Tag: roleplay

Artificial Identities: An Essay

Posted on by Eugenia Bell

Writer and critic Katherine Cross examines the fundamental truths—and benefits—of identity in role-playing games and how they provide the chance to reveal players’ true natures.

Look at the back of the box for any video game and you’ll find a bullet-pointed list of features. “Pulse pounding dungeons,” “hyper realistic graphics,” “exciting multiplayer.” The real joy of gaming, however, comes from what’s silently lurking between those points. They don’t tell you about breaking up loveless marriages, changing your gender, finding the love of your life, or coming out as queer.

Video games are a mirror in which we may see an unfamiliar reflection. They entice players with the promise of an ideal self—the heroic warrior, space marine, or Chosen One who can save the world with countless magic powers that Ordinary You can only dream of. But every person’s “digital ideal” scatter-plots around the mean as a proliferation of perfected, experimental selves who will invariably stray from the intentions of game developers. I’ll never forget how World of Warcraft sparked an affair between two women I gamed with, one in Australia, the other in Hawaii. I never knew what became of them, but the game became intrusively and inescapably real for them both.

The real adventure is what transpires beyond the promises on the back of the box.

That’s always been the trick, you see. Video games, especially those that take place online and throw us all together in some virtual arena, aren’t just games. The game, the ludic matter of scoring points and showing mastery of your skills, becomes a mere excuse for everything not covered by an ESRB rating. The real adventure, often as not, is what transpires beyond the promises on the back of the box. In my time as an online gamer I’ve taken on the role of therapist, talking people I’ve never met down from the ledge of suicide. Imagine my character running through a forest, gathering herbs for her Alchemy skill, and in every spare moment I’m typing out messages to a friend, letting her vent and cry, while sending her missives that I hope will make her hate herself less.

When you play a game like this, the gulf between who you are and who you want to be becomes painfully evident—and yet it’s the pocket of netherspace you dwell in. It’s a mixture of inadequacy, thwarted ambition, and innervating eros that seizes every ounce of your attention. That mixture is alcoholic in its vintage; if booze is liquid courage, the frisson of gaming is a kind of digital courage. What people do with that courage, as is so often the case with its liquid variety, varies widely. Sometimes the inadequacy wracks you and becomes the only thing you know; this becomes an impetus to abuse, to use the illusion of power granted by the game to become a raging wanker whose license is the very concept of play. “It’s just a game, don’t be offended,” or “It’s just words on a screen,” they might say. Such people, almost invariably, try to bring cruel bigoted abuse and sexual harassment under the umbrella of gaming culture. Someone says you can’t shoot straight because you’re a girl? That’s just “trash talk,” the currency of competitive gaming’s realm.

The gap between who you are and who you want to be causes a monstrous mutation; you take it out on anyone in reach, battering them in the hope of feeling strong and powerful because you need one more hit of that elixir, one more shot to the arm in order to feel like a Big Man (and it is so often men who fall prey to this). This is the world in which GamerGate—a harassment campaign spawned by reactionary, self-identified “gamers” against women and queer people in the gaming industry, to purge us and our “corruption”—seemed to prefigure the resurgence of the wider “alt-right”; where the Ubermenschen lifestyle promised by gaming’s consumer-king culture has inadvertently become a fertile recruiting ground for actual neo-Nazis.

It’s hard not to feel despair at this. But there’s more to this world than its darkness, even if that’s all we can see now. There is, and always has been, another reality in the virtual. It’s the reality of the young transgender woman who finds her voice as a woman thanks to videogaming, or the reality of the game developer who speaks in a register only a game can fully express; the queer indie developer whose use of new game development tools allows her to tell a story that would never make it past the gatekeepers of traditional publishing. For all their artifice, these interactive realms have a way of drawing the truth from us, dissolving closet doors and puritanical inhibitions in ways that are redolent of underground scenes. But the pulse of the club or burr of the speakeasy are replaced instead with visions of the fantastical, which for all their blatant falsehood make it strangely impossible to lie to yourself. What you play, especially when you’re given a wide choice, says a lot about your innermost yearnings.

