Well, they both use the same units of Awesomeness — the Rock — but can one fully Rock Out while fully Rocking In? I suggest that the two are, in fact, tangential curves meeting at 0. While slight Rocking Out and slight Rocking In can be similar experiences, the more you experience one, the less you'll experience the other.

Some in the field of Rock Topology have speculated other dimensions of Awesomeness, but no proof has yet survived the peer review process.

Not my experience. I have definitely had the "layered" experience - where a game Rocked Out, and I knew that right away, but only saw the Rocking In on reflection or as seeds planted there germinated in a later session. But if I have to pick one or the other, I'll go for Rocking In most of the time.

Specific examples for Matt: Both of these are with PTA. Why I'm using both PTA is to show that this isn't necessarily an characteristic of game system (I want to avoid, for right now, statements like "PTA rocks in") but of game play ("Our PTA game last night totally rocked in").

I played most of a PTA season (disrupted by a traumatic injury to one of the players) about the Sparrkles, a magical girl rock-n-roll band from the 80s that used their mystical keytars to fight evil corporations. It had unicorns and rainbows and SPARRKLE POWER! and stuff like that. It rocked out.

Of course, it also contained thematic content, because it was PTA. So they were totally dealing with their issues and what have you. But it wasn't really rocking-in in a significant way.

Different PTA game: Blue Line City, which I played at the end of GenCon 2005 with Malcolm, Emily, Eric, and Joshua. It was a game about cartoon characters and their off-camera lives. At the end of it, there was this sense of buoyancy: the game was really good but I couldn't have totally put my finger on why. The next day, talking to Joshua, I was all like "that was about our own creative processes, wasn't it?" and he was like "yeah, I think it was" and then I realized that I needed to take the people in my fiction and games more seriously as people, and not oppress them as much as I had been. That was rocking in.

yrs--
--Ben

Does rocking in to counterpoint the rocking out (like a pixies song loud-quiet-loud) fit in this discussion? In last night's Food Holes game we had a bunch of scenes that were just quiet, personal scenes that really made the gonzo world of competitive eating pop a little more. I really loved those scenes, and they're the ones that are sticking with me. I really liked playing the Dad/Husband who quietly pleaded with his wife to not make him go outside.

Or are you talking about something completely different?

Hippie freeform collaboration as part of pre-play or starting play seems to facillitate rocking in. Whether that's characters, setting, or rules of play.

James

Remi --

I think I'm talking about something different. When a game rocks in, it rocks into the players' hearts and minds, transforming them. It's not about "we had some slow scenes between exploding ninja headbutts." It could be about "holy shit. that ninja I was headbutting was totally me getting my aggression out against my father."

yrs--
--Ben

Also: mechanics that are exploratory instead of firmly directed may help achieve rocking in. Here's the framing/development/experience system from my Avatar game, which we used for the rocking in game Emily was talking about.

1. Start with a trait that the character is not satisfied with. "I am upset with my brother."
2. Declare, in-character, what you want that trait to become. "My brother is my best friend."
3. Play.
4. Whenever you have a scene in which you address "I am upset with my brother," write down a summery of what happened. So...

• TRAIT: "I am upset with my brother."
• GOAL: "My brother is my best friend."
• SCENE 1: "Yelled at him about going out with his friends."
• SCENE 2: "Played video games together in silence."
• SCENE 3: "Did his laundry for him. He mumbled thanks."
• etc.

5. When you've reached a narrative plateau in struggling with the trait, turn it into a new trait.
6. The new trait can't be the same as your goal, because you never get exactly what you want.
7. When your character has become sufficiently dissatisfied with the new trait, pick a goal and start the process over again.

So, in the example, the new trait might be, "Armistice with my brother." And the new goal could be anything.

I think this supports rocking in because there's a process of discovery that goes on here, with characters becoming people they don't necessarily expect, which leads into the self-reflection process that I think is a major part of rocking in.

One technique for rocking in is to bring your own stuff to the table. I have problems with aggression & relationships? I play an aggressive guy in a relationship.

Another is to play games that force you to shut up and listen to the important stuff. Instead of going "After the funeral, we go and do some investigation", and playing out a long investigation scene - just stop right there, rewind, and go "First, we play out the funeral. We need to be there, in that scene, and see what it's about."

Rocking in means listening to yourself, I guess. And sometimes, your self isn't shouting all that loudly. (Sometimes it is).

The jeeps call this "playing close to home".

Crossing that player-character boundary is what's important. When the game touches you, and gives your room to bring in your own self, issues and desires it rocks in. 1000 Kings does this explicitly: you play "yourself", and give eachother stats based on your experience of eachother. The switch in BtI does the same thing in a very abbreviated fashion. The conflict, in that game is where people make the choice about rocking out or in.

Playing characters more like yourself gives more opportunity for putting less distancing in. Fantastic settings have that power--they take us out of our daily selves and put us into a safe place where we need not interact with our issues, or the issues that hit us daily if we choose to look at them. Games like Shock:, Dirty Secrets and Steal Away Jordan bring it back home.

