC is just thinking deeply 'about' your
>character, but we are playing roles, and thnking about, and being, are
>two different things. I'm always myself, although I may be myself deeply
>involved in pretending to be someone else.
Agreed. I'd like to add, though, that IMO one can get immersed to the
extent that one forget's about pretending while in the process of doing
it. Actually, I think that's what deep IC is about. This is more
difficult for the GM because all kinds of meta-considerations crash IC
all the time. IC I perceive other players as their characters, with
varying degrees of success. I experienced some incredibly intense moments
like that; I remember instances where I 'saw' not Frank, but Vindariel
the elf. Physically (photons etc), I of course saw Frank and not some
strange guy with pointed ears. Neither did I visualize the character to
the extent of hallucinating. But Frank became Vindariel for me to the
extent that OOC behaviour would *first* puzzle me, then crash IC. I even
remember rationalizing OOC behaviour IC ("why is he smiling now, we're
discussing how to free Catrina from her kidnappers!? Oh well, he must
have been engaging in a pleasant memory of her" - of course this thought
passed through my head in less than an second, elaboration upon the
subject (Frank smiling because Ralf made faces about the rancid potato
chips or whatever) would have crashed IC). So far, I've only reached this
level of intensity by interacting with other PCs in a setting similar to
the real world, i.e. sitting around a table in a tavern or whatever (the
physical reality largely corresponds to the imaginary one).
A friend of mine reported the existence of a special pub in Hamburg that
caters to roleplayers: The various rooms have a theme to them (throne
room, dungeon) etc. The medieval atmosphere is reinforced by old oaken
tables, furs and medieval weaponry on the walls, beer served in
appropriate mugs etc. Almost like LARP in a castle!
Bye, Martin
bruce...@aol.com
In article <57cfo2$5...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>,
mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>If the character has a lot of technical expertese you don't have,
>you can sometimes map out their decisionmaking in advance by discussing
>it with someone who is a bit more experienced. They don't have to
>be terribly knowledgable, since the goal is convincingness, not
>realism--even someone on your own level of expertese can help,
>for the second perspective.
Right! A group of folks each with a bit of knowledge can together erect an
edifice that will, well, actually that may well drive someone who really
knows the field into fits of laughter or hysteria, but that's another
problem. The group can at least create enough structure to feel convincing
for the game purpose, which is the point.
A resource not to be underestimated is the children's section of the
library. Books for middle school, junior high, and high school students
about careers, for instance, are loaded with great slice-of-life snippets
waiting to be exploited.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> br...@kenosis.com <*> Bruce...@aol.com
http://www.kenosis.com/ - new work by Steve Stirling & George Effing-
er, Christian/libertarian ideas, Daedalus Entertainment, and more
You need a Snack Satchel Slapping Stick!
russell wallace
Oh, absolutely. I wasn't saying watching a movie is being IC, just that
it at least partly shares with it the quality of immersion.
Or, put another way, deep IC is to asking yourself 'what would my
character do next' as being immersed in a movie is like asking yourself
'how did they do those special effects?'.
Andrew Finch
Martin Mertens (Martin....@kcl.ac.uk) wrote:
: I think that roleplayers are, in a way, developing multiple
: personalities. However, there are crucial differences to the mental
: disease.
I would hesitate to make that comparison.
The biggest differnece is that in the cas eof the IC player, there is
only one coherent ego structure, and no matter how deep the IC is, it's
still the player, playing a game. If you yell 'fire!', in the middle of a
very deep IC moment, it will be the player responding. There may be a
seconds hesitation, but that's concentration, and not a new personality
structure.
MPD is very rare, and the events which trigger the formation of actual
secondary personalities are generally no fun. Fracturing the ego is very
different that playing make believe, thank god.
: The important thing is that roleplayers do it voluntarily and have a
: reasonable amount of *control* over the process. A person suffering from
: multiple personalities or shizophrenia...
Schizophrenia is not related to multiple personlaities.Lack of any ego
formation, flat affect, and an inaability to respond would be closer.
: ..might not be able to switch back and forth as desired.
: Roleplayers may not be able to switch to IC as they like; but switching
: to reality happens all too easily. Going IC is a bit like self-hypnosis,
: but there are many, many (often deeply imbedded) triggers that shock one
: back to reality. In fact, it is seen as desirable to defuse as many
: triggers as possible (e.g. not having non-participanst come in and ask
: about real issues). With some triggers (e.g. having one's name called
: out) that's (fortunately) impossible.
You know, there may be so many triggers that can 'shock' someone back to
reality, because, in reality, they've never left.
: proportion by the media. I remember a recent article that claimed that 3
: out of 5 Americans suffered from multiple personalties...
Say what? Squeeze me. Baking powder.
: Apart from that, roleplaying is a valuable tool for self-exploration (and
: is used as such in psychotherapy). It's a great exercise in putting
: yourself in someone-else's shoes and could (I hope) lead to more
: tolerance. And it can certainly lead to valuable considerations about
: important issues.
I would not argue with any of that. And that seems a more level way of
looking at it.
David
Andrew Finch
Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
: Hard to say (though it seems unlikely to me a priori, since different
: people have quite different cognitive styles). We really lack a way
: to compare experiences without the excapsulating metaphors.
Well, different cognitive styles, but we all have huge amounts of common
ground, in that we are human, roleplayers, hold some of the same ideals
(if not methods of achievment), etc.
: I will note, though, that based on your self-descriptions there do
: seem to be some differences. You describe IC, for you, as something
: that combines easily with other stances and can readily be entered and
: left; you don't seem to have trouble with losing the IC viewpoint if
: you make metagame-based decisions. You seem to be able to maintain a
: detached, "author-omniscient" viewpoint the majority of the time
: while gaming, even while also employing IC viewpoints. You're not
: easily distracted by OOC information; you like dramatic irony (audience
: knows something, character does not) and cut scenes. You don't tend
: to internalize character success or failure (you've often commented
: that it doesn't matter to you if the character succeeds or fails
: as long as it's interesting).
Yes.
: These differences suggest some underlying difference of approach. My
: experience on this newsgroup suggests that they tend to correlate,
: too; some players are more like you or Mark, some are more like
: me or John Kim, relatively few have a couple of traits from each group.
I don't think it's a difference in approach, but only a difference in how
that appraoch is valued. Look at it this way. I don't find the Authorial
stance hard to maintain or get into. I can switch in and out of it as I
please. I do not find deep moments of IC to be disruptive to the
Authorial mode.
Does that make my Authorial stance different from someone else's?
: I would say that the most striking difference to me is the fact
: that you don't seem to lose IC by making metagame choices, whereas
: a large part of my gaming strategy is based around avoiding this
: disaster. It suggests that I am using some kind of partitioning
: which has to be maintained for IC to work for me, whereas you
: aren't.
Which may mean that you require that partition for comfort, and I do not.
However, rolling dice for decisions is not something I can do while IC,
but I've heard others say that dice cause no problems. Is my IC stance
differnet form theirs? From what I've heard, I don't think so. But my
personal likes and dislikes are.
David
Andrew Finch
Scott A. H. Ruggels (scott....@3do.com) wrote:
: I do think there is a difference in the way you conduct it. Your use of
: the metagame, and your playing of the authorial stance suggest that you
: have not achieved deep, unselfconcious I.C.
But I have. AT least I'm sure I have, and that's all we have to go on. I
haven't heard Matry, or you, describe anything which I am unfamiliar with.
: You play all the stances,
: for an I.C. player, there is only one worth doing.
Well, achieving IC, and finding it the only worthwhile stance, are two
separate issues.
David
Irina Rempt
Martin Mertens (Martin....@kcl.ac.uk) wrote:
> A person suffering from
> multiple personalities or shizophrenia...
> ..might not be able to switch back and forth as desired.
> Roleplayers may not be able to switch to IC as they like; but switching
> to reality happens all too easily. Going IC is a bit like self-hypnosis,
> but there are many, many (often deeply imbedded) triggers that shock one
> back to reality. In fact, it is seen as desirable to defuse as many
> triggers as possible (e.g. not having non-participanst come in and ask
> about real issues). With some triggers (e.g. having one's name called
> out) that's (fortunately) impossible.
The worst is the *telephone*. Or the doorbell. It's perfectly possible
to stay IC and do something in the kitchen (though the munchies might
come out rather medieval if you're in a fantasy campaign :-) but it's
impossible to either answer the phone IC or ignore the hellish thing
altogether.
Those of us who are parents may have noticed that ignoring real life
while roleplaying is a bit like the way we ignore children while trying
to finish something that needs to be finished; stay with the task at
hand (like talking on the phone) while paying marginal attention to the
other thing (like a small child pulling at one's trousers with
something to show, or just begging for attention). There's a sort of
multitasking going on that keeps one from having to switch back and
forth all the time. Not everyone can do it; women generally seem to be
better at it than men (though I know multithreading men as well as
single-minded women).
> ..might not have memories about what happened while in a certain mode.
> Roleplayers may forget about their surroundings and time during play (as
> with a good book or movie), but only to the extent that they fail to
> perceive superfluous details. They will afterwards know what they have
> been doing, where, with whom, approximately for how long etc.
As soon as they come out of the IC stance, yes. This may take a few
minutes. If the game was very intense, my character may creep up on me
unawares from time to time for days, and as I have most of my very good
games with my husband, we play out little snatches or converse IC at
those times.
> ..might not be able to distinguish between various personalities.
> Roleplayers may go IC to the extent that they forget about reality and
> reach SOD, but when (not if) they return, they can certainly make the
> above distinction and say during what parts of the game they have been
> (deeply) IC.
Also, for GMs and other multiple character players (Mary?), which one it
was, which (AFAIK) a MPD patient can't.
Irina (why do these random .sigs seem so appropriate sometimes?)
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Reality is for people who lack imagination. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ennead
russell wallace (rwal...@tcd.ie) wrote:
: (BTW, the bit about "no stable ego..." just suggested a question to me:
: for someone with a sufficiently *unstable* ego, mightn't there be some
: element of risk? My answer to that would be yes: I'm not a
: psychologist, but my guess would be that deep IC roleplaying would be
: contraindicated for anyone with serious psychological problems. David,
: if you're reading this, any comments here?)
I'm not a psychologist either, but I've had some personal
experiences that suggest that the answer is a _qualified_ yes.
My college gaming group, which favored an extremely
deep IC approach to games, included one member who, in
retrospect, should probably not have been messing around with
this style of gaming. He was extremely psychologically unstable,
and the deep IC did not seem to have a healthy effect on him.
He became quite ill, actually, and the fact that his illness
drew upon aspects of the games we had been playing was deeply
disturbing for everyone concerned.
Admittedly, it is hard to determine whether the games
really acted as a catalyst for his eventual breakdown. Who
knows -- perhaps they actually _delayed_ it by allowing him
some outlet. From my own admittedly layman's perspective,
however, it certainly did not seem that the gaming was at
all healthy for him at that point in his life.
I would give only a _qualified_ yes to this question,
however, because I've also known people for whom deep IC
gaming was an extremely _beneficial_ activity for their
emotional health. At the risk of sounding foolish or
melodramatic, I can think of one person for whom it would
not be unreasonable to hypothesize that deep IC roleplaying
may well have been the only thing that _prevented_ her from
having a nervous breakdown during a very difficult period
of her life.
Roleplaying can be very therapeutic, and it can provide
an outlet for a sort of thinking for which real life offers
little opportunity. Many writers express the belief that they write
because it "keeps them sane," and fiction writing is a type of
deep IC.
So I would be very reluctant to state that deep IC
roleplaying is universally unhealthy for the emotionally
unstable. I think it can be so for some, but for others,
I think it can be very beneficial indeed. I, for one, do
not consider myself very emotionally stable, and I think
that roleplaying has been very helpful, although I do
not use it consciously as "therapy."
-- Sarah
Ennead
Carl D. Cravens (rave...@southwind.net) wrote:
: Folks talk about this deep IC stuff as if the characters were really
: someone else... feeling "the character's" emotions, thinking "the
: character's" thoughts.
Carl, do you write fiction?
I ask because most fiction writers talk about the process
in just this way. The characters "take over." They think and do
things the writer didn't intend, didn't anticipate, didn't expect,
didn't even *want.* They run with the story, taking it out of
the writer's conscious control.
The deep IC works the same way, which is unsurprising,
since it is the same thing.
: These things didn't come from outside you, so
: where did they come from? They must come from inside you, and if they
: came from inside you, doesn't that mean these things *are* you?
Yes and no. Just because something comes from within
you does not necessarily mean that this "you" is the same one
that you associate with your conscious mind or your ego. The
schizophrenic really _does_ hear voices; he does not consciously
write a script for them first. The Pentecostal who speaks in
tongues while inspired by the Holy Spirit is not "faking it" by
making a conscious decision to speak in gibberish, neither do those
who channel the loa as part of their religious experience
do so as a conscious act of will.
Some people might argue that the religious experiences
really _don't_ come from within, but from without. That's a matter
of debate, though. I personally do not believe that the distinction
between "internal" and "external" is nearly so cut-and-dried as
your confusion would seem to suggest.
: These characters *aren't* real people, they're creations of your own
: mind.
Yes, but they are creations of ones mind who are not
entirely under your conscious control, and for this reason, it
can make more sense to speak of them as if they are "real people."
Fictional characters are creations of the writers' mind,
but writers still talk about them as if they were autonomous
entities.
For that matter, even gamers who do not go for deep
IC speak of character in this fashion. Consider the phrase:
"He would never do that -- it would be out-of-character."
There is an implicit assumption there -- or a conceit, if
you prefer -- that the character is an autonomous entity,
capable of doing or not doing _anything_ on his own volition.
And yet even non-IC players use such phrases all the time.
: How can you experience emotions that aren't your own? (What do you
: consider emotion? Physiological response to a mental state? I can
: induce such a mental state that has nothing to do with my immediate
: situation.)
Well, what do you consider "your own?" I can feel great
sadness when reading a weepy part of a novel, but it is not
really "my" sadness. _I_ have nothing to be sad about. *I'm*
having a great time, because I'm reading a book that has really
moved me, and that's one of my favorite things in the world.
Through vicarious experience, emotions can _become_
your own.
: Is the deep IC player *really* developing multiple personalities?
In one sense, yes. In another, no.
The deep IC player might well be described as developing
multiple personalities. This is not, however, quite the same
thing as developing MPD. It is only when one loses control
over this sort of schismatic thinking that it is a problem.
Just because you hear a deity speaking to you does not necessarily
make you a schizophrenic.
: I just don't see how you can
: say that you're experiencing the thoughts and emotions of an imaginary
: character.
I guess I just don't see what the problem is. Maybe this
is just because I do experience this while you do not?
: I can see getting emotional in sympathy with an imaginary
: character (I do it all the time in fiction), but I don't understand the
: claims being made unless you're purposely inducing a minor multiple
: personality. (And if this is the case, aren't you taking a big risk
: with deep IC'ing violent or otherwise "undesirable" characters?)
Not so long as you maintain control over the process -- in
other words, so long as the loss of control the process entails
does not become a permanent state of affairs.
Should you lose this control, then yes, I suppose that
RPing an undesirable character could be very unpleasant indeed.
But then, I think it would be pretty damned unpleasant no matter
what sort of character you were playing -- we're talking about
psychosis here, and psychosis is usually a pretty unpleasant
experience for those so afflicted.
I don't think, though, that falling into a permanently
psychotic state as a result of this type of thinking is all that
likely an occurrence. Were this the case, there would be an awful
lot of deranged artists, mystics, role-players, psychedlic-users,
and occultists running about, including entire populations of
adherents of religions that involve some sort of channeling as a
regular part of ritual practice. In actuality, however, most
of these people do _not_ go insane.
: Or maybe you just don't really mean what I think you mean.
I don't know, but I suspect that I _do_ mean what
you think I mean. It just doesn't seem all that unusual
to me, nor as frightening and dangerous as you seem to be
perceiving it to be.
: (I'm going out on a limb here... my boss is one of those making these
: claims here. :)
He's a role-player? Or is he a writer or a channeler?
-- Sarah
Mary K. Kuhner
Hmm. I don't think "comfort" is the issue for me. It's not that
maintaining IC while considering metagame issues makes me uncomfortable;
it's that I cannot do it and cannot even grasp how I could do it.
It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference between feeling
my emotions as player (i.e. metagame reactions) and feeling my
character's emotions. I can't do both at once if the two sets are
discordant; that would be a muddle.
Consider the cut-scene we were discussing earlier, where the players
find that their characters are doomed to death, but the characters
don't know that. As a player, at this point I would be feeling
anger, which for me goes with a tension in the diaphragm, a kind of
discomfort in the pit of the stomach, tense neck and throat muscles;
and I would be feeling desperation and despair, which go with a kind
of physical heaviness, a sag in the shoulders, a "lump in the
stomach" feeling. (I don't do this deliberately; that's just how
emotions work for me.) On the other hand, my character is going
off on a mission, and presumably is reasonably optomistic about
it. So his shoulders are up, his breathing is a little fast, his
eyes are held just so--I don't have words for all of this--anyway,
it's the physical set that goes with his emotions. There would
also be a color to his thoughts, an adventurious or business-like
mindset. For sure, his stomach wouldn't hurt, nor would his
throat.
Now, I only have one body. How am I going to inhabit both sets
of emotions at the same time?
I don't think this is "not comfortable with the idea", I think this
is "clueless how I could possibly do such a thing." When I am playing
multiple characters I use various tricks to get around this problem,
but they don't ever involve having two contradictory sets of emotions
fully "on tap" at the same moment. One of them has got to be
backgrounded.
From this, and your repeated denials that "feeling your character's
emotions" really means what I think it means, I speculate that our
experiences are significantly different.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Keith Kornelsen
wi...@gr.cns.net (William Clifford) wrote:
>rave...@southwind.net (Carl D. Cravens) wrote:
>
>>Folks talk about this deep IC stuff as if the characters were really
>>someone else... feeling "the character's" emotions, thinking "the
>>where did they come from? They must come from inside you, and if they
>
>{This is just going to sound crazy I know it}
Well, when the men in the white coats come to get you tell them
to swing by my place on the way.
>I wouldn't be so quick to assume that just because something comes
>from "inside" a person that it means that it *is* them.
I very much agree. I think all people contain the basic elements
of human personalities. We all have at least a touch of everything,
although that may be only a minute part of our personality. I think
that we may incorporate these things through our contact with other
people in our developmental years, or it may be that they are
there from the start. In any case, I think that they're there
by the time personality forms.
IMHO, we draw on these things when we're deep IC. For instance,
I know I'm an INTP, reactive personality, and am also quite
straight. My current character is very outspoken, active,
agressive, and is staring to suspect that she has feelings for
other women. I do DIP so this is all coming out in play for
me, and the character is developing a habit of taking her own
direction in formation and choices. I'm not this kind of
person at all, but she is. And I know she came from somewhere
inside me.
>Now I'm not one of these "deep IC" players because I just haven't
>played in those kind of games at all. But I have had analogous
>experiences with stories, poems, and most particularly with dreams.
>I've had some that may have come from "inside" me but that I didn't
>feel came *from* me. They came from Something Else of which I won't
>pretend to know what it was. What Mary has described in her "deep IC"
>experiences sounds similiar to what I've experienced in the past with
>stories if you take out her explainations.
The Something Else is not external, but it is not us. I feel
this one a lot when I write. It drives me up the wall, because
you can't control it.
>I don't like talking about it much because some people have looked at
>me like I was some kind of nut when I did. Others have taken it as an
>excuse to fob off some vaguely New Age psycho-cosmological theory on
>me (Zen philosophy and Jungian psychology don't mix nearly as well as
>some people think In My Opinion). Of the two I prefer the first
>reaction.
I'm not talking about this as a religious thing. My personal
beliefs lie in a quite opposite direction. I think it does spring
from psychology, though. I'm not a psychologist, I'm an English
and music student, so I may be off track here.
>While I like to think I'm as grounded and down to earth as the next
>person but I suspect that if I ever got into a game where "deep IC"
>role-playing was required of me I could well find myself inhabiting
>the same body as Someone Else. It's a weird world in there and I don't
>know enough about it to try to explain it real well. But this is a
>very interesting issue for me.
I hear you. At least it doesn't rain fish on the net.
--Solace
John R. Snead
As I see it, deep IC is basically generating another personality inside
your head. If found it quite possible, and quite interesting to view
section of "real life" through a character's eyes. In this sense deep IC
is creating a multiple personality.
However, it is not the same thing as MPD. From doing extensive reading on
the subject, MPD is not simply having multiple personalities, it is having
multiples personalities which interfere with normal functioning. Deep IC
personalities don't do this (at least with anyone I've ever known).
Interestingly enough, I've also run into several people who have multiple
personalities which are not a problem and which don't come out of gaming.
Talking to such people is quite an unusual experience when they let you
talk with both (or in one case all three) personalities, it looks like
someone slipping into *very* deep IC (all reactions, non-verbal cues,
and patterns of movement change dramatically). The only real difference
is that the additional personalities here are somewhat more separate,
and more certain of their own reality than most gaming characters.
From what I've seen, many humans have the capability to develop (either
deliberately or not) additional personalities. In many people, even when
done unintentionally, this process adds depth and interest to their life and
does not cause them any problems.
All this is taking a rather rationalist view of things, in the case of non-
gaming multiples the individuals explanations generally involved ghosts
and spirits. Human minds are very flexible things and deep IC is an
interesting way of playing with this. Our cultures worries that non-
traditional mental states must be pathological seems rather overblown.
-John Snead jsn...@netcom.com
psych...@aol.com
David (Andrew Finch?) posts, in part:
I wouldn't say that the 'me' at work is a different
personality from the 'me' at other times.
I don't believe there is any difference between what
I do, or John does, or Carl, or [Mary Kuhner], other
than the metaphors we choose to encapsulate our
communication about it in.
David, do you think there is something qualitatively different between
what we all are doing and what is happening with people with real,
genuine, serious multiple personality disorder? Even people with multiple
personality disorder only have one set of hardware to run all their sets
of software on.
Warren Dew
Irina Rempt
(drat it. Two little corrections. I'm rereading some things to see if
I've been making a fool of myself apart from the Alberta thing, and I
can't stand letting goofs get away)
Irina Rempt (ir...@lamarkis.uucp) wrote:
> though I
> *am* extraverted (a strong ENFT) I don't like being watched. This makes
"ENFP" of course. You can all stop trying to remember what the "T"
stands for :-)
> It suddenly clicks that when you hide a ball under a cloth,
> the ball is still there.
That is "that the ball still exists". Before that, infants think that
when they can't see something it doesn't exist, and thus will not look
for it. The point was supposed to be that whether or not you wear a
persona, your self exists regardless.
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
psych...@aol.com
Irina Rempt notes that the telephone and doorbell are a problem for
staying in character.
Why not let the answering machine worry about the telephone during gaming
sessions? Answering machines these days are not too expensive, and quite
sophisticated.
For the doorbell, though, you need a more expensive accessory - a butler.
Warren Dew
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
In article <57dgdm$i...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>, mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
> Consider the cut-scene we were discussing earlier, where the players
> find that their characters are doomed to death, but the characters
> don't know that. As a player, at this point I would be feeling
> anger, which for me goes with a tension in the diaphragm, a kind of
> discomfort in the pit of the stomach, tense neck and throat muscles;
> and I would be feeling desperation and despair, which go with a kind
> of physical heaviness, a sag in the shoulders, a "lump in the
> stomach" feeling. (I don't do this deliberately; that's just how
> emotions work for me.) On the other hand, my character is going
> off on a mission, and presumably is reasonably optomistic about
> it. So his shoulders are up, his breathing is a little fast, his
> eyes are held just so--I don't have words for all of this--anyway,
> it's the physical set that goes with his emotions. There would
> also be a color to his thoughts, an adventurious or business-like
> mindset. For sure, his stomach wouldn't hurt, nor would his
> throat.
Cool! I also deliberately alter how I was holding myself to represent
different emotional states.
It's really quite dramatic, at least for me. I put on a confident smile,
and I *feel* confident and jaunty; I stare at the floor with a glum
expression, and I can feel adolescent angst.
> Now, I only have one body. How am I going to inhabit both sets
> of emotions at the same time?
Well, I timeshare. When it's time for Dana to threaten a thug,
I lean forward, narrow my eyes, and smile mockingly. When it's time
for *my* response (f'ex, I-player know that the stagecoach has a
Gatling gun in it, when she doesn't) I wince in sympathy for
upcoming pain.
The emotional state echoes the physical one, and if I know how my PC
feels *now*, I can "save the state" by remembering the body posture.
Then I can do things like go and make silly comments about the other
players, and come back later and restore the "character state" by
shifting back into her posture. (The group currently favors lightbulb
jokes, with the punchline varying according to the PC's personality.)
I really can feel the emotions my character does, but it doesn't
seem to be quite what you do, because it's easy to slip in and
out of the character's mindset. Could you explain how things are
different for you? (I may not have given enough info for you to
compare. If so, please ask.)
Neel
-----
Check out a rec.games.frp.advocacy FAQ at:
http://www.mit.edu/people/neelk/rgfa-glossary.html
-----
Ennead
Andrew Finch (bcks...@crl.com) wrote:
: I have no doubt that it's a role I've created, and a personal fantasy of
: mine. No loss of self in playing that role. No doubt of who and where I
: am, and what I'm doing. I can go from deeply involved in a bit of
: roleplay, to grabbing the last slice of pizza, and back, without feeling
: that I've just switched 'states of mind'.
It's interesting that you brought up the pizza, David.
One thing I've noticed about games in which I get deeply IC is
that after them, I am always _famished._ Even though we always
have munchies on hand for gaming nights, I never think of eating
them while I'm deeply in-character. I just forget that they're
_there,_ or if I do remember, the idea of eating simply holds
no appeal.
And then, once the game is over, I get really _pissed_
when there's no food left!
--- Sarah
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <57feku$6...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> ne...@mit.edu (Neelakantan Krishnaswami) writes:
>Mary wrote:
>> Now, I only have one body. How am I going to inhabit both sets
>> of emotions at the same time?
>Well, I timeshare. When it's time for Dana to threaten a thug,
>I lean forward, narrow my eyes, and smile mockingly. When it's time
>for *my* response (f'ex, I-player know that the stagecoach has a
>Gatling gun in it, when she doesn't) I wince in sympathy for
>upcoming pain.
>The emotional state echoes the physical one, and if I know how my PC
>feels *now*, I can "save the state" by remembering the body posture.
This is how I do multiple PCs, and it works for me. It also covers
interruptions and distractions pretty well. What it *doesn't*
cover, for me, is making a PC decision based on a player emotion. If
I change posture, change mindset, and consider what my own emotions
are, then the decision is "tagged" with my personality and it
feels drastically wrong to attribute it to the PC. If I stay in
the PC's mindset I literally don't really know how I'd feel about
it as a player, or at least I know only rather distantly and coldly
(because the physical correlates of emotion aren't there?)
I guess, analyzing it this way, the problem is that whatever organizing
principle I use to separate "what the PC wants/thinks/decides" from
"what Mary wants/thinks/decides" is not compatible with "cheating".
If I "cheat" and use a Mary-reason to motivate a PC decision I
generally lose track of the PC as a separate process, and the whole
game goes flat.
I know quite a few players like this, but I'm worse than most, I think
from having spent so many years doing multiple characters. The
organizing principle gets a real workout, and perhaps it becomes
overly rigid in the process.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
John R. Snead
Neelakantan Krishnaswami (ne...@mit.edu) wrote:
: Cool! I also deliberately alter how I was holding myself to represent
: different emotional states.
:
: It's really quite dramatic, at least for me. I put on a confident smile,
: and I *feel* confident and jaunty; I stare at the floor with a glum
: expression, and I can feel adolescent angst.
That's *very* different from my experience. I know when I'm doing deep IC
when the other players mention I'm doing such things, and I'm totaly unaware
of this fact. I was once playing a PC who was a rather uptigth 1920s,
British, female, academic. Someone mentioned how well I was doing the
rigidly prim and proper body postures and I just stared at them and asked,
"I was?" I've always assumed that planing such things came under author
mode.
: > Now, I only have one body. How am I going to inhabit both sets
: > of emotions at the same time?
: Well, I timeshare. When it's time for Dana to threaten a thug,
: I lean forward, narrow my eyes, and smile mockingly. When it's time
: for *my* response (f'ex, I-player know that the stagecoach has a
: Gatling gun in it, when she doesn't) I wince in sympathy for
: upcoming pain.
: The emotional state echoes the physical one, and if I know how my PC
: feels *now*, I can "save the state" by remembering the body posture.
: Then I can do things like go and make silly comments about the other
: players, and come back later and restore the "character state" by
: shifting back into her posture. (The group currently favors lightbulb
: jokes, with the punchline varying according to the PC's personality.)
: I really can feel the emotions my character does, but it doesn't
: seem to be quite what you do, because it's easy to slip in and
: out of the character's mindset. Could you explain how things are
: different for you? (I may not have given enough info for you to
: compare. If so, please ask.)
As I mentioned above this sounds very similar to how I use author mode.
I'm doing deep IC when "I" am not aware of my body postures, or the exact
reasons for actions my PC is taking. Author mode, for me, is when I am
consciously planning things like body posture and am carefully planning
what for my character would be immediate, urgent, actions.
It's interesting how different terms get used by different people. Clearly
terms like authro mode and deep IC do not mean the same thing to everyone.
-John Snead jsn...@netcom.com
John R. Snead
Ooops, that's what I get for writing w/o fully engaging my brain :(
My previous response to Neelakantan Krishnaswami, where I was
talking about he differences between deep IC and *author* mode,
I meant to write *actor* mode. Must be early senility setting in at 35.
-John Snead jsn...@netcom.com
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
In article <19961125184...@ladder01.news.aol.com>, bruce...@aol.com writes:
> In article <57cfo2$5...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>,
> >you can sometimes map out their decisionmaking in advance by discussing
> >it with someone who is a bit more experienced. They don't have to
> >be terribly knowledgable, since the goal is convincingness, not
> >realism--even someone on your own level of expertese can help,
> >for the second perspective.
>
> Right! A group of folks each with a bit of knowledge can together erect an
> edifice that will, well, actually that may well drive someone who really
> knows the field into fits of laughter or hysteria, but that's another
> problem. The group can at least create enough structure to feel convincing
> for the game purpose, which is the point.
I found some of my notes from, a short-lived hard-sf game I
ran in high school. Back then, we knew little about physics
other than unit conversions and orders of magnitude, and the
whole thing still stands up surprisingly well.
This seems more or less true regardless of the field --
getting realistic results in a game means little more than
reading about the field at the SciAm level to get a feel
for what the factors to consider are, and what their relative
sizes are.
There really isn't all that much that runs counter to all normal
intuitions; intuition and a little knowledge will get you a
long way.
> A resource not to be underestimated is the children's section of the
> library. Books for middle school, junior high, and high school students
> about careers, for instance, are loaded with great slice-of-life snippets
> waiting to be exploited.
This is sufficiently worth repeating that I will leave it here. :)
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
In article <57g1b2$g...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>, mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
> In article <57feku$6...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> ne...@mit.edu (Neelakantan Krishnaswami) writes:
>
> >Mary wrote:
> >> of emotions at the same time?
>
> >Well, I timeshare. When it's time for Dana to threaten a thug,
> >I lean forward, narrow my eyes, and smile mockingly. When it's time
> >for *my* response (f'ex, I-player know that the stagecoach has a
> >Gatling gun in it, when she doesn't) I wince in sympathy for
> >upcoming pain.
>
> >The emotional state echoes the physical one, and if I know how my PC
> >feels *now*, I can "save the state" by remembering the body posture.
>
> interruptions and distractions pretty well. What it *doesn't*
> cover, for me, is making a PC decision based on a player emotion. If
> I change posture, change mindset, and consider what my own emotions
> are, then the decision is "tagged" with my personality and it
> feels drastically wrong to attribute it to the PC. If I stay in
> the PC's mindset I literally don't really know how I'd feel about
> it as a player, or at least I know only rather distantly and coldly
> (because the physical correlates of emotion aren't there?)
I'm not sure I completely understand what you are saying here.
We can use David's example of a cut scene at the start of the
game showing the PCs being executed after the end of the mission.
This would be a big help for my roleplay; the PC and player
understandings of the situation would be so different that I
would find it much easier to separate the PC decision process
from what I think. (In fact, I think this is why the Feng Shui
game I'm in is so good...)
You've said that it would make it harder for you to run the
character. Could you please try again to explain why dramatic
irony is so hard on your sense of character?
> I guess, analyzing it this way, the problem is that whatever organizing
> principle I use to separate "what the PC wants/thinks/decides" from
> "what Mary wants/thinks/decides" is not compatible with "cheating".
> If I "cheat" and use a Mary-reason to motivate a PC decision I
> generally lose track of the PC as a separate process, and the whole
> game goes flat.
Yeah, I can understand that, and it's true for me as well (though
to a much lesser extent).
As I see it, the PC's personality is primarily the set of emotional
filters through which he (or she) views the world. If the action the
PC performs is inconsistent with how the character feels, then making
sense of the character is much harder, since the logic of the
character is lost.
Mark Apolinski
John R. Snead wrote:
>
> As I see it, deep IC is basically generating another personality inside
> your head. If found it quite possible, and quite interesting to view
> section of "real life" through a character's eyes. In this sense deep IC
> is creating a multiple personality.
>
> However, it is not the same thing as MPD. From doing extensive reading on
> the subject, MPD is not simply having multiple personalities, it is having
> multiples personalities which interfere with normal functioning. Deep IC
> personalities don't do this (at least with anyone I've ever known).
>
> Interestingly enough, I've also run into several people who have multiple
> personalities which are not a problem and which don't come out of gaming.
