Tabletop role-playing games are too complicated of an activity to analyze in any meaningful way, so for the sake of discussion, I’ll provide a limited definition, and just speak to that:
A Role-playing game is an activity in which a person tries to understand another person or state of being.
Question: do the role-playing games we play actually engage with that definition?
In many obvious ways, I manage to succeed at this goal. My players play characters with intimacy, sensitivity, and empathy. We learn about things at the table. About each other, and also about the spirit of others.
But I have always felt the the role-playing game is flawed in a particular way: it is performative. In its nature, the player is always compelled towards bigger, theatrical performances, with a captive audience to listen.
Life is most often learned in silence and solitude. I don’t know if I’ve had a tenth as many beautiful thoughts with others around, or while I’m working. For insight, for empathy, a soul needs quiet.
The subtle, the inward, the real change, happens away from the table - in retrospect, in reflection. In silence.
In life, the truly deep insights and the development of the self come in the uncountable moments of solitary contemplation.
How can you design a game which has space for those aspects of the playing of role? That’s what I’d like to explore.
This is where the game can’t go. So what fills in the gap? Maybe reading, or meditation? Perhaps the game is like the last train. It can get you to the end of the tracks, to the foot of the mountain, and you make the rest of the journey on foot.