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     4 

     5                      Ritual Discourse in Role-Playing Games

     6 

     7    by Christopher I. Lehrich <[8]clehrich@bu.edu>

     8 

     9 Introduction

    10 

    11    Theoretical analysis of RPG's remains largely cut off from other

    12    theoretical discourses, a situation that tends of itself toward sterility.

    13    Two reasons for this isolation predominate. First, RPG theorists come from

    14    a wide range of educational backgrounds, and as such have no shared body

    15    of theoretical models or discourse on which to draw. Second, RPG theory

    16    hopes to serve a constructive function, rather than a purely analytical

    17    one: where the anthropologist for example traditionally understands

    18    herself as necessarily exterior to the people and situations she analyzes,

    19    the RPG theorist wishes to employ the results of his analysis to improve

    20    his own gaming.

    21 

    22    The former difficulty need not concern us unduly. So long as theoretical

    23    models from outside current RPG discourse receive adequate formulation and

    24    explication in RPG terms, only an a priori hostility to other theoretical

    25    constructs would dismiss them out of hand. It is worth considering that

    26    such hostility does appear mutual -- that is, much RPG discourse

    27    formulates itself in opposition to academic theoretical discourse, while

    28    many academics continue to express disdain and scorn if not outright

    29    hostility for role-playing games as an activity -- but resolution of this

    30    can only come about in a historical situation as yet hard to imagine. Thus

    31    I shall set the issue aside, stating only that I intend to explain fully

    32    whatever theoretical constructs I deploy.

    33 

    34    The second problem, however, inheres in the nature of RPG's themselves. A

    35    purely theoretical analytical model of RPG's, i.e. one without any

    36    practical application whatever, will generally be received poorly, if at

    37    all, within RPG communities. Indeed, even RPG theorists who go to

    38    considerable lengths to formulate the practical implications of their

    39    models are sometimes derided as airy pseudo-intellectuals. Fortunately,

    40    some recent RPG publications by members of the theoretical community have

    41    received accolades,[9][1] and this will presumably have the long-term

    42    salutary effect of legitimizing theoretical work within the hobby at

    43    large.

    44 

    45    At the same time, analyses of RPG's have come to formulate practical,

    46    essential divisions and categories, and argued that these may be

    47    unbridgeable. For example, Ron Edwards's tripartite GNS model rests upon

    48    the notion that the three categories must remain discrete in order to

    49    avoid paradigmatic clash and attendant misunderstandings among players,

    50    leading in turn to poor play. That is, a group of players with strongly

    51    Narrativist tendencies should be wary of playing a strongly

    52    Gamist-structured game, or introducing into the group a player with such

    53    an approach. While "hybrids" -- games that effectively serve more than one

    54    of the three major play-types -- are conceived as possible, a central

    55    point for Edwards is that Narrativist-oriented play is not well-suited to

    56    Gamist-oriented games, and that groups who attempt such may need to revise

    57    the game extensively to fit their needs. Similarly, a single player who

    58    cannot conform to the paradigmatic norms of the group in which she plays

    59    will probably find herself continually at odds with other players, leading

    60    to social conflict; this player would be best advised to find another

    61    game.[10][2]

    62 

    63    In his recent article "Story and Narrative Paradigms in Role-Playing

    64    Games,"[11][3] John Kim argues that underlying such categories we find two

    65    approaches: "Collaborative Storytelling" and "Virtual Experience." These

    66    tend, like Edwards's categories, to remain divided. In what Kim calls

    67    "Paradigm Clash," we find a naturally-occurring conflict between

    68    perspectives:

    69 

    70    To the storytelling point of view, the experiential view seems to result

    71    in an unnecessarily limited set of techniques. . . . Experiential play may

    72    also seem passive, letting events happen rather than actively controlling

    73    them. . . . [Conversely,] To the experiential point of view, storytelling

    74    play seems to be creating a product for a nonexistent reader. . . .

    75    Experiential players faced with storytelling play may complain about

    76    breaking suspension of disbelief, or lack of depth.

    77 

    78    Conflict arising from disjuncture, narrative or otherwise, is not only

    79    theoretical. Most gamers have experienced it, and one great strength of

    80    Edwards's model (derived from the earlier Threefold Model developed in the

    81    Advocacy newsgroup[12][4]) is to emphasize recognition and classification

    82    as means to avoiding the problem. In both his and Kim's models, players

    83    and groups who recognize their preferences in a categorical sense can

    84    select games to fit their desires, or revise them so, leading to enjoyable

    85    play with a minimum of fuss and trouble.

    86 

    87    While I support this general constructive point, and do not presently wish

    88    to challenge the classification itself (a much-contested issue), I suggest

    89    that a hard-line division within analysis leads toward weaknesses in a

    90    general understanding and formulation of how RPG's really function. By

    91    drawing on some theoretical models outside of RPG's, I would like to

    92    propose a more unified model of RPG narrativity.

    93 

    94    A word about practicality: I do not, in the present article, formulate the

    95    practical implications of this model for game design or play. I do not see

    96    this as a weakness in itself: if the model serves analytically, it can

    97    have synthetic value. But the two operations have at least a notional

    98    distinction, and can operate well in isolation. If theory must face a

    99    practical proof-critique, then all analysis is already crypto-synthesis;

   100    logically speaking, there is thus insufficient distance postulated to

   101    ensure the validity of the analysis. In short, without the ability to

   102    distinguish at least heuristically between theory and practice,

   103    theoretical work can never have real logical force, lending weight to the

   104    criticisms mentioned at the outset.

   105 

   106    A further point: I intend to propose a ritual model for RPG play, based

   107    upon recent understandings of ritual within the academic discourses of

   108    anthropology, sociology, and history of religions. This model would appear

   109    to fall squarely into the common discourse of analogy as theory, of

   110    proposing that RPG's are "like" something else in order to help emphasize

   111    a point otherwise unclear. Such analogical reasoning is founded upon an

   112    essential methodological principle: the analogy is not identity. Thus

   113    response to the proposal is constrained to two related moves. On the one

   114    hand, one may move to expand the analogy, picking up additional aspects of

   115    the metaphorized object or activity and further relating them to RPG's; on

   116    the other, one may move to limit the analogy, demanding that the metaphor

   117    not be taken to the point of absurdity.[13][5]

   118 

   119    Some find this mode of analysis useful, primarily in a creative sense. If

   120    one "gets" the analogy, in its logical extension and intension, one thinks

   121    about the hobby in a somewhat new way, perhaps leading to new creative

   122    engagement with design or play. But if one does not "get" the analogy, the

   123    tendency, naturally, is to dismiss it as unhelpful, or to reformulate it

   124    endlessly until one does "get it." Either way, the reason to analyze such

   125    a metaphor is generally synthetic, to create new ways of engaging with the

   126    hobby. In other words, the proposal of yet another analogy serves no

   127    analytic function.

   128 

   129    In proposing a ritual model of RPG's, I do not wish to add another analogy

   130    to the lists. I do not mean that RPG play is like ritual at all; I mean

   131    that it is ritual. Therefore classical and recent tools of ritual analysis

   132    apply fully to RPG's, for analytical purposes, for making sense of RPG's

   133    as something other than an entirely isolated hobby, indeed for seeing

   134    RPG's as a human cultural product not particularly distinctive to modern

   135    society. If to some this seems a claim that RPG's are not special and

   136    extraordinary, I suggest on the contrary that this grants to RPG's a

   137    legitimacy and "specialness" attendant upon their roots in wider humanity

   138    and culture.[14][6]

   139 

   140 Ritual

   141 

   142    An obvious first step in proposing this model is the formulation of a

   143    definition of ritual. Unfortunately, perhaps, such definitions have been

   144    the focus of extensive debate for more than a century now, with no clear

   145    end in sight. More models have been proposed of what ritual "is" than many

   146    readers might believe. I have no intention of summarizing this whole

   147    history; I will instead simply propose a starting-point.

   148 

   149    The above-mentioned disjuncture between "Collaborative Storytelling" and

   150    "Virtual Experience" parallels, in a number of respects, two recent

   151    emphases in ritual theory.

