By W.A. Hawkes-Robinson (Hawke Robinson)
Original draft (c) 2006
See modification for these documents for most recent revision.
RPG Research is also aggregating documentation on considerations for optimizing the RPG experience, whether you are a researcher, professional, or layperson just wishing to have the best gaming experience possible.
Here is a summary of many observations made over the decades through various experiments in trying to optimize the RPG experience. This is from a huge pile of hundreds of documents I (Hawke Robinson) have written, spanning over 15+ years of intentional research (and over 40 years of general RPG experience). It will likely take me a year or more to finish integrating all that information into this document. All of the placeholder topics I currently have documents to fill in the blanks, but I time is the challenge in doing so. Bit by bit I am uploading all that content here.
UPDATE: 20180910, there is a planned book publication underway for a more organized and complete version of these documents some time in 2019. Watch the RPG Publishers website for publication details and release date.
Much of the information in these RPG Optimization documents begins with preludes of personal experiences and observations of gaming since the 1970s onward, then later focuses on more semi-formal and formal research efforts (though not fully formalized IRB research).
Use the table of contents to jump to the sections you are most interested in.
The information posted in these documents is based both on personal and others' observations (most of which include thousands of hours of recorded RPG sessions), verbal feedback, and formal assessment forms from participants.
In the future, pending finances and staffing availability, I hope to test all of these claims with more formal controlled research (some day).
Scores of variables were taken into consideration and repeatedly tweaked to try to find some level of causal changes, but at this stage are probably only at best correlative, about the immersion & enjoyment levels of participants.
There are plenty of potential confounds here, and so every statement should have that taken into consideration that these should be further researched with more rigorous techniques.
However, implementation of these observations does seem to have lead to consistently repeatable higher assessment & observation scores.
I hope others find this useful for trying to optimize their own RPG sessions.
Much of this research was in non-therapeutic and non-educational settings, just standard leisure activity of tabletop role-playing games. Others are from my many years of programs with clients, students, and facilitators.
Though some educational settings, and some therapy-related issues are mentioned in these documents, others focus on those (educational & therapeutic focused) topics, they are not the primary focus of these documents (unless otherwise specified).
Some of these considerations in these documents include some of the people in these programs were known to be people with diagnoses of Autism spectrum, social phobias, disruptive personality types, etc.
While there are more scientifically rigorous studies listed, under way, and planned in the future, including an upcoming book in 2019, these documents are far more variable in formality, but still provide useful data and insights to help others trying to find ways to maximize the RPG experience for their participants.
Since questions on these topics come up pretty much every month, I will try to fill in the blanks for the huge amount of data gleaned over the decades.
These documents will hopefully, over time, provide many answers to people trying to optimize the experience for their players. Some portions of these documents may eventually be merged into the FAQs section of the site.
I am using these terms in the following ways:
The degree to which the RPG participant is engrossed in the activity.
This is measurable on Likert-style scales using a wide number of TR/RT assessment tools.
An optimal state of immersion that can lead to maximal performance by the participant.
This is trickier to measure, while there are degrees of flow, it is somewhat binary in different areas. The more one experiences each of the areas as "on" versus "off", the more intense the flow experience.
When the participant experiences all aspects as "on", they are most likely in the most productive and maximal performance state possible, with the highest enjoyment levels.
If you aren't familiar with flow, you may know it as "being in the zone" in sports. The main proponent of the flow concept is Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.
The key is to balance challenge, environment, participant abilities, intrinsic motivation, and many other variables, so that the participant has an intense, distinctive experience, and is at their optimal state of performance.
Here is a video lecture by Hawke Robinson providing some examples of Flow State experiences in sports and gaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbtma-4qUl8
The core components of Flow Theory, as quoted from a summary on Wikipedia:
"Jeanne Nakamura and Csíkszentmihályi identify the following six factors as encompassing an experience of flow.[2]
Those aspects can appear independently of each other, but only in combination do they constitute a so-called flow experience. Additionally, psychology writer Kendra Cherry has mentioned three other components that Csíkszentmihályi lists as being a part of the flow experience:[3]
Just as with the conditions listed above, these conditions can be independent of one another."
The image below is the most common model used to reflect all the variables that need to be perfectly balanced to get into the ideal flow, hitting that "sweet spot" in the center for maximal flow experience.
Quoting from Wikipedia's summary:
"Flow theory postulates three conditions that have to be met to achieve a flow state:
However, it was argued that the antecedent factors of flow are interrelated, as a perceived balance between challenges and skills requires that one knows what he or she has to do (clear goals) and how successful he or she is in doing it (immediate feedback). Thus, a perceived fit of skills and task demands can be identified as the central precondition of flow experiences.[15]"
Related to role-playing games, I have found a lot of variables can improve the likelihood of participants (including the GM) experiencing Flow more frequently and for longer durations. That is what most of the experiments from 2012 through 2014 were focused on. There are a lot of things that can "take a person out" of flow, or prevent them ever experiencing it. But based on the many leisure experience assessment tools I've used for RPG participants, everything listed for qualifying as flow experience was experienced repeatedly by all participants at one point or another. Sometimes everyone in the group experienced it simultaneously, while more often individuals experience it during key points on their own at different intervals than their fellow participants.
The list of variables is quite lengthy. If there are just a little "off" the participants can still have good notable immersive experiences experiences but less likely to achieve full flow state.
If these variables are considerably outside of recommended parameters, then it can completely prevent anyone from experiencing flow in the game.
Again these experiments focused primarily on tabletop RPG, but are to various degrees applicable to LARP as well.
The above is so subjective and difficult to specify (many papers unto themselves), but assuming a qualified GM, and cooperative players (though that wasn't always the case during these experiments, there was a little bit of a "weeding out" process of the most disruptive players that were unwilling to follow the code of conduct consistently), most of the experiments focused on environmental factors to increase the likelihood of flow experiences, that is what the majority of this document covers.
Different Interaction Patterns
Different activities interact with people and the environment in a variety of ways. These interactions have different effects on those involved. Role-playing games come in several different interaction styles. Generally tabletop is cooperative, combat LARP competitive, computer-based competitive, and SAB/M introspective. Elliot M. Avedon detailed 8 interaction patterns related to recreation and therapeutic recreation, from the behavioral sciences perspective, in his 1974 book "Therapeutic Recreation Service - An Applied Behavioral Science Appoach.".
Here is a summary diagram created by W.A. Hawkes-Robinson on those 8 interaction patterns, and how different RPG formats apply.