These are my free form notes from the Seminar in Tampere on Playing Roles:
Montola: The Invisible Rules of Role-Playing
Role playing as a social process.
This paper basic backbone of thesis.
States: Role Playing is Gaming.
Hasnt been done thoroughly enough yet.
Games are_.
Formal
Structued
Rule based.
Rules of rp itself?
How apply game studies to rp?
RP is interactive construction of subjective Diegesis.
Creation of own story world.
//interesting, close to Lisbet's stuff, and my stuff.
Three frameworks:
Exogenous (stems from outside the game)
Endogenous (from inside the game)
Diegetic. (resides in fictional world)
Rule 1 (3)
RP is and interactive process of defining and redefining
Rule 2 (3)
Powe to define the game worl is
Rule 3 (3)
Player-participants define game world through personified character constructs, conforming to the statee, properites and contents of the game world.
Optional rules. (5)
Rping is
Game strucute,
Power stucture
Information structure
Discussion.
Craig: 300 pages in the seventies expanding to thousands, more and more detailed, how rules are formed by conflict in the games. The gamist thing of loving rules.
Montola: and companies making money on creating more and more rules
Lisbeth: in first rule you say player can define, but in the third rule you say that the world is given.
Montola: hmm in third it is about the players i should underline it.
And in MMOGs players DO create objects and give them new meaning and function.
Liz: maybe if you add augmenting in the first rule.
Pohjola: different kicks for different groups, influential. ...but when you discuss social power, is it in the group or is it in the narrative? Could be clarified.
Blue t-shirt: game masters, do they role play if everyone is a game master?
Montola: all participant can change diegetic content, but well game masters could role play if they have a distinguashable character.
Blue t-shirt: maybe the 3rd rule could be refrased...
Annika: I am confused. Reason: you claimed that the rp experience is fundamentally subjective. What is the game world in that case if it is socially constructed by all participants.
Montola: all have their subjective view. No one can access the world as a whole.
Annika: but they are in the same world.
Montola: it is an illusion that a lot of effort is put into.
Annika: so much given in an MMORPG.
Craig: when you finish, what can you do that you couldnt do before you started?
Montola: what is role play? Distillation of the funcamental core of role play?
Craig: A canonical view we all can refer to? Or looking at AD&D page 20?
Montola: im not very practical in this one.
Green t-shirt: Is it possible to really describe social processes? Id describe Rp as social activity, I miss the social part in the paper.
Craig: a benefit of this could be forming design practice. Seeing rule sets that are not explicit in rule books. Since many players play same characters in many games maybe there could be rulesets specific to characters, as a type of characterization.
Stenros: in the papers for this conf, we have so different views of what rp is, confusing.
Craig: create languages for talking about this, fundamentally valuable. Also the process of defining is important. A definition is like a flashlight, it highlights certain things.
Harviainen: What about ... Basic template that each culture has about what for example a statue with a man on a horse is. In Finland its mannerheim, in sweden its karl. The functionality of the diegesis.
Montola: yes so different cultural templates, and we can never be sure how different they are, re the different views, the subjective, on the world.
...multiduscussion: agreement that the more described something is the more different the view.
Liz: true rules? Pretty normative, no?
