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Don't know about "people" but I keep saying that because I don't know any better. Guess you are right but I haven't given it a thought yet.

Stormcrow wrote:Why do people keep saying "medieval"? Middle-earth does not seem medieval to me. Its technology, politics, and social orders seem much more like classical antiquity, except for the Shire and Bree which resemble 19th century England.

The regions of Eriador (with the exception of The Shire) feel very medieval in character, as does much of Wilderland. It's the southern lands of Gondor that seem more classical to me.

In the traditional understanding of the Dark Ages as a post-apocalyptical situation (never mind the validity of that, just the perception), Eriador certainly has the same vibe.

As for the subject at hand, I need to run more (read "any, i.e. more than zero") con games in the UK. For science.

Erland Hakon wrote:I think what you say is correct but with a little different nuance, for me the point is not "players could immerse even more into a medieval world" but "players could immerse into a medieval world with a different level of voluntary suspension of disbelief"... and this is what can result in different styles of play.

Woooah . . . way to go all Colridgean on everybody! I totally support further discussion in this thread if it's gonna go all metaphysical and literary.

It's not only how you actively game/think/play/react, but how you read, and how you imagine and empathize that affects your RPG gaming style?--I totally buy that.

Nonetheless, coming back down to reality, I have to say that as a brit living in the US, the idea that there would be a British gaming style vs an American one seems pretty unlikely, and pretty unhelpful. I'm sure we can all agree that there are regional and cultural differences that may or may not play into gaming preferences, but we could probably find all sorts of matches and conflicts among player bases within and across those two countries--right? And might cultural and geographical history and influence play out differently in different genres of entertainment? Yeh--probably.

But I guess I'm more interested in what's of value here. I don't think it's one grand answer. I'm more interested in this idea of winning vs. struggling. As a small town boy from the UK, when I gamed with my brothers growing up, we gamed to win, to have our characters become powerful, to get loot, etc. Sometimes we play these games together now out of nostalgia, and I really don't know how we did it for so many hours.

These days I'm more interested in straight escapism, more in realism. Here in TOR, just getting to inhabit Tolkien's world for a bit longer--I'm not too worried about surviving, or looting or winning. From my adult perspective, winning in TOR, with bravado, with unchecked heroism, seems to drag it away from what feels Tolkienesque, and towards a more mainsteam, washed-out, consumer-culture, 21stC style RPG setting (name any MMORPG, but I'm looking at you WoW).

And there's a value judgement right there--I feel like I'm looking at it through more 'mature' eyes. But I've been checked on that view in this forum (rightly), and this thread is making me realize, that maybe this is just a current phase, maybe it's a worldview that aligns more with the struggles I face now than those I faced in adolescence. No value or comparison needs to be made. Maybe I'm still playing out my problems, in just as juvenile (read appropriately/developmentally playful) a manner.

But it makes me wonder--I like this play style and didn't know it before. Maybe there are others I know nothing about yet. That's exciting. I think broadening perspectives and thinking about how to suit play styles as an LM is more what Robin was going for, but I haven't read the book.

Power gaming is something I have never got--but it probably has it's roots in the fact that I'm more literary/artistic than mathematical. When I play and create, I'm thinking in terms of story arcs, dialogue, character quirks, twists of fate. Then again, I love rulebooks and systems, so I could potentially see the lure of loosing oneself in the numbers and modifiers of a system, of subcreating through the maths. Maybe I can game with powergamers with more tolerance if I think about it that way, and not so much about them trying to win through numbers in opposition to logic or story. Maybe I learn I need to look for gamers that aren't all about the numbers to play with.

So if Robin's ideas gives us some perspective and vocabulary for talking about gaming styles and preferences, maybe that's good thing as long as we use them as just that, and not as labels for other people. Anyone else got past what I'm going through and on to something else? Or got any advice for someone coming back to gaming after a long hiatus since adolescence? Anyone think of any particular perspectives or styles of creation that relate specifically to TOR--to how you read and approach Tolkien?

Back to Coleridge, and forgive me being philosophical for a minute, but I can't resist: I guess if we were to see Power Fantasy gaming as gaming about the ego, then maybe a gaming culture about enduring and struggling, whatever you want to call it, is more about the superego. And in a way this would fit with Tolkien's very moral, very self-conscious, archetypes, who make choices that are bigger than, that are in spite of, their own selves. This is the looking back, the reflection, the loss and loosing, that has been noted so much in LoTR. This feeling of depth and interiority was exactly the invention (through the modern novel), the mechanism, that people talked about triggering a 'suspension of disbelief'--an actual entering into the worldview of a fictional character and taking it as a reality. It would make sense that it's trying to get at that that recreates the feelings of the books in us.

But do we actually loose ourselves more easily when we try to inhabit a world where people make moralistic, choices, because we don't know anything about it? Like the example above of those without the artifacts of history all about them looking from afar and living that history out through books, films and games. And maybe it's harder to actually play and have fun when we're trying to game this way rather than just satisfying our egos? I think maybe the reader in me is sometimes at odds with the gamer. This thread prompts more questions than answers for me.

And now I've lost an hour or so of work . . .

Long post. Sorry. No more from me.

In my opinion it is not metaphysical or philosophical at all.

For me they are not in the same level of voluntary suspension of disbelief play with a character of this group:


instead one of this other:



On the other hand both images evoke me different playing styles, even being able to play them with the same set of basic rules.

Erland Hakon wrote:In my opinion it is not metaphysical or philosophical at all.

For me they are not in the same level of voluntary suspension of disbelief play with a character of this group:
instead one of this other:

Yes, well, I suppose that's the whole question of the thread--maybe for you it is voluntary, maybe for others it is subconscious. For some gaming style might be a product of cultural, historical, and personal influences, a reflex.

Unless, that is, I've missed the point entirely.

On a more philosophical note, I doubt any of us really suspend disbelief--that is, in simple terms, enter an imaginative/creative state--voluntarily. We might choose to begin or to end the experience (pick up a book/put it down), but to guide ourselves into and control the depth and quality of an imagined experience, well, it's certainly beyond me. E.g. sometimes I'm not in the mood to roleplay, and sometimes I do a better job than other times--it's not necessarily within my control! I believe that skill is called empathy, and the world is sorely lacking in it.

Tolkien says that the moment a reader has to suspend his disbelief is the moment the creator of the secondary world has failed at his art. A successful author creates a secondary world that the reader willingly enters and accepts, because the art of its creation was great enough that the reader doesn't (secondarily) disbelieve it.

Role-playing games are not stories. Nobody is drawn in by your alleged acting ability. Your purple prose is obviously amateur and derivative. The skill of the game master is in the weaving together of various characters and events in a way that makes them interesting for the players to interact with. If you suddenly break character you haven't spoiled the secondary world. There are areas of overlap; both well-told stories and successful RPGs have people who invest secondary belief in them, but the nature of that belief is totally different. These are very different Arts.

A difference between US and UK players? Maybe, but I guess they're irrelevant here. Americans invested in Tolkien are as willing to embrace his stories' philosophies as well as Brits. We don't try to Americanize him. (Though I ironically maintain American spelling.)

Stormcrow wrote:Tolkien says that the moment a reader has to suspend his disbelief is the moment the creator of the secondary world has failed at his art. A successful author creates a secondary world that the reader willingly enters and accepts, because the art of its creation was great enough that the reader doesn't (secondarily) disbelieve it.

Interesting--would love to read the source there?

Stormcrow wrote:Role-playing games are not stories. Nobody is drawn in by your alleged acting ability. Your purple prose is obviously amateur and derivative. The skill of the game master is in the weaving together of various characters and events in a way that makes them interesting for the players to interact with. If you suddenly break character you haven't spoiled the secondary world. There are areas of overlap; both well-told stories and successful RPGs have people who invest secondary belief in them, but the nature of that belief is totally different. These are very different Arts.

I'm struggling to wrap my head around this and get thoroughly where you're coming from.

On the one hand I agree--yes, who would want the pressure of playing out an entire game in character? Or even, in an in-person game, of coming up with Tolkien-like prose and dialogue on the spot? I'm not clear that this was what the previous discussion had been about. For my part, I was talking about being able to inhabit a character and make decisions realistically, according to the character's circumstances/knowledge/the current story, rather than meta-gaming and goal--reward gaming. Talking about empathy, not acting ability. Maybe you were just being rhetorical?

On the other hand I don't think you can separate the source material that the game and the players are clearly evoking from the game itself. Different 'Arts' they may be, but it's clear that you couldn't have a 'successful' game of TOR that was irreverent towards the canon--it would literally be game breaking. If it were just the interactions of the systems and events that were important, we wouldn't have genre- and IP-specific systems. We'd all settle for DnD. Or, to put it another way, you're making possible only the kind of player that comes to every table with the exact same playstyle, exact same set of (in and out of character) motivations . . . The systems we adopt, and the players who come to the table, define the kinds of stories we tell---and at its heart, yes, I do think roleplaying games are a form of storytelling. At least, I think those that set out to be highly narrative based, like TOR, are!

I also think you might thoroughly offend people that do play in the style you're talking about, who tend to the more fan-fiction end of play-by-post etc. Not really sure this kind of judgement is ever warranted. Let's keep this to a discussion. Yes, national stereotypes etc. have been brought up---we can still keep our heads!

cuthalion wrote:Interesting--would love to read the source there?

Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories," found in a couple of different published books.

Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called 'willing suspension of disbelief.' But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the storymaker proves a successful 'sub-creator.' He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little aborting Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.