   152 

   153    Virtual Experience correlates well with Ronald Grimes's and Victor

   154    Turner's focus on "performance," which ultimately amounts to a notion of

   155    total involvement in ritual activity.[15][7] In ritual, according to this

   156    perspective, humans engage the totality of hearts, minds, and bodies,

   157    setting them to work creatively and dynamically to produce effects within

   158    the social and mental worlds of the participants. Thus in zazen (Sitting

   159    Zen), one does nothing but sit, generally in an approved posture; one's

   160    mind and heart should be similarly focused on nothing but sitting, not in

   161    the sense that one should think continuously, "I'm sitting," but rather

   162    that one's mind should be in a state parallel to the body's state,

   163    thinking nothing, resting, yet remaining alert and awake, receptive to

   164    outside contact. In the Catholic Eucharist (Mass), to take a quite

   165    different sort of example, liturgical tradition emphasizes that the

   166    communicant should be fully involved in the process, such that when the

   167    miraculous transformation of the substance of wafer and wine

   168    (Transubstantiation) occurs, and when in fact the communicant receives

   169    these into the mouth, it is not only one's body that receives the body and

   170    blood of Christ, but the totality of body, mind, and soul. Thus this

   171    understanding of ritual emphasizes what in RPG terms is called

   172    "immersion," a total involvement in the activity. Failure on this score

   173    would be seen as ineffective (zazen), impious (Eucharist), or shallow

   174    (RPG).

   175 

   176    The Collaborative Storytelling model is less obviously commensurate with a

   177    ritual model. Two directions, however, support this formulation. First,

   178    there is Claude Levi-Strauss's structuralist interpretation of mythic and

   179    ritual thought as bricolage, and second, there is the movement largely

   180    associated with Pierre Bourdieu, Sherry Ortner, and Catherine Bell toward

   181    understanding ritual as "practice" (or "praxis" in the more overtly

   182    Marxist formulations).[16][8]

   183 

   184    Levi-Strauss's idea, in simple terms, is that cultures think like oddly

   185    artistic hobbyists. [17][9] Imagine you have a basement full of stuff from

   186    which to build whatever you like. You have bits of old machines, things

   187    your neighbors threw out, scraps of wood, and tail-ends of old projects,

   188    as well as the taken-apart bits of all your old projects. Now you decide

   189    to build something, and you have some ideas -- aesthetic and practical --

   190    about how that should be done; you are very skilled and talented, and can

   191    see possibilities in all sorts of things. But you do not have a Home Depot

   192    available, or you consider it "cheating" to go buy things. At any rate,

   193    you have to build the thing you're going to build from what you already

   194    have in your basement.

   195 

   196    A nice example is a Rube Goldberg cartoon, though those are deliberately

   197    silly. You fly a kite, and the kite string pulls a lever, and this pushes

   198    an old boot, and that turns on your iron, and the iron burns some old

   199    pants, and smoke goes into a tree, and.... A brilliant example is the

   200    recent Honda advertisement called "the cog," which can readily be found on

   201    the Internet.[18][10] The point is that one constructs an elaborate

   202    machine out of bits and pieces already owned.

   203 

   204    Levi-Strauss's point is that each object used contains its own history;

   205    that is, the iron has already been used for something and the bricoleur

   206    then gives it a new use. The iron, to focus on the single example, is a

   207    local source of heat; it can burn pants, or make a grilled-cheese

   208    sandwich, and of course can press a shirt. But it cannot be a

   209    refrigerator. And if, clever person that you are, you pull the heating

   210    coil out of the iron for some project that requires a heating coil, your

   211    iron now contains the history of its usage: it is now a heating coil and a

   212    heavy weight.

   213 

   214    Every sign in myth and ritual, says Levi-Strauss, is like this iron, and

   215    every living mythic culture is like this bricoleur. When faced with a

   216    (social) situation, an intellectual problem of whatever kind, the

   217    bricoleur begins by running through his memory (the basement) to see what

   218    he already has that can be used to solve the problem. He then builds the

   219    machine that solves the problem, in the process incorporating the entire

   220    history of every object in question, and furthermore altering (however

   221    slightly) each object so used; when he goes to build something else, later

   222    on, the current project will be part of the history of each object.

   223 

   224    Technically speaking, every sign is thus constrained and yet free. On the

   225    one hand, it is not constrained to the degree of a percept, a particular

   226    contingent mental encounter with an actual object; this percept is what is

   227    called a "perception" in the formalist model to which Kim refers. A

   228    percept is entirely constrained, because when a person looks at a given

   229    object on two successive occasions, his or her mental equipment has

   230    altered -- to use a cliche, one cannot enter the same river twice. At the

   231    same time, a sign is not fully liberated, as is a concept, an idea arising

   232    in reaction to a particular person's connections to a percept: when I look

   233    at the lamp on the table, I may think of my grandmother (who perhaps owned

   234    a similar lamp), and thus "grandmother" is a legitimate conceptual link,

   235    but no such connection may arise for you, and even if it did, it would be

   236    a different grandmother. So a sign (Levi-Strauss means the Saussurean

   237    version of the sign) is both constrained (the iron cannot be a

   238    refrigerator) and free (it can do a whole range of things involving local

   239    intense heat). In Levi-Strauss's linguistic analogy, this iron is a sign

   240    in the same way as a word is: the word "iron" can mean a range of things

   241    (the metal, the instrument) but it cannot mean anything at all.

   242    Furthermore, this word only acquires meaning by its relations to other

   243    words: if I say "iron," you do not know until I go on with "a pair of

   244    pants" what sort of meaning I intend, even whether it is a verb or a noun.

   245 

   246    The other approach I want to bring up, "practice" theory, arises from a

   247    number of rather technical difficulties with structuralism, and amounts to

   248    an attempt to understand manipulation of signs and symbols in strategic

   249    yet controlled ways. With respect to ritual, practice theory argues for a

   250    continuity among behaviors, as against the disjuncture of ritual from

   251    other modes of action. The signs used in ritual, that is, acquire meaning

   252    from their extra-ritual contexts, and furthermore the special meanings

   253    accorded to them in ritual carry over into other modes of life.

   254 

   255    From a practice perspective, every ritual contains within itself a number

   256    of structures, just as in structuralism; these structures are in essence

   257    the Rube Goldberg machines constructed by the bricoleur. As we know from

   258    Levi-Strauss, the iron can be replaced by any other source of local heat,

   259    since its only function in the machine in question was to create smoke by

   260    burning a pair of pants. Thus the machine has a structure, requiring a

   261    number of elements, but the specifics of which objects or signs are used

   262    to fill those element-slots are open. What interests practice theorists is

   263    strategic choice: how do people decide whether to use an iron or a space

   264    heater?

   265 

   266    Broadly, the question in practice theory is how people choose, from a

   267    limited range of culturally-available options, which techniques to apply

   268    at a given moment. This depends on strategy: we want to maximize rewards

   269    in a specific situation. But in order for strategy to work, we have to

   270    play the game; that is, one cannot go outside the structure of the system

   271    to manipulate signs as one likes, because to do so annuls the power of the

   272    strategy in the first place. Thus every strategic use of signs is at once

   273    a free, liberated exercise of power by a situated person, and at the same

   274    time a contribution to keeping the system stable and intact without

   275    significant change. The possibility of real change is thus undermined by

   276    the very strategies which seek to change the system, because they depend

   277    for their efficacy upon the structures in question.

   278 

   279    If the dichotomy between virtual experience and collaborative storytelling

   280    parallels that between performativity and what we might call the practice

   281    of bricolage, as yet this parallel serves no analytical or synthetic

   282    function; it is once more an over-theorized and over-determined metaphor.

   283    In addition, it is as yet under-explained, in that the theories may be

   284    formulated but their application to the specific situation of RPG's is not

   285    yet clear. In short, while we can see a parallel division within both the

   286    two discourses and the two modes of behavior, this does not answer the

   287    question: why are RPG's ritual?