Are you sure this isn't just what psychologists refer to as
role-playing? Emphasizing different aspects of one's personality at
different times might *seem* like completely different personalities
when they're really not. Example: Company President and CEO who acts one
way at the office, but when she gets home switches to Mother/Wife role.
Mark
Scott A. H. Ruggels
Irina Rempt wrote:
>
> Neelakantan Krishnaswami (ne...@mit.edu) wrote:
>
> > Cool! I also deliberately alter how I was holding myself to represent
> > different emotional states.
> >
> > It's really quite dramatic, at least for me. I put on a confident smile,
> > and I *feel* confident and jaunty; I stare at the floor with a glum
> > expression, and I can feel adolescent angst.
>
> bit wider (by pulling up those little muscles above the eyebrows) and
> do something to my mouth that's not quite a pout, but goes in the same
> direction. Then I saw my 15-month-old daughter with *exactly the same
> expression*. I wonder if it's a remembered body image, or did I learn
> from her?
>
> My players find this portrayal of children totally convincing; I had to
> do a girl in her twenties with brain damage in our latest game, which
> makes her childlike except when she's on drugs, and they could
> correctly determine the different states even before she'd said
> anything.
>
For me it's speech patterns and word choices. I have been told I do
accents well. American regional, as well as some foreign. A Spy
Character of mine, Felix, speaks with a very dry, spare west Texas
drawl, and snarls when he gets really angry. and slow burns.
A noble of mine has an accent 'borrowed' from Sir George Saunders
(Shere Khan from Disney's Junglebook), Now I couldn't get that low on
the vocal register (but boy do I want to) but the pacing and the word
choices are there. Cultured and cold when he wants to be. However after
a few years of play, when things started to go his way more often, a lot
of the bitterness, and sarcasm left the voice, and almost approaches a
PBS 'Lord Peter Whimsey' level of animation when discussing something
that interests him.
For a corrupt Elementalist in Doug's 4 Gods campaign, I used Doctor Zin
from the Old Johnny Quest episodes (1964), and it fit his precise, and
calculating, and ultimately evil mind.
And the ever optomistic pilot of the Military powered Armoured suit
had a fast midwestern accent ( Like my Uncle Frank), and spoke in a
heavy Military Jargonese sprinkled with football expressions.
Word choices are part of the decision filters I build to make a
personality, and become second nature. Often 'invoking a character'
means speaking a phrase or something characteristic of the character,
but like Lea has said, sometimes they bubble up to watch what's going on
around them.
But posture, and look is a part of it as well. Sometimes a hat helps.
Scott
Scott A. H. Ruggels
Another thing about being I.C. I have found useful, is that is a good
way to 'road test' characters for another media. I still do comics very
rarely, and I am still writing up a couple of game products, and I
found that it is benificial to 'play' the character in a series of
unpredictable situations and see what it does. I find that I cannot
understand a complex situation until I give the 'movers and shakers'
some I.C. time to figure out how they think. I find that I.C. is awfully
usefull.
You know... This might be exactly the sort of thing that FBI profilers
do. They just have access to better studies of personality, and a slight
education precisely for this process of mental fabrication of alternate
personalities.
Scott
James Robinson
John R. Snead <jsn...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>Getting more back to gaming, how many of the rest of you deep IC players
>also have IC dreams?
I can't consistently get into IC, but if I've been able to during a
particularly intense session then occasionally I'll have an IC dream. I've
also had IC dreams for characters that I'm still in the process of creating.
Once, and only once, I had a half-IC dream* about a black-skinned elf with
a bow and a big smile, creeping around on the rooftops, and fleshed out my
next PC on the basis of the character in that dream! I'm still playing her.
* IOW, sometimes I saw her from a "camera" viewpoint, sometimes I saw through
her eyes; I *always* had a sense of her thoughts. The dream even supplied
her name: Hyacinth.
--
The Amorphous Mass If I knew what I was doing,
amo...@avalon.net it wouldn't be research.
Irina Rempt
psych...@aol.com wrote:
> Irina Rempt notes that the telephone and doorbell are a problem for
> staying in character.
> Why not let the answering machine worry about the telephone during gaming
> sessions? Answering machines these days are not too expensive, and quite
> sophisticated.
I hate answering machines. I'm not a Luddite at all (after all, I use a
computer, and the Internet, and the microwave) but this is one piece of
technology that I wish had never been invented.
Most of my friends seem to be the same way. I had one on trial some time
ago (an answering machine, not a friend :-), and I got complaints from
more than half of the people who tried to call me during that period. One
or two stopped trying to call altogether and resorted to postcards. I
like getting mail, but this was going too far and I took the thing back
to the shop. Anyway, even if you set it at "zero rings" you hear it go
TING and it drives you mad with suspense who it was - almost as bad a
distraction for me.
> For the doorbell, though, you need a more expensive accessory - a butler.
Or a robot :-)
I can answer the *door* IC, though, when I'm GMing. I just switch to
the nearest NPC who is likely to answer the door and has compatible
mannerisms to my own. It's fun.
Irina Rempt
Neelakantan Krishnaswami (ne...@mit.edu) wrote:
> Cool! I also deliberately alter how I was holding myself to represent
> different emotional states.
>
> It's really quite dramatic, at least for me. I put on a confident smile,
> and I *feel* confident and jaunty; I stare at the floor with a glum
> expression, and I can feel adolescent angst.
I just noticed the other day how I play children: open my eyes a little
bit wider (by pulling up those little muscles above the eyebrows) and
do something to my mouth that's not quite a pout, but goes in the same
direction. Then I saw my 15-month-old daughter with *exactly the same
expression*. I wonder if it's a remembered body image, or did I learn
from her?
My players find this portrayal of children totally convincing; I had to
do a girl in her twenties with brain damage in our latest game, which
makes her childlike except when she's on drugs, and they could
correctly determine the different states even before she'd said
anything.
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Hindsight is an exact science. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Stehman
Irina Rempt (ir...@lamarkis.uucp) wrote:
: I can answer the *door* IC, though, when I'm GMing. I just switch to
: the nearest NPC who is likely to answer the door and has compatible
: mannerisms to my own. It's fun.
"Sauron raises his skeletal hands as darkness and power swirl around
him-- <ding, dong> Excuse me for a moment. <pad, pad, pad, click,
creeeaaaak> Yes?"
"Good evening! I'm here to let you know about an exciting offer on
a new set of encyclopedias--"
<ZOT!>
You're right, sounds like great fun! :-)
--
Jeff Stehman Senior Systems Administrator
ste...@southwind.net SouthWind Internet Access, Inc.
voice: (316)263-7963 Wichita, KS
URL for Wichita Area Chamber of Commerce: http://www.southwind.net/ict/
Ennead
: >I have a couple of questions for the deep-IC players here.
: >Personally, I tend to play IC for the first session or two
: >until I get a good feel for what the new character will do
: >in any situation and then slip into a more Authorial mode
: >as maintaining IC is too draining in the long run.
: If that's not what you mean, perhaps you could make it clearer?
: I'm puzzled because I tend to do Author when I don't know a
: character well enough, and IC later on. There's a kind of "click" where
: the character's emotions and (to a lesser degree) thoughts
: fall into place; after that they're generally much easier to play
: than they were before.
I suspect that the cause of confusion here may well be
that Barbara is strongly design-at-start, while Mary is strongly
design-in-play.
As a DASser myself, I know what Barbara means. Often
I find myself starting out the first game session very IC, because
I've already immersed myself so deeply in the character as a part
of the character creation process. I've just come straight off
of thinking IC to write the character history, and so I'm already
immersed in the IC when I start play.
What usually happens for me, though, is that that
initial IC gets bludgeoned the first time it comes in contact
with the harsh treatment of actual play. Suddenly, the IC
has to contend with my own voice, and my own body, and the
distraction of all the other participants in the game -- none
of which it had to confront back when it was being expressed
through writing and imagining, rather than acting out.
So then I scuttle back to Author mode for a while,
until the newly-strengthened IC is able to return, which
may happen sooner or later. _Then_ I get the "click" Mary
mentions, which is the sound/feel of the IC returning to me.
My pattern of play usually goes IC-Author-IC, so
I can identify with both of your positions.
-- Sarah
John R. Snead
Mark Apolinski (Mark.Ap...@jpl.nasa.gov) wrote:
If you are referring to the folks I know who have non-problematic additional
personalities which are not derived from gaming. the answer is a definite
no. In one case, the person had this additional personality show up in her
head one day. The 2nd personality came complete with memories and a
detailed previous life. He was basically a yuppie who has a definite
feeling that he died, but he couldn't remember the circumstances. He and
is "host' got along quite well and never had any problems negotiating
reality. The odd thing is how many people I've run into with this little
quirk (4 so far). All the additional personalities weren't ghosts, but they
all came complete with their own previous lives. The explanation may
be spiritual, it may be psychological, but either way it wasn't faking and
it's fascinating to watch. Definitely an inspiration to deep IC role-players
everywhere.
Getting more back to gaming, how many of the rest of you deep IC players
also have IC dreams?
-John Snead jsn...@netcom.com
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <329C73...@jpl.nasa.gov> Mark Apolinski <Mark.Ap...@jpl.nasa.gov> writes:
>John Snead wrote:
>> Interestingly enough, I've also run into several people who have multiple
>> personalities which are not a problem and which don't come out of gaming.
> Are you sure this isn't just what psychologists refer to as
>role-playing? Emphasizing different aspects of one's personality at
>different times might *seem* like completely different personalities
>when they're really not. Example: Company President and CEO who acts one
>way at the office, but when she gets home switches to Mother/Wife role.
The example I have encountered didn't seem as context dependent as
the CEO example. The person changed personalities more or less at
will, but not instantly; it took several minutes during which
he showed some signs of epilepsy-like twitches and tiny seizures.
I found the subjective impression of his having become another
person extremely compelling; since I was not privy to the inside
of his head I could, of course, have been fooled by good acting,
but it certainly didn't look that way.
It was not a problem for him, though he noted that it had been
earlier in his life (mainly, that if he never allowed himself to
invoke the alternative personality, he'd have seizures).
I am agnostic about his explanation, which involved spirit possession,
but if it wasn't that it sure looked like non-pathological (as
far as I could tell) multiple personalities.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
ne...@mit.edu (Neelakantan Krishnaswami) writes:
>We can use David's example of a cut scene at the start of the
>game showing the PCs being executed after the end of the mission.
>This would be a big help for my roleplay; the PC and player
>understandings of the situation would be so different that I
>would find it much easier to separate the PC decision process
>from what I think. (In fact, I think this is why the Feng Shui
>game I'm in is so good...)
>You've said that it would make it harder for you to run the
>character. Could you please try again to explain why dramatic
>irony is so hard on your sense of character?
If I, the player, know my character is going to be executed, I feel
upset. Inevitably, I feel some physical syptoms of upset--
the tight stomach, tense throat, whatever. I suspect there are
also more biochemical things going on--blood pressure, adrenaline,
whatever. And my mental processes are colored by my feelings. I
tend to feel a lack of interest in "side issues" when in such a
situation; I no longer like to look at scenery, for example, and
I tend to think obsessively about the lethal problem and nothing
much else.
For knowing what my character is feeling, these responses are pure
noise. They're very loud noise, too, because they're "mine" and
player emotions, all things being equal, start out with a big
advantage (running on their native OS?)
They might be useful if I played by sitting back and asking myself
"What does my character do in this situation?" because I know my
own reactions (due to OOC information) are worthless, so I have
to concentrate on his. I think this is what you are saying.
But when the game is going well, that's not what I'm doing; the
subjective experience is of thinking what the character thinks,
filtering through his mindset as Scott says, and feeling emotions
appropriate to his situation. To do that I want to be as unaware
of my own emotions as possible, except when they are similar to
his (it's not a problem if he knows he's going to die; then both
of us feel fear and desperation concordantly, just colored with
our different mindsets).
I can switch relatively well between the emotions of one PC and another
*if they are not too intense*. In our multiple-character games
we use various tricks including Author mode, GM support and
coffee breaks to deal with cases where one PC is feeling very
strongly about something, because it is next to impossible for
me to do fast alternation of IC viewpoint in the face of such
situations. It's one of the major limitations of the style,
in our experience.
My own emotions easily get intense enough to swamp IC, if I am
in a situation like the cut-scene one. I don't know good workarounds
for this, especially if the discordance goes on for a long time.
In other words, for me to run IC and feel strong IC emotions,
I need my own emotions to be either (a) quiet and unobtrusive,
or (b) the same as my character's. The cut scene doesn't work
for either of those, so it upsets me. I deal much better with
casual out of game chitchat because I can use (a).
I also run into different problems involving "is it appropriate
for my character to suspect he might be killed?" which, since I
know that he *will* be killed, are hard to resolve "fairly". But
I think this is Author more than IC. And metagame issues
involving "is the GM trying to tell me that I should *use* this
information somehow?" which, in the scenario under discussion,
seems threateningly likely to be the case. I don't know if
I'd call that Actor or Author--I'm weak on the difference.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Irina Rempt
Neelakantan Krishnaswami (ne...@mit.edu) wrote:
> > >Mary wrote:
> > If
> > I change posture, change mindset, and consider what my own emotions
> > are, then the decision is "tagged" with my personality and it
> > feels drastically wrong to attribute it to the PC. If I stay in
> > the PC's mindset I literally don't really know how I'd feel about
> > it as a player, or at least I know only rather distantly and coldly
> > (because the physical correlates of emotion aren't there?)
> I'm not sure I completely understand what you are saying here.
> We can use David's example of a cut scene at the start of the
> game showing the PCs being executed after the end of the mission.
> This would be a big help for my roleplay; the PC and player
> understandings of the situation would be so different that I
> would find it much easier to separate the PC decision process
> from what I think.
Do you mean that you need the added input from Neel to better
understand e.g. Dana, to prevent Neel's *subconscious* thoughts from
seeping over into Dana? Does Neel decide for Dana, or does Dana decide?
And does it matter if Dana thinks what Neel thinks, as long it's IC for
Dana to think so too?
Unless it's a firewalling problem: Dana uses, IC, knowledge that only
Neel has, without either of you realizing at the time whose knowledge
it is ("But you don't know that!" is the usual reaction in our group).
I recognize that; it happens in a campaign I play in, the only campaign
I'm still 'only' a player in <only 4-6 times a year, sniff>. My
previous character died and I sometimes have to ask the GM 'have I been
here, or was that Jana?' because I honestly can't remember.
> You've said that it would make it harder for you to run the
> character. Could you please try again to explain why dramatic
> irony is so hard on your sense of character?
I can't answer for Mary, but for me it would be a question of
firewalling. I'd either think I was being railroaded, or be tempted (if
the cut scene was of the future) to avert whatever was in stock.
I played a mage once who could cast precognition spells that carried a
heavy penalty in grades of initiation (in world terms) or experience
points (in mechanics terms) if the information was used to prevent what
was foreseen. She never used the spell, because she knew (or I knew - I
was a beginner then and my IC perspective was not so well developed as
it is now) that she wouldn't be able to stand the sense of impending
doom.
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Dare to be naive. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mary K. Kuhner
jsn...@netcom.com (John R. Snead) writes:
>Getting more back to gaming, how many of the rest of you deep IC players
>also have IC dreams?
Late in the _Paradisio_ Shadowrun campaign I had a very vivid dream
in which I was Jayhawk (the best developed of the PCs) and I had to
decide whether or not to side with the enemy in order to save the
rest of the PCs, who were otherwise dead.
I particularly remember trying to justify my/Jayhawk's decision to
Channa, late in the dream. It was very clear in the dream that
I was *talking* to Channa, and had no idea what she was thinking or
feeling; this surprised me in retrospect, because she was another
one of my PCs. Clearly my subconscious firewalls better than I do.
I've had dreams that veered back and forth from IC to a kind of
author-omniscient view, sometimes with bits of metagame and/or
mechanics intruding....also weird dreams where I suddenly discover
that I can't visualize something I'd been gaming about on an
abstract level (like what it's like to teleport). I recall
my dream-self hopping up and down in frustration trying to teleport,
but being unable to figure out how it would feel adequately to
dream it!
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Irina Rempt
> : I can answer the *door* IC, though, when I'm GMing. I just switch to
> : the nearest NPC who is likely to answer the door and has compatible
> : mannerisms to my own. It's fun.
> "Sauron raises his skeletal hands as darkness and power swirl around
> him-- <ding, dong> Excuse me for a moment. <pad, pad, pad, click,
> creeeaaaak> Yes?"
> "Good evening! I'm here to let you know about an exciting offer on
> a new set of encyclopedias--"
> <ZOT!>
> You're right, sounds like great fun! :-)
ROTFL! I said "compatible" <dissolve in giggles> and "likely to answer
the door". Most of the time salespeople, collection takers, etcetera
don't even notice, because they *expect* a servant type :-)
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Stay away from flying saucers today. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frank Pitt
In article <57e4ai$m...@news.telusplanet.net> knel...@agt.net writes:
>>While I like to think I'm as grounded and dowFISH earth as the next
>>persFISHbut I suspect FISH as if I ever got into a game where "deep IC"
>>role-playing was required of me I FISHd well find myself inhabiting
>>the same bodFISH Someone Else. It's a weird world FISHhere and I don't
>>know enough about it to try to exFISHn it real well. But this is a
FISHry interesting issue for me.
> FISH
>I hear you. At least it doesn't rain fish on the net.
>
>--SolFISH
You were saying ?
FISHkie
Carl D. Cravens
On Wed, 27 Nov 1996 17:10:25 -0700, "Scott A. H. Ruggels" <scott....@3do.com> wrote:
I'm really enjoying this thread... my goal was to "demystify" what was
going on in deep IC. (I have a habit of pronouncing that "deep ick".
:) The thread's gone a long way toward that goal. I've filed every
message and when I get a break during the holiday here, I'm going to
write a summary post to discuss some of the points.)
(Now, I've probably formed some opinions that many of you might disagree
with... mostly having to do with attitudes that the player has taken
toward the character persona having a life of its own. It's probably
easier to get into deep IC when you think of the character as 'real' and
as there being a 'transformation' going on as the character surfaces to
co-habit the consciousness. But I think, ultimately, a lot of this
attitude I'm seeing is simply just one of the tools used to get IC.)
> A noble of mine has an accent 'borrowed' from Sir George Saunders
>(Shere Khan from Disney's Junglebook), Now I couldn't get that low on
[...snip...]
>For a corrupt Elementalist in Doug's 4 Gods campaign, I used Doctor Zin
[...snip...]
>And the ever optomistic pilot of the Military powered Armoured suit
>had a fast midwestern accent ( Like my Uncle Frank), and spoke in a
[...snip...]
>heavy Military Jargonese sprinkled with football expressions.
This is a tool that I've recently found useful. I've always had a habit
of trying to find the face of a famous person to portray my character...
it helps people to visualize when they know just what the character
looks like. Recently, I've started borrowing mannerisms. My current
character (I'm a *player* for once!) which I've played all of one
session partially uses Marcus' (from B5) voice and mannerisms (and
cocky attitude). It's easy to start playing a character when you've
already *seen and heard* what it is that you're trying to achive. Of
course, I'm not playing "Marcus", but a character based on his
mannerisms. In the long run, he probably doesn't come out much like
Marcus at all.
I did play an NPC using Lenier's (B5 again) speech patterns... he got
identified about the third time he spoke. (It helped that he played a
role that was similar to Lenier's on the show... devoted apprentice.)
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net) * Phoenyx Roleplaying Listserver
* http://www2.southwind.net/~phoenyx
I'm not lost, I'm "locationally challenged".
Deliverance
Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
>
[snip]
> the CEO example. The person changed personalities more or less at
> will, but not instantly; it took several minutes during which
> he showed some signs of epilepsy-like twitches and tiny seizures.
> I found the subjective impression of his having become another
> person extremely compelling; since I was not privy to the inside
> of his head I could, of course, have been fooled by good acting,
> but it certainly didn't look that way.
>
> It was not a problem for him, though he noted that it had been
> earlier in his life (mainly, that if he never allowed himself to
> invoke the alternative personality, he'd have seizures).
>
> I am agnostic about his explanation, which involved spirit possession,
> but if it wasn't that it sure looked like non-pathological (as
> far as I could tell) multiple personalities.
>
> Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
I've read about that in the 'olden days' that a lot of the 'voices'
people heard from gods or some kind of spirit can possibly be explained
(of course, this is a more or less atheistic viewpoint) by the right
hemisphere of the brain having linguistic capabilities in a certain area
(I hate the left/right brain categories, but there is something to it I
guess). Often people would hear a god commanding them - just their
intuition expressing itself verbally. Perhaps roleplay develops that
area of the brain - I think it would, considering that it is using more
'right brained' functions in a verbal setting. That may explain these
phenomena, at least atheistically, then again, for the more theistic
point of view - it shows that God/dess decided s/he would want to be
heard, and added that physical area to the brain for that.
I am not sure of the exact book/magazine I read it in, but I can look if
anyone is interested.
--
Deliverance pjo...@sprynet.com
As this is a shared account, begin all email subject lines with 'P:'
Disclaimer: My sigs are often more relevant/intelligent than my posts
On War: "This is not a conventional war. We have to forget
propriety."
Colonel Robert A. Koob, tentative head of jury in the Seargeant
Charles E. Hutto case. Hutto was accused of assault in the My Lai
massacre during the Vietname War.
Irina Rempt
Scott A. H. Ruggels (scott....@3do.com) wrote:
> For me it's speech patterns and word choices. I have been told I do
> accents well. American regional, as well as some foreign.
[zap examples]
> Word choices are part of the decision filters I build to make a
> personality, and become second nature. Often 'invoking a character'
> means speaking a phrase or something characteristic of the character,
> but like Lea has said, sometimes they bubble up to watch what's going on
> around them.
Speech patterns, tempo, timbre and intonation work for me, but I can't
do regional accents or dialect - makes me feel a fake. I'm a better
roleplayer than actress. A slight foreign accent works sometimes, but I
have to know at least a smattering of the language because then I can
"set my dial" to that language and use it as a filter. It seems that
the better I can speak the language, the easier it is to keep up the
accent; I can maintain an English accent indefinitely (so much so that
I can pretend to be English for days on end in real life, which I tried
for fun years ago; I'm almost bilingual as it is) but French takes
constant effort.
My husband "does the voices" much better than I can, and sometimes
scares the children with it when reading to them. I rarely change my
*voice*, just some characteristics. His current character is a country
girl who has spent some years in a city and seen the seamy side of life
there, and when she's angry or wants to come over tough she reverts to
'city speak' which comes out as a low-class Amsterdam accent in my
husband. I complimented him on it after the first session and *he
hadn't even noticed*, though he can do it consciously.
Mary K. Kuhner
When I'm playing I'm not generally aware of the body posture/
voice mannerisms/adrenaline reaction stuff; I'm not a good actor
and I have a terrible time doing this on purpose. I know I do
it because I've tried watching myself to see what "getting into
character" means. I got curious when my husband walked into
a room once, looked at me, and before I said a word said "Hi, Ratty."
How did he know? Ratty is a street kid, doesn't care about dirt,
and is timid; the combination means that he's generally touching things
with his whole body in a way I wouldn't normally do. When my husband
saw me I was wound around a grimy stairway railing, trying to think
what Ratty was going to do in that night's game....
I have a terrible time doing voices or accents on purpose, beyond a very
general "this person speaks in a low voice, this one lilts, this one
stammers." But some (not all) of my more developed PCs have good enough
speech patterns that Jon can tell them apart without tags. Of the
seven major PCs in the Paradisio Shadowrun campaign he could reliably
peg three, sometimes four. I didn't make an effort to distinguish
them, as speech tags are usually enough; the voices just evolved.
One of the hardest things for me when I start a new group of 6 or
so PCs is to keep them from adopting speech patterns wholesale from
the last batch (which would probably stunt their independent
development). Valerie started out sounding *way* too much like Ratty.
Finally found a voice of her own, but it took a while.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Thomas Lindgren
>>>>> " " == Deliverance <pjo...@sprynet.com> writes:
In article <329E55...@sprynet.com> Deliverance <pjo...@sprynet.com> writes:
> I've read about that in the 'olden days' that a lot of the
> 'voices' people heard from gods or some kind of spirit can
> possibly be explained (of course, this is a more or less
> atheistic viewpoint) by the right hemisphere of the brain
> having linguistic capabilities in a certain area (I hate the
> left/right brain categories, but there is something to it I
"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind",
Julian Jaynes (I think).
His theory is discredited, as far as I know, but it provided me with
quite a bit of inspiration on how gods work in RPGs. For some reason,
I found the metaphor of 'gods = voices in your head' easier to work
with than the usual 'gods = marvel superheroes'. My method was
approximately: (a) consider a divine visitation as a hallucinatory
episode; (b) then fit such 'deities' into your campaign world. What
sort of deities appear? When do they appear? What do they do? How do
they fit together?
For example: when you, the character, go to the temple hut and
worship, you actually meet the god, not just the statue or image of
the god. You can meet gods in the fields or when portentous events
will occur, or when you are in danger. The gods needn't be friendly or
helpful, but seldom harm or help you directly (apart from giving advice or
commands). And so on. The result felt quite 'ancient greece' to me.
Thomas
--
Thomas Lindgren, Uppsala University
tho...@csd.uu.se, lind...@sics.se
http://www.csd.uu.se/~thomasl/
Copyright Thomas Lindgren, 1996. Distribution on Microsoft Network prohibited.
bruce...@aol.com
In article <3m4ti7l...@groucho.csd.uu.se>, tho...@csd.uu.se (Thomas
Lindgren) writes:
>His theory is discredited, as far as I know, but it provided me with
>quite a bit of inspiration on how gods work in RPGs.
I've noticed that the apparent truth of a proposition seems to have
nothing to do with its use for fictional purposes. Poul Anderson, for
instance, does not particularly believe in Toynbee's cyclic theory of
history, but puts it to good use in his future history. Over the years
I've known various folks to put Jaynes to good use, though none of them
believe in it, either.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> br...@kenosis.com <*> Bruce...@aol.com
http://www.kenosis.com/ - new work by Steve Stirling & George Effing-
er, Christian/libertarian ideas, Daedalus Entertainment, and more
You need a Snack Satchel Slapping Stick!
Alain Lapalme
Neelakantan Krishnaswami wrote:
>
> In article <57g1b2$g...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>, mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
> > In article <57feku$6...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> ne...@mit.edu (Neelakantan Krishnaswami) writes:
> >
> > >Mary wrote:
> > >> Now, I only have one body. How am I going to inhabit both sets
> > >> of emotions at the same time?
> >
> > >Well, I timeshare. When it's time for Dana to threaten a thug,
> > >I lean forward, narrow my eyes, and smile mockingly. When it's time
> > >for *my* response (f'ex, I-player know that the stagecoach has a
> > >Gatling gun in it, when she doesn't) I wince in sympathy for
> > >upcoming pain.
> >
> > >The emotional state echoes the physical one, and if I know how my PC
> > >feels *now*, I can "save the state" by remembering the body posture.
> >
> > This is how I do multiple PCs, and it works for me. It also covers
> > interruptions and distractions pretty well. What it *doesn't*
> > I change posture, change mindset, and consider what my own emotions
> > are, then the decision is "tagged" with my personality and it
> > feels drastically wrong to attribute it to the PC. If I stay in
> > the PC's mindset I literally don't really know how I'd feel about
> > it as a player, or at least I know only rather distantly and coldly
> > (because the physical correlates of emotion aren't there?)
>
> I'm not sure I completely understand what you are saying here.
>
> We can use David's example of a cut scene at the start of the
> game showing the PCs being executed after the end of the mission.
>
> This would be a big help for my roleplay; the PC and player
> understandings of the situation would be so different that I
> would find it much easier to separate the PC decision process
> game I'm in is so good...)
Interesting...
>
> You've said that it would make it harder for you to run the
> character. Could you please try again to explain why dramatic
> irony is so hard on your sense of character?
> I'm not Mary but I'll put in my two cents in anyways since I tend to agree with Mary on
this. I ran the game she is referring to and I had to change the cut scene to
something IC for it to work.
I think this has a lot to do with how one actually roleplays. From Mary's
descriptions, she often gets emotionally affected by what happens to her character (ie
she is feeling her character's feeling, be it anger, despair, whatever). Now, this
kind of emotional reaction has a lot of physiological aspects. If a character is
feeling sad and Mary feels that, her body will react to this.
Now, if you take the case of the example, a player would be upset and feel betrayed
when they find this out (well, it did both times I ran the game). Now, this feeling of
betrayal can be quite intense and will trigger physiological responses and this
physiological state will affect the player's decision. If I'm upset about something, I
tend to be more irritable and also tend to assume the worst about something. So, if as
a player, I am upset by the revelation provided by the cut scene, I will have a harder
time ensuring that my IC reactions do _not_ reflect this.
Really, this is a case of firewalling and timing. If I'm calm but my IC reaction
requires anger or whatever, I can usually "fake" this. However, if I'm upset, it is
much more difficult to simulate and calm IC decision. The adrenaline is still flowing
and I can't make it stop.
I mention timing because, for me, when this occurs will have an impact on my ability to
IC the situation. IF the cut scene occurs today but there is nothing for that my
character can do about this for a session or two, then the negative impact on IC is
minimized. By the time the information provided by the cut scene requires firewalling,
my gut reaction to the cut scene is old enough that I can now deal with it rationally.
Alain
Irina Rempt
Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
> When I'm playing I'm not generally aware of the body posture/
> voice mannerisms/adrenaline reaction stuff; I'm not a good actor
> and I have a terrible time doing this on purpose. I know I do
> it because I've tried watching myself to see what "getting into
> character" means.
Same here. I have to go in, send a bit of myself out to watch, and then
observe as it were through a peephole, because if the larger part of me
that's IC notices that it's being watched, it becomes self-conscious
and drops out, or goes into Actor mode (all artificial) which comes to
the same thing.
I can't stand being videotaped or even my voice being recorded either,
even if I know I don't have to see or hear it afterwards; I've been
known to keep silent *for an entire game session* (a major feat for me)
because I knew someone was tape-recording it.
> I got curious when my husband walked into
> a room once, looked at me, and before I said a word said "Hi, Ratty."
I had a discussion about the campaign world with my husband the other
day, I saw his posture and expression change, and said "Talvi, you keep
out of this" :-)
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| When all other means of communication fail, try words. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alain Lapalme
Jeff Stehman wrote:
>
> Irina Rempt (ir...@lamarkis.uucp) wrote:
>
> : I can answer the *door* IC, though, when I'm GMing. I just switch to
> : the nearest NPC who is likely to answer the door and has compatible
> : mannerisms to my own. It's fun.
>
> "Sauron raises his skeletal hands as darkness and power swirl around
> him-- <ding, dong> Excuse me for a moment. <pad, pad, pad, click,
> creeeaaaak> Yes?"
>
> "Good evening! I'm here to let you know about an exciting offer on
> a new set of encyclopedias--"
>
> <ZOT!>
>
> You're right, sounds like great fun! :-)
As an aside, isn't it annoying when that happens (door bell or the
phone) in the middle of an intense scene. Best IC killer I know of.
Alain
Alain Lapalme
russell wallace wrote:
>
> In <3298DE...@jpl.nasa.gov> Mark Apolinski <Mark.Ap...@jpl.nasa.gov> writes:
>
> >russell wallace wrote:
> >>
> >> Hmm. I understand what you're saying, and it really is difficult to
> >> explain. I'll try an analogy:
> >>
> >> Think of being in the cinema, watching a really good movie, the kind
> >> that's so captivating you almost forget where you are and that the
> >> events in the movie aren't really happening.
> >>
> >> Yet, the experience of becoming so immersed in a movie that you almost
> >> forget where you are is a real one, and one that would be almost
> >> impossible to describe from first principles to someone who hadn't had
> >> it. Deep IC roleplaying is sort of like that. Does that make it any
> >> clearer?
> >>
>
> > I wouldn't call this kind of experience, deep IC at all. If it's like
> >watching a movie, then you aren't IC, you're in Audience mode. Isn't
> >Deep IC similar to this, but you are also channeling the characters
> >thoughts and feelings? I think it's a more personal connection than just
> >watching.
>
> Oh, absolutely. I wasn't saying watching a movie is being IC, just that
> it at least partly shares with it the quality of immersion.
>
> Or, put another way, deep IC is to asking yourself 'what would my
> character do next' as being immersed in a movie is like asking yourself
> 'how did they do those special effects?'.
> Maybe I'm getting confused here but... "how did they do those special effects" looks
and feels like anti-IC to me. If I'm watching a movie and am asking myself these
questions, then I'm not immersed.
Confused???
Alain
Ennead
psych...@aol.com wrote:
: Why not let the answering machine worry about the telephone during gaming
: sessions? Answering machines these days are not too expensive, and quite
: sophisticated.
Because even when you turn the ringer off _and_ turn the
volume on the answering machine all the way down, you can still
hear the <click> as the answering machine picks up the call.
At least, you can in a house as small as ours.
And when that happens, there's always that one person
who simply will _not_ be able to relax and get back into the game
until they know who the caller was.
I don't understand it myself. But then, I hate
telephones with a cold and undying passion, and have only
been broken out of the habit of unplugging the infernal
device through years of strenuous training by irritated
housemates who, for some ungodly reason, _insist_ on
not only possessing one of the wretched devices, but also
on having it operative.
-- Sarah
Irina Rempt
Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
> I've had dreams that veered back and forth from IC to a kind of
> author-omniscient view, sometimes with bits of metagame and/or
> mechanics intruding....also weird dreams where I suddenly discover
> that I can't visualize something I'd been gaming about on an
> abstract level (like what it's like to teleport). I recall
> my dream-self hopping up and down in frustration trying to teleport,
> but being unable to figure out how it would feel adequately to
> dream it!
Last night I fell asleep while playing out an exchange between two NPCs
im my mind, talking about financial matters. It continued in my dream,
and though things got a bit weird after a while (for instance they
suddenly turned out to be sitting on big rough wooden chests instead of
the carved chairs they'd started out on, and it wavered all the time
between IC and single third-person perspective and author-omniscient)
the conversation just went on smoothly.
Until the point that one of them, who was the kind of man that smokes
big cigars (I must have subconsciously modelled him on a Dutch
politician, I realize now) would have lit a cigar. There's no tobacco
in Valdyas. He was so frustrated looking for his cigars, trying to
remember what was missing, that it woke me up. My dream-self knew
exactly the size, shape and smell of the missing thing, but not what it
was called or even its precise function. I've never smoked tobacco, let
alone a cigar, in real life, so I'm not surprised that I don't have a
memory of it IC in my dream.
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Love your enemies. It'll drive them crazy. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jaana Heino
>also have IC dreams?
I do...:) I have had three kinds of dreams you might call 'IC':
First, I see dreams that clearly are my characters', and which have not
happened in gaming sessions. Janka's nightmares of the soon-to-come
meeting of her husband's ex-wife as the lates example. Very tragic,
indeed...:)
Second, I very often see the events of sessions as a replay in my
dreams, and that is just cool, the dreams being very coherent and *very*
IC.
Third, once when in a gaming session my character was dreaming (an
arch-demon starting to possess her, coming to her reality through a
mirror) I saw that dream *myself* the next night. Took real effort to go
and look at the mirror at night when I woke up, I was absolutely certain
that I'd find it shattered and glowing with green light...:)
And fourth, those I don't know if these count, I often dream of being
some one else and *later* make a character out of those dreams...
--
Jaana Heino-----------------email: jant...@cc.helsinki.fi----
Iivisniemenkuja 4 F 70----------------------------------------
02260 Espoo-------------------"Hoida haava, paranna tauti,----
FINLAND---------------------------anna kuolevan kuolla."------
Ennead
Karen J. Cravens (pho...@southwind.net) wrote:
: I think what David calls IC is what I call Authorial, but I'm
: not sure what I call Authorial is what other people call
: Authorial, so that probably doesn't help anybody but me.
Okay. I'll bite, Karen.
Do you think you could give an example of your use
of what you call the Authorial stance?
-- Sarah
Ennead
Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
: I will note, though, that based on your self-descriptions there do
: seem to be some differences.
It doesn't seem to me, though, that any two people on
this newsgroup who talk about experiencing the "deep IC" cite
precisely the same conditions under which it flourishes or is
damaged.
: You describe IC, for you, as something
: that combines easily with other stances and can readily be entered and
: left...
Yes, but I feel the same way. And from your descriptions
of the Deep IC, Mary, it certainly _seems_ as if we are using
that term to describe pretty much the same experience.
I don't find it troubling to the IC to leap into Author
or Audience and back again. In fact, I believe that I do this
_constantly,_ often without even thinking about it or noticing
it. Every time I listen to another character's conversation
taking place outside of my own character's range of hearing,
I am Audience. Every time I participate in pacing management
("Okay, so when I get back from the store, I go to the
library..."), I am Author. This is a part of all non-LARP
games that I have played, and yet, in many of those games,
I would consider myself to have been experiencing a deep IC.
Frankly, I don't see how you can play _multiple_
characters in deep IC, yet still find stance-jumping so
very inconceivable. It seems much simpler to me than
jumping from one IC to another. But that's me. Clearly
people differ a great deal in their IC capabilities.
: ...you don't seem to have trouble with losing the IC viewpoint if
: you make metagame-based decisions.
I find this odd as well about David's approach, but
I am willing to believe that he can do it. After all, there
are certain uses of the Authorial stance which _I_ find
readily compatible with the IC, so I suppose I can imagine
how those other uses which I find difficult might be easy for
other people.
: You seem to be able to maintain a
: detached, "author-omniscient" viewpoint the majority of the time
: while gaming, even while also employing IC viewpoints. You're not
: easily distracted by OOC information; you like dramatic irony (audience
: knows something, character does not) and cut scenes.
This, I feel, is one of the arenas in which my experience
of the IC differs very strongly from your own.
I find that while gaming, I have two very distinct
emotional sets -- the IC one and the player one -- and
that the firewall between them is very thick indeed. The
problems you described with the cut scene revealing the
PCs' impending execution, for example, are not at all the
problems I would have with the same device. I don't have
difficulty playing a confident character when I am feeling
tense and nervous, because somehow, as soon as I adopt the
IC stance, my own emotion set is superceded by that of the
character. This is, in fact, one of the ways that I know
that I've succeeded in falling into the IC. So the
OOC knowledge that the success of the mission would spell
the doom of the character just wouldn't bother my IC very
much, because for some reason, my emotional firewalls are
very strong.
My _strategic_ firewalls, on the other hand, are
terrible, and _this_ is what would bother me about the
cut scene. Meta-game questions like "what did the GM
intend by showing us that scene?" or "am I supposed to
be meta-gaming to make things turn out okay for the
characters or not?" or "was that scene supposed to imply
that I might be having premonitions of disaster now, at
mission's start?" would be impossible to banish, and
this would certainly interfere with my ability to get
IC. The emotional effects of the foreknowledge of
doom, however, would not be a problem for me.
This difference, though, seems to me to be one more of
condition than of experience. Although we are bothered by
different things -- you are comfortable with light mechanics,
for example, while I find mechanics poison to IC -- I feel
very strongly that what we experience in deep IC is nonetheless
more similar than it is different.
: These differences suggest some underlying difference of approach.
Agreed.
: I would say that the most striking difference to me is the fact
: that you don't seem to lose IC by making metagame choices, whereas
: a large part of my gaming strategy is based around avoiding this
: disaster.
For me, it all depends on the type of metagame choice.
I have no problems, for example, in jumping out of character to
act a GM-like role by explaining orthodox Church theology to
a confused player, or by describing a part of the covenant
about which I am the resident expert, or by leaping in to
help adjudicate a tricky in-game action. None of these troubles
my IC unduly.
On the other hand, I have never been able to "map"
mechanics onto in-game decisions in a way that doesn't kill
my IC. Nor can I reconcile the IC with Plot Points or
any form of Script Immunity "vouchers." And battle maps
or similar diagrams often are a struggle for me, as I find
it very hard to balance the third-person viewpoint they
represent with the first-person IC stance.
: It suggests that I am using some kind of partitioning
: which has to be maintained for IC to work for me, whereas you
: aren't.
It seems to me that you have a particular difficulty
when emotional identification with the character (a player
emotion set, albeit a personal one) is at odds with the actual
IC emotions of the character. So if the character is sanguine,
while you-in-identification-with-the-character are worried,
then the two emotion sets bleed into one another, so to speak,
confusing your IC. Would that be a fair description?
: No value judgements implied in any of this.
Nor here. I'm just fascinated by these differences,
given how very similar our experiences of the deep IC seem
to be in other ways.
-- Sarah
Karen J. Cravens
In article <57qss9$3...@nadine.teleport.com>,
An example? Probably not exactly. I can kind of explain how I
play characters... it's mostly Authorial, but I seem to recall
reading something in those classifications that was different
from my viewpoint but darned if I can remember what it is.
Anyway. I never get to what Jeff and some others call "Deep IC,"
where it's really *me* thinking what the character's thinking. I
think I've invented "Deep Authorial." :}
I know the character intimately enough to have the feeling of the
character following his/her own path, but there's always the
sense that I'm writing the story, not living it. Writing it
first person, mind, but it's still subtly different. FWIW, I've
had some IC dreams (chiefly about Fastlane, but I suspect that's
just because walking through walls is his shtick, and it's a
common dream thing) anyway.
It may come from too much GM'ing... I'm used to writing the
world along with the character. I'm having a little trouble now
with the current campaign. I'm a random DIP/DAS creator (a
character can "click" for me at any time; unpredictable
epiphany), and Bruce (Hi, Bruce!) is running a game that's a
"playtest" of a partially designed world. I had trouble building
a character without feeling like in the process I'd design part
of the world for him. I literally sat through two
character-design sessions looking at a blank piece of paper,
rolling on a random occupations table, waiting for *something* to
click. I finally ended up pulling out a random character
generator, and came up with a character that had, in FUDGE, a
Great Charisma, Great Reason, Mediocre Spiritual, and Law skill.
A lawyer? Almost a click. So I develop it a little, and give it
to Bruce at the next session. No name, so while everyone is
messing around fine-tuning I run into the computer room and fire
up the random word generator. Unfortunately, most of my
alphabets are associated with alien races, and I can't just use a
naghur or se'kk name. The only two "human" alphabets I have are
Vilani and Zhodani, so I try Vilani, and end up with some vaguely
African-sounding names. Click. Suddenly I have Umasaad daughter
of Sharkiid; travelling magistrate; tall, tribal-princess
bearing; skilled in investigating, interrogating, and judging; et
cetera.
Okay. Except that in Bruce's world, I find cases are settled by
who can produce the most character witnesses. All a judge does
is count, and decide on a penalty. And there are no small towns
without judges; there are six cities one or two days' travel
apart, with a bunch of farms in between. So I suddenly have a
door-to-door judge: "<knockknockknock> Excuse me, Mr. Farmer, I
was wondering if you had any character witnesses you needed
counted?" But the first part, at least, is consistent with the
society Bruce has built, and I can't really change it.
But I digress.
Once a character clicks, I can get swept up in *writing* his/her
story pretty easily, with a lot of the same effects the IC folks
mention. But Jeff, at least, has mentioned that the limitation
of Deep IC is that you can't, really, play a character that's
fundamentally different from yourself. But you can write about
them, and I can get Deep Authorial just as easily with a bizarre
character as with a "typical PC" type, provided the character has
"clicked" in that indefineable way and I know what the character
is *about*. Of course, I try to confine the truly bizarre
characters to when I'm GM'ing, because others tend to be
difficult to fit into a "Standard PC Group." But that's a
different issue. There are a few that I did play as PC's that I
wouldn't really want to be Deep IC doing: Serreth the ruthless
necromancer, among others ("While you were unconscious, I placed
your soul in this gem. Answer the nice man's questions, and I'll
give it to you. Don't, and I'll destroy it. Delay, and I'll
kill your body and trap you in the stone." It would have made
the other PC's happier if they thought she was bluffing, and
probably would have worked just as well. But she wasn't, and it
didn't particularly bother her as long as the end justified the
means).
--..............Karen Cravens .. pho...@southwind.net ...............
Phoenyx Roleplaying Listserver - majo...@phoenyx.net
Home of worldmaking-L, Hands-On RPG World Building
http://www2.southwind.net/~phoenyx/worldmak.html
Ennead
Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
: Hmm. I don't think "comfort" is the issue for me. It's not that
: maintaining IC while considering metagame issues makes me uncomfortable;
: it's that I cannot do it and cannot even grasp how I could do it.
I don't do them both at once at all. I wouldn't even try
to do that; it would seem to me impossible.
I _alternate_ between the two. When I'm playing a GM-like
role during the game, I'm not maintaining IC at the same time.
It would be terrible for me to try to do that, as even if the
metagame questions were comprehensible to the character (which
they couldn't be without driving the character insane), the
character is not the person who _should_ be making the metagame
decisions. A game in which the IC made the metagame decisions
would be pretty disastrous, IMO.
No, when I deal with such decisions, the IC gets put
on hold, and with it goes the character's emotion set. I deal
with the metagame as *me.* When I return to the IC, the person
who deals with the metagame recedes, and the character, with
his emotion set returns.
Is this similar to how you switch from IC to IC as a player
in your games, BTW? I'm still trying to figure out exactly how
you manage that.
: It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference between feeling
: my emotions as player (i.e. metagame reactions) and feeling my
: character's emotions. I can't do both at once if the two sets are
: discordant; that would be a muddle.
I agree that there is a fundamental difference, but I don't
have the same sorts of problems firewalling between emotion sets.
Although I _contain_ both at once, I don't really "do" both at
once. If you see the distinction.
For example, one of my main characters in the Isrillion
campaign, Tydfal, is often in a state of high anxiety. When I
play him in such situations, I feel a pain in the pit of my
stomach, tension in the neck and shoulders, and a certain kind
of nervous hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli (sudden noises are
more likely to startle me, I become more aware of motion at the
edge of my peripheral vision, and so on). I suspect that my
pulse rate increases as well. By all normal criteria, I am
anxious.
But I-the-player do not have to be in a state of anxiety
before the game begins to get IC with this character. Nor,
for that matter, does the character's nervousness make the
game unenjoyable for me, although I certainly do not find
anxiety at _all_ enjoyable when I suffer from it in real life.
Somehow, in some way I don't fully understand, there is
a compartmentalization going on which makes this possible.
When, in the course of a game, I have to step out of
Tydfal's IC and deal with a metagame point, I don't feel that
my metagame decisions are influenced by Tydfal's personality
or emotional state. I don't think that my metagame decisions
reflect anxiety or pessimism. I'm not making those decisions
from the IC, and so the IC does not intrude upon them.
: Now, I only have one body. How am I going to inhabit both sets
: of emotions at the same time?
I don't really know how this works -- I agree that it seems
very improbable indeed. I find, though, that I don't have much
trouble doing it nonetheless, although I can't for my life explain
how it is done.
: I don't think this is "not comfortable with the idea", I think this
: is "clueless how I could possibly do such a thing." When I am playing
: multiple characters I use various tricks to get around this problem,
: but they don't ever involve having two contradictory sets of emotions
: fully "on tap" at the same moment. One of them has got to be
: backgrounded.
I suspect that you do multiple ICs in much the same
way that I switch back and forth from IC to Author without
losing the IC. Do you ever have to deal with two PCs who
are experiencing contradictory sets of emotions? And if so,
then how do you deal with the problems you describe?
-- Sarah
John R. Snead
Ennead (enn...@teleport.com) wrote:
: Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
<snip>
: : You seem to be able to maintain a
: : detached, "author-omniscient" viewpoint the majority of the time
: : while gaming, even while also employing IC viewpoints. You're not
: : easily distracted by OOC information; you like dramatic irony (audience
: : knows something, character does not) and cut scenes.
: This, I feel, is one of the arenas in which my experience
: of the IC differs very strongly from your own.
: I find that while gaming, I have two very distinct
: emotional sets -- the IC one and the player one -- and
: that the firewall between them is very thick indeed. The
: problems you described with the cut scene revealing the
: PCs' impending execution, for example, are not at all the
: problems I would have with the same device. I don't have
: difficulty playing a confident character when I am feeling
: tense and nervous, because somehow, as soon as I adopt the
: IC stance, my own emotion set is superceded by that of the
: character. This is, in fact, one of the ways that I know
: that I've succeeded in falling into the IC. So the
: OOC knowledge that the success of the mission would spell
: the doom of the character just wouldn't bother my IC very
: much, because for some reason, my emotional firewalls are
: very strong.
learly not all deep IC players are the same. I'm like Mary on
this one. After the game, or in moments of audience or actor
mode I can have different emotional reactions than my PC, but
when I'm doing deep IC I've got no room for emotions other than
my PC's. The only exception is when I run into something which
I have a *very* strong reaction to which is very different from
my PC's. Such cases drop me into actor mode *very* rapidly.
I have trouble understanding how someone could feel 2 sets of
strong emotions at once, how do you do this?
: My _strategic_ firewalls, on the other hand, are
: Agreed.
I have the same problem with Plot Points or similar devices, but
light mechanics makes IC much easier for me. Exactly how does it
cause problems? My problem is that w/o light mechanics I have no
useful (to me) method for allowing my character to do anything I
personally don't know how to do.
As an example, my current PC is both a sculptor and a computer
hacker. Generally, when Anders sculpts I describe the sculpture
and our GM decides how my descritpion meshes with Anders' high
level of technical skill with sculpting. Easy, mechanicsless,
diceless, play. However, I couldn't hack a computer to save my life.
I say "Anders' trys to hack into X's data". I then make a computer
skill roll. This allows me to concentrate on how Anders is reacting
to the situation, what he is looking for next, and what he thinks of the
data he finds. Trying to RP hacking, or any other activity I'm fairly
clueless about (such as combat) w/o mechanics would be amazingly frustrating.
I'd be interested to hear how and why folks find light mechanics interferes
with deep IC play. For me, mechanics allows me to concentrate on what I
find important and interesting. Worrying about such things which I find
difficult and my PC finds easy snaps me out of deep IC quite rapidly.
The diversity of opinion here is fascinating....
-John Snead jsn...@netcom.com
Ennead
Alain Lapalme (lap...@brelca.on.ca) wrote:
: > Or, put another way, deep IC is to asking yourself 'what would my
: > character do next' as being immersed in a movie is like asking yourself
: > 'how did they do those special effects?'.
: Maybe I'm getting confused here but... "how did they do those special
: effects" looks and feels like anti-IC to me. If I'm watching a movie
: and am asking myself these questions, then I'm not immersed.
: Confused???
Yes, you are, I think.
Russel gave an analogy:
Deep IC is to asking yourself "what would my character do next"
AS
Being immersed in a movie is to asking yourself "how did
they do those special effects."
In other words, "what would my character do next" is
similar to "how did they do those special effects" in that they
are both symptomatic of a *lesser* degree of immersion.
Being truly immersed in the movie (a state in which one
would not think to wonder about the technicalities of the SFX)
is like being Deep IC (a state in which one does not think to
wonder what the character "should" do next).
Clearer?
-- Sarah
psych...@aol.com
Karen Cravens posts, in part:
There are a few that I did play as PC's that I wouldn't
really want to be Deep IC doing: Serreth the ruthless
necromancer, among others ("While you were unconscious,
I placed your soul in this gem. Answer the nice man's
questions, and I'll give it to you. Don't, and I'll
destroy it. Delay, and I'll kill your body and trap
you in the stone."
I wonder if I'm alone in having found deep roleplaying of truly cruel or
evil characters - the kind White Wolf shies away from portraying - very
interesting. I don't do it often, but it has produced at least one of my
most memorable experiences - getting deeply into the character of the more
powerful dragon in my campaign. From the dragon's point of view, it was
fun to play around with a few adventurers, much the way a cat might play
with a beetle, or you or I might play around with lead figurines. From my
own point of view, I learned a lot about dragons in my campaign.
Warren Dew
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <57r6v7$7...@nadine.teleport.com> enn...@teleport.com (Ennead) writes:
Sarah, you're right; the individual variation is stunning even when it's
quite clear that we're talking about the same phenomenon. I still have
this gut feeling that what David describes is qualitatively different
from what other people are describing, but of course there's no real
way to know.
>Every time I listen to another character's conversation
>taking place outside of my own character's range of hearing,
>I am Audience. Every time I participate in pacing management
>("Okay, so when I get back from the store, I go to the
>library..."), I am Author. This is a part of all non-LARP
>games that I have played, and yet, in many of those games,
>I would consider myself to have been experiencing a deep IC.
These examples don't seem problematic to me either (unless the
conversation is one that raises serious secrecy-firewall issues).
David's descriptions of switching stances sound more difficult to
me; things like "for the good of the story you need to fail here,
so tell me why you failed" where the meaning of the word "you" is
quite ambigious. Maybe my issues are as much with ambiguity among
the stances, as with stance-switching per se. Hm....
> Frankly, I don't see how you can play _multiple_
>characters in deep IC, yet still find stance-jumping so
>very inconceivable. It seems much simpler to me than
>jumping from one IC to another. But that's me. Clearly
>people differ a great deal in their IC capabilities.
I suspect that I haven't been clear, either with myself or in my
writing, about what I find disruptive and what I don't. I don't have
a problem with pacing management (though scenes in which it's needed
tend to be shallow-immersion ones for me) but if you start asking
Author questions like "Should Markus back down on this mission because
otherwise Christine won't get enough stage time?" it's a bit different.
I have a lot of trouble simultaneously juggling Markus' decisionmaking
process and my own decisionmaking process when they are working on the
same decision, but in different frames. (Is this a "strategic firewall"
in the sense of your next paragraph?)
> My _strategic_ firewalls, on the other hand, are
>terrible, and _this_ is what would bother me about the
>cut scene. Meta-game questions like "what did the GM
>intend by showing us that scene?" or "am I supposed to
>be meta-gaming to make things turn out okay for the
>characters or not?" or "was that scene supposed to imply
>that I might be having premonitions of disaster now, at
>mission's start?" would be impossible to banish, and
>this would certainly interfere with my ability to get
>IC. The emotional effects of the foreknowledge of
>doom, however, would not be a problem for me.
I'd have problems with both. I'd tend to be very angry at the GM,
purely as a player, for making things so unnecessarily difficult
and for (as I see it) trying to trick/tempt me into "cheating" by
using the metagame information.
> For me, it all depends on the type of metagame choice.
>I have no problems, for example, in jumping out of character to
>act a GM-like role by explaining orthodox Church theology to
>a confused player, or by describing a part of the covenant
>about which I am the resident expert, or by leaping in to
>help adjudicate a tricky in-game action. None of these troubles
>my IC unduly.
The first two wouldn't for me either; the third is problematic only
if I have too much stake in the action.
> It seems to me that you have a particular difficulty
>when emotional identification with the character (a player
>emotion set, albeit a personal one) is at odds with the actual
>IC emotions of the character. So if the character is sanguine,
>while you-in-identification-with-the-character are worried,
>then the two emotion sets bleed into one another, so to speak,
>confusing your IC. Would that be a fair description?
They may bleed into each other, or I may have to spend too much energy
suppressing the player reactions to be able to feel the character
reactions fully. Or I may end up second-guessing myself; does Markus
really feel this cheerful and self-confident, or am I overcompensating
for my own feeling of desperation and despair?
Yes, this seems like a fair description. Incidentially, I've never
liked the audience knows/characters don't know forms of dramatic
irony even in non-interactive media (movies, books). I respond to
them emotionally, all right, but the emotion evoked is almost always
distress, frustration, and an unpleasant kind of tension. So some
of this may be due as much to a general distaste for the flavor as
to any particular relationship with IC roleplay. (I don't mind other
forms of dramatic irony, such as statements meant in one sense that
prove to be true in a different sense--my beef is specific to
audience-knowledge situations.)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
russell wallace
>> Oh, absolutely. I wasn't saying watching a movie is being IC, just that
>> it at least partly shares with it the quality of immersion.
>>
>> Or, put another way, deep IC is to asking yourself 'what would my
>> character do next' as being immersed in a movie is like asking yourself
>> 'how did they do those special effects?'.
>> Maybe I'm getting confused here but... "how did they do those special effects" looks
> and feels like anti-IC to me. If I'm watching a movie and am asking myself these
>questions, then I'm not immersed.
>Confused???
No, I agree with you. That's what I was saying: 'how did they do those
special effects' is an example of *non*-IC, by contrast with the
situation where you're sufficiently immersed in the movie that you
almost forget it is one. It has a similar difference in feel to that
between non-IC and IC modes in an RPG.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwal...@tcd.ie
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <57t25f$1...@nadine.teleport.com> enn...@teleport.com (Ennead) writes:
>Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
> When, in the course of a game, I have to step out of
>Tydfal's IC and deal with a metagame point, I don't feel that
>my metagame decisions are influenced by Tydfal's personality
>or emotional state. I don't think that my metagame decisions
>reflect anxiety or pessimism. I'm not making those decisions
>from the IC, and so the IC does not intrude upon them.
That's the bit that gives me trouble; if I get too anxious,
the anxiety is really hard to let go of, physically. I don't sleep
well after tense games either. This may be a general trait of
mine rather than a roleplaying-specific one; I don't simmer down
quickly from being angry or frightened in real life, either.
> I suspect that you do multiple ICs in much the same
>way that I switch back and forth from IC to Author without
>losing the IC. Do you ever have to deal with two PCs who
>are experiencing contradictory sets of emotions? And if so,
>then how do you deal with the problems you describe?
If one PC's reaction is pretty obvious, I guess I use Author/Actor
to do him and IC to do the one who is less obvious. For example,
if Markus is reporting to Chernoi, and Chernoi is blindingly
angry with him but doesn't wish to show it, I do Markus in
a very light IC or Author stance, concentrating on getting
his account factually right and not worrying too much about feeling his
feelings. This lets me explore how Chernoi is feeling in more detail.
We may pause at the end of the scene for a more Markus-like reaction.
("What did Markus think of that? Does he realize?")
If I really need both sets, and they are really disjunct, we take
it *very* slowly and use lots of GM cues and prompting. Luckily
this doesn't seem too common. The characters are often at odds,
but in ways that are not diametrically opposed and are easier to do.
If one faction is cautious and the other is eager, this is easy
to grasp, relatively speaking--I can feel caution and eagerness
opposing each other, and I let the cautious part speak through one
PC and the eager part through the other. There is a certain
tendency if I am trying to do dialog among all six of them for
me to "hear" a sentence and then have to ask myself who said it.
This is not full IC, certainly; I get that mainly in scenes focussed
more strongly on one PC. But it's generally enough to get reasonably
in-character reactions. (If no one would have said something I
pitch it, but I have enough of a feeling for the group as gestalt
that this seldom happens.)
One thing that helps greatly in doing multiple-PC dialog is not
trying for snappy back-and-forth but doing longer paragraphs.
Not totally realistic but much easier.
The hardest scenes are ones like "Markus tries to get Chernoi to
forgive him" (last week's game) where clearly both what Markus is
feeling and what Chernoi are feeling are germane, they're not
the same, and there is no "script" to guide the conversation (as
there is when, say, one character is reporting an event to another).
These go very, very slowly. I suppose there is some Author mode
filling in gaps between the two perspectives. It does not sound
like natural dialog; there are distinct pauses between each exchange.
I may fill in with physical description "She leans her head
against his arms while she tries to collect her thoughts" or
with interior monologue "Didn't he use the same excuses last
time?" while I try to shift gears.
An interesting sideline; cognitive differences are easier to switch
for me than emotional ones. I've been repeatedly amused by the fact
that Markus thinks what he's doing is morally right, and
lately Chernoi disagrees. When I'm doing Markus I agree
with him; when I'm doing Chernoi I agree with her; in my own persona I'm
rather baffled. I think I've given all the arguments to one of the
PCs and have none left for myself.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
All this analysis is making me wonder how I *do* do multiple PCs with
different emotions, since I seem to have explained quite clearly why
one can't. I decided to pick apart a recent example. Please pardon
the horrendous pronoun confusion.
Background: this is from the _Radiant_ space opera game. Markus, due
to a string of individually reasonable-sounding decisions, has been
living in a remote cabin and having an affair with a beautiful teenaged
girl named Black. His wife, Chernoi, is not entirely pleased with him.
In the scene in question, Markus is on board ship briefly and seeks
out Chernoi in the hopes of softening her disposition to him
(or, if nothing else, finding out just how angry she really is).
I myself would like them to be reconciled a bit, or at least not
to have a horrendous fight, but I was trying not to let that intrude.
I had no idea what the outcome would be. Markus is quite
persuasive, but Chernoi is *very* irritated. Both of them are
strong-willed and stubborn. They are psychically linked but
stubborn enough not to let that influence them too much.
This was run as a disconnected scene; we didn't do the events of the
evening in detail, but just picked up that night. It's Chernoi's
watch. Initially I'm looking through Markus' point of view; I
see the common lounge (she's not there), then the bridge. A visual
glimpse of Chernoi doing something on the bridge. Seeing her,
Markus feels distinctly frustrated, horny, and lonely, and says,
"Damn, I miss you a lot!" (The player's emotions are helping
out here--I miss Markus-and-Chernoi-together quite a bit too.)
Very sudden context switch to Chernoi--I know how Chernoi feels in
general, having been playing her on and off for the last several days
game-time. She's full of pent-up anger, and I feel that it bursts
out now--"You always say that!" (He said it last time we met, and
then went right back to Black.)
I wonder (Markus wonders?) what Markus could have done to prevent
all this--I run quickly through the logical steps that led
to his decision, and (from his point of view) I *still* don't see
what else he could have done, so he responds, defensively,
"Should I have done something different?"
I run through the same chain, in abbreviated fashion, from Chernoi's
point of view. She doesn't really see anything he could have done
either, but she's angry and upset and she's sure there was
*something*. (I think Chernoi's anger is the dominant physical
response here, and if you could see my body langauge you'd probably
see Chernoi clearly, not Markus.) "You've always got such a
wonderful explanation for why you have to do what you do." (He
had such a good explanation for why he had his last affair, too.
I wouldn't mind him having affairs, even, but it's infuriating
to be complicit in them!) (Brief flash of guilt: Am I being
a hypocrite? I was the first to take a lover, but dammit, not
a fifteen year old!) Very likely the player's hands were on her
hips here.
She looks at him, angry, demanding something. (Thinking: I could
have stopped this at any time, but it would have been dishonorable. I
feel manipulated. He's using my honor to get his way.)
This is the crux of the scene--what does Markus say, and how does
Chernoi react? At this point we slowed *way* down. Deep breath.
What is Markus going to say? I see/feel the gesture before I
hear the words: he holds out his hands, takes both of hers.
(I describe this to the GM.) I suddenly remember being Markus
when he swore his binding oath to Chernoi: he used just
the same gesture. That is what he is remembering too. "I will
always come back to you," he says, the words of the oath. He's
not really thinking (or at least I am not really thinking on his
behalf)--just acting on emotional impulse, trying to find an
alternative to attempts at self-justification which are clearly
not going to work. (Just a bit of player worry here that my
knowledge of what won't work is coloring his--but, I assure
myself, they know each other quite well.)
To the GM: "I expect that a shock goes through him." It was an
oath backed by Chernoi's psychic gifts, which are considerable.
If Markus dies he'll probably haunt her as a ghost. I want
confirmation of my understanding about what it feels like to work
with such powers.
GM: "Through her, too."
So I need Chernoi's reaction. Markus, and I, hope she'll be swayed
by this reminder of how much he trusts her. It was not easy for
Markus, who cherishes his freedom, to swear such an oath; yet he
did it willingly. I put Markus-and-I on hold, and try to think
how that sounded to Chernoi. I whisper the words again, hearing
them through her ears. I imagine her hands in his. She pulls
him closer until their arms are together, rests her forehead on
their joined hands. What is she feeling? Confusion, that's
what I feel. Anger suddenly abated, but still there in the
background. (The physiological response is helping me out here.)
She thinks: He did give me that. And I *am* complicit, I approved
every step. What else could he have done, really? She
says: "I miss you, too." Not really forgiveness, but something
close. She won't truly forgive him until all this is over;
it's just too irksome, and it's not getting any less so. But
she's willing to make peace. (Hurrah! says the player, a response
that is not such a problem now that the decision is made.)
Drop out to some other mode (I'm hazy on the Actor/Author distinction in
practice): "They make love" (quick cut to a gut sense of Chernoi)
"on the bridge; she refuses to leave her watch." I feel her residual
irritation--he's been leaving her to her duties while he plays--
she's going to rub his nose in that a bit.
Sudden very unexpected insight into Markus (Author mode?) "and
Markus finds it very odd that she's not Black; he doesn't
want her to be Black--but in only a week he's become so accustomed
to Black that Chernoi feels strange to him."
GM: I see how that could be. It must bother him.
Drop to Author: Markus goes back to his cabin and lies down next
to Black.
GM: She's asleep, but she instinctively snuggles up next to him.
Player: He lies awake, feeling very confused. He's terribly
aware of Chernoi's presence on board.
GM: Even the air seems to have a touch of her scent in it.
Player: It takes him a long time to get to sleep.
Does this make any sense? I am not really having luck sorting
the modes out here. They sound so clear in discussion, but
in practice? The only thing that was really clear was the
metagame-verus-ingame distinction (represented by my one
bit of firewalling trouble: does Markus know Chernoi well
enough to know that justifying himself to her is useless?)
If I had wanted more strongly for the scene to come out a
particular way, it would probably have been a failure; PC/PC
arguments are hard, this one was particularly hard, and
if I'd been doing any more second-guessing on the metagame
level I think the whole thing would have collapsed.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Irina Rempt
Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
> Incidentially, I've never
> liked the audience knows/characters don't know forms of dramatic
> irony even in non-interactive media (movies, books). I respond to
> them emotionally, all right, but the emotion evoked is almost always
> distress, frustration, and an unpleasant kind of tension.
There's been a time in my life that my objection to this was so strong
that I immediately put down any book containing a sentence like "Little
did she know...". I still refer to some books as "a little-did-she-know
book" from time to time and my husband knows what I mean and bases his
decision of whether or not to read it in part on that.
I have much less of a problem with an omniscient-author POV where only
some of the characters know something and the audience knows through
those characters. The problem only arises where *only the audience* is
aware of a fact. Firewalling again.
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Chef: any cook who swears in French. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Stehman
psych...@aol.com wrote:
: I wonder if I'm alone in having found deep roleplaying of truly cruel or
: evil characters - the kind White Wolf shies away from portraying - very
: interesting. I don't do it often, but it has produced at least one of my
: most memorable experiences - getting deeply into the character of the more
: powerful dragon in my campaign. From the dragon's point of view, it was
: fun to play around with a few adventurers, much the way a cat might play
: with a beetle, or you or I might play around with lead figurines. From my
: own point of view, I learned a lot about dragons in my campaign.
I don't think of any of my good IC characters as being truly cruel or
evil, although one of them has gones through a few phases of true
unpleasantness. Coldly, systematically and ruthlessly hunting down
and killing someone. Justifiable homicide many would have said, but
that would have been based on solely his actions. I didn't find
anything justifiable in the character's thoughts.