I'm really not sure about the distinction -- not in the "don't understand what you're saying" but in the "not sure the distinction exists." I know when I design I'm usually trying to hit both -- FLFS thematic batteries can really hit deep and hard, even as you're patching the ship's hull with aluminum tables from the ship's mess hall. Or, if Seth's still around in this thread, I like to think that Sons of Liberty does this, too: after you're done punching Tories in the face, you're walking around an hour later and you're thinking about what it means to be American.

Posted By: Joshua BishopRobyOr, if Seth's still around in this thread, I like to think that Sons of Liberty does this, too: after you're done punching Tories in the face, you're walking around an hour later and you're thinking about what it means to be American.

Doh! I still owe you commentary from our GenCon game. Argh! Well, I'll give some of it now.

Sons of Liberty is not a deep game. That's not a critique. If anything, I mean that as high praise. It's easy to enter the game and have a massive amount of fun. There's something special in frantically searching the table, trying to deal with the pestilent pungent putrescence that is your hand of cards. On that level, it's like Jungle Speed: fast, fierce, and frenzied. (I'll see what other alliterations I can work in as I go.) And, like Jungle Speed, that frenzy has a bonding effect on the players. At least, that's what it seemed like from our playtest.

At the same time, the game pushes certain concepts and buzzwords that are uniquely American. Rather, I should say that those concepts and buzzwords have a special place in the American myth. I'm talking about words like "Tory" and "tyranny" and "freedom". For crying out loud, the Tory's narrated actions are all about violating the Bill of Rights.

Sons of Liberty is all about celebrating the American myth. Quite honestly, on the Jungle Speed level, the game would work just fine if you were all Space Marines trying to stop the Tyranid/Zerg menace. (Pick whichever mythos appeals to you more.) However, I don't think that there would be quite the same sense of desperation and drive to win. It's like playing Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings if you're a fan of the books. Suddenly, it's not just about moving pieces on the board and efficiently allocating damage. It's about protecting Frodo as he is wounded again and again in body and soul. And in Sons of Liberty, you are fighting to overcome an enemy that epitomizes everything UnAmerican. I actually wonder if a foreign audience would "get it". Maybe I'm completely wrong, and I'd be curious to hear about a playtest by folks who aren't Americans.

After the game, I bumped into Gregor Hutton, and I said, "I just finished playing a game of Sons of Liberty! I think I'm supposed to hate you now!" We both laughed.

And he's just Scottish! Imagine if I had stumbled across an actual Englishman!

When I posted earlier about playing Sons of Liberty, I said, "I felt very American after playing. You can take that in the broadest way possible, including all the insulting emotive ones." I stand by that. On the one hand, playing the game was a great time, in which awesomeness was accomplished, like the human chain of Quakers across the mouth of Boston Harbor. (Rock out!) At the same time, I think that I understand being an American a bit better as a result of playing the game, including how Americans can be highly obnoxious to everyone around them. (Rock in!)

And so, to summarize....

I agree with Joshua.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

I think there is one really important difference between Rock Out vs. Rock In that so far hasn't been mentioned: I think it's a lot easier to go into painful/uncomfortable places with Rock In play. In my very first Primetime Adventures game, I had a pretty traumatic experience playing a single mom in war-torn Serbia. In hindsight, that character was all about loving something (a son, a community, a way of life) and losing it in the most horrible way possible, despite all your best efforts. We only played 2 sessions before we ran into some mismatched agendas, but play was absolutely shattering for me.

So, "Rock In" can be pretty powerful, but it's often an emergent effect and you need to be cautious with it.

(Also - I think some characters are more "Rock In" than others; it might be a function of character concept & theme, rather than whatever's going on in-session.)

What's the difference between "Rock In" and "Life Now"? Are they synonymous?

joepub wrote:

Note also that fantasy and distant worlds can also be really good for targeting our personal issues and beliefs. Sometimes they concretize and make tangible things which we fail to express in the real world.

Good point, Joe. I've experienced freezing up with issues because the setting I'd chosen had been too close to home for me. I based a character in a Sorcerer game my group played on someone I knew, but felt blocked and frozen about playing her to the hilt, likely because I felt guilty (and because I wasn't adequately using the darn rules of the game). And have seen people address issues like rape and murder in deep ways precisely because they were playing in a setting that gave enough distance to do so. (And because they rocked.)

I think we'll be having a good dialogue in the next couple of years about the levels we can reach by these different means. I'm looking forward to it.

Posted By: Moreno R.Seth, be careful. Do you want to create another monstrous undying thread? =:-O

On this topic? Yes! :-D

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

Posted By: JDCorleySeth - As I mentioned on the phone, our playtest of Dirty Secrets took the "last week, right here" suggestion in a different direction. Nothing was close to home - none of the characters were anything like the players and their experiences were absurd (I do not mean that in a bad way.)

Oh sure.

I'm not saying that a game can automatically make a group "rock in". However, I think that there's a better possibility for a group to form meaning by bringing the action close to home. If nothing else, I learned about an organization (Humane Borders) that I never would have heard about otherwise. And I'm guessing that the local color of the story made it easier for the players to engage with the fiction.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf