Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.archives
From: [john hughes] at [anu.edu.au] (John Patrick Hughes)
Subject: PAPER: Australian Convention Roleplaying (part 1 of 3)
Followup-To: rec.games.frp.misc
Date: Sun, 9 Aug 1992 22:50:32 GMT

After the recent seminar at Arcanacon, I was asked to post this seminar paper.
It deals with 'systemless' or 'thematic' gaming, a style popular on the
Australian convention circuit. Discussion most welcome!

John.

PART 1 OF 3.

New Directions in Australian Roleplaying 
Style, Innovation and Responsibility in Convention Roleplaying


Thoughts on 'thematic gaming' presented by John Hughes at the
Second Roleplaying Forum, Sydney,  May 1991.
Updated slightly for Arcarnacon X, Melbourne July, 1992.

Part One: Some Examples, History and Definitions
Part Two: Practical Design and Presentation
Part Three: Sensationalism and Misuse of Modules

"Art must ultimately be valued because of its capacity to improve the
quality of life-- by increasing our sensitivity to others and our
surroundings, by sharpening our perceptions, by reshaping our values
so that moral and societal concerns take precedence over materialistic
goals. Of all the arts, theatre has perhaps the greatest potential as a
humanising force, for at its best it asks us to enter imaginatively
into the lives of others so we may understand their aspirations and
motivations. Through roleplaying, (either in daily life or in the theatre),
we come to understand who and what we are and to see ourselves in
relation to others. Perhaps most important, in a world given increasingly
to violence, the value of being able to understand and feel for
others as human beings cannot be overestimated, because
violence depends on dehumanising others so that we no longer
think of their hopes, aims and sufferings but treat them as objects
to be manipulated or on whom to vent our frustrations. To know
(emotionally, imaginatively, and intellectually) what it means to be
human in the broadest sense ought to be one of the primary goals of both
education and life; and for reaching this goal, no approach has greater
potential than theatre, since humanity is its subject and human beings
its primary medium."
Oscar Brockett "The Essential Theatre"

PART ONE: Examples, History & Definitions

INTRODUCTION

This seminar was supposed to be about 'thematic' roleplaying.
Its not, because as far as I'm concerned, thematic roleplaying doesn't exist.

So-called thematic roleplaying means different things to different people.
Its also called cooperative dramatism or multiforming or `Sydney style'
gaming. Let me group these titles together and for the sake of convenience
call what I'm supposed to be talking about new wave roleplaying.

New wave gaming is just a tool in a box. It's always been with us.
Its simply about taking notice of basic roleplaying technique. The tools
that it uses are basic to our hobby.

There is nothing revolutionary about new wave gaming. You can trace its
orderly evolution, building step by step from earlier styles. Nor is
it an end: roleplaying will continue to develop as long as roleplayers
trust their freedom to create.

Like all roleplaying, new wave gaming is about having fun, about being
creative, about having the freedom to step outside the boxes that
define you and for a short time be something different. Its about surprising
yourself and the people with whom you share the experience. Its about
collectively weaving a magic spell.

The fact that new wave gaming is considered new or revolutionary or even
dangerous is a sad comment on the commercial interests that shape our hobby.
These interests that tell us that roleplaying is really about buying
things--buying rules and buying ideas--especially sanitised, prime
time pornopop ideas aimed at fourteen year old boys. According to their
rules, Sexism is fine, but not sex. Violence is encouraged (boys will be
boys), but emotion considered taboo. Militarism is fine, but fictional
devils are dangerous. You can explore being a violent killer, but not
being gay. You can be a god, as long as you portray women in traditional
and non-threatening roles.

Commercial gaming (with some notable exceptions) seeks to free our
imagination--but only so much. It seeks to channel our imagination along
very narrow (and commercially lucrative) paths. It glorifies the teenager
in us, because commercial gaming believes that (male) teenagers are its
only viable market. I think they are wrong. However, until this situation
changes, and commercial roleplaying starts catering to a universal
audience, new wave gaming will continue to be a personal and convention
orientated style.

In so far as there is a reaction to this in the Australian convention
circuit--a reaffirmation of the basic creativity and imagination of
true roleplaying--then there is such a thing as new wave gaming. That it
came out of the Australian Convention circuit is only natural, because in
one sense Australian conventions have always rejected narrow interpretations
of what roleplaying should be about.

Gaming conventions in the United States and the UK are for the most part
trade shows organised to sell products rather than ideas, dominated by
gaming companies and distributors. We have escaped that, and so we've had
freedom to create. Our hobby is richer for it. Australian conventions
have given us freeforming, and they have led us away from narrow
interpretations of dice and table work and rule book into a realm of
experimentation, creative freedom and theatre. These developments have
sat happily side by side with more traditional forms, and both styles
cross fertilise the other.

So I'm really talking about roleplaying, not new wave roleplaying.
Please remember that. You can't separate it out from the rest of roleplaying,
you can't draw neat boundaries and say that new wave gaming starts here and
ends there. There is no sense of hierarchy, no sense of us and them.
It's basic to our hobby. When I say for example, that new wave roleplaying
emphasises x, I'm not suggesting that other forms of roleplaying don't cater
to x. I'm stressing this cautionary note because I know some people <do>
draw boundaries either in rejecting the more traditional approaches or
in rejecting the so-called new wave approaches.

I've heard people say that DnD isn't real roleplaying. I've heard it said
that new wave roleplaying is `brainwashing'. I reject both views. Both styles
are about creativity. Both are about having fun. Both are about weaving
magic, even though they do so in slightly different ways. Both are open to
abuse. Each needs the other to achieve a sense of balance and variety.

New wave gaming is very popular on the convention circuit. I've already
mentioned the role of the Australian convention circuit in encouraging our
imaginations. I believe there are other factors that account for it as well.
Roleplayers are growing older, and just as our reading tastes and our movie
tastes and even ('Heaven help us!', I cry from the far side of thirty)
our drinking tastes change, so do our roleplaying tastes.

Some (most?) of us here have spent ten or more years exploring certain
types of gaming, and quite simply we want to explore new territory as well
as continuing to enjoy the old. I can see myself relaxing with gratuitous
Runequest bloodbaths when I'm eighty; however I also want to inspire my
creativity with something slightly more challenging than new troll drinking
songs. Runequest offers entire realms of myth and culture to explore
-- and there is much to offer elsewhere.

Not that new wave gaming is limited to us dinosaurs. The brightest and the
best players and designers are young, and fairly new to the hobby.
As I've said, so-called new wave gaming is really about basic roleplaying
technique, and everyone can enjoy it. 

Finally, punters are becoming more sophisticated, and expect more from all
their modules, be they adventure or thematic. I look back at the modules
being offered in the early nineteen eighties--by myself and by others,
and I get embarrassed. Today we have diversity and a degree of
professionalism, we are all challenged, and we all have more to
experience and enjoy.

Roleplaying as we know it, by some strange quirk of history, began
in wargaming. Parts of that legacy are still with us, especially in
commercial gaming. The emphasis on rules, dice and mathematics,
the kill or be killed plots, the figurines and grid maps,
the glorification of the adolescent male in all of us. It's interesting
to imagine what roleplaying would be like if it began slightly differently,
with a different set of assumptions. What would it be like if it began as a
development of impromptu theatre, or non-competitive theatre sports, or
story telling, or live action playing, or New Age religious dramas,
myths and rituals? All of these approaches have good points and bad
points; all of them are very different from the wargaming model that has
dominated our history. They emphasis different senses, different forms
of presentation, different rationales. As a thought experiment, it helps
us to imagine some of the aspects of roleplaying we presently ignore.

SO WHAT IS IT?

Though I've claimed that new wave gaming is really just basic roleplaying
technique, I appreciate that there is a certain type of module that most
of us would agree on calling thematic or new wave. Generally, such modules
emphasise in-depth characterisation, atmosphere, and concentrate on exploring
emotional or moral dilemmas. Before I talk about this style of roleplaying
in the abstract, let me give you a few concrete examples.

New Wave is an Umbrella Term

Before I do that I need to narrow the ground. New wave gaming is just too
big. I personally see it pursuing at least four novel, equally exciting
directions, and I think we need to differentiate between them. I speak
from my Sydney / Canberra perspective: Melbourne may well have additional
styles to offer.

There is the mainstream emphasis on character, atmosphere and theme-based
gaming. My talk will concentrate on this stream.

There is the `total theatre' stream typified by the Epitaph workshops,
with their video cameras, closed rooms and lack of GMs. I'll come back
to this.

There is the `two team' format being explored by Chris Wheeler and others. 

There is the freeforming stream, with all of its ongoing developments.

Such a list is of course subjective, but it gives you an idea of the
scope and tremendous variety of new wave gaming. If I've left anything
substantial out, please let me know.

BEING THERE--SOME MODULES TO
PUT IT ALL IN CONTEXT

In originally preparing for this talk (May 1991) , I conducted an informal
survey in Sydney and Canberra to determine what people considered
representative `thematic modules'. Four modules topped the list, and
they turned out to be surprisingly representative in terms of
conventions, themes and designers--male and female, individual and group.
Luckily, I've played or run all of them, so I hope I can talk without
seriously misrepresenting the authors.

In chronological order, the four modules were;

Persons Unknown by the Cthulhu Collective
Arcanacon VII (1989)

Memory by The Wyrm's Footprint
Necronomicon I (1989)

Sundowners by Glen Fraser and David Arthur
Macquariecon `90

What Price Liberty? by Robert MacLean
Sydcon `91

Over modules mentioned in the survey included Malformed Creations
(Mark Morrison), Five Sort Out Cthulhu (Kathy Ho), A Whiter Shade of Pale
(The Wyrm's Footprint), Winners Don't Do Drugs (Chris Wheeler),
Shadows In the Rain (Gerry Huntman), Murphy's Law (Russell Waters),
Hotel California (Paul Eccleston), Something in the Heir (WF)
and Grail Quest (Robert MacLean). I make no claim to this being an
impartial survey (A Wyrm asks you the question and to be polite you mention
a Wyrms' module) and I note that it favours relatively older modules and
Sydney / Canberra modules. However, it it gives us a basis on which to talk.
All of these modules were successful in what they set out to do, and each
in some way have entered our collective memory. 

Persons Unknown by the Cthulhu Collective
Three session Call of Cthulhu presented at
Arcarnacon VII.

Five amnesiacs escape from an asylum to discover their past and eventually
wish that they hadn't. 

Persons Unknown was technically a pizza (a mixture of elements), but parts
of it, especially the first session, were intensely thematic. Five amnesiacs
awake in a sanatorium to find that nobody has missed them, that nobody knows
who they are. (1989 was a big year for amnesia and for flashbacks). In the
first session they explore their characters and the tantalising fragments
of memory that haunt them. The atmosphere is tight, claustrophobic and gritty.
Chthulhuesque things begin to happen around them, and so in the second
session we have an escape and a drawn-out tunnel of fun chase scene across
the Scottish countryside. In the third session, a flashback, we discover
the reason the characters go insane, how they are forced to deal with the
otherworldly Celtic spirits that threaten them, and almost incidently, 
how they save Scotland from a nuclear disaster. The key thematic element
of the third session is, in a display of cooperative dramatism, to engineer
the origin of the phobias, character quirks and memories that were explored
in the first session. Persons Unknown is a well balanced, tightly scripted
module with a wide appeal.

Memory-by Philippa Hughes, John Hughes and James Townley
(The Wyrm's Footprint). Single-session, systemless, adult concepts.
A Short, Sharp Shock at Necronomicon I, October 1989.

Dead yuppies coming to terms with each other and with themselves. Five
Sydneysiders bound into emotional triangles that become eternal. A
traditional `haunted house' ghost story.

Memory is a bit like a Sex Pistols album--remembered mainly because
it was the first. Memory, I believe, first formally introduced the
systemless module format and `adult concepts'. I'm not claiming Memory
was to the first to use these concepts, I'm saying it was the first to
say so on the blurb. It almost completely abandoned plot in favour
of intense introspection and character interaction. It was self-consciously
theatrical, involving sound effects, design notes, briefings and debriefings.
Players were encouraged to build a seamless module--a short intense period
of total immersion in their characters. Memory also introduced and
simultaneously exhausted a genre of total gamesmaster control. The players
were dead (though they didn't realise it) and could do only two things--
explore the increasingly surreal house they occupied (with its mysteries,
voices and `ghosts') or recycle their memories. The module used the
device of GM initiated flashbacks to set mood and atmosphere. The flashbacks
explored good times and bad, marriage, birth, crime, hope, adultery,
and death. It was up to the players to seek justification for themselves
and their lives, and possibly to resolve their emotional minefields
within the context of the flashbacks.

 What Price Liberty? by Rob MacLean.
A single-session, cap gun driven but otherwise systemless module
run at Sydcon `91.

What Price Liberty? is an excellent example of a plot-driven module
that is strongly thematic, and probably the best example we have so far
of a module exploring an emotional and philosophical issue as its main
theme. Its about the struggle for freedom, and the role and use of
terrorism as an instrument in obtaining that freedom. Five IRA 'freedom
fighters' of varying persuasions seek to unravel life, death,
the nature of terrorism and the taste of Guinness while deciding whether
or not to wipe out half of Britain with a stolen canister of Anthrax.
The background presence of MI6 adds a gritty espionage feel to the
module, and the use of cap gun props certainly adds to the tension
of events. The module proceeds from the characters, who were designed
to present a variety of views on the nature of the struggle between
Britain and Ireland, and on the appropriateness of acts of terror in
that struggle. It features a variety of button events that encourage
players to philosophise--a wake, a funeral, hiding out. They must give
eulogies, make speeches on gravestones and generally immerse themselves
in being Irish (with a little help from the Pogues). There is the option
for them to construct their own flashbacks to explore relationships and
past events. 

Mostly, this module ends with a member or members of the party killing some
/ most / all other characters, in a situation where nearly everyone is at
least thinking of having to kill some of the others. Which I consider to
be a very accurate statement about the nature of terrorism. Pass the Guinness. . . 

Sundowners by Glenn Fraser and David Arthur.
A double-session, minimal system module run at Macquariecon `90.

As France prepares to burn, five Anne Rice vampires flee from a powerful
force that is trying to destroy them, and incidently seek to justify their
existence to themselves and each other.

One hot module! Set in pre-revolutionary France, Sundowners is a
tremendously rich evocation of the shadowy world of the Anne Rice
vampire modules, sensuous, sexual and decadent. The module itself is very
short--only eight pages. The main work is done through Glen and Davids'
character descriptions --and what characters they are! A young actress
recently taken as an undead; her materialistic lover / mother; a
savant seeking to live on the blood of rats; a six hundred year old
crusader priest; and a twisted sadist trapped in the body of a child.
At times the module dips into a more traditional vampire genre--Van Helsings
and alchemical spells and silver tipped crossbow bolts--and I think falters
somewhat as it does so. However, these intrusions cannot stop the express
train power of the opening vision, and the module ends with power, each
character having to justify themselves and determine what makes their
life worth living. Not surprisingly, some characters cannot. And so,
Paris burns I

There's nothing like playing them . . .

I could go on describing modules for hours--the Australian convention
circuit is very rich and diversified. I encourage you all to seek out
these modules, and arrange to play them. If you enjoy new wave gaming,
I'm sure there will be one or two on this list you haven't had a
chance to play. If you haven't tried new wave gaming, then I hope
these short descriptions give you an idea of what its about and what
its trying to do, and just how wide the field is. I also hope that I've
demonstrated how firmly new wave gaming is rooted in traditional
roleplaying, to the extent that it is difficult to say where one ends
and the other begins. 

To demonstrate how wide the field is, I'll briefly mention Epitaph,
which was a direct result of the 1990 Roleplaying Forum, and Past Tense,
a wonderful module written since my survey and the first draft of this paper.

Epitaph Workshop by the Epitaph Collective.
A single session, systemless, GM-less experimental
workshop run at Arcarnacon `90 and Necronomicon II.

Epitaph was a conscious bundling of ideas that grew out of the first
Roleplaying Forum, and sought to explore a self-consciously theatrical
style of gaming. Epitaph involved five ordinary people of diverse outlooks,
ages and attitudes trapped in a subway train while the world outside
prepared for an incoming nuclear attack. Or did it? It was after all,
a ghost story of sorts. Some of the phone calls to and fro were <very>
 interesting. The implementation went something like this . . .

Firstly, brief your players about roleplaying in three dimensions,
about the roleplaying contract--providing each other with cues, and about
taking responsibility for each other. Put them in a room made up as a
subway train. Watch them on a video camera, use a pre-recorded 'radio
program' as your source of plot hooks and use an intercom as a
'phone link' to the outside world.

 In Epitaph, most plot cues were given via a prerecorded radio program
featuring news, music and "How Green Was My Cactus" (An Australian political
satire). Characterisation and character development were entirely in
the hands of the players. The phone calls were mainly initiated by the
players. Because of the possible tensions of the situation, we developed
mechanisms for breaking mood in case things became too intense-- which
they didn't. As we were using a video camera, teams received a tape of
their performance.

Epitaph was an interesting and rewarding experiment, whose future was
probably cut short by the theft of the camera at Necronomicon II.
For me, the most interesting thing of all was that while Epitaph was
intensely character-based, the actual performances didn't turn out to be
thematic. There was just too much else going on. 

Past Tense by Cathy Simpson
 Single-session, systemless, adult concepts. A Short, Sharp Shock
at Necronomicon III, October 1991.

Past Tense seems so natural, so seductive, that it is perhaps easy
to overlook its essential brilliance and power. Until you play it,
that is. 

Take five roleplayers and a bottle of wine. Put them round a table at an
imagined dinner party. Encourage small talk, introductions, a sense of
friendship and intimacy. Gradually introduce the characters, and begin
roleplaying, striving to maintain that easy and relaxed atmosphere.
The characters are five everyday people -- friends, lovers, rivals.
One of them is interested in reincarnation, and is reading a book
on the Christos Method. Why not try it? If nothing else, everyone will
receive a relaxing massage.

And so one by one, the group, serious or humorous, credible or
sceptical, attempt a past life regression. The Gamesmaster, performing
one of her few inputs into the scenario, places a walkman over the head
of the regressing player. Each hears a tape that describes a person
and a series of events in fourteenth century France. No explanation is
offered. The players must puzzle out the experience, accept or reject
it, and decide how the experiences of the historical characters reflect
on their own lives and relationships. There is a connection between the
tapes and the characters, a connection the players are free to accept or
reject.

Eventually the evening will run its course. In closing, the
gamesmaster asks the players to summarise the effects of the evening
on their ongoing lives, drawing together the threads raised in
discussion.

Part of Past Tense's power stems from Cathy's tapes, well scripted
and professionally recorded, that detail incidents from past lives
in a sometimes harrowing or graphic way. The module reflects on the lot
of women, both past and present. It is an excellent example of a mood
piece where story, tension and action flow from the characters themselves.
To accept or reject, to follow through a thread or push it aside as
too threatening or too personal -- these actions all have meaning and import
in themselves. Once the characters have been introduced, the gamesmaster
has little to do except change tapes and hand out `image sheets' which
summarise the regressions. 

HOW IT CAME TO BE

We're now in a position to offer some tentative definitions of new wave
gaming. Not to limit, or to include or exclude, but merely to explore
some of the motivations behind it, and its particular strengths. Please
recall my earlier comments--this is not `Us and Them'--new wave gaming
simply uses some of the tools available to all roleplaying and applies them
in a certain way.
 
Historically, I think new wave gaming descended from horror gaming
--and in particular Call of Cthulhu. In the early days it was synonymous
with horror gaming. Of the twelve `thematic' modules mentioned in the
survey, only three are not horror. There are a couple of reasons for this.


The earliest RPGs were all power fantasies--they were about being respected,
being your own master, acquiring material goods, power and reputation.
They were a lot of other things besides, but basically they catered
(and still cater) to our insecurities. They were about being a hero,
being more than human--every day in every way I'm getting better and
better, and I've got the experience points to prove it. They were combat
simulations, pitting good against evil, centring on values of
aggressiveness, confrontation and objectification. Unless the party
turned on itself, no one lost, and everyone had the chance to succeed.

Enter Call of Cthulhu. Whatever else it did, Call of Cthulhu turned
adventure gaming upside down. Players were victims--willing victims,
but victims none the less. Rule systems, combat systems weren't that
important anymore. If you played to the genre, physical resistance was
futile, and the only sort of victory was surviving without too much damage
to life, limb and mind. Call of Cthulhu made fighting only a minor part
 of roleplaying. It encouraged different types of characters, with different
types of skills. For the first time, atmosphere and a sense of tension
became central to the game. You knew it was going to get you, but you didn't
know <when>. Since you were going to die anyway, it encouraged you to
enjoy your character while you could. You couldn't fight back, but you <could>
roleplay. Later games including Pendragon and Trauma also emphasised
the mind and soul of the character as being equally important as physical
and mental skills.

Those characteristics--atmosphere and characterisation, are central to new
wave gaming. They are important in all roleplaying, but in new wave gaming
they have centre stage. After several years of Call of Cthulhu, and almost
in reaction to that game's gratuitous characterisation, there emerged a
third characteristic of new wave gaming-- realistic portrayals of everyday
men and women. It grew out of mood pieces, and of the shift from Lovecraft
to other forms of dark fantasy--ghost stories and psychological tableaus.

Certain types of traditional horror literature have always emphasised
'the monster within' and our eternal struggle to remain compassionate,
loving...  and human. Even when cloaked in traditional forms, the monsters
of our collective imaginations resonate with very human fears and doubt.
Werewolves and vampires challenge the civilised veneers of our sexuality,
ghosts evoke our taboos against death and the awareness that we all face a
final extinction, monsters of all kinds evpose our animal natures, and the
blind rage we often feel constrained within the demands of 'civilised'
society. Horror literature invites us to take off our blinkers and look at
ourselves.

So too with horror roleplaying. A hobby that began as an act of escapism
was gradually turning back toward real life. From that emphasis grew the
final notable characteristic of new wave gaming--its ability and willingness
to explore real world themes and issues. Finally, because mood and atmosphere
were so important to the stories we were creating together, we developed or
borrowed a series of techniques and props--dark rooms and sound effects and
multiforming and theatrical techniques--to increase the fun and the power
of what we could achieve.

If traditional adventure gaming is about people affecting their environment

Character >>>>>>>> Environment

then new wave gaming is about the environment affecting people.

Environment <<<<<<<< Character


The five central characteristics of new wave gaming are

*	STRONG ATMOSPHERE, INTENSITY

*	FOCUS ON CHARACTERISATION

*	REALISTIC PORTRAYALS OF ORDINARY PEOPLE

*	WILLINGNESS TO EXPLORE `REAL WORLD' ISSUES

*	ROLEPLAYING `IN THE ROUND' USING THEATRICAL TECHNIQUES AND PROPS


Escapism is basic to roleplaying, and it is a healthy activity. New wave
gaming has its share of escapism too. Yet in focussing on real people and
real emotions, new wave gaming provides a sense of entertainment and
challenge that is different to more traditional methods. Not better,
but different.


So, new wave gaming is about freeing our senses--all our senses--
to create an experience in cooperation with others. If roleplaying is
about building illusions, thematic roleplaying (with other styles such
as freeforming) is about building illusions in three dimensions. It
encourages different approaches and it values different things to other
roleplaying forms, but it shares the general commitment to creativity,
imagination and fun. Rather than rescuing the princess, often the true
aim of a new wave module is to evoke a certain atmosphere or tension.
Both of these different objectives can be challenging, both call on
roleplaying skills, imagination and team play, and both produce a
tremendous sense of satisfaction when we get it right.

An analogy I often use when discussing roleplaying is that of a
bookstore. Bookstores cater to a wide range of reading tastes--from
science fiction and fantasy to Mills and Boon to Virago to Penguin
Classics. They offer wares of interest to men, women and children.
Entering a bookstore, you can choose anything from a racy best seller
to a book of poetry without feeling patronised or labelled. You have
freedom to choose. You have freedom to enjoy. We all have our favourite
styles of literature--be it Mills and Boon or Frank Miller comics or tracts
on upper Tibetan nose flutes. Yet most of us can appreciate something
different when it comes along, and appreciate it on its own terms. Books
bring their own values, without a sense of hierarchy or 'us and them'.
Arthur C. Clarke is no more threatened by Joan Collins than he is by
Jane Austin or L. Ron Hubbard or Willy Yeats.

I look forward to the day when roleplaying can cater to the tastes of all
men and women in the way that a bookstore can. We have a long way to go.
New wave gaming has added one more shelf at the back of the store.

WHAT IS PLAY? -- A BRIEF DIGRESSION

Some people claim that new wave roleplaying is 'serious' roleplaying.
I disagree. For me, in new wave gaming we are starting to discover the
'play' in roleplaying. We have always known about the roles--and 
for a long time we had only a very limited number of roles to choose 
from--the fighter, the adventurer, the outcast. At last we are discovering
something of 'play'.

New wave gaming offers us the time to take the material offered to us and
twist it around, explore it, play with it. The time constraints of an
adventure module means that other things are important--finding things,
fighting things, doing things. New wave gaming offers us 'space to play'.


Play is a highly important yet elusive term in anthropology and psychology.
Play refuses to fit in, to be bound by roles. It is a joker, a trickster.
It avoids convention, it avoids being told 'you have to do it like this'.

Playfulness is volatile and sometimes explosive--and cultures
try to contain the spirit of play and pack it into a number of
packages. Yet it keeps escaping from these packages--that's how
roleplaying started in the first place.

Our modern culture distrusts play and all that it stands for.
I think the real reason for the attack on roleplaying from 
fundamentalist religion stems from this--it has more to do with
the Protestant work ethic than with devils and satanism. Our culture
values 'realism' and 'reason', while looking down on 'fantasy', 
'imagination', and 'myth'.


Play is no longer forbidden on moral grounds, as it was in the Puritan
Commonwealth, but is accepted less as an end in itself than as a means
towards other ends. Thus <professional> sport and the entertainment <business>
 have become major industries, and games are encouraged among youth
because they are seen as building character and teaching skills. But play
for its own sake? Careful there, you might get brainwashed.

Play subverts the way things ought to be. It frees us to discover new
ways of doing, new ways of experiencing, sometimes new ways of being.
It is about disengagement, freewheeling, opening yourself to new
experiences. The energies of play skip through our brains, sampling a
little bit from here, a piece from there. Play can reveal to us
possibilities, can help us restructure our views of what reality can
and cannot be.

I believe that the challenge of new wave roleplaying is that we ask people
to play when often all they want and expect is to enact a role. This is a
subtle point, but it bears careful thought.


Part Two examines the writing and staging of modules.
Part Three examines controversy and responsibility.

John.
[john hughes] at [anu.edu.au]