You know that insufferable question everyone gets asked at job interviews? “If you could have one superpower, what would it be?” Supposedly, the answer reveals a lot about you. Super strength indicates, perhaps, an aggressive personality; invisibility may suggest a subtler, shyer one. But with the act of roleplaying in a video game you’re surrounded by people you don’t really have to impress with your answer. It instead takes flight amid a carnival of other answers, loudly competing for space in the digital crowd. As a consequence, it says a good deal more about some aspect of you.

I had discovered what it was that I was really getting out of all my playing: a chance to be my truest self.

Some games play this to the hilt. Kitfox Games’ Moon Hunters—an enchanting prehistorical fantasy where you discover what happened to a missing moon goddess—marketed itself as a “co-op personality test RPG,” where your character’s choices added up to some truth about the player, writ large in an in-game constellation. Most games don’t embrace this so openly, however, leaving it to you to discover on your own just what it is that compels you to role-play a certain kind of character.

But the next time you get really into a game, especially one that allows you a wide degree of latitude in customizing the character you play, it’s worth asking yourself what you’re really playing with here. For my part, my World of Warcraft days drew to a close not long after I came out. I went from twelve-hour days in the game to barely being able to log in. I had discovered what it was that I was really getting out of all my grinding, raiding, and farming: a chance to be my truest self. As soon as I found a way to do it in the physical world I had less need of a digital facsimile. I owe gaming that much—and I owe it to the medium to remember the best of its potential, even in these dark days. ♦

(Image credit: Still from World of Warcraft courtesy Martin Chung via Flickr.)

Ritual: An Essay

Posted on by Eugenia Bell

Can the communication central to certain immersive role-playing games help build empathy and resolve cultural misunderstandings? Game designer and writer Adam Dixon looks at some extraordinary games that are attempting just that—and succeeding. Missed part 1? Check it out here.

Other games use rules to explore other issues. The Quiet Year is a game about communities. Together, we play as the people of a small village, rather than individual characters. We work together to define that community—the landscape, people, politics and resources—and then we guide it through one year.

We start in the gentle days of spring. We take it in turns, each of them representing one week. When it is our turn we draw a card that gives us a prompt to answer.“How does a girl cause trouble?” “There’s a bad omen, what does it mean?” “Is there anyone else on the map?” Once asked, the player takes an action that further explores and changes the community. Seasons pass and as we approach autumn and winter things get harder. Divides grow wider, projects are sabotaged, the land becomes tough.

Our terse communication leaves gaps; spaces to interpret, to misunderstand.

Through all of this there is no freewheeling debate, the rules forbid that. We talk in clipped sentences, and only on our turn. Words are the most important thing, and the rules reflect that. Our terse communication leaves gaps; spaces to interpret, to misunderstand. If we want to break the silence, to actually communicate about an issue, we have only one respite. We can use our action to hold a discussion. Each of us offering a single line about a topic, reflecting a view from the community.

When the discussion ends, play passes to the next player, the next week. If we spend our time discussing a problem, we don’t get to act on it. Someone else has to do that, or we have to wait until our next turn, and by then other issues, other priorities will have inevitably emerged.

While we play we reveal the imperfections of our own communities. We are reminded of the inequality of our voices and opinions, and that even when we get a platform for our opinion, nuance is often lost. What gets conveyed depends on the audience’s willingness to hear. We get drowned out by people who think they know better, ignored because of who we are, overruled by those with an agenda.

When this happens in the game, when something happens that we don’t like or agree with, we have one recourse. We can take a contempt token, a symbol of our disapproval. We hold on to these tokens for as long as we like, we can give them up if we take a selfish action or someone makes amends. Largely though, they are an untethered mechanic: symbolic and cathartic.

We are offered a glimpse into what it’s like to experience something that disables us.

14 Days is a two-player game about living with chronic migraines. We each create a character and tell the story of two weeks of their life. We map out a calendar with the things they need to do, what they’d like to achieve. As you play you juggle these with the reality of unpredictable pain. We play out these difficulties, explore what they mean for someone’s life. We are offered a glimpse into what it’s like to experience something that disables us, that makes it harder for us to achieve what we’d like. While ostensibly about migraines, part of the game’s effectiveness is that it gives space for players to consider the thing blocking them from achieving everything they’d like. The calendar is central to the game, on it is mapped everything from work we need to do to friendships we need to maintain. Removing our ability to achieve everything forces us to consider what is important. We are able consider the characters’ relationship with the pieces of their life, and in in doing so reflect on our own.

It’s rare that a set of rules can make us feel a thing outside of play. They’re not meant to. Rulebooks are like recipes, simple directions to play a game. The feelings and emotions usually well up once gameplay begins. Dog Eat Dog’s rules are barbed. It’s a game about colonialism and its human consequences. We play as natives on an island being invaded by an advanced nation. We create both of these forces, the occupation and the natives together. We define traits of both—maybe the islanders sing songs together each morning, perhaps the occupation refuse to speak in any language that isn’t their own. Then we assume our roles. The richest play as the occupation, the rest are the natives. It is up to us to define what “the richest” means. Through the game we explore what it is like to live through colonization. Playing as natives we know that our fate is settled in one of two ways: we can either assimilate and accept the new ways or we can sacrifice our lives to resist. It is possible for the colonists to be defeated, but it is rare (usually the best we can hope for is to influence the occupiers’ values). The mechanics are weighted against the natives. The game is unfair. The occupiers can force their way into scenes, they can ignore the rolls of dice to force the outcomes they want.

The barbs in Dog Eat Dog’s rules serve a purpose. Most players will have had no experience of colonialism, will not have faced that kind of prejudice. The rule makers know we might be uncomfortable, that as the occupier we might hold back. By forcing us to discuss wealth, by unequally slanting the resolution mechanics, the game knocks us off balance. We are forced to let our guard down, to tell the right story.

 

Play unsafe

We have a ritual. Once a week, or a month, or whenever we can find time, we gather around a table and tell stories. We create a world and act characters within it. We share in each others’ creativity, our friends’ inputs blending with our own. Sometimes when we play we tell difficult stories, critique the world around us, use the game as a safe space to transgress.

There is magic in these stories, but we should be aware of their limits. It’s tempting to imbue games with power they don’t have, to oversell the power of empathy. We can learn compassion, but we shouldn’t mistake the glimpse of understanding we gain from playing a game for understanding someone’s life.

Games tell stories through the void, their structures create space where stories can grow. When that void is filled, it is filled by us. It is directed, but ultimately most of what we learn about is ourselves. They give us space to understand our own values and assumptions, and, where necessary, challenge them. ♦

(Image credit: Image of College of DuPage Sci-Fi/Fantasy Club hosting CODCON 2015 on Flickr.)

Ritual: An Essay

Posted on by Eugenia Bell
Roleplaying games, long defined by the likes of Dungeons & Dragons, have expanded—as game designer and writer Adam Dixon discusses here—to include broad new descriptions of the culture-impacting characters we assume playing them.

This is our ritual: every Monday we sit around this table, covered with paper and pencils, books, and dice. Six of us. We talk, share jokes, and catch up until the sky behind the window turns black. Then we begin, we take on our roles. Five of us become someone else, we become actors playing a character we’ve designed. The other leads us in the ritual. They knit together a fictional world and all the people within it.

Games create stories. In between their structures and rules are gaps we fill with our own narrative—a fruitful void. This void is everywhere a game isn’t, the places where art, world building, writing, and mechanics don’t touch. It’s an invitation for players to create, to be playful with story. For some games this is a happy accident, an aside—when we play Cluedo we might create personalities for Mrs. Plum and Colonel Mustard. It adds to our enjoyment of the game, but isn’t really intended. Other games use the void purposefully: The Sims gives us tools to build characters, a house, a world, and then asks us to infer our own narratives and motives from the abstract language and actions on screen.

Words are our most important currency.

A man, covered head-to-toe with strange tattoos, appears as if from nowhere under the streetlight. “Help me,” he says, grasping your wrists, “They’re coming.” What do you do?

You’d never paid much attention to Darius before. You’d always thought he was leagues above you, it could never happen. But it is happening. He is walking towards you, frost-fire eyes locked on yours. What do you do?

For days your head has been under bombardment—pain, hallucinations, fever. You’ve spent half of your week locked in your darkened bedroom, but they still won’t go away. Tonight, your friend who is normally half the world away, is in town. What do you do?

 

This is about games that tell stories on purpose, that use mechanics to create spaces for players to tell stories—roleplaying games. Games played as a group, usually in real life though sometimes through Skype or Hangouts. We collectively imagine a world and tell a story that happens within it. We play with paper and dice, though words are our most important currency.

Dungeons & Dragons is the most famous of these games. A fantasy game where we play as elvish paladins, half-orc mages, and halfling rogues, raiding dungeons to protect the world and steal treasure. It’s the roleplaying game that normally appears on television shows, it’s the one that most people play first, it’s the one other games rally against. Let’s get out from under its shadow.

Roleplaying games aren’t all Dungeons & Dragons. There are games of countless genres, that explore mature themes, that have simpler rules, that are radical in rules and content.

Storygames, or indie roleplaying games, began as a movement in the early 2000s, defined by both their independent development, and, more importantly, their narrativist design. At the heart of storygames is the desire to put story first, the mechanics work to drive the narrative forward. Storygames tend to focus on a particular kind of story, and give players the tools to best tell it. We might tell a story of people trapped in a love triangle, play out a Coen brothers heist where everyone is down on their luck, or remember a made up arthouse film.

 

Limits of character

Usually the first step of playing a storygame is to create characters. We spend time together designing the person we want to play. We assemble a rough collection of stats, abilities, and traits that go some way to define who we’re playing. We give everyone an idea of who we want to be and then we play to find out more about them. We use these fragments to create a rounded person.

We often play people who are different from us; we might be a different species or have abilities that we don’t posess in real life. This creates space for transgressive play. We can occupy characters that have different genders, social classes, or sexualities than us; we can use our characters to explore ourselves, our fantasies, and the issues we care about.

There are games that go out of their way to encourage this style of play. Apocalypse World creates an environment that explicitly undermines the masculine, capitalistic power fantasies seen in a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction. In its character creation it foregrounds different expressions of gender. We make a choice of both our gender—ambiguous, female, male, transgressing—and how we express it, through a choice of the fashion we wear.

Role-playing can be a space for transgressive play.

Apocalypse World has inspired a range of games. Using similar rules and mechanics, there are Powered by the Apocalypse games of every genre, from steampunk to comedy. Many of these games also adopt Apocalypse World’s progressive politics. Night Witches explores the realities of being a woman pilot in the Soviet air force, players dogfight the Nazis at night and face their own femininity—and people’s reactions to it—by day.

In Monsterhearts, we play teenagers in a high school where feelings of adolescent monstrousness are made literal. Our characters aren’t just students, they’re also werewolves, ghosts, witches, and ghouls. Figuring who we are and where we belong in the world is a central theme of the game, and our character’s sexuality is a large part of this. The rules explicitly tell us not to define our character’s sexuality, we must play in order to discover it. When someone tries to turn on our character, we use the dice to see if it works, to see what we find hot. How we react to that, how our character feels about what turns her on, is entirely down to us.

It is through our characters that we are given permission to explore our expressions and our fantasies, and whatever we choose, the implications of character bleed through into our game. ♦

In part 2, Adam Dixon looks at the growing impact of community, immersion, and empathy in role-playing games.

(Image credit: Feature image by and courtesy of the author. Apocalypse World image courtesy of D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker.)

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