   288 

   289 Semiotic Modeling of Ritual and RPG

   290 

   291    I have noted that Kim's use of the formalist

   292    perception-discourse-conception model parallels the semiotic or structural

   293    percept-sign-concept model. The difficulty with the formalist model for

   294    this purpose, however, is that it is focused primarily on an interpretive

   295    perspective, in which the analyst stands in a perceptive relationship to a

   296    givendiscourse; like the circular model in hermeneutics,[19][11] the

   297    central issue is how an interpreter can make sense of a discourse already

   298    present, how we approach meaning through interpretation of texts and signs

   299    already distant from their producers (authors). Thus a central

   300    preoccupation of both formalist analysis and of hermeneutics has been the

   301    analysis of ways in which the reading situation is not conversational, in

   302    which reading a text is not having a conversation with the author. But in

   303    RPG's, the situation is normally conversational in an obvious sense, and

   304    thus this mode of analysis focuses on problems seemingly distant from

   305    those in RPG's.

   306 

   307    The structural model of signification, from which the practice theory also

   308    arose, is by contrast primarily concerned with the use of signs by a

   309    current producer, a situation more obviously commensurable with RPG play.

   310    The question, in short, is not how players read a text produced for them

   311    by a game-master, but rather how the whole group in combination produces

   312    signs and texts that they themselves read. The structural model of

   313    signification fits well here, as the primary issue is to understand ritual

   314    or mythic activity as a mode of discourse production.

   315 

   316    In ritual, participants manipulate a range of signs within a constrained

   317    structure. That structure can change through such manipulations, but only

   318    within narrow limits. Every Catholic Eucharist differs significantly, in

   319    that the place, people, and physical environment of the ritual vary, but

   320    this variation is officially read by participants as within a fixed

   321    structure. The post-Vatican II use of the vernacular in the Mass, for

   322    example, was at once a major transformation of the structure of the

   323    ritual, and at the same time theorized as not radically transformative:

   324    even in the vernacular, according to the Vatican II council, the Eucharist

   325    retains its sacramental efficacy. From a semiotic perspective, the

   326    linguistic alteration represents a new negotiation of liturgical language

   327    as a discrete sign, where Vatican II agreed that the differences between

   328    Latin and the vernacular should not be understood as an essential

   329    structure of the ritual, but rather a relatively arbitrary sign amenable

   330    to conversion without undermining ritual structure itself.

   331 

   332    At this same level of semiotic manipulation, we can see in RPG

   333    reconstruction and revision a parallel analytical discourse. Taking to its

   334    extreme the Edwards et al. formulation that "system matters,"[20][12] the

   335    claim is a clearly structuralist one: transformation of system elements in

   336    RPG's effects concomitant transformation of gameplay and orientation. For

   337    example, a combat system dominated by so-called "realism", usually meaning

   338    a high prioritization of real-world simulation in modes of action and

   339    effects of violence, is not a discrete sign that may be removed from a

   340    given game and replaced with an entirely stylized, anti-"realist" combat

   341    system. Because such a system element is structural, it links to all other

   342    parts of the total game structure and its transformation thus strongly

   343    affects the whole. Mike Holmes has made this point well, arguing that a

   344    "realist" combat system colors the whole game, such that all activity

   345    occurs with reference to such a preoccupation with violence;[21][13] as

   346    Kim puts it,

   347 

   348    [E]ven if a gun is never fired during the game session, the mechanics for

   349    that [weapon] may influence the story -- because they shape how the player

   350    conceives of guns within the fictional world. If the mechanics make all

   351    guns exceptionally deadly, it increases the tension in a scene where a gun

   352    appears even if the gun is never fired.

   353 

   354    Thus the "system does matter" principle argues that system elements are

   355    motivated signs, and thus contain structure; their transformation affects

   356    the totality of the structure.

   357 

   358    Between the Vatican II approach to language and the Forge approach to

   359    system, however, we must recognize that the difference is not absolute;

   360    furthermore, the distinction drawn is ideological, not "factual." There

   361    can be no question, for example, that the use of the vernacular in

   362    Catholic Mass has significantly changed the ways in which Catholics

   363    experience the ritual; indeed, were this not so, there would have been no

   364    reason to make the change in the first place. Vatican II asserted a matter

   365    of aesthetic and theological priority: however far-reaching the effects of

   366    this transformation, they argued, the essential core of the ritual

   367    (transubstantiation in a broad sense) would not be affected, and whatever

   368    aesthetic loss of force might be entailed by the loss of the affective

   369    qualities of Latin (as traditional, foreign, ancient, powerful) would be

   370    more than made up for by gains in broader spiritual involvement (through

   371    understanding the liturgy intellectually, thus affectively through content

   372    rather than through an aura of ritualism). Indeed, Martin Luther's move to

   373    the vernacular was intended partly to combat the affective dimension of

   374    Latin as itself powerful, arguing that this amounted to a kind of

   375    fetishism or idolatry: the focus should be, he thought, on the content of

   376    the words spoken, rather than on their linguistic medium.

   377 

   378    In Forge RPG theory, conversely, there is an implicit distinction between

   379    system elements and other elements. It is certainly plausible that the

   380    radical transformation of the combat system of Dungeons and Dragons from

   381    the AD&D system to the recent d20 system considerably changes all elements

   382    of gameplay, even those not overtly connected with combat; to replace the

   383    combat system with a more freeform model akin to The Pool would presumably

   384    effect further changes. But first of all, it seems clear that transforming

   385    other elements of the game (setting, background, character generation)

   386    would also entail drastic concomitant changes in gameplay; for example,

   387    d20 games not based on Dungeons and Dragons genre and story conventions

   388    exist in considerable numbers, and certainly do not play exactly the same

   389    way as does Dungeons and Dragons. In short, it is unclear how one is to

   390    classify elements into arbitrary and motivated, into those which can be

   391    shifted without large-scale structural effects and those which

   392    cannot.[22][14]

   393 

   394    More interestingly, RPG theorists (taken in the broadest sense) generally

   395    make a series of divisions among elements in their games, and implicitly

   396    argue for relative arbitrariness. That is, the notion that a "combat

   397    system" is in any sense a discrete element, a discrete structure, should

   398    not be accepted uncritically. If the Forge "system matters" principle

   399    argues that even apparently discrete structures like this are motivated

   400    and not arbitrary, we must recognize that this presumes a tendency to see

   401    such systems as arbitrary, that they are apparently discrete. By

   402    emphasizing that "system" is motivated and structural, the Forge theorists

   403    further suggest a prioritization of elements, where motivation is taken as

   404    superior to arbitrariness, so that theoretical analysis and synthesis

   405    should focus on structure rather than sign. To put this differently, it is

   406    implicit that RPG's consist of a vast group of interrelated elements,

   407    falling into a natural hierarchical order; those nearest the trunk of the

   408    tree, as it were, are relatively motivated and theoretically important,

   409    while those nearest the branch-tips are more arbitrary and of lesser

   410    theoretical weight.

   411 

   412    At the same time, few would argue that the arbitrary, non-structural signs

   413    are trivial or unimportant. Such arbitrary elements as Color (essentially

   414    affective set-dressing in imagined space) or snack choices by players are

   415    not irrelevant, and may in particular instances be elevated to structural

   416    elements: the game-concept Long Pig The Role-Playing Game made snack

   417    choice and usage into a system element, while Ars Magica troupes

   418    interested in medieval history may make set-dressing a primary focus for

   419    play.[23][15] But the claim is that it is by shifting such elements from

   420    arbitrary to motivated, from incidental to system, that they become

   421    analytically important; in general, the analyst does not focus

   422    classification on such elements, but rather begins with system.

   423 

   424    The important point here is that whether the issue is the relative weight

   425    of meaningful dimensions of liturgical language or the classification of

   426    structural elements in RPG's, the understanding is in both cases

   427    ideological, intended not only to classify and analyze the ritual in

   428    question but also to emphasize and push for improvement in the activity,

   429    thus making normative claims about what the ritual should be about.

