I think this has been touched on before, but I'd like to post this and get it out of my head. Feel free to board me.*
I've been thinking about my own game designs post gencon. At the core of BW and BE is the idea of "beliefs." Facets of personality that one is willing to make a stand on. The challenging and questioning of these facets is, I believe, the soul of my design. WIthout that core, I'm simply not interested in the games at all.
So why all the technical bits? Why the ornate systems of spiralling intricacies? Why not freeform these crucial decisions? Why simply frame scenes and pose questions?
Obviously, I have secondary design priorites; I like technical games.
Beneath that, though, I think system has some other instrinsic value. Perhaps universal. In the ritual that is play, I think system builds immersion -- I think system induces a trance-like state that draws the user into the shared imagined space. I think is true for Polaris, Burning Wheel, Dogs, D&D or a LARP. (In LARP, I'd even venture to guess that the costumery is part of the system.) I think the recitation and application of system serves like ritual phraseology to engage a trance and remove one's thinking from the day-to-day, traditional space to that of the game space. I submit system and its various rigors therefore enhances imaginative play. It frees players from the bonds of their accustomed way of thinking.
That's it for now; I have no great essay to write on the subject. But feel free to comment. Perhaps we can induce a trance. -Luke
"I think the recitation and application of system serves like ritual phraseology to engage a trance and remove one's thinking from the day-to-day, traditional space to that of the game space."
Personally, I'd go with:
"A player's image of the game setting is often tied to, and suported the mechanisms by which they see that world actually operating as a viable fiction *for them*. By engaging with those mechanisms, they can get into a headspace that's more closely in tune with that fiction."
First answer: If my house is next to a river, I don't need plumbing. I can drink from here, wash a little further down, and crap a little further yet, easy peasy.
But I'd rather have plumbing, and it changes my life in ways that go far beyond the delivery of water.
Other Answer: You're right, system introduces new modes of thought, but these modes can themselves grow restrictive or calcified in time. If there is any one virtue in a passion for examination of system, it is the barnacle scraping it provides. I'm uncertain if I'd go as far as trance, but I'll meet you halfway and say "language", which is itself a gateway to a number of possible experiences, including trance.
Which is to say, the trance can be reached with a half assed system, but only with great effort. System is the bridge that makes getting to that experience easier.
Conclusion: Man, you should ask this shit _at_ gencon. Sleep dep makes the answers more awesome.
Speaking from my (currently in process) hypnotherapy training: Trance is (often) defined as the state which results from the suspension of the critical factor (or critical faculty; phraseology differs).
Inasmuch as the induction rituals of a game bring people into a shared imaginative space with willing suspension of disbelief - yes, you have trance.
So a system which is ineffective in assisting the players into suspension of the critical factor is, to that degree, an ineffective system. And of course what is an effective system for one group will be ineffective for another; likewise, an effective system for one subject matter will be ineffective for another. System Matters.
Things outside system, things which add colour and flavour, also matter, though, inasmuch as they induct people into the SIS. This is why I'm following the thread on Opening Ritual with keen attention (that, and I also design rituals).
Wow, that's as much theory as I've ever babbled here. Don't expect a repeat soon.
Mike: Awesome! Even awesomer that there's a term for it.
Rob: Where do you think this stuff comes from?! Sleep-hazed flying over the midwest post gencon verbal battle with Ron and Vincent, that's where.
Levi: Setting is a dangerous term, loaded with all sorts of baggage. Otherwise, you just restated my point. Though I implicitly agree that the vision is singular, I also think that there is undeniably a shared vision. If there wasn't, the group trance that's been happening for the past 30 years.
Omnes: I am not trying to stress system over any other aspect of the game, nor am I trying to define good and bad systems. I'm merely trying to take a funhouse mirror look at what it is that system is and does. I do believe that system is an extranormal ritual which we agree to participate in so that our imaginations and jointly activated toward a similar purpose. And I think this is awesome.
A detailed system puts you into a mental mode where you have to Say Yes to everything that comes in, in order to learn what you're doing. You just have to sit there going, "We have three six-sided dice. Okay. We roll them against our attributes. Okay. We roll equal to or higher, not equal to or lower. Okay. Capitalism grinds away your will. Okay." Wait, what was that last one?
That's obviously an exaggeration, but you do have to suspend your critical factor to a degree just to learn a new game - just to get your brain to accept that all this nonsense about dice is important, even. That makes it easier for the game to install other beliefs in your head.
Ss far as I understand from Michael Yapko's book on clinical hypnosis, Trancework, some forms of hypnotic communication aim to keep the critical faculty busy so that the hypnotist can give suggestions to the more susceptible parts of the mind.
I think one of the things about system-heavy gaming is that the critical faculty is happily pondering very rational, complex systems, leaving the more intuitive mental processes alone so they can enjoy themselves with visualization, symbolic interaction etc.
Sometimes, after playing a system-heavy game where I have little or no feeling of being "there", I'll find I recall parts of the fiction very vividly, imbued with atmosphere I didn't experience during the game. Perhaps part of the mind experiences this no matter what we consciously experience?
Keith Johnstone talks about trance in Impro, correlating what happens in ecstatic ritual with what happens in improvisation (at least Johnstone-style improv). It's a dangerous and fascinating grey area. If system supports this sort of immersion in a game, the analog in ritual would be energetic repetition - movement, chanting, that sort of thing. If you're right, Luke, it'd be interesting to see what would happen in a game design that incorporated not just Polaris-style at-table ritual, and not just firm, complex procedures, but elements you might see in a Haitian religious ceremony - maybe chanting as you throw the dice, or dancing as conflict resolution. Players getting physically exhausted through constant repetitive motion. That would be weird, uncharted territory.
I've experienced the most trance-like states in chat freeform play, which is strange--the medium is slow, there are no complex rules systems to distract me, etc. But it's also highly character-focused play, where maybe the emphasis on character interaction as well as the focus on writing serve that same purpose.
This discussion causes all sorts of little lights to start flickering. I so often hear people talk about how they want to strip out mechanics for the sake of immersion, but this is a really interesting idea that you need to lay down the mechanics to get the immersion. Give that critical faculty something to do, so that the imaginative faculty can busy itself with the dreaming up of fiction.
It's interesting, too, because it runs a little counter to some of our indie game maxims--it implies that some of this fun happens 'now' but beneath the radar, where there is a real payoff *later* when the behind the scenes imagining bubbles back up to the surface.
Of course, it's clear, too, that some people really do immerse more easily without mechanics, so you are looking at some nifty personality differences getting involved. All the fiddly bits as a way of either a) distracting critical response to disbelief (play with this stuff while we go over here and dream up some crazy stuff) or b) rallying the critical faculty to support belief (if it's this fiddly, it has to be true!--sort of playing on a complexity as truth fallacy). Either way, you're looking at fiddly bits being useful for folks who are pretty darn critical to begin with, people who can't disengage their critical mind easily, and so need something else.
...
[Edit]: Which is to say, that the system may be a more direct route to immersion than music, drugs, alcohol, and sex--it directly engages rather than clubs into submission. And it's probably a lot gentler on your body. To get drunk on a glass of water, as Henry Miller once put it.
Xenopulse, I'm not saying that system=trance is the only form of immersion. I'm just poking around at the role system has in immersion. And immersion does not equal roleplaying in this case. I'm looking at the trancelike state where the game is all, you've forgotten what time it is, you're doing and saying things you would never in real life.
Jason, I agree that it'd be interesting to incorporate traditional ritual into our games -- dance, smoke, drink -- but that's not really the direction where I want to take this. I like the idea very much that the application of this weird little set of rules is what suspends the critical faculty at the table.
And neither is system the only way to induce trance! It's just all I'm looking at right now. And system=trance won't work for everyone. Just like hynosis or dance doesn't work for everyone. Each person has their own "nifty bits" which need to be engaged by the medium in order to achieve trance.
It's fascinating to me that methods for rolling dice and reciting numbers and descriptions might be the key to suspending the critical faculty in our audience (in general: white, post-highschool education, middle class, 20-30s). Though now that Mike has brought up the whole critical faculty thing, it does seem to make a lot of sense. There's got to be some mechanism for immersion. And system must play a roll in it some how (despite cries to the contrary).
Isbo: Yes! In fact, I submit that if mechanics are too simple, too easily pushed to the wayside, too erratic, this type of trance is not possible within the game. Rhythm, constancy are part of other styles of ritual. And, if you've ever been in a maze, you know that the puzzle fires up a hole different side of your brain -- I found it quite trancelike as I navigated by mental resources I was unaccustomed to using.
-L
*See nerdnyc.com for a definition and practice of boarding.
Posted By: Jason Morningstarmaybe chanting as you throw the dice
That seems to happen a lot at the table. The rolling of dice itself is almost a ritual: the counting which dice to roll, thinking of what you need to roll, shaking the dice together, dropping them on the table, counting them up again.
I wonder how it would be if it was fully ritualize, fully formalized.
And not just dice. The other day in the car I was playing Paper-Rock-Scissors with my six-year-old. He had learned it a different way, so I taught him the "1, 2, 3, shoot". We got into a rhythm and I was surprised how many games we ended up playing (he won more often then me, but I was ... driving, yeah that's it I was driving).
