Manifesto

I have long been intrigued by the idea of attempting to understand role-playing, not just as an art, in the sense of a practical activity that requires mastery, but as a form of human communication and life which is dependent upon, and can in turn help us understand, other aspects of human existence.

Role-playing is, compared to other forms of aesthetic expression, unique in many ways. This makes the theoretical endeavour all that more difficult, since we have comparatively little help to find in the more well-established disciplines that deal with other art forms. Even the, by now, fairly well-established and quickly growing discipline of game studies offer us only hints, since role-playing and computer games are — despite their common title of “game” — worlds apart. So, at least, is my contention, and I hope to be able to demonstrate why.

Nevertheless, role-playing is a human activity, and even if we cannot simply calque the theory of role-playing off of pre-existing disciplines of art theory, we can at least be hugely helped by the general study of the human condition, as it is expressed in such fields as philosophy, hermeneutics, semiology, psycho-analysis, linguistics, anthopology etc.

This, to be sure, is nothing new; but neither do I lay claim to putting forth any sort of innovation in so doing. I am simply stating the aim and purpose of the present blog. There is a kind of theory which views role-playing as an isolated phenomenon which can be studied wholly on its own terms, and, accordingly, attempts to construct, from scratch, a formal description of the medium. Then, there is a kind of theory which views role-playing as deeply implicated in the entirety of what it means to be a man, and which seeks to analyze phenomena from role-playing as expressions, modifications, or elaborations on other, more general human practices and conditions, so as to shed light on the meaning of role-playing in the context of human existence. It is this latter kind of theory with which I will be concerned.

This approach results in theory that is less useful for direct application in the construction of new systems and designs, but perhaps more instrumental for a deeper understanding of role-playing as such and, possibly, for a novel view of man through the lense of role-playing.