   430    Precisely at this point, predictably, the ideological weapon of

   431    "practicality" often comes into play in RPG discourse: because a more

   432    purely analytic classificatory model (e.g. the polythetic comparative

   433    model proposed for the humanities by Jonathan Z. Smith[24][16]) eschews

   434    normative claims in the form of practical suggestions for game design or

   435    ritual construction, the RPG theorist codes such classification as

   436    impractical, thus valueless. This is equivalent to a Catholic liturgist

   437    saying of an academic theorist's analysis that it is irrelevant because it

   438    does not help formulate new dimensions in Mass. For the academic, however,

   439    this is precisely the point: she may be interested to see the results of

   440    her analyses serving a constructive use to the liturgist, she does not

   441    wish to impose her perspective upon those she studies. Ronald Grimes, for

   442    example, believes deeply that ritual theory can be of constructive value

   443    for people seeking to formulate or reformulate their rituals, but as a

   444    rule he does not tell them how to go about it.[25][17] A ritualist who

   445    denounces Grimes for not proposing a "how-to" makes an entirely

   446    ideological -- and ultimately incoherent -- claim: if Grimes does not

   447    propose a "how-to," his work is useless; if on the other hand he does tell

   448    ritualists how to "fix" their rituals, he will (and should!) be denounced

   449    for telling others what they ought to believe.

   450 

   451    I have come a long way around, but the notion of RPG's as ritual can now

   452    be asserted directly. Between RPG theory and RPG practice there exists a

   453    dynamic relationship structurally identical to that between the theory and

   454    practice of ritual within lived ritual communities. RPG theory, by this

   455    logic, is only commensurable to academic theory and analytical method

   456    through a deeper and more complex formulation; a relatively direct

   457    correlation links RPG's to rituals in their actuality.[26][18] In order to

   458    recognize this link, we must accept the duality of theory and practice as

   459    integral to ritual performance itself; in other words, rituals are not

   460    actions or activities performed in isolation from their cultural worlds,

   461    but rather performances related to theoretical concerns in the same way as

   462    game-play relates to the theory and system-construction that surrounds it.

   463 

   464    To put this differently, and more specifically, RPG play enacts theory, in

   465    the sense that standing behind and prior to play is a series of

   466    theoretical constructs: system design, GM notes, pre-play agreements and

   467    social contract, genre expectations, and other theoretical tools. From

   468    this perspective, RPG play acts out this prior structure; this is

   469    equivalent to the old reading of ritual as acting out a liturgical text.

   470    At the same time, the prior structure is to a degree open to challenge

   471    within game play, and furthermore does not fully constrain particular game

   472    actions, determining a range and a set of priorities rather than laying

   473    out a script. As has been recognized for some decades now, the same can be

   474    said of the most formal ritual: within apparent constraint there is scope

   475    for contestation, not only of the various issues and questions related to

   476    a particular ritual's situation within the social context, but also of the

   477    ritual itself with all its symbols.

   478 

   479    Nevertheless, these two views are always in dynamic, creative tension: the

   480    available range of manipulations of ritual signs stands within a

   481    structural context only slightly accessible to interior challenge. For

   482    example, radical transformation of Catholic liturgy cannot proceed from

   483    within ritual performance itself, while small-scale local transformation

   484    and contestation are fully expected. Radical transformation of liturgy, as

   485    we have seen with Vatican II, must come from a theoretical discourse

   486    exterior to performance. Conversely, such discourse acquires its ability

   487    to challenge ritual structurally by sacrificing its analytical and

   488    normative force at the local level; that is, while Vatican II could change

   489    liturgical language, a structural change not available to a given

   490    congregation at the moment of performance, the congregation can manipulate

   491    particular performances to effect social meanings inaccessible to the

   492    Vatican. For example, a particular wedding ritual may be used, at a given

   493    moment and in a particular contingent historical situation, to enable deep

   494    consideration within the congregation about the traditions of marriage,

   495    divorce, and childbirth; these same issues can be discussed by the College

   496    of Cardinals, as indeed they are, but not at the level of particular

   497    people in particular time, since they can only formulate principles and

   498    cannot apply them individually.

   499 

   500    Precisely the same dynamic obtains in RPG discourse. While a given

   501    structural situation of notes, game system, theoretical models, and so

   502    forth formulates a contextual model within which play occurs, such

   503    structures do not extend to the level of individual particularity that is

   504    central to play experience; that is, no game structure can be so logically

   505    intensive as to dictate every action and speech by every participant at

   506    all times, because to do so (even were it possible) would annul the entire

   507    nature of the game as game. In fact, this limitation of theoretical

   508    efficacy is granted the status of a virtue in Forge theory, through the

   509    double formulation of "practicality" as a rational anchor and the

   510    hierarchization of the relative motivation of system structures as

   511    relative theoretical importance. Not surprisingly, we find that the usual

   512    model of RPG discourse has it that performance (play) is the "real" anchor

   513    of RPG's, and that theory is understood by its proponents as a potentially

   514    liberating source of creativity and energy for "real" play.

   515 

   516 Liminality in Ritual and RPG: Preliminary Classification

   517 

   518    If we recognize in RPG's a dynamic interaction of theoretical and

   519    practical reason, between structure and event, it is not clear how within

   520    the practical sphere the active, strategic manipulation of signs actually

   521    works. That is, we have seen that in religious ritual, situated people

   522    deploy signs and structures within the context of larger, only partly

   523    flexible structures, and that RPG play stands within a similar context; we

   524    need now to understand how RPG players manipulate signs and structures for

   525    strategic reasons, and how such strategies are both free and subject to

   526    constraint.

   527 

   528    For this purpose, I would like to propose a specific analogy, that of RPG

   529    play to a particular mode of ritual behavior. At the outset, however, I

   530    should note that this is analogy and not identity; that is, while RPG is

   531    (and is not merely like) ritual, it is nevertheless a distinct and

   532    specific kind of ritual, one with no exact equivalent in other ritual

   533    spheres. Thus this analysis must be effected within a deliberately

   534    constrained comparative model, in order to evade the methodological

   535    problems attendant upon the loose metaphoricities described in the

   536    introduction.

   537 

   538    Every modern scholar of ritual is familiar with the liminal model of rites

   539    de passage (passage-rites), originally proposed by Arnold van Gennep in

   540    the eponymous book, and elevated to a critical analytical model in

   541    especially the earlier work of Victor Turner.[27][19] In its classic

   542    formulation by van Gennep, such passage-rites as initiations consist of

   543    three stages. First, the neophyte is separated from the symbolic and

   544    social structures which normally surround him; second, the neophyte passes

   545    through a liminal phase, in which a series of new and powerful symbols

   546    known as sacra are presented to the neophyte for consideration and

   547    reflection; and finally, the neophyte is aggregated back into the social

   548    structure, now in a new status.

   549 

   550    For example, in boys' puberty initiations, the boy is removed from boyhood

   551    and society in general, perhaps secluded in a special initiation hut or

   552    otherwise physically removed; in addition, he is visibly marked as

   553    unclassified, e.g. having his head shaved, being painted black or white,

   554    stripped of clothing, and so forth. Once separation from boyhood has been

   555    effected, the neophyte is in a condition of liminality, "betwixt and

   556    between," neither this nor that; neither boy nor man, he is

   557    unclassifiable, a condition generally expressed through symbols marking

   558    status as not participating in even a larger range of classes: he may be

   559    dressed as an androgyne, marking him as neither male nor female (and

   560    both); he may be forced to lie on the ground in a posture normal for

   561    corpses, marking him as neither dead nor alive (and both); and so forth.

   562 

   563    In this liminal phase, various sacred symbols (sacra) are presented to the

   564    boy and his co-initiates (such initiations usually involve several boys at

   565    once), in the form of monstrous and bizarre masks, objects, or behaviors,

   566    presented to the neophytes by already-initiated men. All these signs serve

   567    as objects of thought, and are commonly distorted to emphasize reflection

   568    on particular issues; for example, a figurine or dancing costume might be

   569    shrunken and blurred in all its parts, but bear a wildly exaggerated

   570    phallus, encouraging reflection on sexuality and male sexual identity.

   571 

   572    In an example discussed by Turner,[28][20] Bemba girls are presented with

   573    an earthenware figurine of an exaggeratedly pregnant woman who carries

   574    four infants, two at her equally exaggerated breasts and two on her back;

   575    other features of this figure (arms and legs, for example) are shrunken to

   576    stubs. The figurine in this case is accompanied by a riddling song about a

   577    mythical midwife, and initiated women say the riddle's point is

   578    straightforward: Bemba tradition demands that after giving birth women

   579    abstain from sexual intercourse for a year. But a woman's husband may

   580    object to this, and one's mother or mother-in-law may also demand that the

   581    young woman get pregnant again, as the older woman wants grandchildren and

   582    the husband wants sexual satisfaction. The point of the sacrum, then, is

   583    that a wife who does not respect the tradition of abstention will become

   584    like the figurine, dominated to destruction by babies and their care.

   585    However much a woman may wish to give in to her husband or mother -- or

   586    her own desires -- she must abstain. Thus the use of exaggerated symbols

   587    in the liminal phase focuses attention on traditional culture, its reasons

   588    and purposes, and ultimately promotes conformity.

   589 

   590    Once this instructional phase has concluded, aggregation usually begins

   591    with more or less permanent markers of the new status, followed by social

   592    presentation of the neophyte to the relevant communities (initiates, then

   593    society at large). For example, a boy may be circumcised, marking him

   594    permanently as an initiate (thus fully male), then dressed in men's

   595    clothing (not unlike the old British practice of a boy's changing

   596    permanently from short to long pants); the initiates are then presented to

   597    the men, who welcome them into the men's longhouse or equivalent male

   598    structure from which they were previously forbidden, and they depart this

   599    house to be greeted by the women of the community as men rather than boys.

   600 

   601    The emphasis in the current analysis is, as for Turner, the liminal. There

   602    is no difficulty spotting separation and aggregation in RPG's. Depending

   603    on a particular group's habitual practices and preferences, separation may

   604    begin at the front door of the host's house or apartment; this is

   605    particularly apparent in more LARP-oriented play, where entry into the

   606    broadly-defined play space is marked by a transformation of manner and

   607    affect, even of clothing. But the most limited table-top play generally

   608    marks a separation between game-play and out-of-game behavior. This is

   609    perhaps most obvious negatively, in objections to players who do not focus

   610    on the game and continually introduce "irrelevant" topics (television

   611    shows, video games, current events, etc.) into play.

   612 

   613    I have marked the term "irrelevant" with quotes for a reason: these topics

   614    are only irrelevant if and to the degree that a given group marks them so,

   615    a point generally negotiated through piecemeal social contract means. The

   616    LARP example, as an extreme of the Virtual Experience model, may tend to

   617    object to any introduction of topics or behaviors not previously

   618    formulated as "in-game." A smaller-scale variant of this general dynamic

   619    is the issue of "in-character" as distinct from "out-of-character": in

   620    some groups, speech should be performed in-character, in that anything

   621    said by a given player should be taken as the speech of that player's

   622    current character; sometimes this takes the form of linguistic constraint,

   623    notably the demand that players speak of their characters in the first

   624    person rather than the third.

   625 

   626    At a more strategic level, groups may make a sharp distinction between

   627    in-character and out-of-character knowledge, raising as a problem whether

   628    a player may act in-character upon knowledge presumably not available to

   629    his character. That is, if Alan (playing Thror the Barbarian) knows that

   630    Marler the Wizard (played by Barbara) has been captured by an evil

   631    sorcerer and is held in a deep dungeon below the castle in which Thror now

   632    stands, and Alan knows this because as a player he was present when

   633    Marler/Barbara was captured, but Thror was not on the scene and thus has

   634    no particular way to know what has occurred, a group must consider whether

   635    Alan may have Thror head for the deep dungeon to rescue Marler.

   636 

   637    The question is complex, and may be handled strategically at any number of

   638    levels. For example, some groups feel that, so long as Thror's rescue of

   639    Marler would make an exciting story, the fact that Thror "knows" nothing

   640    about the capture is irrelevant. Even within this perspective, however, we

   641    might note a distinction between Alan having Thror "happen accidentally"

   642    to head downwards, postulating an in-game coincidence to cover the

   643    out-of-game implausibility, as against Alan having Thror declaim in

   644    ringing tones that somehow he knows what has occurred, postulating a

   645    backwards revision of plot and thus annulling disjuncture. Another

   646    strategic choice, of course, would have Alan simply ignore what has

   647    happened to Marler, since Thror is "actually" ignorant of it; Alan and

   648    Barbara may hope that events will transpire such that Thror can rescue

   649    Marler, but the interior logic of the game-world in this case does not

   650    permit Alan's use of out-of-character knowledge to alter events in this

   651    fashion.

   652 

   653    At a theoretical level, the same issues obtain, particularly in the

   654    aesthetics of game design. Some groups prefer to keep rules and systems as

   655    far in the background as possible, because they see such structures as

   656    irrelevant to the game-world; that is, since Thror himself cannot be

   657    imagined thinking that he has a +7 to hit but a -2 to damage if he swings

   658    his fist, while he has a +3 to hit and a +6 to damage if he swings his

   659    sword, the strategic choices made by Alan in selecting the appropriate

   660    attack for the situation can be read as interfering with the interior

   661    game-logic. Other groups see such activity on Alan's part as an essential

   662    aspect of gaming as an activity. For example, one can treat a Dungeons and

   663    Dragons "dungeon-crawl" as a competition by the players, as strategic

   664    manipulators of an intricate mechanical system, against the Dungeon Master

   665    who has similarly manipulated the system to construct a difficult

   666    challenge; in this case, Barbara's choice to cast Magic Missile rather

   667    than Fireball because she makes a trade-off between damage inflicted upon

   668    a chosen target and the collateral damage which comes from the fireball

   669    spell, not to mention the specifics of range, casting-time, and material

   670    components, is anything but irrelevant: indeed, at one extreme, this may

   671    constitute much of the fun of play.

   672 

   673    In any event, the problem of negotiating the bridge between in-character

   674    and out-of-character is founded upon the structural separation effected at

   675    the outset of ritual. The social aggregation at the close of play thus

   676    amounts to an undoing of this separation: players step back from the

   677    in-character world (to whatever extent they postulated themselves as in

   678    it) in order to receive rewards or accolades, rehash enjoyable events, and

   679    generally begin shifting from a relatively discontinuous and separated

   680    game-time to an ordinary social event, itself marked eventually by the

   681    dispersal of the participants to their everyday lives.

   682 

   683    We have already seen that within the liminal phase, the "game itself,"

   684    classification, and identity are sites of considerable contestation and

   685    difficulty. But it is when we take into account the question of sacra and

   686    response that the parallel to initiation becomes particularly valuable. In

   687    particular, when we consider the interrelation of freedom and conformity,

   688    i.e. the political nature of liminality, we can begin to dig under the

   689    surface of gaming to discern the social relations and contracts which make

   690    play possible.

   691 

   692 Liminality in RPG's: The Social Rituals of Play

   693 

   694    One of Turner's great achievements in the study of ritual was his

   695    explication of the socio-political implications of ritual activity; while

   696    he was hardly alone in formulating this general perspective, Turner has

   697    the advantage for present purposes of having a relatively clear model that

   698    does not depend on extensive prior reading in the literature of

   699    anthropology or sociology.

   700 

   701    As liminality theory shaded into the origins of "practice" theory, it gave

   702    rise to a stock type of analysis. The symbols of a given ritual,

   703    particularly its liminal phase, would be explicated for purposes of

   704    situation, giving sufficient data for the reader to make sense of the

   705    further argument. The analyst would then attempt to demonstrate the

   706    following dynamic at work: within the liminal phase, neophytes -- and by

   707    extension, the society as a whole -- employ symbols and structures to

   708    challenge, test, and even undermine the structures and norms of authority;

   709    through the ritual process, however, particularly as the liminal phase

   710    moves towards conclusion in aggregation, all this "testing" ends up

   711    serving the purposes of established authority. Thus the ritual gives the

   712    illusion of freedom and choice, but actually enforces conformity; ritual

   713    is thus read as a technique of mystification by which cultural authority

   714    can be produced and reproduced by deceiving participants in all walks of

   715    society into accepting these authority structures as natural, given, and

   716    ideal.

   717 

   718    There is certainly truth in this reading. For example, numerous

   719    carnivalesque rituals (Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Carn`aval, Saturnalia,

   720    etc.) do indeed construct a special space and time in which to express

   721    discontent, disorder, radicalism, and challenge, all of which is then

   722    often deployed in a larger cultural context to emphasize the "rightness"

   723    of hegemonic discourses of authority. But more recently scholars have

   724    begun to grant that this reading is simplistic: Mardi Gras has on numerous

   725    occasions been used precisely to foment revolt, for example. Thus recent

   726    practice theory, when it has focused on ritual and liminality, has tended

   727    to admit that ritual does produce conformity through the illusion of free

   728    choice, but at the same time to grant that particular agents in particular

   729    historical situations have the ability to manipulate symbols to their own

   730    advantage, despite the apparent constraints (and apparent freedoms) of

   731    ritual structures.

   732 

   733    At present, I will not push the socio-political reading of RPG's beyond

   734    the narrow, local community. It would be interesting to consider how RPG's

   735    as ritual necessarily participate in and reconstitute the structures of

   736    society at large, but the data-set required to do such analysis

   737    meaningfully is prohibitively large. In addition, ethnography of

   738    game-sessions has barely begun, if indeed it can be said to have begun at

   739    all, and thus we have only the most dubious sort of anecdotal data. My

   740    concern, then, is with the socio-political workings within a gaming group,

   741    which amounts to an analytic perspective on the social contract of such a

   742    group as it intersects with other structures of gaming.

   743 

   744    It is worth noting here that the dominant Forge theory generally takes

   745    social contract to be a maximally distanced structure, standing at the

   746    upper extreme of the hierarchy of RPG structure. While there has been

   747    discussion of social contract and means by which it can be negotiated in

   748    order to avoid paradigmatic or personal conflict, the emphasis fits

   749    squarely within Edwards's overall approach. That is, because social

   750    contract is seen as at a considerable remove from in-game play issues, the

   751    most efficient way to deal with contractual problems is to discuss them

   752    outside of play, e.g. by confronting a problem player outside of game

   753    time, by formulating explicit social expectations before play, and so

   754    forth. But the fact remains that these problems generally arise within

   755    game play, and prior constraint cannot fully predict or forestall such

   756    difficulties. I suggest, in fact, that precisely because RPG's are ritual

   757    behaviors, social conflict is inherent in the form. At the same time, from

   758    a practical perspective, it is worth recognizing that because structural

   759    and sign-manipulation achieve their maximal expressions within liminality,

   760    with extra-ritual commentary discourse primarily functioning to protect

   761    ritual tradition against challenge, acting disjunctively to separate

   762    possible challenges from the fragile yet powerful matrix of ritual

   763    performance, play itself will necessary be the central locus of social

   764    contestation, and importantly it is only within its structures that

   765    conjunctive solutions are possible. In other words, while extra-gameplay

   766    discourse may try to protect a game against social contract problems

   767    arising within gameplay, such strategies cannot of themselves achieve

   768    consensus; the means by which a group can resolve such questions must be

   769    sought within play.

   770 

   771    Extending from this point, we may note a common tensive relationship

   772    between extra-ritual assertions of hegemony over performance on the one

   773    hand, and on the other a concomitant counter-balancing of the manipulation

   774    of ritual as a site for resistance. Simply put, it is often the case that

   775    as authoritative discourse tries to increase control over what happens

   776    within ritual performance externally, resistant elements become increasing

   777    empowered within performance and have greater efficacy without. In an RPG

   778    context specifically, it seems not unlikely that increasingly emphatic

   779    assertions of hegemonic control of appropriate play and in-game discourse

   780    will tend to evoke increasing resistance within play, which is to say that

   781    players within the game will tend to challenge strong norms asserted by

   782    the game-master (or the game text, the received tradition of appropriate

   783    play, etc.) the more forcefully they are expressed. One classic example

   784    returns us to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: the more Gary Gygax asserted

   785    his authority and authenticity in laying down constraints about "the right

   786    way to play," the more particular groups and players were drawn either to

   787    revise the game, to play other games, or to challenge Gygax's principles

   788    from within play. With respect to more ordinary assertions of authority,

   789    e.g. "railroading,"[29][21] the more overt the railroading the greater the

   790    tendency to resist; that is, if GM railroading involves providing genuine

   791    incentives to follow the predetermined plot structure, resistance may be

   792    minimal, while if a GM simply blocks all choices but the "correct" one

   793    through ad hoc and increasingly ridiculous means (deus ex machina

   794    maneuvers, etc.), players may find themselves led to beat their heads

   795    against the imposed limitations rather than find creative and enjoyable

   796    means by which to "play along."[30][22]

   797 

   798    My point is not simply that strong formulations of norms in play style and

   799    social interaction may produce the reverse of the desired effect, though

   800    this is worth consideration. Rather, I wish to emphasize that semiotic

   801    manipulation within play reacts to functions in the given structural

   802    context, such that assertions of social or technical norms naturally

   803    constitute important objects of gameplay contestation. As in initiation

   804    ritual, the imposition of social structures through such means as sacra or

   805    rules systems demands challenge and consideration within ritual; attempts

   806    to eliminate such semiotic manipulation within ritual liminality,

   807    including gameplay, can only provoke two kinds of response: resistance to

   808    the norms or elimination of ritual effectiveness. Thus the nature of

   809    gameplay as ritual activity necessarily determines its focus on

   810    manipulation and challenge of given structures.

   811 

   812    If RPG play can be read as reactive, it is neither mechanical nor passive,

   813    and a great strength of both structural and practice theories is the

   814    emphasis on dynamism in the relationship. If on the one hand ritual

   815    imposes upon its participants a series of interlinked structures and

   816    motivated signs, to which participants are then forced to react by the

   817    normative view of ritual activity and thought, at the same time those

   818    participants actually have considerable flexibility in doing so. This is

   819    where some of the earlier Marxist approaches overestimated the hegemony of

   820    authority-structures: they assumed that the imposition not only of signs

   821    but of structures through which to think them fully constrained initiates

   822    (for example) to conform to a rigid status quo; ritual could thus be read

   823    as a means of combating in advance nonconformity, resistance, and the

   824    potential for revolution, because it mystified the arbitrary, cultural

   825    nature of authority structures by transposing them into tradition, and

   826    then constructing a notion of tradition as natural and "given" in nature

   827    or meta-nature (the gods, the spirits, etc.). But as numerous critics of

   828    such ritual theories noted, this implies a special division in society:

   829    there are those who create authority-structures, who to some degree know

   830    that these structures are merely inventions, and then there are those who

   831    are simply slates inscribed upon by such authority structures through

   832    ritual; the only flexible part of this formulation would be the first

   833    part, in that it is possible that authorities too are entirely subject to

   834    what they take to be given structures and traditions, such that everyone

   835    is enslaved by ignorance of the functions and methods of their own

   836    society. Good Marxism this may be, but it does presume that people are

   837    entirely controlled and dominated by what they are told, and never think

   838    flexibly.[31][23] In fact, the approach deconstructs itself: if this is

   839    all true, how can the academic analyst spot the problem at all?

   840    Presumably, academia would constitute a constrained discourse that

   841    recognizes itself as an object of critical analysis, in which case how did

   842    it become so? The logical conclusion essentially would assert that the

   843    members of critical academic discursive circles are a different sort of

   844    people than those constrained by discourse, such that radical elitism

   845    becomes a naturalized and normative structure -- precisely that which the

   846    analysis desired to challenge in the first place.

   847 

   848    In RPG's, flexibility is relatively obvious: few if any players or

   849    observers would assert that gameplay is so constrained as to prevent

   850    flexibility in semiotic manipulation of any kind. At the same time, this

   851    creativity is still generally taken as a marker of the distinctive or even

   852    unique character of RPG's. Quite apart from the fact that this entails RPG

   853    theorists' participation in the reproduction of authoritarian notions of

   854    ritual behavior, a complex logical circle inserts itself in this

   855    understanding, common it seems from the inception of RPG's as a discrete

   856    ritual form. With the explication of this circularity, it will become

   857    clear why I emphasize an analogical parallel to liminality in religious

   858    ritual.

   859 

   860 Creativity as Circularity

   861 

   862    Overt acceptance of creativity and flexibility within RPG play is indeed

   863    unusual in ritual. Importantly, however, it is not the existence of such

   864    dynamism that marks a distinctive ritual mode, but the fact that

   865    participants of all levels recognize and accept this. By contrast, the

   866    modern Catholic Eucharist permits considerable scope for flexibility and

   867    creativity in each and every performance, by every participant at every

   868    level, but this is not commonly accepted as either present or desirable;

   869    we might note that the common disdain for Neopagan ritual invention among

   870    relatively knowledgeable mainstream religious Americans includes (but is

   871    not limited to) a distinction between "real" or "traditional" ritual as

   872    opposed to those which Neopagans "make up."[32][24] In this context, we

   873    can read the ideological split as a claim against creativity within the

   874    special context of ritual, importantly different from how RPG discourse

   875    consciously constructs itself as creative and dynamic.[33][25]

   876 

   877    To put this in terms of initiation, we find that the liminal phase

   878    involves flexibility and invention on the parts of not only the neophytes

   879    but also the entire society; at the same time, such flexibility is

   880    commonly denied by the hegemonic discourse, as already indicated by the

   881    tendency to conceive of neophyte interaction with sacra as "instruction"

   882    rather than creative engagement. Similarly, we find numerous discourses

   883    about carnivalesque ritual formulated in terms of what has been called a

   884    "hydraulic" theory: carnivals act as valves, allowing participants to

   885    "blow off steam" rather than harness it to antisocial ends. By permitting

   886    marginal elements of society to "act out" their frustrations, authorities

   887    retain control of real power and maintain the stability of those they

   888    dominate. Real challenge or engagement with social rules is annulled,

   889    because it "doesn't count" in ritual space.

   890 

   891    Thus the demarcation of ritual space and time -- that formal construction

   892    of division between ritual and everything else central to what Catherine

   893    Bell calls "ritualization" -- lends itself to protection of social norms.

   894    In RPG's, with their discourse of invention and creativity, such

   895    protection seems non-present or at least marginal. But this accords with

   896    expectations: by asserting that RPG gameplay constitutes a protected space

   897    in which to deal with the limited range of issues at stake in a given

   898    game, RPG's naturally tend to assert not only that gameplay permits

   899    flexible engagement with social norms but also that the effects of

   900    exterior norms on players do not play a significant role in the game. For

   901    example, the protection of RPG's allows a male player to play a female

   902    character, a heterosexual player to play a homosexual character, without

   903    its being read as relevant to the player's out-of-game identity; we do

   904    not, that is, assume that a male player who chooses a female character is

   905    actually conflicted about his sexual identity. At the same time, this

   906    entails that the female character in question, if she appears as a

   907    chauvinist stereotype, cannot "officially" be read to imply chauvinism on

   908    the part of the player.

   909 

   910    While for majority players -- white, male, middle-class -- this freedom

   911    may not appear problematic, it entails real difficulties when (especially)

   912    female players enter the game situation, most especially if such players

   913    have a romantic and/or sexual affiliation with another player. Indeed,

   914    female players often find themselves read as "not serious," "just the GM's

   915    girlfriend," and so forth. When such players experience events in

   916    game-time, whether plot events effected by other players or overtly

   917    structural elements constructed within the game rules, their responses may

   918    be read as problematic for in-game discourse. To take an extreme example,

   919    if a female player reacts (in-character or out, in-game or out) negatively

   920    to a rape scene perpetrated upon her (or any) character, some groups will

   921    interpret this as a failure by the player to recognize the lines

   922    separating gameplay from ordinary discourse; more insidiously, perhaps,

   923    the player may feel that she should not overtly respond negatively,

   924    precisely because she accepts that other players grant this absolute

   925    division of discursive spaces, de-legitimizing her own emotional response

   926    as confirmation that she is not a "serious" player.

   927 

   928    The common RPG theoretical response to such a situation, at least in

   929    recent times, is to grant the legitimacy of the player's response. But

   930    this is formulated as a special case: certain types of in-game discourse

   931    "cross the lines" or "go overboard." By implication, normative in-game

   932    activity does not require such responses, and thus this theoretically

   933    symptomatic treatment of the situation continues to emphasize that

   934    gameplay constitutes a protected space by constructing new social-contract

   935    rules to prevent specific problems. That is, theoretical criticism of the

   936    rape situation proposed above amounts to this: RPG groups and games ought

   937    to have rules that say that players' characters cannot be raped. But this

   938    misses the point. On the one hand, it constrains RPG discourse to a

   939    limited range of social issues, making commentary and criticism of rape

   940    (for example) simply a prohibited discourse, undermining the very dynamic

   941    freedom which is supposed to permit a player to deal with situations that

   942    he or she would or could not encounter in real life; on the other, it

   943    retains and protects the hegemony of RPG discourse as something within

   944    which players may not respond personally or emotionally by making those

   945    situations in which such responses are legitimate into abnormal cases.

   946 

   947    Continuing the comparison to initiatory ritual in particular, we have here

   948    an extra-ritual response to contingent historical circumstance through

   949    limitation. In the case of the Bemba girls' initiation mentioned above,

   950    let us suppose that a girl responds to the figurine by saying, "If I

   951    become like the figurine, the white organizations that provide support and

   952    health services will give extra assistance even outside of infant care;

   953    therefore for my family in the current situation the appropriate answer to

   954    the riddle is that I should throw over tradition and use pregnancy to

   955    create a cargo-cult reciprocity with whites."[34][26] Here we see a

   956    creative, dynamic response to the symbolic structures proposed, but with

   957    an ultimate response at odds with the hegemonic intent. An obvious

   958    counter-response would add additional symbols and instructions to prevent

   959    this response by future neophytes, and perhaps provide extra-ritual

   960    instruction of this particular neophyte so as to annul the validity of her

   961    solution.

   962 

   963    In RPG ritual discourse, the same structure of constraint through

   964    piecemeal placation consistently obtains. To the extent that RPG players

   965    understand themselves as creative and dynamic, not controlled by

   966    encultured norms, they are enabled to reproduce challenged norms within

   967    gameplay as protected space. That is, the liberation and protection

   968    afforded players with respect to uneasy social issues tends only to enable

   969    players who (often unconsciously) represent majority discourses to reenact

   970    the violence of those social categories in a hegemonically protected

   971    fashion, defended by the structure of the RPG as separated and distinct.

   972    If the white, male player's black, female character enacts stereotypes,

   973    the notional freedom explored merely reproduces dubious social norms, an

   974    effect seen overtly in fantasy and science fiction book cover images (e.g.

   975    the work of Boris Vallejo), with their manly men with weapons and

   976    voluptuous women in revealing clothing.

   977 

   978    To shift the modalities of play from reproductive to transformational may

   979    be desirable, but it is unclear how this might be effected. While RPG

   980    ritual liminality permits exploration, its structured and constrained

   981    nature acts to defend stereotype reproduction as "freedom" while blocking

   982    challenges thereto as failures of player technique or understanding.

   983    Logically, practical game-construction cannot merely strive to forestall

   984    deployment of stereotypes, but must work actively to undermine their

   985    function within gameplay; it is here that critical formation of

   986    counter-hegemonic moves (e.g. feminist game design) must focus effort, at

   987    the same time recognizing that simply formulating a game that

   988    pre-determines the boundaries of appropriate and inappropriate structure

   989    challenges cannot achieve anything.

   990 

   991 Disjuncture and Continuity

   992 

   993    As we have seen, the liminal phase of passage ritual, or more broadly the

   994    "sacred space" effected by social disjunctures outlining any ritual

   995    practice, affords a privileged site for examination and contestation of

   996    extra-ritual concerns; this sacred space in RPG's is found in gameplay,

   997    often understood as a "safe" place for exploration, and distinguished from

   998    other active spaces by a number of explicit and more subtle formations. So

   999    far, I have focused on how such privilege and safety becomes a

  1000    double-edged sword, permitting some forms of experimentation while denying

  1001    others legitimacy, and also undercutting the radicalism of experiment to

  1002    render it harmless. But as with any ritual, the protective structures that

  1003    reproduce hegemonic discourse formations are themselves genuinely

  1004    threatened by in-ritual challenges. It is worth considering how such

  1005    challenge may be formulated through semiotic manipulation in gameplay.

  1006 

  1007    In The Savage Mind, Claude Levi-Strauss suggested that ritual tends to be

  1008    conjunctive, as opposed to the disjunctive, classifying emphasis of myth.

  1009    His meaning is best expressed, perhaps, in a discussion of the difference

  1010    between game and rite:

  1011 

  1012    All games are defined by a set of rules which in practice allow the

  1013    playing of any number of matches. Ritual, which is also 'played', is on

  1014    the other hand, like a favoured instance of a game, remembered from among

  1015    the possible ones because it is the only one which results in a particular

  1016    type of equilibrium between the two sides. The transposition is readily

  1017    seen in the case of the Gahuku-Gama of New Guinea who have learnt football

  1018    but who will play, several days running, as many matches as are necessary

  1019    for both sides to reach the same score. This is treating a game as a

  1020    ritual.... Games thus appear to have a disjunctive effect: they end in the

  1021    establishment of a difference between individual players or teams where

  1022    originally there was no indication of inequality. And at the end of the

  1023    game they are distinguished into winners and losers. Ritual, on the other

  1024    hand, is the exact inverse: it conjoins, for it brings about a union ...

  1025    or in any case an organic relation between two initially separate

  1026    groups....[35][27]

  1027 

  1028    The point is that a game like soccer or Monopoly takes a group of people

  1029    not initially distinct in game terms and divides them into at least two

  1030    classes (winners and losers). By contrast, the ritual performance of

  1031    soccer described here does not conclude until all players have been made

  1032    equivalent; latent in Levi-Strauss's formulation is that the natives

  1033    project their preexisting social divisions upon the game by picking teams

  1034    upon non-arbitrary given grounds. For example, they might decide that each

  1035    team will be made up exclusively of initiated men of a given moiety, so

  1036    that the teams represent moieties; through the ritual process, they then

  1037    construct a situation in which this difference is asserted as

  1038    non-absolute. This is arguably the point of the modern Olympic Games:

  1039    national participation through representative athletes is supposed to

  1040    assert that all men are brothers, that superiority is individual and not

  1041    national, and so forth.

  1042 

  1043    Setting aside the numerous quite serious problems with L vi-Strauss's

  1044    theory with respect to ritual as a broad range of behaviors -- indeed, I

  1045    doubt he intended that it be taken as a general principle in the first

  1046    place -- we can see this dynamic at work in a major RPG discourse,

  1047    particularly that which emphasizes the collaborative nature of play. As we

  1048    have already seen, in Kim's Collaborative Storytelling model "play is

  1049    understood as multiple authors producing a single discourse and a single

  1050    story." The same model discourages secrets among participants, and judges

  1051    success partly by whether "all of the participants significantly

  1052    contributed to that discourse." Following up Levi-Strauss's notion, we can

  1053    see here a striving toward conjunction and unity, as against disjuncture

  1054    in the form of "winning" or limited player dominance of the discourse. In

  1055    other words, one of the distinctive characteristics of RPG's as opposed to

  1056    more traditional games is precisely that they fit a ritual rather than a

  1057    game model.

  1058 

  1059    At the same time, a more serious deployment of structural and practice

  1060    perspectives on the semiotic elements of both religious and RPG ritual

  1061    must recognize the oversimplification inherent in this

  1062    conjunction/division split. First, that there are no winners or losers

  1063    cannot be accepted uncritically. Precisely because a dominant RPG

  1064    discourse denies such divisions, we must consider the possibility that

  1065    play imposes upon players a notional unity by denying the option to seek

  1066    or even accept division. After all, if we extend this rhetoric of unity,

  1067    it can be taken as a claim that in-game, all players are equal and in fact

  1068    equivalent, which may be deployed strategically by situationally- or

  1069    socially-dominant players to assert that complaints are anti-group and

  1070    thus mark bad players. In this context, the discourse of collaboration and

  1071    unity can support the problematic use of hegemonic authoritarian or

  1072    oppressive discourse, as discussed previously in the context of

  1073    chauvinism.

  1074 

  1075    But not all such challenge necessarily supports authority or serves as an

  1076    instrument of oppression. To take a simple example, the rhetoric of unity

  1077    and conjunction may be deployed to block favoritism or to identify problem

  1078    players as those who either try to dominate play or refuse to participate

  1079    at all. Especially in the latter case, the unifying effect of ritual

  1080    process may enable a group to draw out a timid player, emphasizing further

  1081    the liminal "safety" of game space.

  1082 

  1083    More interestingly, however, the conjunctive nature of ritual process may

  1084    act together with the aggregation of ritual closure to effect genuine

  1085    social alteration. A play group is often formed on an ad hoc basis, where

  1086    some players do not know each other well outside of the game context, and

  1087    indeed may not have met. Through successful ritual collaboration in a

  1088    shared space understood as distinct from other social spaces, a new social

  1089    group forms, enabling friendship and other forms of collaboration that

  1090    refer to the constructed game-space rather than to other social

  1091    structures. That is, precisely because gameplay is at once divided from

  1092    other social spaces and nominally focused upon a limited set of

  1093    predetermined issues, and because such rituals do act conjunctively by

  1094    taking given divisions and annulling "winner and loser" categorizations,

  1095    gameplay tends naturally to formulate an alternative social framework.

  1096    Particularly for those who find mainstream, dominant social frameworks

  1097    problematic or dangerous, gameplay can constitute a controlled social

  1098    space in which to succeed and seek liberation.

  1099 

  1100    However psychologically supportive and validating such an alternative

  1101    framework may be -- and it is worth noting that some psychologists have

  1102    pointed to RPG's as valuable for self-exploration and validation among

  1103    (especially) teenagers -- from a broader social perspective we should

  1104    recognize that this essentially entails a continuation of the initiation

  1105    discourse. Turner notes that it is common that the neophytes, whatever

  1106    their extra-ritual socio-economic status, are as part of the liminal

  1107    leveling considered equivalent. While friendships among those

  1108    simultaneously initiated often extend beyond the ritual situation, social

  1109    status, factored out within liminality, is not particularly affected by

  1110    such friendships. That is, it could be argued that the shared space of

  1111    ritual, although it permits and even demands reflection upon social

  1112    inequalities, ultimately acts not only to affirm these inequalities as

  1113    natural and given, but also deludes those in inferior positions into

  1114    thinking that they achieve a measure of equality that is in fact

  1115    nonexistent. From this perspective, we can see that RPG's may act

  1116    simultaneously to affirm and assist players psychologically, and at the

  1117    same time discourage them from acting upon or challenging the inequities

  1118    of modern social dynamics. Anecdotally, at least, we seem to see this in

  1119    stereotypes of RPG players as "geeks" or "nerds" who, by participating in

  1120    gaming, in conventions, and generally in a subculture, are thereby

  1121    diverted or distracted from real social action or mobilization. To

  1122    formulate a rather overstated Marxist reading, the recognition of RPG's as

  1123    ritual is confirmed by its ability to serve as an opiate for the

  1124    oppressed.

  1125 

  1126 Conclusions: Toward an RPG of Practical Reason

  1127 

  1128    At present, RPG theory primarily acts as an exterior, supporting discourse

  1129    referred toward the "real thing" -- gameplay. Ironically, criticism of

  1130    some RPG theory as irrelevant or trivial, on the ground that it is not

  1131    practical for play goals, actually serves to grant power and hegemony to

  1132    theoretical discourse: the very fact that gameplay so strongly formulates

  1133    the barriers between in-game and out-of-game, play and system,

  1134    in-character and out-of-character, reproduces the mystification of

  1135    theory's active role in discourse construction. As a way of concluding