This is reminding me of the discussions of Left-Brain vs. Right Brain from Music Compostion class. Left for mechanics, Right for imagination (go ahead and disprove me, I don't mind. It's just a convenient explanation.) Artists strive to engage both in a revolving manner. Inventive imagining followed by translation to a form comprehendable to others. Certain art forms weigh heavily on one side over the other.
I used to imagine I was seeing this in action every day in choir rehersals. We'd be singing away and the conductor was driving and flexing the sound. Whenever he stopped us the first words out of his mouth (if they even were words) were absolute nonsense. It took a second or two for him to "switch gears" and communicate clearly because he was lost in the imaginative trance.
Different players want to trance out to different "levels" of intellect and imagination which justifies the need for both to me.
Stack, That's exactly what I'm proposing -- the act of figuring, factoring, speaking the elements of the system and rolling the dice, factoring again and speaking the results. That's the trance of the system.
I'm wondering how this can be better utilized at the table. When you're in this trance state, when you're in the zone, how does that help play? what breaks that trance, what sort of actions hurt it? Are there more universal trance inducers? or is it really a player to player or group to group thing?
It all comes back to this. Look a jungle speed. I think that's a pretty "trance" game. You very much get in a particular head space to play. Yes it's not roleplaying, but its an example.
Dance, or exhaustive action in roleplaying is interesting territory. I boffer larped for nearly a decade, and often the after-fight roleplaying was much more intense (this could be a function of having just gone through a survival experiance, it could be because plot often just developed, or it could just be from having "your blood up," but many of us witnessed this).
Well, I don't think the trance state for RPGs is very deep or "sticky" -- it's easy to pop out of. I think there is a rhythm of play for the whole ritual that involves starting in standard social play and working down into the trance then surfacing on the other side. A waveform that repeats itself multiple times a session at the table.
JBR, that sounds like a good performance piece. A player, a GM, and a stack of monster cards consisting of just a to-hit number and hit points. The monsters never hit. Keep doing this for an hour or two, see what happens. I'm pretty sure you'd get into a weird state of mind after that.
in college a few of my freinds did a lot of experimenting into work induced trance. Not drugs, just prolonged, in-depth, art intesive work. 2 items of note:
1. While in a 9 hour drawing class 5 of us were working with the same model. we were making quick 30 min full body sketches. We instructed the model to alternate seated and standing poses so that we would get a differance each time, but she fogot to do this (important i feel) and every pose was pretty similar. When working drawings that fast you have to spend 80% of you time looking at the model, and only 20% the drawing, eventually you go whole poses without really looking at your paper. I'm right handed, i can't do anything with my left hand, i just got that one figured out. but at around hour 6 our teacher came over to check up on our progress, he was looking over my shoulder but not speeking and i continued with the work, after a few breaths he mentioned that he didn't know i was LEFT handed.
At some point my right hand had become tired and i uncontiously switched hands. I was so focused on the model and speed process that i didn't notice i was using my bad hand. My brain was just going. The drawings with my left hand were no differant from the drawings with my right. I was just as proficient. BUT once i noticed that i was using the wrong hand, i was all thumbs again. It was amazing, it was like forgetting how to walk.
2. My freind sara is all into the bounds of sleep deprevation, she tries to work when she's mostly asleep, doing things with that time when you don't realize your awake and operating and when you finnaly wake up you look back at what you have made and it is like looking at something someone else whipped up.
She spent a 24 hour period making self portraits every 45 minutes. same facial expression. essentially the same drawing, every 45 minutes for a day. no sleep, no rest, no breaks. The drawings exhibit the wave form that luke talks about above. The first 5 or so drawings markedly improve on one another as she gets more "in the groove" then there is a degredation in quality as sara got tired, bored, contious of the project. This lull lasts 9 or so drawings. the next bunch are very good, the best in the set, they are interesting, acurate drawings, the line quality is exciting, and they feel like accomplished peices, not simple exersises. The last 10 or so really suck, they fall apart quickly, after the previous group's quality. The last two drawings are interesting though unrefined. Good, bad, good, bad, starting to get good again.
Christian, I've found the same results from my online play experiences. I think it has a lot to do with easily slipping into the mode of reading a novel, which is a naturally immersive experience (at least for me).
Luke, I don't have much to contribute except that this idea is very interesting and possibly can have a strong impact on game design. Its already got me thinking and revaluating.
Yeah, I'm thinking about it too. Thinking about how the ritual of actually using the system can be used to help immersion. I think this is something I fundamentally and unconsciously recognized for BW -- just look at the unique terminology and very different play process -- but it's something I'd like to keep kicking around the back of my head as I move on into new designs.
Matthijs' comment about an abundance of stimulus as well as an absence or a repetition of stimulus working to produce trance - yes, definitely. Anyone who's been around the meditation traps will have come across the different approaches, which boil down to:
* Reduce the stimulus (close your eyes, dark room, silence etc.) so that the "monkey mind" gets bored and goes to sleep. * Focus on one specific stimulus which gives the "monkey mind" something to play with and gets it out of the way. This can be staring at a candle, regular drumbeats or whatever.
These are known, technically, as apophatic and kataphatic respectively. At least, those are the Western names.
There are also two different kinds of trance, for which I forget the official terms. Basically one is the trance which occurs by arousing the fight-flight impulse and frustrating it, the kind that you get in hunter-gatherer boys' initiations where the kids are subjected to fear, pain etc. until they attain an altered state and get into the mythic space. The other is the main kind used in hypnosis, where instead of activating the sympathetic nervous system you activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the system that relaxes you and calms you down, and this drops your brainwave frequency down to the level where trance occurs. And once you are in one, suggestion can flip you into the other relatively easily.
I'm reminded of a remark by C.S. Lewis (can't remember where, unfortunately) which came up recently in a discussion I was in about how religious practices create "thin places" for experiencing transcendent moments. He said that he was opposed to the approach to religious services which made each one different and used different words each time, because for him, the familiarity of the repeated liturgical words enabled him to forget the words themselves and think about what lay behind them. So if immersion/trance is one of your goals, switching systems around all the time is going to be counterproductive (and also, your system should work the same throughout the game rather than having significantly different rules cut in under different circumstances).
Oh, and Misuba's mention of the suspension of the critical faculty that's required to even believe that the dice are important - totally the point. This is why a game is a good way of doing this. You're already suspending your critical faculty.
Now, that done, I am keen on hearing what Luke means when he says:
I think this is something I fundamentally and unconsciously recognized for BW
What elements, Luke? Having just bought BW at Gencon and being in the process of reading it, I'm curious to have you point out some of these features while they are fresh!
I deliberately chose many new terms to describe phenomena in BW -- shade, exponent, obstacle, IMS, etc -- to remove the reader/player from his traditional comfort zone. But then I use those terms in a rhythmic repetition. Fight scripting can get very hypnotic -- Strike, Block, Counterstrike, Avoid, Strike, Block, Counterstrike, Avoid, etc.
It's not perfect trance by any means, but I think engaging the BW system is immersive in its own right (for the sketchy reasons I described above).
Also, wihle I haven't played Exalted for a while (and never truly by the books), I think that it, too, has the opportunity to encourage trance-like behavior (or any game where you have A) Powers that B) Can stack together like MtG effects): When the socialite exalted is approaching some complicated "social throwdown situation", the player has the opportunity (not sure how much the framework supports it) to walk his character in the situation, looking at her laid-out charm cards, assembling them in her mind; as a pro golfer takes to the green, selecting a driver based on distance, weather, lawn; or a sniper calculating wind speed, angle, location, height, etc.
Paul Czege's idea is dangerous (are any of Paul's ideas not dangerous?). And his analogy of allowing software to be installed on your computer is an apt one.
But consider: The Various Ms (Marketers, Musicians, Movie-Makers, Media and other Meme-Merchants) are installing stuff in your head all the time - stuff that serves their agendas. How about if we took back a bit of control and installed stuff in our own heads that serves our agendas? That, in a nutshell, is what hypnotherapy (and meditation, and ritual, and potentially storygames) is all about.
(/soapbox)
The idea of using a game as a life-stages-transition ritual is a hugely exciting one to me. One of the reasons I became interested in RPG again after a long break is because of these links to ritual and trance. For example, this American hypnotherapist in Taiwan has been experimenting with using hypnosis to increase people's immersion in video games, movies and roleplaying games.
This is something that has to be handled carefully, and he has some good suggestions in that blog post I just linked to for keeping it safe. One of his links in the post is to a funny story from another hypnotist who hypnotized a D&D player and suggested that he would vividly experience whatever the GM suggested. Unfortunately, the GM got a bit experimental without consulting the hypnotist and at one point told the player, "I'm a balrog." The player made what the GM remarked was "the correct move": turned pale and legged it like a bastard. It took them half an hour to find him.
Since we're talking trance play, I'm going to link to my experiment in trance-induced shared dreams. It's more concerned with the nature of heavily immersive play during trance, than exactly how to achieve that trance.