Something I've been interested in doing for years is run a character
who becomes your basic dark lord, starting at whatever humble
beginnings a dark lord can start. What goes on in Sauron's head that
makes him what he is? 'Course, for my own sanity my dark lord would
have to be misunderstood and fated to do what he does (which is simple
enough-- in this case the curse of knowing what you must become and
believing that fate cannot be changed could easily be a self-fulling
curse).
--
Jeff Stehman Senior Systems Administrator
ste...@southwind.net SouthWind Internet Access, Inc.
voice: (316)263-7963 Wichita, KS
URL for Wichita Area Chamber of Commerce: http://www.southwind.net/ict/
Scott A. H. Ruggels
> really want to be Deep IC doing: Serreth the ruthless
> necromancer, among others ("While you were unconscious,
> I placed your soul in this gem. Answer the nice man's
> questions, and I'll give it to you. Don't, and I'll
> destroy it. Delay, and I'll kill your body and trap
> you in the stone."
>
> evil characters - the kind White Wolf shies away from portraying - very
> interesting. I don't do it often, but it has produced at least one of my
> most memorable experiences - getting deeply into the character of the more
> powerful dragon in my campaign. From the dragon's point of view, it was
> fun to play around with a few adventurers, much the way a cat might play
> with a beetle, or you or I might play around with lead figurines. From my
> own point of view, I learned a lot about dragons in my campaign.
>
I have enjoyed playing cruel characters. I had Emilio 'Tex' Sternvogel.
He was a cheerful sociopath, who had been a government torturer for a
couple of less than upright governments that the terrans were allied
with,. He was a counter insurgency specialist who set up death squads
for the petty dictators on the rim. Well He was a NAVY man through and
through, and alway kept his word. Most people thought he was just a
slick lounge lizard, until he started to torture some captives, and
started in on the string of one liners and cruel humor as he worked. He
thought he was being funny, but most of the other characters left the
room. He got all the information they needed, and there was no body when
he was through, though the sickbay smelled 'funny' for a few days. He
had a fair amount of medical training of some type, but he wasn't
particularly compassionate, and tended to perform first aid with all the
sincerity of a corner mechanic. He smoked. He was not the first person
people would call if they were in trouble, but he would help his friends
out, and he had this fearless adrenaline junky streak. He was polite to
strangers, and amiable, but if he didn't like you he would be verbally
cruel, trying for the maximum of embarassment or pain. If he liked you
he would quietly back up what ever plans you had, and make your life
mysteriously a lot smoother. The angrier he got, the less it showed, and
the quieter he got. He spooked a lot of people in that campaign, tho he
lasted a fair amount of time. He retired from the 'BIG HAUL" in wealth
and comfort on a tropical paradise close to Terra, where only the
'right' people were allowed to settle.
He was a lot of fun. :-)
I have had other characters with malicious streaks, or bad character
flaws. They are more interesting sometimes than the whitebread paladins
I have also played. Playing these doesn't mean you are evil. And they
may be really interesting to play.
Scott
Karen J. Cravens
In article <19961202213...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
psych...@aol.com wrote:
>I wonder if I'm alone in having found deep roleplaying of truly cruel or
>evil characters - the kind White Wolf shies away from portraying - very
>interesting. I don't do it often, but it has produced at least one of my
>most memorable experiences - getting deeply into the character of the more
>powerful dragon in my campaign. From the dragon's point of view, it was
>fun to play around with a few adventurers, much the way a cat might play
>with a beetle, or you or I might play around with lead figurines. From my
>own point of view, I learned a lot about dragons in my campaign.
Hmm. The dragon example was nice, but you had mentioned truly
cruel or evil characters...? :}
Carl D. Cravens
On 25 Nov 1996 05:08:09 GMT, enn...@teleport.com (Ennead) wrote:
>Carl D. Cravens (rave...@southwind.net) wrote:
>: Folks talk about this deep IC stuff as if the characters were really
>: someone else... feeling "the character's" emotions, thinking "the
>: character's" thoughts.
> Carl, do you write fiction?
Some... haven't done much in awhile. But I've been thinking about it
again. I've thought it might be a good way to explore the world I'm
building. But I do read a lot of material on authorship... it applies
to roleplaying in places.
> I ask because most fiction writers talk about the process
>in just this way. The characters "take over." They think and do
>things the writer didn't intend, didn't anticipate, didn't expect,
>didn't even *want.* They run with the story, taking it out of
>the writer's conscious control.
> The deep IC works the same way, which is unsurprising,
>since it is the same thing.
I don't see them as similar, unless (back to this again) I have a
fundemental misunderstanding of what you all mean by deep IC.
The character thinks and does things the author didn't intend because
he's worked at developing their personality. They do things, or refuse
to do things, because it's no longer in character for the personality
developed. By the last phrase I mean the personality which the author
has cobbled together in his mind; not something the character did on its
own, but something the author did while attempting to make the character
seem real.
But, over all, I see the author working entirely in author mode. He has
a scene where Angus must kill the little old lady, but realizes,
suddenly, that Angus isn't the type to do it. He can't "make" the
character do it because it's far too out of character; it'd ruin the
story, not because, against his wishes, Angus himself refuses to do what
the author tells him. This wasn't a decision that Angus made, it was a
realization that the author came to when he writes, "Angus' puts the gun
to the little old lady's head and...", and suddenly he knows; Angus
isn't the kind of person who'd do this because that's a feature (perhaps
unforseen) of the type of personalty the author's been trying to
construct.
In reading Mary's description of playing the two PC's trying to
reconcile, much of it sounded very authorial to me... little of it
really deep IC.
I'm starting to think like Karen on this matter... what many of you call
IC-mode, I may be calling Author-mode.
I think part of it is that some of you have me fooled into thinking that
deep IC is a mystical thing, where one can actually forget about one's
true self for a time and *be* someone else for awhile. But when it
comes down to the actual descriptions of the event, it sounds very far
from that.
> Yes and no. Just because something comes from within
>you does not necessarily mean that this "you" is the same one
>that you associate with your conscious mind or your ego. The
>schizophrenic really _does_ hear voices; he does not consciously
>write a script for them first. The Pentecostal who speaks in
>tongues while inspired by the Holy Spirit is not "faking it" by
>making a conscious decision to speak in gibberish, neither do those
>who channel the loa as part of their religious experience
>do so as a conscious act of will.
Conscious or not, it's still "you". If the character is coming from the
unconscious mind, I would expect it to be *more* you than less. Your
mind can't dredge up something that it doesn't already contain. And I
think, when talking about how deep IC can't be harmful, it's not a
strong argument to bring up the mentally unstable as an example. :)
>: These characters *aren't* real people, they're creations of your own
>: mind.
> Yes, but they are creations of ones mind who are not
>entirely under your conscious control, and for this reason, it
>can make more sense to speak of them as if they are "real people."
> Fictional characters are creations of the writers' mind,
>but writers still talk about them as if they were autonomous
>entities.
It's one thing to talk about Angus as a person. It's another thing to
talk about Angus *needing* to do things, and giving Angus a creative
outlet of his own. This is perhaps the part of this deep IC concept
that is really confusing me the most... the character does only what
you allow him to do. The character doesn't kill because it would not
fit with what you understand of the construct of his personality... some
of this "knowing" is gut-feeling. But to give your artificial
personality creative outlet in the real world is somewhat boggling to
me. Sure, writing a diary from Angus' point of view might help you
understand your creation better, but your creation has no "need" to
write a diary in the real world. If the personality you've created
would be the type to keep a diary, you could certainly roleplay the
diary in your head and not have to write anything... just knowing that
the character keeps a diary (of possibly vague content) would be
sufficient for that. The need to actually write out the diary is that
of the player, wanting to futher define and hone their understanding of
that personality.
(I will be honest... we've gotten into such a habit of talking about
characters as if they were real people, some of the above was difficult
to write. Maybe I shouldn't, because if some of my vague theory about
deep IC is true, thinking too hard about this might kill the IC stance.
Thinking about the character as an autonomous person is important to the
deep IC stance... kill the illusion of autonomy and you may kill the
deep IC.)
> For that matter, even gamers who do not go for deep
>IC speak of character in this fashion. Consider the phrase:
>"He would never do that -- it would be out-of-character."
>There is an implicit assumption there -- or a conceit, if
>you prefer -- that the character is an autonomous entity,
>capable of doing or not doing _anything_ on his own volition.
>And yet even non-IC players use such phrases all the time.
It's not an assumption of autonomy, it's a statement of the rules of the
artificial personality you've constructed for the character. To say
"Angus won't kill the little old lady" is to say "the parameters of the
personality which I have developed for Angus does not allow for killing
of little old ladies." There's no autonomy involved... the construction
of that artificial personality was under the control of your own mind,
conscious or not. You are merely interpreting that construction.
> Well, what do you consider "your own?" I can feel great
>sadness when reading a weepy part of a novel, but it is not
>really "my" sadness. _I_ have nothing to be sad about. *I'm*
>having a great time, because I'm reading a book that has really
>moved me, and that's one of my favorite things in the world.
> Through vicarious experience, emotions can _become_
>your own.
I would argue that they *are* your own. Sympathetic emotion, for a real
or not-real situation, is still real emotion. Your emotion is a
reaction to inputs on your emotional state, whether those inputs came
from real events or fictional events has little to do with the validity
of the emotions.
>: I just don't see how you can
>: say that you're experiencing the thoughts and emotions of an imaginary
>: character.
>
> I guess I just don't see what the problem is. Maybe this
>is just because I do experience this while you do not?
The problem is, as I stated up front, that I don't understand what you
are experiencing and wish to remove that lack of understanding. I'm not
trying to prove or disprove, approve or disapprove, I'm simply trying to
understand. It's getting closer... and has certainly sparked a
discussion. :)
I'd really like to be able to watch some of you actually do this. I've
always had a problem assuming too much mystical aspect into other
people's games.
>: (I'm going out on a limb here... my boss is one of those making these
>: claims here. :)
>
> He's a role-player? Or is he a writer or a channeler?
He's Jeff Stehman, roleplayer, Systems Administrator, Chief Troll.
(Or is that General Troll? Dean just got promoted to Troll 2nd Class
w/Clusters and I took his position as Troll-in-Training, so I'm still
not clear on how the rankings work. Maybe that's why I'm in Training?)
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net) * Phoenyx Roleplaying Listserver
* http://www2.southwind.net/~phoenyx
Old beta-testers don't die, they just crash to DOS.
Jeff Stehman
: > Carl, do you write fiction?
: > The deep IC works the same way, which is unsurprising,
: >since it is the same thing.
: I don't see them as similar, unless (back to this again) I have a
: fundemental misunderstanding of what you all mean by deep IC.
I write better IC. The problem is I write less IC. My hand can't
keep up with my thoughts, and it becomes incredibly easy to put down
the pen and just enjoy the IC experience. (I can type faster than I
write, but I can't work in an editor or word processor without
editing as I write, which destroys IC. Even with echo turned off my
fingers recognize typos and hit the appropriate sequence of keys to
jump back, correcting them.) But then, as with IC, I think people
write differently.
Note that, when writing, I only go IC for one character through an
entire short story/chapter.
: But, over all, I see the author working entirely in author mode. He has
: a scene where Angus must kill the little old lady, but realizes,
: suddenly, that Angus isn't the type to do it. He can't "make" the
: character do it because it's far too out of character; it'd ruin the
: story, not because, against his wishes, Angus himself refuses to do what
: the author tells him. This wasn't a decision that Angus made, it was a
: realization that the author came to when he writes, "Angus' puts the gun
: to the little old lady's head and...", and suddenly he knows; Angus
: isn't the kind of person who'd do this because that's a feature (perhaps
: unforseen) of the type of personalty the author's been trying to
: construct.
If you were writing this story, would suddenly stop and say, "I can't do
this," or "Angus can't do this?"
: I think part of it is that some of you have me fooled into thinking that
: deep IC is a mystical thing, where one can actually forget about one's
: true self for a time and *be* someone else for awhile.
Then I won't tell you about the warm, relaxing wave that spreads out from
my chest when I hit IC. :-) (And I'm certain if I hit this bar enough
times something wonderful will come down the tube!)
: I'd really like to be able to watch some of you actually do this.
You have (he says with a maniacal laugh).
: >: (I'm going out on a limb here... my boss is one of those making these
: >: claims here. :)
: >
: > He's a role-player? Or is he a writer or a channeler?
: He's Jeff Stehman, roleplayer, Systems Administrator, Chief Troll.
I didn't think I was a troll, but that would explain why the sunlight
reflecting off the building across the street is causing me such pain.
: (Or is that General Troll? Dean just got promoted to Troll 2nd Class
: w/Clusters and I took his position as Troll-in-Training, so I'm still
: not clear on how the rankings work. Maybe that's why I'm in Training?)
The problem is you're asking yourself what a troll would do. You need
to be the troll.
Mary K. Kuhner
>But, over all, I see the author working entirely in author mode. He has
>a scene where Angus must kill the little old lady, but realizes,
>suddenly, that Angus isn't the type to do it. He can't "make" the
>character do it because it's far too out of character; it'd ruin the
>story, not because, against his wishes, Angus himself refuses to do what
>the author tells him.
It can feel different to me--I can be aware that it is "wrong" for
the character to do something, but have absolutely no insight
as to why. You may be correct that it is "wrong" because it violates
my constructed mental model, but if so that mental model is running
somewhere where it is not consciously accessible to me.
We sometimes spend time after a session exploring the question "why did
the character do that?" It can take hours, and often my husband, not
I, is the one who finally comes up with the insight. It just does not
feel to me like this is something I know; more like something I can
discover with digging (rather like the reasons for my own decisions).
>In reading Mary's description of playing the two PC's trying to
>reconcile, much of it sounded very authorial to me... little of it
>really deep IC.
Yes. It's extremely difficult to get deep IC in a scene with two
cental PCs. A much better example would be from a scene with only
one; I'll try to write one up, if you like.
>I think part of it is that some of you have me fooled into thinking that
>deep IC is a mystical thing, where one can actually forget about one's
>true self for a time and *be* someone else for awhile. But when it
>comes down to the actual descriptions of the event, it sounds very far
>from that.
I don't think you were fooled; it really can feel like that. It doesn't
feel like that all the time, though; there are moments, sometimes long
ones, but they are intercut with the kind of semi-Author stuff you saw
in my posting.
>Conscious or not, it's still "you". If the character is coming from the
>unconscious mind, I would expect it to be *more* you than less. Your
>mind can't dredge up something that it doesn't already contain.
My experience with myself is that there is a lot of stuff in there I am
not very familiar with, including aspects of self which haven't been
part of my "daylight personality" for decades, if ever. I don't think
that all possible personalities are implicit in mine, but there are
sure a lot of personalities that *are* implicit, but that are very
different from my own. Jayhawk, one of my strongest IC PCs, was
very much an answer to the question "Who would I have become
if I had made a key life decision differently?" She is certainly
implicit in my personality, but I am *not* the person I would have
been if I'd rejected science in favor of becoming a computer hacker.
Seeing the world through her eyes felt very different from seeing it
through mine. The most shocking difference was that there are kinds of
magical thinking that I do and she just doesn't, at all. In her
mindset I was noticably blind to kinds of symbolism that I understand
just fine in my own.
Incidentally, I didn't know that was who she was until I did some
introspection on my own; I wouldn't deliberately set out to do a
character that way.
[sympathetic emotions]
>I would argue that they *are* your own. Sympathetic emotion, for a real
>or not-real situation, is still real emotion. Your emotion is a
>reaction to inputs on your emotional state, whether those inputs came
>from real events or fictional events has little to do with the validity
>of the emotions.
It's been clear to me, though, that emotions experienced IC as a
response to events may be very different than the emotions I would
myself experience in response to those events. I'll give a couple
of examples; all of them are weird; I think good examples of this are
bound to be weird.
I am bisexual; in my own persona I can find members of either
sex attractive. For some reason I totally do not understand, while
my female characters generally share this trait, my male characters
are heterosexual unless I make an Authorial attempt to have things
otherwise. If I am listening to a description of certain male NPCs,
and I am "inhabiting" Chernoi's viewpoint, I feel attracted and
aroused. If I'm "inhabiting" Markus' viewpoint, the same exact
description makes me feel, not aroused, but mildly prickly and
competitive. I don't think "how would Markus feel about this
person?"--I didn't establish initially that Markus was heterosexual,
for one thing, and would thus not really have had a basis for
deciding. I just notice, to my surprise, that he doesn't find men
sexually attractive, and when I am playing him *neither do I*.
I just don't hear it anymore, unless I drop out of his viewpoint.
My PBeM character Catalina had, for complicated reasons, the esthetic
sense of a serial killer. It wasn't that I'd think, confronted with
a bloody murder scene, "Oh, Catalina would actually like that" while
trying to suppress my own revulsion. Instead, if I ran across
the description while in character, the mental picture that would
unfold in my mind would seem *appealing* to me. Bloodstains,
crumpled bodies, the whole bit. I could tell when IC failed because
suddenly I'd see it through my own eyes and feel sick.
I think the key here is that the PC's emotions flow from a very
different cognitive framework than the player's, and that gives
them a distinctly alien flavor. Getting IC for me is in large
part being able to "find" that cognitive framework--the main tool
is making decisions from the character's point of view, from
Author mode, as I struggle to internalize the mindset.
Does this help? Language is so inadequate for discussing mental
states....
Incidentally, I am not at all sure that watching people play will
help you at all. Good Actor-mode players are much better at
convincing you of their character's emotions than most IC-emphasis
players; it tends to be a private, internal thing. The besetting
sin of IC-emphasis players is to have a wonderful character in their
heads that no one else can really perceive--I think this is what
Mark's show-everything rule is supposed to avert.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Larry D. Hols
Hallo,
Jeff Stehman wrote:
>
> psych...@aol.com wrote:
>
> : I wonder if I'm alone in having found deep roleplaying of truly cruel or
> : evil characters very interesting.
> I don't think of any of my good IC characters as being truly cruel or
> evil, although one of them has gones through a few phases of true
> unpleasantness.
> Something I've been interested in doing for years is run a character
> who becomes your basic dark lord, starting at whatever humble
> beginnings a dark lord can start. What goes on in Sauron's head that
> makes him what he is?
I did play a thoroughly evil character once, and found the experience
fascinating and thought-provoking. Nothing had any worth to him that he
didn't assign to it, and it was all secondary to him in any case. He
befriended only those that he found amusing or challenging, and used
associations with others as means to ends. Everything and everyone was
simply to be manipulated to further his position and plans.
He did assist in the well-intentioned endeavours of the group most of
the time, but simply because he thought he could gain leverage over
somebody at some time by doing so. He appeared to be just a somewhat
pre-occupied person, but was chillingly ruthless in plotting who to use
and how to use them.
The other players had no clue that he was evil until after that campaign
had ended and we were discussing it. I started explaining the rationale
behind some of the "good" acts, and other players were appalled. Once
the evil was pointed out, they saw how the plotting and scheming managed
to channel the course of events.
I thought it quite satisfying to have been so terribly subtle about the
evil within the character that the other players had no idea what was
going on.
Larry
John H Kim
This is in reply to Carl's questions regarding a fiction
writer being "In-Characer". To answer this, I am going to quote
Ursula Le Guin's essay _Dreams Must Explain Themselves_, from a
collection of her essays entitled _The Language of the Night_.
Certainly different authors will work in different ways.
I certainly plan stories without going In-Character. However,
her description of her fiction writing refers to characters as
"existing" in a similar way to our In-Character talk.
Carl D. Cravens <rave...@southwind.net> wrote:
>But, over all, I see the author working entirely in author mode.
>He has a scene where Angus must kill the little old lady, but
>realizes, suddenly, that Angus isn't the type to do it. He can't
>"make" the character do it because it's far too out of character;
>it'd ruin the story, not because, against his wishes, Angus himself
>refuses to do what the author tells him.
Ursula Le Guin wrote:
``In any case I had little choice about the subject. Ged, who
was always very strong-minded, always saying things that
surprised me and doing things he wasn't supposed to do, took
over completely in the book. He was determined to show me how
his life must end, and why. I tried to keep up with him, but
he was always ahead.''
I think that sums it up fairly nicely.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>I think part of it is that some of you have me fooled into thinking
>that deep IC is a mystical thing, where one can actually forget about
>one's true self for a time and *be* someone else for awhile. But
>when it comes down to the actual descriptions of the event, it sounds
>very far from that.
Don't mistake the description for the actual event. I can
write about something that frightened me as a kid, and you can read
it and say, "Gosh, that isn't very frightening." The experience
of being In-Character is a mental state -- how you think about it
and thus how you describe it to others makes a *real* difference
in what your mental state is.
Thus, I don't think that the difference in language
here is just syntax -- if someone thinks about the character
as a real, separate person, then their In-Character experience
will be different than if they think about it as a thin fictional
construct.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>(I will be honest... we've gotten into such a habit of talking about
>characters as if they were real people, some of the above was
>difficult to write. Maybe I shouldn't, because if some of my vague
>theory about deep IC is true, thinking too hard about this might kill
>the IC stance. Thinking about the character as an autonomous person
>is important to the deep IC stance... kill the illusion of autonomy
>and you may kill the deep IC.)
Agreed. Calling it an "illusion" is pointless -- it is
a mental state. Of course it's not objectively real. However,
if you want to "understand" it, you have two choices: the first
is that you study it objectively in others. The other is to try
it. Instead of dismissing your PC as an illusion, consider her
like a real person and try to find out what she's like.
Ursula Le Guin describes her writing at one point:
``If William is a character worthy of being written about, then
he exists. He exists, inside my head to be sure, but in his
own right, with his own vitality. All I have to do is look
at him. I don't plan him, compose him of bits and pieces,
inventory him. I find him.''
Sure, you can say that Ursula is deceiving herself here,
and propagating an illusion. But frankly, I consider her worthy
of emulation as far as fictional characters. I am far more
trusting of her advice than the advice of someone who has never
created such deep characters.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Kim | "Faith - Faith is an island in the setting sun.
jh...@columbia.edu | But Proof - Proof is the bottom line for everyone."
Columbia University | - Paul Simon, _Proof_
psych...@aol.com
Carl D. Cravens posts, in part:
But, over all, I see the author working entirely in
author mode. He has a scene where Angus must kill
the little old lady, but realizes, suddenly, that
Angus isn't the type to do it. He can't "make" the
character do it because it's far too out of character;
it'd ruin the story, not because, against his wishes,
Angus himself refuses to do what the author tells him.
This wasn't a decision that Angus made, it was a
realization that the author came to when he writes,
"Angus' puts the gun to the little old lady's head
and...", and suddenly he knows; Angus isn't the kind
of person who'd do this because that's a feature
(perhaps unforseen) of the type of personalty the
author's been trying to construct.
Excellent exposition of how author mode differs from 'deep IC'.
In reading Mary's description of playing the two PC's
trying to reconcile, much of it sounded very authorial
to me... little of it really deep IC.
Uh-oh....
I think perhaps the problem is that you were reading Mary's description of
what went on, rather than the characters' own descriptions. Mary, of
course, was using 'author' (or perhaps more accurately, 'journalist') mode
when writing her post. As a result, it's difficult to tell from her
description what mode her characters were being played in.
Which I guess doesn't help you any, sorry.
To say "Angus won't kill the little old lady" is to say
"the parameters of the personality which I have developed
for Angus does not allow for killing of little old
ladies." There's no autonomy involved... the
construction of that artificial personality was under
the control of your own mind, conscious or not. You
are merely interpreting that construction.
Is there autonomy involved when I, Warren Dew, decide to post a response
to you, Carl D. Cravens? Or is it just a bunch of neurons firing in
accordance with the laws of physics? I'd argue that there's autonomy only
at the conscious level, and that at this same level, getting deeply into
character results in autonomous decisions that are the character's, and
not the player's.
Warren Dew
Jeff Stehman
Larry D. Hols (hols...@tdsi.net) wrote:
: >
: > : I wonder if I'm alone in having found deep roleplaying of truly cruel or
: > : evil characters very interesting.
: I did play a thoroughly evil character once, and found the experience
: fascinating and thought-provoking. Nothing had any worth to him that he
: didn't assign to it, and it was all secondary to him in any case. He
: befriended only those that he found amusing or challenging, and used
: associations with others as means to ends. Everything and everyone was
: simply to be manipulated to further his position and plans.
You just described one of my characters, but I don't consider him to be
thoroughly evil, just good old-fashioned amoral (which in reality I find
far more frightening than I do evil). As a matter of fact, the
description of Chaotic Evil in AD&D fits my character perfectly. He's
really quite a nice fellow, though-- at least, when he's in a mood to be
socialable. However, there is an abscense of malice in him. For
example, he may kill on a whim, because he doesn't like someone,
vengence, entertainment, advancing a scheme, whatever; but he wouldn't
kill just for the sake of killing or because it caused someone pain.
'Course, you quickly hit upon a definition problem when discussing good/
evil, so no surprise there.
He's been fun to play, though. He was introduced to the party when he
was hired by their enemies to set them up for a fall, something he did
masterfully. There we were, warriors wounded and mages on empty. He
almost laughed and did the old, "We have you now!" but his semi-good
sense got the better of him. Good thing, too. Those who had hired him
weren't ready to leap out of the bushes-- they had run into their own
problems enroute and had turned back. Boy, would that have been
embarassing (not to mention painful. :-)
Nicholas Charles Argall
I think I can prove that David's _overall_ stance differs from Mary's
(Dave, please correct me if I'm wrong):
Andrew Finch (bcks...@crl.com) wrote:
: Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
[Dave]
: I don't think it's a difference in approach, but only a difference in how
: that appraoch is valued. Look at it this way. I don't find the Authorial
: stance hard to maintain or get into. I can switch in and out of it as I
: please. I do not find deep moments of IC to be disruptive to the
: Authorial mode.
: Does that make my Authorial stance different from someone else's?
[Mary]
: : I would say that the most striking difference to me is the fact
: : that you don't seem to lose IC by making metagame choices, whereas
: : a large part of my gaming strategy is based around avoiding this
: : disaster. It suggests that I am using some kind of partitioning
: : which has to be maintained for IC to work for me, whereas you
: : aren't.
David says: "I do not find deep moments of IC to be disruptive to the
Aurthorial mode."
Mary says: "... you don't seem to lose IC by making metagame choices..."
David is living in the Authorial mode, switching from AU to IC when he
needs to, then switching back. Mary is living in IC mode, switching to
AU when she needs to (she doesn't like it much, but that's a side issue).
David's Authorial mode doesn't need to differ from Mary's for the overall
style of play to differ.
Nick
John R. Snead
John H Kim (jh...@ciao.cc.columbia.edu) wrote:
: This is in reply to Carl's questions regarding a fiction
: Carl D. Cravens <rave...@southwind.net> wrote:
: >But, over all, I see the author working entirely in author mode.
: -*-*-*-*-*-*-
: >
: >(I will be honest... we've gotten into such a habit of talking about
: >characters as if they were real people, some of the above was
: >difficult to write. Maybe I shouldn't, because if some of my vague
: >theory about deep IC is true, thinking too hard about this might kill
: >the IC stance. Thinking about the character as an autonomous person
: >is important to the deep IC stance... kill the illusion of autonomy
: >and you may kill the deep IC.)
: Agreed. Calling it an "illusion" is pointless -- it is
: a mental state. Of course it's not objectively real. However,
: if you want to "understand" it, you have two choices: the first
: is that you study it objectively in others. The other is to try
: it. Instead of dismissing your PC as an illusion, consider her
: like a real person and try to find out what she's like.
: Ursula Le Guin describes her writing at one point:
: ``If William is a character worthy of being written about, then
: he exists. He exists, inside my head to be sure, but in his
: own right, with his own vitality. All I have to do is look
: at him. I don't plan him, compose him of bits and pieces,
: inventory him. I find him.''
: Sure, you can say that Ursula is deceiving herself here,
: and propagating an illusion. But frankly, I consider her worthy
: of emulation as far as fictional characters. I am far more
: trusting of her advice than the advice of someone who has never
created such deep characters.
Carl, the only probloem I have with some of you definitions of IC is that
from many points of view our own consciousness is equally an illusion.
From a subjective standpoint each of us has a sense of self, a
perception that we are free-willed conscious entities. This perception
is a purely subjective phenomenon. Why is it so unlikely to suppose that
someone could generate other such consciousnesses in the same fashion,
in effect, different software running on the same hardware.
None of these consciousnesses may be "Real", including the one we regard as
"us". We might all simply be no more than the sum of our firing neurons.
This doesn't make our subjective experience of our own consciousness any
less real or valid. Humans have very flexible minds, with training it is
possible to perform all sorts of wonderful tricks such as consciously
altering your perception of time, or deliberately hallucinating. Why is
creating another consciousness, just as "real" as our own, but under
limited control by the primary consciousness so unlikely.
Comments?
-John Snead jsn...@netcom.com
Mary K. Kuhner
I promised to try to write a description of deep-IC roleplay, but I've
run into what seem to be insurmountable problems.
Markus is not going to write an essay on what it's like to be played
by Mary; he has no idea about that. I could give you a hunk of
Markus-thinking-and-feeling, but there would be no way to tell it
apart from a story written by me, in first person, about Markus.
If I write an essay on what it's like to play Markus, the essay will
necessarily be from my point of view, and it will talk about what
I'm thinking about my gaming. The problem is, deep IC is just that
moment when I'm *not* thinking about my gaming, or indeed thinking
(in my persona) at all. Trying to describe it necessarily loses
that non-self-aware quality, because obviously to describe something
I have to write as if I'm aware of it (in this case, dissecting the
experience after the fact).
The best I can give is a glimpse into the unexpectedness of the
character responses.
***
Markus had been baiting Midnight, the cult leader, in her imprisonment;
trying to get her to think she might be able to manipulate him. She
gave him a formula for a demon-summoning "and control ritual" (the
latter would seem to have been a fake) and he went so far as to summon
the demon and struggle with it psychically, so that he'd be able
to convincingly portray being influenced by it.
All this was a month ago. In the intervening month a lot has happened
to him; in particular, he is trying to learn to be rigorously honest
with Black (as the best way to heal her emotionally)--not an
easy thing for him.
Midnight's defense team asks him to visit her.
[I tried writing what follows in first person, but Markus
is not at all introspective--his version would be too cryptic
for the reader to follow. He very seldom asks himself why he
is feeling or doing what he is. The first bit here is quite
unusual for him. Incidentally, Midnight is an NPC so there are
no other PCs involved here--thus, switching between PCs was
not an issue and I could concentrate a little more.]
He goes in, sits down to wait for her, and reflect on the events
of the past month. Midnight comes in. He realizes that he
ought to put on his impression of a demon-touched, power-hungry
person whom Midnight can manipulate. But somehow he doesn't
want to; it feels distasteful, not fun like it used to be.
Midnight looks at him and says, "You've changed."
"Ah? In what way?"
"More...composed."
At that point he realizes that he's probably blown his entire
charade; she'll likely decide from his composure that the
demon's been discovered and banished. Maybe he could redeem
things by pretending that the composure was a mask--for the
guards' benefit, maybe? But he just doesn't want to. Instead,
he decides to tell her something true, and possibly useful;
that he is concerned about her daughter. Maybe she'll try
to manipulate him through Black; maybe she'll let something
slip in the process.
***
At the end of the session I suddenly realized that *I hadn't
wanted Markus to do that.* I enjoyed his imposture towards
Midnight a lot. And I had no idea whatsoever why he had
suddenly spoilt it. "Was I too tired to play tonight?" I
asked the GM. He thought about it. "It sounded a lot more
like a watershed in character development than player fatigue
to me."
I had to agree; the reaction was in character, on a gut level,
but dammit, why? We spent the next half hour trying to figure
it out. Basically, Markus has been trying to persuade Black to
be more honest (she was raised in an environment of radical
dishonesty and illusion). In the process he's had to confront
the fact that he, himself, is fundamentally dishonest--he
deals with most people and situations via a series of masks.
The charade with Midnight was just an extreme example of his
normal operating style.
Having to be honest for Black, understanding suddenly that he
is *not* honest in his everyday dealings (it was so natural
to him that he literally didn't know he lied so much) led to
this sudden impulse to deal honestly even with Midnight, his
enemy. That's the sense we made of it after the fact. He
knew, on an unconsidered gut level, that he couldn't truly
be what Black needed him to be and still face everyone
else with masks on.
But I didn't "know" this while I was playing. What I knew
as a player was that I/Markus tried to lean forward, open my eyes
wider, speed up my breathing--the things that Markus does
to slip into his power-hungry demon-ridden facade--
and something inside just balked. I couldn't do it. I knew
what I was supposed to say to Midnight, and that all the
arguments in favor of saying it were still good, but I just
couldn't. The words--I guess they would have been "They
haven't let me see you, I think they don't really trust me
anymore, it's been *such a long time*" in a big tumble--
literally stuck in my throat and wouldn't come out. Markus
is not normally introspective, but he/I wondered about
this--why won't I do it? But he/I had, in character, no
insight. (As a matter of fact he still doesn't, beyond a
gut feeling 'Black needs me not to behave like that.')
This feeling that the character's actions make sense but I cannot
immediately explain them is a hallmark, for me, of deep IC. A
character done in pure Author mode can do things that the Author
doesn't understand, if the Author wants him to, but then they won't
make sense. Author mode doesn't give that feeling that there is
real information--Markus *has* a reason for what he's doing--
that the player/writer isn't privy to.
Another hallmark, and one I was very pleased with, is that the
distracting "Mary doesn't want Markus to do this" thought and
the equally distracting "Maybe I was too tired to roleplay
tonight" waited until the end of the session to pop up--I
truly didn't think of them till then. I was terribly
puzzled, but in character--the metagame stayed out of it.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu