Donate today to building the Wheelchair Fiendly RPG Trailer to provide role-playing games in all forms to those people with special needs. - https://www.gofundme.com/rpgtrailer
Yesterday they published an online article, in conjunction with a related video documentary on Autism and Live-Action Role-Playing.
http://www.vice.com/read/at-this-danish-school-larping-is-the-future-of-education-482
It is a good high-level article on the power of RPGs to increase immersion and other benefits when used in an academic setting. The video that is also embedded in the article is a nice example of the many benefits of LARP for Autism too.
The article is primarily about using LARP for Education, and specifically the Danish school I have mentioned for years.
Twice this year they have interviewed me on related topics.
Fortunately, they included part of one of their two interviews they conducted, and were quite generous in using many parts and links to my research and quotes from the second interview.
Please do check it out, and spread the word to others.
Happy Gaming!
-Hawke Robinson
I am archiving a copy of the article below in case it disappears or the link changes:
By Mike Pearl
Staff Writer
Østerkov Efterskole students. Screencap via YouTube user XEKZMoeffer
At Østerkov Efterskole, a boarding school in Hobro, Denmark, immersion in the subject matter is the central educational strategy. Students can be immersed in literature, immersed in history, or even immersed in a mission through outer space as they flee from futuristic American astronauts, according to founder and headmaster Mads Lunau.
"Actually, in that setting, [the US] has aligned with the Chinese against the Danish fleet, so they have to align to beat us. But there is one [Danish] ship that survived, and it's traveling through space," Lunau told VICE.
Some kind of lame classroom board game? Not so much. According to Lunau, "it's more like LARP," referring to the global phenomenon also known as live action roleplaying, often oversimplified as a mix between Dungeons & Dragons, and Comic Con-style cosplay, or mixed up with Civil War reenactment in the US.
In the US, LARPers got a little too much media exposure back in the 2000s, and the realization that dorky grown-ups with in costumes with swords were pretending to fight each other in the woods resulted in a barrage of online mockery.
Østerkov Efterskole students. Screencap via YouTube user XEKZMoeffer
But LARPing in Denmark and elsewhere in Scandinavia, while also a nerdy pastime, can be a little more intense. In its most extreme, it looks less like a Renaissance Faire, and more like an Ingmar Bergman film—with elaborate historical experiences that don't allow any non-functional, or non-period props. While a LARP experience can use the "mechanics of a board game" to keep it fun and on-rails, that doesn't begin to capture the experience, Lunau told us. "It's more something where you tell the story, or you're part of the story," he said.
LARP is a motivational tool at Østerkov. In what Lunau calls an "ordinary educational system," you do things in the hopes that you're pleasing the teacher. He sees this as a "narrow" motivation, and one that "certainly isn't the motivation you get when you get into your work life."
Østerkov Efterskole headmaster Mads Lunau. Photo by Flemming Laursen
Østerkov Efterskole (efterskole means "afterschool") is a boarding school where students aged 14- to 18-years-old attend a one-year program. Østerkov might be on the weirder side for an efterskole, but it still fits into the efterskole box. These schools are a Danish tradition that would seem just generally weird to the test-score fanatics in places like the United States.
Watch our full-length doc: LARPing Saved My Life
The time you spend in a totally optional efterskole—usually just after wrapping up your primary education—is your time to get away from your parents, discover yourself, get onto the college track, study art and music, or just maybe fool around with other teens. Now, in the case of Østerkov Efterskole, you can do all that while going on interactive adventures through history.
"We made a whole school using narrative to motivate young people or students to get into the subjects—a normal way to study," Lunau said.
Except in this normal school there are tons of props and costumes. "We have a lot of props and dress outfits from the school," he said. It's not a school where you learn to LARP, though, so the kids don't have to learn to sew their own tunics. In fact, costumes are optional. "They are not told to dress up, but it gives them a better feeling," Lunau said.
Østerkov Efterskole. Photo by Flemming Laursen
Not so fast with the prosthetic elf ears, though. "Fantasy is not really part of the agenda here," Lunau claimed, although he added that "they do a lot of fantasy playing when they use the games in their spare time." But on the whole, the game narratives at Østerkov are educational: They come from "narratives in history, or from society or from literature." In short, they're LARPing their way through the dusty old material from their textbooks.
Lunau founded the school ten years ago, basing it on an idea that had been cooking for decades. In the 80s and 90s Lunau and his associate Malik Hyltoft worked as organizers in the Danish gaming world. "We observed a lot of young people absorbing a lot of knowledge in order to play the games. Thick books in foreign languages containing complex descriptions of processes, rules and environments, or large quantities of different fiction—or historically based literature," Lunau told American researcher and recreation therapist Hawke Robinson in an email provided to VICE. Robinson is the founder of the RPG research center, and works with students in Spokane, Washington, using RPGs as what he calls an"intervention modality," for students who require unconventional forms of education.
Østerkov Efterskole. Photo by Flemming Laursen
Lunau's idea was met with little resistance, because of Denmark's more flexible education system, along with a really laid back education minister who Lunau says responded to the idea by going, "'this is interesting, so try it out.'" The eventual closure of one school wouldn't be a big deal, the minister reasoned, "but if it did work, with some good results, it would be good for everybody," Lunau said.
Such positive results, he hoped, might be particularly dramatic for special needs kids.
About 10 of Østerkov's 90 students have what Lunau calls "serious challenges," among them autism and major ADHD. These students are aided by three on-staff special needs teachers. About 30 other students cope with lighter disabilities, such as dyslexia, and dyscalculia.
Still from the VICE documentaryLARPing Saved My Life
Hawke Robinson tracked down Lunau because the smaller operation he runs in Washington State also features LARPing as an education tool, particularly for special needs students. Often Robinson's version is less academic, focused instead on education with simple, real-world applications.
"Let's say there's a goal that says we want this group to learn how to use the public transit system in Tacoma," Robinson told VICE. The exercise that teaches them to use the bus is a tabletop RPG, that turns into LARPing in the final chapter. "You're all agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," the game begins—placing the students squarely in the comfort of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, instead of the boring real world. As the students uncover the clues, they'll uncover an evil plan to release a virus using the public transit system in Tacoma—one that will turn everybody into zombies. "They follow some clues and ride a couple of buses to key locations to try to thwart the bad guy's plans," Robinson said.
Still from the VICE documentaryLARPing Saved My Life
Lunau's program, focuses instead on Danish school curriculum. "So if you want them to know about the European Union, they actually play foreign ministers having a meeting," he explained, "or they have an environmental conference where they try to solve the world's problems"—an idea not far removed from the Model United Nations.
"This week we're doing Ancient Rome," he said. Students have to conduct the Roman Senate, battle Roman adversaries like Carthage, build aqueducts, and mine the Alps to support the ancient Roman war machine.
Simulated experience is, in theory, a mnemonic device, helping the kids remember important information they'll be tested on later. It's an assertion that has showed up in promising scientific research, but it likely deserves further exploration.
However, in the case of the both the American and Danish programs, there's a bonus outcome for kids with autism and Aspergers, and it's an ironic one, considering LARPing's geeky reputation: an improved ability to interact with other people in a healthy way. Robinson's program works by putting kids and adults with social difficulties in a setting where they're working together for a common goal, and he says it works. "They're getting core social skills that really don't get developed in a classroom setting or video game setting."
A 2008 paper by psychiatrist Jacqueline Countryman also stresses the importance of group interactions and roleplaying in teaching social skills to students with autism. Robinson documents his findings, and posts volume after volume of his own research at the RPG Research Center website, where his papers apparently await the scrutiny of mainstream neuroscience and educational researchers.
Lunau fully acknowledges the significant portion of his students who go, in his words, "'This is great! We also LARP in school!'" and they're there because their hobby makes school less boring for them. But, he insisted, "it's not a school for LARPers—it just attracts them."
"You can use this system in a normal school if you wanted to," he added. That kind of judicious dissemination of his ideas—just a LARP or two sprinkled into a more conventional curriculum—might happen down the line, but things seem to be moving even faster than that: a whole new LARPing-focused efterskole is opening in Denmark, according to Lunau. "We are happy that we are not the only one in the world. Now we're two." What's more, at least one student who attended the school the year it opened is so committed to this kind of pedagogy that he's returned this year as a substitute teacher.
As for more conventional results, Lunau says they're seeing those too.
"We had a girl that was a special needs student and she was not doing well in her former school," he said. "And we had her for exams in history." Her teacher was a bit nervous when she had to explain the inner workings of the Roman Republic's government. But sure enough she demonstrated fluency with the ways the Senate decided things, along with "what the different roles of the senate were, and how it worked with the rest of the Italian people." According to Lunau, "She received what I think would be a B or A- in American grading system," but he said there was one last question thrown at her before the test administrator was satisfied: "How did you do this?"
Her answer, according to Lunau: "'It was not difficult because I was there.'"
Watch our full length film LARPing Saved My Life
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NEW YORK — It's an icy Tuesday afternoon on Manhattan's Upper West Side, but in Room 302 of Barnard Hall, the freshmen are wrapped in togas. Socrates is on trial.
The class session will inevitably end in a crucial vote on the fate of the Greek philosopher, so one of the 16 students suggests that the charges be posted. Theresa Christensen, a tall freshman who is clearly in charge, pops the top off a dry-erase marker and quickly writes: "Socrates is an impious teacher who seeks to corrupt the youth and undermine the strength of Athenian democracy and society."
The next hour goes by in a blur: After a quick prayer to the goddess Themis, the six Barnard College students serving as the two sides take turns passionately condemning or defending the philosopher. A loud, sometimes raucous debate follows as the session — part freewheeling discussion, part improv session — heats up. The speeches inevitably lead to pointed cross-examinations and cheers — or jeers — from the crowd.
The class is part of a quiet revolution taking place at colleges across the USA and abroad, one that takes an unusual approach to teaching history. Called Reacting to the Past, this teaching method rejects lectures and laptops, instead asking students to stand up, dress up and compete against one another. They do intensive research on key moments in history, then act them out over a series of class sessions. History, in other words, as a giant, live-action role-playing game.
"Students live in these worlds of social competition, whether it's Facebook friends or leveling (up) in video games — that's part of what motivates us," says Barnard history professor Mark Carnes, who has pioneered the history games over the past 14 years. "And to banish it from our motivational arsenal is to guarantee that we've lost a lot of motivational power."
Now in use at about 350 colleges and universities, from Ivy League campuses to community colleges and even in a few prison classrooms, the games span much of world history: the trials of Socrates, Galileo and the 17th-century Boston religious leader Anne Hutchinson, the Crusades, the French Revolution, the birth of India and women's suffrage in turn-of-the-century New York City, among other topics.
Fourteen games have been published so far, but another 60 are in development, part of a movement among college instructors worldwide. In 2013, a handful of instructors formed the Reacting Consortium, a non-profit group that now runs the program.
The idea came to Carnes more than 20 years ago, when he began to realize that, despite his own hard work and his students' obvious intelligence, his history classes simply weren't engaging.
"I had smart students, but they weren't giving it their all," he says. "This was not their passion. They were doing enough to get A's, but it didn't deeply resonate in their lives."
He soon realized that the problem was not new. Yale University literature professor Henry Seiden Canby had long ago pointed out the "deathly indifference that hangs like a fog bank" over the American university, marveling at "the astonishing power of the undergraduate mind to resist the intrusion of knowledge."
Carnes checked the date of Canby's observations: 1915.
The culprit, Canby had decided, was the social life of students. Even at the turn of the century, before automobiles and radios and the Internet, students simply had more interesting things tugging on their attention. Greek life, collegiate sports, clubs, drinking and pranks were all taking their toll. Colleges, even the best colleges in the world, were struggling to keep up.
A century later, Carnes realized, classroom instruction had improved, as had the academic credentials of most college professors. But most students were still focused on anything but classwork. "They're doing something else that's more compelling — or they're too tired because they were out doing the things that are more compelling," he says.
Much of their extracurricular excitement, he realized, revolved around competition. So Carnes decided he would bring students' love of "subversive play" into the classroom. He realized this was a decidedly unpopular position for a college professor to stake out. His colleagues frowned on competition of nearly any sort. Competition created winners and losers.
"We've got this notion that if you lose, your ego is going to be shattered," Carnes says. "And what really happens is that by not giving students these experiences in play modes, they end up having a superficial sense that 'they can do anything,' and then they get turned down by their girlfriend or they get fired from a job and they're shattered. They just don't have any experience with this — or they just don't take any risks at all."
So one day he asked two students to run a classroom debate. He found that almost instantly the focus shifted "from me to them." Students, he realized, naturally gravitate to other students, especially when something is at stake.
Since Carnes is the guy who gives out grades, the class members still kept him in their field of vision. After the first session, he moved his chair back 5 feet from the discussion table. "Nobody even commented on it," he said. The next session, he moved his chair to the back of the room. It's been there ever since.
What many teachers forget is that the flip side of the coin labeled "competition" is "teamwork." In the games that came out of those first debates, teams of students compete to outdo each other, in the process diving deeply into the material in order to give their side the upper hand. In the process, Carnes found, students immerse themselves in the characters and even come to love them.
"It's a month of their lives," he says. "It sucks them in." After the game is over, the winners exult and the losers sulk. "For many of them, they call home and they talk about this experience and it's sort of a painful one. This is the class that students talk about with their parents."
The curriculum is challenging. Students must read hundreds of pages of background, much of it in the form of historical documents, and write several papers. Grading is based not only on their writing but also on their mastery of historical characters' points of view and their ability to make them come to life in class. Carnes laughs as he recalls that a student guide to Smith College, which has embraced the games, said they appeared fun and easy but actually tricked students into doing more work than all other classes combined. "Be careful!" it warned.
James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, says the games clearly engage students, helping them "situate themselves in the past" in a way that simply reading about history doesn't.
"There's a lot there that contributes greatly to student learning in history and to helping students think historically, which is our goal," he says. Most historians believe that thinking historically is more important than "inculcating an ability to memorize names, dates and facts. And I think 'Reacting' does that."
Each game hews closely to history, except at the end. That's when students must make their own judgments about the small slice of history playing out in front of them.
In class this afternoon, Daisy Homolka, 18, a freshman from Asheville, N.C., made a passionate defense of Socrates, telling classmates, "He does not tell people what to think — he asks them what they think." It must have been persuasive, because minutes later the class defied history and narrowly voted to acquit Socrates. As Christensen read the verdict, a cheer rose from his defenders. No suicide by hemlock after all.
"I love being able to share my opinions and I love the public speaking aspect of the class," says an energized Homolka. "We definitely get kind of rowdy, but that's part of the fun."
Reacting instructors report better — in some cases perfect — class attendance, fewer students dropping or failing classes and engagement that's often stratospheric. "What everyone says about Reacting classes is that students show up," Carnes says. "Part of it is they don't know what's going to happen that day. They don't know who's going to win a particular debate, what sort of thing is going to occur, and there is an element, in these worlds, of drama, which is true of any good competition."
Carnes last year published a book on his experiences. In one chapter he recounts a class on the trial of Hutchinson, the New England religious leader. In it, a student who rarely speaks in class finally rises to defend Hutchinson and is verbally smacked down by a more polished speaker. Eventually, though, the defender — in the book, Carnes calls her "Veronica" — works up the courage to fight back and challenge her classmate, perhaps not as eloquently but in a heartfelt way.
Afterward, Carnes marvels at her performance. As he and Veronica walk across campus, Carnes asks how she finally screwed her courage to the sticking place and was able to speak.
"They were trying to hurt Anne," she tells him. "I couldn't let them do that."
Medieval Lore in a Contemporary Role-Playing Game
Gary Alan Fine
Often when we think of legendary characters, we think of them only within the confines of the legend itself. However, some legendary creatures, as a result of the popularity of folk narratives, popular culture productions, or elite cultural forms, transcend their original locations. Popularity implies that aesthetic creations are the subjects of discussion and debate, and that they are incorporated into social interaction. The argument is that folklore is not only grounded in texts, but is part of ongoing interaction.
For example, from high culture, an active tradition derives from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Frankenstein is a frequent expressive symbol, even though the title is now taken to refer to the creature, rather than to the perpetrator.
A similar example from popular literature is Count Dracula. Carlson describes how the Dracula motif, given impetus by 8r8JI Stoker's Dracula, had roots in numerous popular literary sources. Today Dracula is a common reference even by those who have never read about vampires and undead creatures. Another source of legendary creations for the popular imagination is J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Although Noel noted that many of Toikein's creatures are derived from folklore, the hobbit was created by Tolkein. Hobbits and more traditional folklore creatures described by Tolkein are now part of American and British culture as a result of his writing.
Finally, legendary creatures enter social conversation through folkloric paths. The stories that circulate about ghosts or ghouls in American culture are generally orally transmitted; the vanishing hitchhiker4 is one example of this genre, as are stories about mass murderer Gein.S Legendary creatures may also become part of the conversational resources of a society. When someone is described as an "ogre" or "ghoulish," we do not find this an unusual reference, and in the process these terms may acquire a shared symbolic meaning substantially different from their original implications. It is this folkloric issue -- how creatures are transferred from legends to informal conversation that is the topic of this article.
For a period of eighteen months I attempted to examine how individuals use traditional folkloric material in social interaction. To do this I participated in and systematically observed several groups which play fantasy role-playing games in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In addition to this observation and participation, I conducted lengthy in-depth interviews with some two dozen members of this subsociety and read publications and rule-books published by and for this group.
Fantasy games are an outgrowth of wargames. Wargaming is an attempt to simulate on a map the conditions of a mili tary encounter. Although war games have been described as descendents of chess and go, 1811 is the date of the first game, Kriegsspiel, explicitly designed to simulate warfare. By World War II, wargaming was employed by the major global powers as a means to train their officers in military tactics. Wargames became commercial in 1953 with the publication of a board game, Tactics, based on the simulation of a hypothetical conflict.
During the past three decades, the wargame "industry" has expanded from its humble beginnings, and many battles and political situations have been simulated. However, the emphasis on historicity and on complex tactics has proven limiting to some, and, as a result, there was room in the gaming market for other games more directly based on players' fantasies and on the flexibility which comes from not having to relive history. Fantasy games eliminated the traditional hexagon-grid board, and replaced the rule-based structure of the game by the control of another player, the referee, who constructs a game scenario using the rulebook only as a guideline.
In 1974 the first of this new breed of games, Dungeons & Dragons, was marketed; TSR Hobbies describes the structure of their best-selling game as follows:
While one of the participants creates the whole world in which the adventures are to take place, the balance of the players -- as few as two or as many as a dozen or more -- create "characters" who will travel about in this make-believe world, interact with its peoples, and seek the fabulous treasures of magic and precious items guarded by dragons, giants, werewolves, and hundreds of other fearsome things. The game organizer, the participant who creates the whole and moderates these adventures, is known as the Dungeon Master, or simply the DM. [In other games this person is called the Game Master, or simply the referee.] The other players have game personae -- fighters, magic users, thieves, clerics, elves, dwarfs, or what have you - who are known as player characters. Player characters have known attributes which are initially determined by rolling the dice••••These attributes [e.g., strength, charisma, intelligence] help to define the role and limits of each character••.•there is neither an end to the game nor any winner. Each session of play is merely an episode in an ongoing "world"••••Each Dungeon Master runs a "campaign," the series of connected adventures, for his or her participants•••D&D is basically a cooperative game where the group teams to defeat the hostile environment developed by the Dungeon Master••••[A] typical expedition to explore a dungeon labyrinth has a Dungeon Master narrating to players what they see••••The entire game board is seen only by the moderator, players having to create their own as they go along and "see" and "experience" the dungeon and what lurks therein.
Dungeons & Dragons is based loosely on the European Middle Ages -- one source claimed that it represented England in 1185 -- but the external social order is vaguely defined. More important are the adventures of characters in the under world, killing and being killed by a variety of monsters, many of whom derive from traditional mythologies.
With the success of Dungeons & Dragons, other role playing games, exploring other settings, followed -- including Traveller, a role-playing game based on space exploration, and Chivalry & Sorcery (C&S), based on "warfare and wizardry in the feudal age." Although Dungeons & Dragons is the most popular game nationally, C&S was most popular in the groups I observed.
Chivalry & Sorcery consists of a 128-page rulebook, which details the rules of the game and the structure of Medieval Society on which it is based. The rulebook (and subsequent supplementary material) provides much information of interest to folklorists, such as magic, clerical miracles, and legendary monsters; from this information a game is fashioned. One could use the rulebook as the basis of analysis -- to understand how the creators of the game drew upon folk traditions in the construction of their world. Such a project is akin to determining the extent to which any author employs folk traditions in his/her writings. However, this is not my aim, and, if attempted, would miss much of the significance of the fact that I am examining a game. Both in theory and in practice the "rules" of fantasy role-playing games are not absolute prescriptions, but guidelines for play:
Chivalry and Sorcery provides the guidelines by which players may easily create the kinds of worlds they want and does not attempt to "dictate" in any way what must be.
The rules are not rules in the conventional sense of board games, where deviation is equivalent to cheating. This means that the players have a strategic role in the creation of the game structure. The referee has the primary responsibility for determining how the rules are to be interpreted and it is he'll who role-plays minor characters (non-player characters) whom characters meet while adventuring. Generally the referee is one of the older and more experienced players because this position requires a knowledge of the game rules and the ability to create an imaginative game scenario for the other players.
The games which I observed and participated in were for the most part played on Friday evenings in the co-Unity room of a Minneapolis police station -- a central location which was available without charge. At about 7:00 p.m. players begin arriving, and a number of individuals announce that they are willing to referee or are talked into it. Once an individual announces that he will referee a particular game, a group of players join him at one of the tables set up for this purpose. Depending on the referee's desires, the attendance that evening, and the game to be played, anywhere from four to twelve players participate in the game. Players then create their characters for the evening or select characters previously created -- a decision which does not seem to effect the game structure, other than in continuing games characters may be more fully developed because they have been played longer. Among the attributes of characters created in C&S are: race (human, elf, hobbit, and dwarf are the usual races), sex, size, strength, voice (inarticulate to orphic), personal appearance (hideous to handsome), intelligence, wisdom (witless to visionary), charisma, alignment (saintly to diabolic), carrying capacity, command level, personal combat factor, horoscope, mental health (a wide range of phobias and ailments are possible), age, social class, and father's occupation. This is, it must be emphasized, only a partial list.
After this has been completed, the referee explains to the players the nature of the scenario that he has constructed for them -- a task which requires a lively imagination. Sometimes the scenario is rather simple, such as exploring un-mapped areas or hunting for treasure in a dungeon. On other occasions it may be considerably more complicated and may parallel traditional tale types, such as a quest by one character to discover his lineage or the attempt to free a Duke who has been imprisoned by evil forces. Players then outfit their characters with armor, weapons, rations, magical amulets, and organize into a party in order to begin the adventuring. The rest of the evening consists of playing out this scenario.
Each player ideally (although not always in fact) speaks as his character might or vocalizes the actions his character might take. This is an oral game and is not based on acting out one's role. Actions in the game are determined through dice rolls -- either by the referee (when the outcome must be kept secret from players) or by the players, as when deter mining the outcome of armed combat. The game continues until it reaches a conclusion or a breaking point, or until the referee or players are not interested in continuing.
LEGENDARY CREATURES IN FANTASY GAMES
Fantasy games provide an escape for players from their mundane reality: it is an opportunity for imaginative specu lation, expressed socially. As E. Gary Gygax, a creator of Dungeons & Dragons noted:
Our modern world has few, if any, frontiers. We can no longer escape to the frontier of the West, explore Darkest Africa, sail to the South Seas. Even Alaska and the Amazon Jungles will soon be lost as wild frontier areas. Furthermore, adventures are not generally possible anymore•..It is therefore scarcely surprising that a game which directly involves participants in a make-believe world of just such nature should prove popular.
One young player commented:
I think the fantasy•••you're trying maybe to be things that you're not. So if you just lived your same character [real self] over in the game, it wouldn't be as enjoyable. (Personal interview)
Portraying legendary creatures such as hobbits, elves, and dwarfs is seen as particularly rewarding for players in that they transform the player into a fantastic adventurer. Like wise, "meeting" traditional monsters transforms one's routine daydreams into dangerous tests of one's new self.
It has been well recognized in folkloric studies that belief in monsters and other legendary creatures can affect behavior and direct interaction. Evidence from a variety of settings confirms this effect of traditional lore. Stromback, for example, has indicated that Scandinavians believed that water demons (nixes) drowned people. This belief was linked to the believer's everyday reality: "In the accounts for the city of Stockholm from 1607 it is said that a cooper was wounded by the nix when he visited the privy at the eastern shore of the city-islet.1117 Other research in Europe has demonstrated that elves, lycanthropes and fairies affect talk and action.18 Tanl9 reports a case of hysterical contagion from Malaya in which schoolgirls became hysterical and fainted as a consequence of "seeing" ghosts. In modern American culture sightings of ghosts or flying saucers, connected to traditional folk beliefs, suggest the relationship between legendary belief and personal involvement.
Even more frequent, and more directly relevant to the world of fantasy gaming, is the "playful" acceptance of legendary creatures. One need not accept the existence of a creature to enjoy talking about it. Credibility may be of secondary importance as co pared to the entertainment value of the discussion. As Degh and Vazsonyi20 have recognized, belief is not an essential component of legend-telling.
Telling a good story can be an end in itself. The truth of the assertions are bracketed in favor of the thrill of fantasy, as one finds audiences engaging in a willing suspension of disbelief. Legends are now seen less as texts by folklorists, and more as topics of discussion or action, which may be collectively constructed.
Modern legends are particularly susceptible to involvement. Gallehugh describes the case of a vampire beast supposedly discovered near Bladenboro, North Carolina in 1953. Local mass media reports of this beast brought reports and curiosity seekers into Bladenboro for a "good story." A similar phenomenon occurred in the 1951 "sighting of the Jersey Devil in Gibbstown, New Jersey. Gutowski noted a parallel bracketing of belief in townspeoples' reaction to the Turtle Days festival in Churubusco, Indiana. This event commemorates the "Beast of 'Busco" -- a giant turtle-like creature which supposedly resides peacefully in a lake outside of town.
Whether the creature corporally exists, its "presence" provides the town with a symbol around which community pride and boosterism can be focused.25 These communal uses of folklore suggest that content and performance are intimately connected
-- a symbolic representation may be used by many individuals for their own ends.
Creatures encountered in fantasy gaming have similar functions in that they provide topics for discussion, although in gaming they are treated as if they actually exist, but there is no pretense of sincere belief. The bracketing of disbelief is explicit within the game frame. Within the confines of the police station, dragons, balrogs and harpies are regularly dispatched by elves and dwarfs, and within the game this killing is treated as real. Key to the understanding of the position of these creatures within the game is the realization that belief is suspended. Players, if asked, would contend that they do not believe the "real world" existence of these creatures. However, this question is never asked and is a foolish question, much as asking a child ifs/he believes in fairy tales. Only when players are role-playing, do they accept the existence of these creatures (and indeed they had better, for otherwise their characters will "really" be killed and they will be excluded from the game). Their belief is only relevant within the boundaries of this situation -- boundaries set by the beginning and ending of the game. The belief, like belief in legends, is situated in a socially defined context.
Although a fantasy campaign may incorporate numerous aspects of Medieval life, certain elements tend to predominate because of players' interests. Adventure is the central focus of most scenarios, and a satisfactory adventure involves outwitting and slaying a variety of creatures. While one may encounter brigands, fighting men, or clerics, it is the legendary creatures that are the most enjoyable in that they allow the participants' imaginations room to roam. In one game, a party of adventurers was attacked by a gorgon; immediately, the members of the party had to decide what action to take to avoid being turned to stone (in the game frame). By viewing the reflection of the gorgon in their shiny shields and firing arrows, the party survived this encounter and received credit for killing this horrid beast. Such encounters often have a galvanizing effect on the players. As in natural interaction, much of the game-time is involved in routine encounters (determined by random dice rolls). This can lead players to lose interest in the game, become restless, or talk outside of the game frame, but when something significant occurs attention is redirected and players become attentive. The referee, like the narrator, has a set of techniques by which he can redirect his audience's attention. Thus, encountering monsters within the game frame can be a technique for restoring dramatic balance; referees may even ignore the rules or the dice rolls for the sake of their story.
A referee noted:
[O]ne time I had Barry, Paul, and Ted meet brigands. I rolled it up. So I said "No more brigands, fighting men, brigands, etc." So I had them meet a pool of water that was coming toward them. (Personal interview)
Referees have a difficult balancing act to insure that there is enough adventure and imagination, without making the odds insuperable against the players. Like a narrator, the referee must learn timing, dramatic balance and the optimal level of tension desirable. In some cases when hostile creatures are rolled up, the referee may discard them if he feels that the encounter with the creature would inevitably kill the characters, and if the continuation of the game, a pragmatic concern, should outweigh the laws of chance, a theoretical concern. The referee is in a position similar to the narrator who must decide whether to tell the "whole story" even if it bores his audience. While it is generally desirable and exciting to encounter legendary creatures, on occasion these encounters may be disruptive if the party of adventurers is small in number, weak, or inexperienced in fighting -- the nature of the audience makes a difference in the construction of fantasy. One regular Dungeons & Dragons player describes the discretionary powers of the referee in creating or altering monsters:
[T]hey follow the rules, but they do have some leeway. Like they can say that ''No, this monster will kill off the whole party," and, you know, if it's not sporting, they usually won't let this monster go in. And you have what's called a first level character, who is very weak, go up against a very strong monster -- now, some dungeon masters [referees] will say ''No, I won't do this," and they will re-roll and get a different monster. They're [the referees] always supposed to•••if a monster is supposed to be gotten, [the players] get it, but they [the referees] may use their leniency to get a weaker monster, so it's more of a sporting chance. Now, of course, you can also get some, and it may be an alter ego kind of case, where it may be the same dungeon master doing it- uh, in one case being nice and giving you an easy monster, and five minutes later you maybe called hill a name or something, or just didn't like what he did, and all of a sudden he's gonna, you know, a monster will come up that is extremely hard, go by the rules, go by how the dice were thrown-- this time he's not gonna take it back. He's gonna say "Yup, you get it." (Personal interview)
Thus, the role of legendary creatures is dependent upon the judgment of the referee. E. Gary Gygax likens the role of the referee to a creator:
Not to be pretentious, but the rules for D&D are like Aristotle's Poetics, if you will. They tell me how to put together a good play. And a [referee] is the playwright who reads these things and puts his play together. (Personal interview)
The best referees attempt to maintain dramatic balance in the game, incorporating humorous, trivial episodes (such as an encounter with a practical joker demon, or with a gigantic chocolate pudding "with whipped cream and a cherry") with others that are more serious. Referees strive, thus, to create an aesthetic game-based fantasy scenario, although the contours of this aesthetic is not explicit. The existence of this aesthetic is suggested in that certain games are considered particularly satisfying and enjoyable, while others are not. Components of this satisfaction appear to include a substantial amount of game-based danger and adventure, powerful characters for players to role-play and identify with, an imaginative game scenario, and a large amount of fantastic detail, conducive to additional imaginative speculation by the players. These aesthetic criteria seem to be comparable to those that might characterize any folk narrative grounded in fantasy and adventure.
The legendary creatures which are role-played and those which are encountered in the game are not necessarily faithful reproductions of the traditional depictions of these creatures. Players have a wide range of knowledge of Medieval lore -- with some quite knowledgeable and others much less so. Perhaps the only constant is that virtually every gamer has read Lord of the Rings, and shares a familiarity with the Tolkein myths. Because of the general unfamiliarity with traditional sources of legendary, the legendary creatures in the game are frequently identified by only a few characteristics that appear salient to game players.
Thus, gorgons turn people to stone and have snakes instead of hair, roes are helpful to humans, harpies exude a dreadful stench, and hobbits are small, tend to be thieves, and have furry feet. This last attribute is frequently a source of amusement, as a common "torture" for hobbits is to pull out the hair from their feet, especially when caught thieving. The characterizations of these creatures are not as rich as in the sources from which they ultimately spring, but are caricatures, which serve to essentialize or stereo type the character. These images serve as a mnemonic device by which players recall how to play their characters and how to deal with other characters. They provide the "kernel" of the character. As mentioned in the case of the hobbit, these salient traits also provide for a set of jocular references to the characteristics of the creature encountered. They serve as points of shared reference from which players can converse, aware that the characters have similar meanings (or "intersubjectivity") for all participants in the game.
Through selective emphasis, many important elements about a character are ignored or down-played. The fact that hobbits have exceptional resistance to disease is not considered interesting and is rarely mentioned, nor is the fact (of which many players are ignorant) that harpies have the torso of an eagle. These fantasy games do not incorporate a complete or complex depiction of European legendary creatures, but rather represent a conventionalized portrayal of these folkloric types.
CONSTRUCTION OF A GAME CULTURE
Game players, utilizing their knowledge of legendary creatures and combining that background knowledge with the game events as unfolded through dice rolls and the decisions of players, develop a unique group culture. This culture combines the players' previous information (latent culture) with the game events (manifest culture). This game culture becomes a central mechanism by which group interaction is organized, as it provides for a set of shared experiences and common referents. I have previously defined a group culture, or idioculture, as "a system of knowledge, beliefs, and customs particular to an interacting group to which members can refer and employ as the basis of further interaction1. Members of the group recognize that they share experiences in common, and that they can refer to these experiences with the expectation that other members of the group will comprehend the reference. This idioculture characterizes all social groups. It seems particularly intense in situations in which inter action is specifically cultural (as in the fantasy creation of a Medieval game universe), and in which past group events are seen as directly relevant to future action. Regular gaming groups develop over the course of weeks a set of cultural elements which come to characterize the interaction of the group.
Since, as an explicit nature of the game, players are actively engaged in creating a culture, the shared culture of gamers is a distinctive feature of this type of interaction.
Ed Simbalist, the co-creator of Chivalry & Sorcery comments:
To play [fantasy role-playing games] is to engage in the creation of a group fantasy, to produce the Grand Illusion of a world ethos by the deliberate suspension of one's disbelief•••• But even as the [referee] spins his web of illusion. the players themselves add to the performance by playing their roles•••The story-telling -- for [fantasy role playing in a very real way is a story-telling activity -- becomes a group creation as the imaginary life experiences and actions of each player-character are added to the basic concept provided by the [referee]. The experience is itself the thing, and once begun it becomes a group happening
A considerable amount of this gaming culture relates to past events within the game context. For example, in one gaming group players found themselves in a dispute over control of a pegasus. Obviously a pegasus is a rare and desirable steed for a player (or a mythological hero) to control, and a dispute broke out over to whom the creature belonged. Finally, one member of the party with a "devout" moral alignment decided that he could no longer allow the winged horse to be tied down and to be the subject of acrimonious debate. Acting secretly by passing a note to the referee, this player had his character slash the rope binding the pegasus, freeing it, to the consternation and anger of some members of the party. From that point the incident of the pegasus was a central cultural element of the group -- achieving something akin to legendary status.
Several weeks later, after this player had missed a meeting of the group. a fellow player commented to him: "You were eaten by a were-pegasus" (a comic cross between the winged horse and a lycanthrope). Similar comments were made on other occasions. and this incident served to indicate to the group that taking action that was opposed to the best interests of another member of the party might be sanctionable even if such action might be something that the player's character would have done.
Another cultural element in this group concerned a dragon which one of the members role-played in his first C&S scenario. This dragon had a lawful (good) alignment and several times during the game had managed to save the party from great danger; for example, killing a gorgon and ten giant mosquitos. and flying the party away from one hundred very angry ores. In future games when this group found it self in trouble someone would mention that dragon-character and would wish that he was there to save them. The dragon served as a totemic figure for the group, and shared awareness of this character was a means of increasing group cohesion.
Other encounters with legendary creatures are referred to in order to make a point -- the encounter with the one hundred ores is used as an example of great danger to game characters, and the same incident is used as an example of a bloodthirsty referee. Another group referred to a player who convincingly role-played a Uruk-Hai (a large, mean, ore like creature) whenever a player had to role-play a monster to indicate that non-human role-playing could be successful.
These examples suggest the salient position of legendary creatures in the game structure. Major encounters with such creatures have the potential for being legendary (or more properly, the basis for anecdotes and memorates) for the group of American males that "encounters" them. While not all encounters become "legendary," they are treated as important events while they are occurring. Depending on the out come and the means by which this outcome was achieved, these encounters may provide the basis for group culture. In this sense encounters might be conceived of as having a similar effect to the telling of those legends in which these creatures occur -- they serve to rivet and channel human imagination.
Because encounters with legendary creatures increase satisfaction with the game, the incorporation of these events into the culture of the group can be seen as establishing the cohesion of the group. Such cultural elements indicate to members the existence of shared experiences and provide positive reinforcement by reminding players of exciting and involving game events. That these legendary creatures are encountered in social interaction gives them a special character, which differentiates them from legendary creatures embedded in folk narratives. What one loses in detail is compensated for by personal immediacy. What one loses by the absence of a creation that has been honed to an aesthetic perfection is compensated for by the input of the audience (players) in the construction of the encounter and the explicit situated meaning with which such creatures are imbued.
The distance that is permissible in a legend teller's audience is replaced by social involvement. In a social sense players have ''llet" these creatures, although the fear that might otherwise have existed has been transformed into imaginative delight and vicarious anxiety. Although the participants do not fear for themselves in these contacts, they are actively involved in the outcome of these encounters through their identification with their characters. Because all members of the adventuring party are in danger in encounters with hostile creatures, the vicarious anxiety is a shared emotion. This shared emotion strengthens the bonds between group ■embers. It provides content for the continuing group culture, which, as noted above, increases group cohesion by providing a set of references with common evaluations.
FOLKLORE AND FANTASY GAMES
The model of folklore proposed in this article focuses on interaction, rather than on narrative. The twentieth century has, in industrialized nations, witnessed the decline of many narrative traditions. The focus on the performance of a single individual seems to have been supplanted by a collective construction of meaning. This change reflects itself in the decline of fairy tales, mythic narratives, epics. ballads, and chants. Concurrently we find an apparent increase in jokes, collie riddles, and rumours.
While much of the material on which the games are based derive from popular cultural renditions of folk traditions, these traditions are discussed and negotiated in the informal interaction of the game. This material is shaped and channeled by game events, which are created by an urban folk group -- role-playing gamers -- who, while playing, rarely refer to printed sources. Once game-related events enter the culture of the group, they have again returned to oral tradition. As in many contemporary performances, it is difficult to separate popular culture roots from those grounded in folk lore. However, it is evident that whatever the ultimate roots of this material, its usage is within the purview of folkloric study. Through this game we can observe the construction of a folk culture as robust in its way as many "traditional" cultures.
In understanding the development of the cultures of these groups, we must be willing to bracket traditional story content dealing with these creatures, and must attempt to examine usage in the context of interaction. With a focus on conversation as folklore, we can transcend the limitations imposed on our discipline caused by the decline of single person narration as a major focus of entertainment.
FOOTNOTES
1, "Popular Culture and Social Interaction: Production, Cons1.111ption, and Usage," Journal of Popular Culture, 11 (Fall 1977): 453-66; John L. Caughey, "Artifi cial Social Relations in Modern America," American Quarterly, 30 (Spring 1978): 70-89.
2M.M. Carlson, "What Stoker Saw: An Introduction to the History of the Literary Vampire," Folklore Fonua, 10 (Fall· 1977): 26-32.
3Ruth Noel, The Mythology of Middle-Earth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977).
4LydiaFish, "Jesus on the Thruway: The Vanishing Hitchhiker Strikes Again," Indiana Folklore, 2_ (1976): 5-13.
5Roger Mitchell, ''The Press, Rumor, and Legend Formation," Midwestern Journal of Language and Folklore, (1979): 5-61.
6P. YoW1g and J.P. Lawford, Charge! Or How to Play War Games (London: Morgan-Grampian, 1967), p. 3.
7J.D. Reed, "Wars People Play," Horizon, 21 (May 1978): 64-67.
8TSR Hobbies, "Understanding Dungeons & Dragons." Pamphlet. (Lake Geneva, Wisconsin: TSR Hobbies: 4 pp.); see also David Axler, "'I Was Only Playing My Character•: An Exami nation of Role-Playing and Perfomance in the Game of Dungeons & Dragons", Wlpublished manuscript, 1980.
25
9Ed Simbalist and Wilf Backhaus, Chivalry & Sorcery: Warfare & Wizardry in the Feudal Age (Roslyn, N.Y.: Fantasy Games Unlimited, 1977), p. 1.
10, "Fantasy Role-Play Gaming as a Social World: Imagination and the Social Construction of Play." In Para doxes of Play. ed. John W. Loy, Jr•• (Corning, New Yorlc: Lesiure Press, 1981), in press.
11Less than 10\ of the participants in these games are female, and I do not know any females who referee these games, although some now do.
12The age range of participants in this group is wide: from children ten years of age to a few middle-aged players in their forties. The referees usually are in their late teens or older. One survey of the readers of a gaming magazine
found that the average age of respondents was 21 years old (see , "Simulation as Leisure," Simulation & Games, in press, 1981).
13DennisK. Benson, Coleen McMahon, and Richard H. Sinnruch, ''TIie Art of Scenario Design," SimulatiOn & Games, 2 (Dec. 1972): 439-463. -
14 Games generally last anywhere from four to eight hours, and gaming evenings have been reported to continue until break fast the following morning.
15, "Oscillating Frames: Fantasy Games and 'Real' Reality." Paper presented to the American Sociologi cal Association annual meeting, August 1980, New York, New York; see also Axler, - cit.
16E. Gary Gygax, "Dungeons & Dragons: What it is and where it is going." The Dragon (Feb. 1979): 29-30.
17Dag Stromback, "Some Notes on the Nix in Older Nordic Tradi tion." In Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Frances Lee Utley, Eds. Jerome Mandel and
Bruce A. Rosenberg (New Brunswick, N.J,: Rutgers University Press, 1970), p. 252.
26
s
18KatherineM. Briggs, The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); Robert Eisler, Man Into Wolf (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951); John J. Winberry; "The Elusive Elf: Some Thoughts on the Nature and Origin of the Irish Leprechun," Folklore 87 (1976): 63075.
19E.S.Tan, "Epidemic Hysteria," Medical Journal of Malaya_!! (1963): 72- 76.
20Linda Degh and Andrew Vazsonyi, "Legend and Belief." In Folklore Genres, Ed. Dan Ben-Amos (Austin, Texas: Univer sity of Texas Press, 1975), pp. 108-110.
21Linda Degh, "The 'Belief Legend' in Modern Society." In American Legend, Ed. Wayland D. Hand (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1971), p. 63.
22Joseph F. Gallehugh, Jr., ''The Vampire Beast of Bladenboro," North Carolina Folklore Journal 24 (August 1976): 53-58.
23James F. McCloy and Ray Miller, Jr. The Jersey Devil (Wall ingford, Pa.: Middle Atlantic Press, 1976), p. 92.
24John Gutowski, ''The Proto-Festival: Local Guide to American Folk Behavior," Journal of the Folklore Institute 15 (May August 1978): 113-132.
25R. Richard Wohl and Anselm Strauss, "Symbolic Representation and the Urban Millieu," American Journal of Sociology, 63 (March 1958): 523-32.
26DanielCrowley, I Could Talk Old-Story Good: Creativity in Bahamian Folklore (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), pp. 13-27.
27see Howard S. Becker and Blanche Geer, "Latent Culture: A Note on the Theory of Latent Social Roles," Administrative Science Quarterly 5 (1960): 304-13, for a full discussion of this point. -
28, "Small Groups and Culture Creation: The Idioculture of Little League Baseball Teams," American Socio logical Review 44 (1979): 734.
29Ed Simbalist, "Fantasy Role Playing," Different Worlds 1 (1979): 23.
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230354034_Emotional_stability_pertaining_to_the_game_of_Dungeons_Dragons
“They should have apprehended the method of visualisation and applied the illimitable virtue thereof for exalting one’s condition.”Barado Thodol: The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Translation by Evans Wentz, 1927.
This essay is an exploration of the thesis that healing as a cultural process can be the product of the manipulation of a symbolic framework of meaning. In such a process, the central concepts are those of passivity, empowerment, and the creation of meaningful cultural metaphors for the causal illness/ state of mind (Young 1977, Kovel 1976). The essay focuses on one particular case from what might be characterised as a developing system. The western recreational activity of roleplaying has been in existence for little over ten years, and in its initial self-conceptualisation was a variation on traditional wargaming. Yet such has been the pace of its development that certain groups are consciously experimenting with its potential for healing along lines that parallel certain psychotherapies and indigenous healing systems. My case study focuses on one roleplayer, “Malori” (a pseudonym) and the way in which she employs her roleplaying and visualisation skills to assist her in dealing with a disabling endogenous depression. In doing so I seek to identify the essential elements of the process and the structural characteristics of certain roleplaying groups which allow the potential for healing to be present. In concentrating on the construction of personal symbols through the creation of roleplaying personas or “characters”, my analysis will essentially be a semiotic one.
The basis of this essay lies in a series of interviews conducted with five ACT roleplayers during October 1988. While the topic eventually centred around the material raised in the Malori interviews, I have found the information gathered in all of the interviews to be valuable in that I was provided with a broad cross-section of opinion in response to the basic questions raised in this essay. In the course of the project I have also drawn upon my own experience as a roleplayer and scenario designer.
Roleplaying occurs in the collective realm of fantasy. Most psychologists conceive of fantasy as the product of individual introspection, with the daydream as the quintessential form of fantasy. Fantasies are believed to reflect an individual’s motives, needs, wishes, desires or ambitions through their unreality (Fine 1983:230). Yet western psychology, with its bias toward verbal and directed thought, seems to have displayed much more prudishness about fantasy than it ever did, say, about sex (Singer and Pope 1978:3). Terms typifying fantasy as “regression in the service of the ego” (Kris, 1951 in ibid:5) demonstrate the psychological bias toward what is characterised as “rational” and directed thought.
One of the characteristics of collective fantasy formations such as roleplaying is that because the creation of the fantasy is a group communicative process, one is able to access the processes of symbol formation in ways that are not possible when studying reports of dreams and daydreaming. As such, collective fantasy stands as a prime example of the symbolic interactionalist approach to the construction of meaning, a true universe of discourse. I shall return to explore this point when discussing roleplaying games as cultural systems.
Roleplaying as a recreational activity is a translation of private fantasy activities such as daydreaming into social and game context that is structured and controlled by an agreed set of rules.
The historical roots of roleplaying lie in wargaming. In 1974, an American wargamer named Dave Arneson created a variation of his medieval fantasy wargame in which his players, rather than commanding armies of troops, took on the roles and personalities of individual fighters and magic users. From this experiment the hobby of roleplaying (and the game of Dungeons & Dragons) was born.
While there is tremendous variation between different styles of roleplaying, the essential elements are common to all. A group of players choose a certain milieu and a particular game system, be it fantasy (Dungeons & Dragons, Runequest), science fiction (Star Trek, Traveller), history (En Garde!, Valley of the Kings), horror (Chill, Call of Cthulhu), adventure (James Bond 007) or humour (Toon, Bunnies & Burrows). Anything that can be imagined is a possible subject of a fantasy roleplaying game. The players then create a persona, or character appropriate to that milieu using the rules of the game system. (A sample character, created for a roleplaying tournament held in Canberra in early 1988, is included with this essay). Using their imaginations, players create a personality, ideology and set of interests and goals for their character. A person designated the gamesmaster (“GM” or simply “god”) then creates either an environment or storyline and guides the players through the myth that he or she has created, describing what they see, who and what they encounter, and the results of their actions. Plots range from something as simple as a murder mystery to be solved in an hour or two’s playing time through elaborate, world spanning campaigns crafted with an eye to detail and involving intricate subplots which might span years of playing time. The imaginations of participants are both aided and restricted by the games system, which imposes a structure onto the game universe, typically providing rules for resolving any action or encounter a character could be involved with - from falling off a horse, asking a (non-player) prince for his hand in marriage, or attempting to program an alien computer. These rules involve simple mathematical models resolved through the use of different types of dice (most commonly, four, six, ten and twenty sided dice, and pairs of percentile dice which produce a result from 1 to 100). Because of this, a character’s skills and personal attributes are encoded as numerical values. Thus a character who is extremely intelligent may have an INT (intelligence characteristic) of 17 out of possible 20, or if she has a degree in anthropology, her anthropology skill might be 60 out of a possible 100.
The earliest published roleplaying games were closely related to their wargaming antecedents, focusing on combat and strategy and ignoring the subtleties of characterisation and drama. Dungeons & Dragons for example, the original roleplaying game, is also narrowest in its construction. It was designed as a strategy combat game, pitting good against evil, and not as a sociological simulation. The structural restraints of the rules system (which provided resolution systems only for combat-related activities) encouraged an ethos of male power-fame-virility fantasy, centring on values of masculine aggressiveness, confrontation and objectification. Plots usually consisted of “dungeon bashes”, fighting monsters to obtain loot. Not surprisingly, most players were teenage males, and few women participated.
As the hobby grew in popularity, other games systems entered the market which placed a much greater emphasis on the acting and dramatic aspects of the hobby - true roleplaying - rather than strategy and “power gaming”. Historical, ecological and sociological backgrounds became more important as GMs led their players out of the dungeons and into the realms of politics, exploration and social interaction. The introduction of “skill-driven systems” allowed non-combatant characters to be played - a game character could now specialise in anything from accounting to zoology. In some game systems, the ethos became one of nurturance and human relationships (Call of Cthulhu) or peaceful exploration (Star Trek) rather than power fantasy. With such developments - which I typify as the “second wave” of roleplaying - more and more women were attracted to the hobby, and with many groups concentrating solely on the characterisation, storytelling and atmospheric aspects of roleplaying, the stage was at last set for an exploration of the psychological and symbolic potential of collective fantasy.
The essential feature of roleplaying is that the action of the game is generated and enacted in the imaginations of players. Though props such as miniature figurines, maps and photographs, sound effect tapes etc. may be employed, they are always secondary to what is occuring in the imagination of the players. A perilous climb to the top of a glacier may simply be a few dice rolls in the terms of game mechanics, but an experienced GM and players can turn it into a genuinely frightening experience. The GM describes the glacier, the difficulty of the climb, the effect of the cold on the characters etc, while calling for ability rolls on the dice at appropriate times. The players respond by describing their imagined feelings and fears, by talking to each other in character and by calling up images of the scene in their imaginations. With an experienced group a genuine dramatic tension is evoked that leads to strong feelings of anxiety and rushes of adrenaline, all without stepping outside of the Lyneham living room. Such is the power of fantasy.
Relaxation and entertainment - pure fun - are the reasons given by most gamers for their involvement in the hobby. While this is hardly surprising, even those who regard the hobby purely as a recreational activity recognize a psychological dimension to their gaming. Four themes emerged in the interviews concerning the value of roleplaying:
“I roleplay as a therapeutic thing. I behave irrationally and outrageously in gaming to relax and enjoy myself... In life I cross-check what I’m doing and thinking. Its nice playing a character who wouldn’t do these things... my characters are an antithesis of myself.”
Roleplaying aids to increasing one’s sense of personal control and efficacy. As roleplaying characters are often much more skillful and/or powerful than the players who have created them, it is often possible to obtain a strong sense of personal efficacy and achievement through an identification with their exploits. There is also a very strong element of cathartic release.
“In a sense you’ve got something between yourself and the real world. It’s like a shield...”
“...which is very handy when you’re first going out. You’re learning techniques and tricks which will eventually come into your own person... and you’ll discover those tricks work.”
Crucial to any semiotic analysis of characters within a roleplaying environment is a conception of how such an environment resembles a cultural system.
Roleplaying games create cultural systems as their avocation - worlds of imagination formed by the participants, given the constraints of their knowledge and the structure provided by the rules. Such creation works on all levels - material culture (architecture, fashion etc), ideology (politics, theories of power, gender constructions) and cultural themes (what religion is, how magic works, the nature of good and evil, theories of destiny, ontology and epistemology). Fantasy roleplaying games have social structure, norms, values and a range of cultural artifacts which are as real as such constructs can ever be - that is, they are real to those who participate in them. Each gaming group interprets, defines and transforms elements within its society. Their gaming world is a transformation of mundane, shared realities. It stands as a caricature of social life, a simplified and exaggerated reflection of mundane reality. This cultural system expands as the game progresses the participants building and synthesising through their experience, just as in real life at any given time an individual never has access to a culture, but only to a rendering of that culture.
Each group develops a universe of symbolic discourse which Fine (1983:123) terms an ideoculture; “a system of knowledge, beliefs, behaviours and customs peculiar to an interacting group to which members refer and employ as the basis of further interaction”. This system expands as the players communicate and interact both within the game context and beyond it. The resultant artifact comprises three interrelated systems of meaning; the shared mundane reality (the base culture), the system of rules which structure the game universe, and the content of the game/ fantasy itself (the transformed culture). The resultant whole is a social world, a universe of symbolic discourse.
There are two characteristics of such conceptualisation that are central to my analysis. The first is that a roleplaying game is a shared fantasy. As such, it lacks the seemingly random, illogical features of fantasy as usually characterised by western psychology; it does not possess the ego-centric or autistic qualities that Freud or Piaget discuss as characteristic of fantasy (Fine, op cit:3). The shared nature also implies that relationships within a gaming group are constrained by members perceptions of what variables cannot be transcended under any circumstances, for example intelligence or maturity. Such perceptions organise the display of power within a fantasy world; even in players wildest flights of fancy we find the obdurate social reality of the “real” world.
The second point is that a fantasy roleplaying game constitutes a voluntary and limited domain. Players act out/ work out their fantasies under an explicit sense of containment. Players must identify with their characters if the game is to be a success; in other words, they must invest their characters with meaning. Characters grow with experience; the depth of their game personality becomes more individual and unique over time. Correspondingly, the player’s identification with the character grows - as evidenced by the very real trauma many players experience if their favoured characters die. In contrast to this growing identification with the character there is also an ideology of distance acknowledged between the players: a failure or repugnant moral attitude on the part of the character is not usually seen to reflect in any way on the player running that character. It’s just a fantasy.
On a fundamental level, a gamesmaster must establish a world view that directs the game action and which represents the implicit philosophy or ideals by which the world operates - what Geertz would characterise as the game’s “ethos”.
Fine (op cit:76-77) provides an example of such an ethos from a Dungeons and Dragons game characteristic of what I have described as the first wave of roleplaying. He saw the “ethos” of that particular game as comprising the following themes:
To contrast such an ethos, what follows is a similar listing from a typical second wave game - in this case the Call of Cthulhu campaign in which I act as gamesmaster. The campaign is a literary-model game set in Europe during the nineteen twenties, and seeks to explore the existential dilemma of twentieth century humanity as exemplified in the “cosmic horror” stories of H. P. Lovecraft.
Such an ethos is created by the GM in consultation with the players; it is their actions and ambitions within the game universe that may cause the ethos to change over time or the game’s style to evolve. Both GM and players attempt to shape the scenario to their own ends.
In situations such as those described above, the character must, to some extent, exist as a personal symbol. Such symbology may extent to the character being a conscious symbol of the self, and, in certain exceptional circumstances, a symbol imbued with transformational potential. In attempting to understand when such a symbol achieves such potential, I have constructed a typology of the Character as Symbol, illustrated at Figure One.
Figure One. Roleplaying characters as symbols of the self: a typology.
The final categories that I have typified both are conscious manipulations of a player’s perception of self.
EXAGGERATED SYMBOLS are characters created to amplify characteristics or skills that the players believe they possess. Thus, intelligent players create genius characters, sports-minded people create super athletes etc. Such characters are a way of building up a players self affirmation, for such characters are a source of uplifting emotional feedback when the particular skills or characteristics bring success. Such identifications may extent into the ideological realm, for as one interviewee explained:
“I always play rational characters because I’m a rationalist”.
COMPENSATING SYMBOLS are characters created to explore a characteristic or skill that the player believes they do not possess. “Jack”, the character created by Malori in the case study which comprises Part Two of this essay, is a compensating symbol par excellence. Such characters are attempts by players to “round up” their own personalities into something more accomplished and balanced. Thus, shy players attempt to play forward, confident characters, cerebral bookworms create bare chested barbarians, impatient players create silent, meditative monks etc.
It is compensatory characters that demand the greatest investment on the part of players, not only in terms of roleplaying ability but also in terms of emotional energy and risk. While the rewards of playing such a character can be great, the associated risks mean that any failure will be taken on a very personal level. Because such characters demand a high level of conscious investment, risk, and energy, it is compensatory characters that have the greatest potential to become transformatory symbols - symbols and vehicles of healing.
An obsessive preoccupation with internal reality is seen as a sign of mental illness: how then is it that roleplayers, often investigating considerable time and emotional energy into their characters, do not succumb to the call of their inner world? The answer lies in the many “frames” that constitute roleplaying reality, and the way a roleplayer must constantly “flip frames” between the social world of her companion gamers and GM and the inner world of her imagination. A roleplayer adopts what Goffman (1974 in Fine, op cit:201) refers to as a pretence awareness context among her own selves, creating a number of temporary and compartmentalised roles for herself, shielding some types of information from some of her roles.
An example from a Call of Cthulhu game (a historical/ horror game set in England in 1930) demonstrates this constant “flipping” between frames of reference. Jack, a character in the game, has discovered a German businessman searching his hotel room. Jack has an unloaded pistol. Jack’s player is thinking and speaking on a number of different levels:
Level 1: (player to GM). “I’ll attempt to bluff him with my empty pistol”.
Level 2: (character to character). “Oh I say, bad show old chap. Hands up!”
Level 3: (player thinking in historical terms). “This guy is a Nazi, but probably it’s only 1930. Jack wouldn’t know what a Nazi is. He probably thinks they’re some sort of socialists”.
Level 4: (player thinking in game terms). “Jack’s strength and size are both small. If the German tries to escape, he will have a good chance of success. My German is lousy, only 30%. I’d better stick to speaking English”.
Level 5: (player thinking in terms of game ethos). “John is GM, and he doesn’t allow characters to die without good reason. I’ll risk it”.
Level 6: (player watching other players in the room). “Rhys is whispering to the GM. His character must be nearby. I’m safe. But Jack doesn’t know that yet!”
And so it continues. Every imaginative move is accompanied by some social interaction, some communication with ones GM, gaming companions or their characters. Every character action is screened by the player to ensure the character is not acting on information that he or she does not possess. Experienced roleplayers can easily achieve and maintain simultaneous orientation to several frames or levels with little confusion. As one interviewee commented:
“I can multi-task. I run game reality and external reality in tandem”.
I have demonstrated that players may sometimes perceive their characters as symbols of self. I have also indicated that such symbols attract considerable emotional involvement on the part of players, and that the game revolves around the character being involved in highly dangerous activities in which they are challenged, threatened and pushed to the limits of their ability by the machinations of the GM’s plot. Given the emotive nature of the transactions that he or she directs, and the position of the absolute power assumed within the context of the game, how do gamesmasters deflect the powerful feelings of transference that one would expect to flow from some players under these circumstances?
A GM is commonly called “god” by players. This is an acknowledgement of the power that the GM commands during the game, and the way he or she controls the ultimate destiny of the characters within the game. A GM is akin to the “powerful ritual elder” described by Moore (1983) in that he or she formulates and controls the group contract, gives the players permission to behave in certain ways and guarantees the continuing communitas of the group. It is the GM who is primarily responsible for formulating the group ethos as described above.
The GM is protected from much of the transferred emotion that we would expect such position to attract by two beliefs that permeate all gaming culture. The first is that, during play, the GM is merely a mechanic, a rulesmith whose primary duty is to impartially apply the rules of the game. If something adversely affects a character it is because of some unwise action on that character’s part combined with “bad luck on the dice”. Secondly, a GM will usually disguise a decision that he or she makes behind the pretence of a die roll. As the result of such a roll will not be seen by players (though the action of rolling the dice will), a GM can justify any occurrence as being according to the dice result. Not surprisingly, dice beliefs occupy a highly visible part of gaming subculture, with notions of “killer dice”, “lucky dice” and “lame dice” abounding. Dice throwing is often accompanied by ritualistic elements such as blowing on the dice, warming them between the hands, or “throwing them high”. GMs have their own dice ideology. “The dice”, they say, “don’t lie”.
In this section I have attempted to describe roleplaying and the way that it functions as a cultural system in microcosm. I have examined players beliefs about the characters they create and attempted to delineate those circumstances in which a character symbol may take on healing/ transformative potential. I have briefly commented on the construction of a roleplaying ethos and the way in which roleplayers switch frames of reference during a game, in effect bracketing information from part of themselves.
One point must be strongly emphasised before examining the case study that comprises the second section of this essay. Roleplaying is difficult, and players do not always roleplay well. Within the gaming milieu there is considerable latitude in the degree to which a player submerges his or her own self into a character role, or adopts the identity implied by that role. The gamers interviewed for this essay are all experienced roleplayers, and in my own judgement (informed by seven years of running modules on the Australian convention circuit) well above average in their roleplaying ability. This experience and talent has allowed some of them to utilise their roleplaying in such a way that it has profound implications for their everyday life. In part two of this essay I examine one such instance in detail - how one roleplayer has utilised her gaming skills to fight a crippling endogenous depression. In such a case the true healing potential of the transformative symbol becomes apparent.
Two heavy trestles, and a board,
Where Sato’s gift, a changeless sword
By pen and paper lies,
That it may moralise
My days out of their aimlessness.William Butler Yeats.
“Meditations in Time of Civil War”.The only thing you can do if you are trapped in a reflection is to invert the image.Juliet Mitchell.
Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974)
“Malori” is a twenty seven year old, English-born Arts graduate. She has been roleplaying since 1982. Malori is intelligent, highly articulate and fully conversant with both the psychological and symbolic aspects of her hobby. Over the years she has won a considerable number of roleplaying awards at conventions in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne, a testimony to her obvious talent. With her husband (also a committed roleplayer) and a number of friends she has formed a design group which produces and organises roleplaying tournaments at national conventions.
Malori has created and played a large number of roleplaying characters over the years, but in the last twelve months has taken the unusual step of playing variants of a single character (a young Englishman called John “Jack” Hargreaves) in all of her regular games. This unusual situation has resulted as Malori’s response to a particularly disabling illness - a unipolar affective disorder, an endogenous depression.
Malori has suffered the effects of her depression for at least twelve months, and has been unable to work more than a few hours a day. Her attempts to overcome the disease have taken her to psychiatrists, physical specialists, mental health counsellors, physiotherapists, dieticians and, more recently, to a naturopath. Her improvement has been marked over the last three months, but she is still restricted to a shortened working day. Despite her own initial scepticism, Malori has found her roleplaying the most effective instrument in fighting the disease.
“I have a form of endogenous depression which has far reaching psychological consequences apart from just the emotional depression. I get very depressed, quite dangerously so at times. There are a lot of physical side effects... continual tiredness, physical sicknesses which are sometimes difficult to cope with. I am constantly stressed... to the point of wanting to physically run away. There is no cause for the fear, and of course nowhere to run to. Socially it’s difficult, as I can respond in an irrational fashion to perfectly normal social stimuli. I get very angry, dissolve into tears or end up in a towering rage for no apparent reason.”
Malori’s doctors place the origin of the illness in the biological realm, but state that it usually has a psychological root. Malori, in fighting the illness, has attempted to work through its psychological manifestations with “counsellors, psychotherapists, friends, and in particular with my roleplaying groups”. She sees the psychological root of her condition in terms of a poor self image which she believes a result of conflicting cultural images of Womanhood that she has assimilated.
“I come from a very protective Protestant background. In many ways I didn’t have an opportunity to develop my personality... When I found myself in the big wide world, having responsibilities of my own, I was frightened and this thing developed in order not to have to face these things... I was diagnosed a year ago but I think I’ve had it... most of my adult life.”
“I feel guilty about letting people down, not being able to make people happy, making people unhappy, not living up to people’s expectations, not fitting a role stereotype in an appropriate way... or fitting a role stereotype in an appropriate way!!”.
“There seems to be a real tension between the image of Woman that I was brought up with and the image of Woman I discovered when I went to school and university... It came to be very serious after I was married.”
“I feel I was brought up with a very negative image of femininity. Woman had to be passive, they had to wait for what they wanted, they weren’t allowed to initiate anything... When all the priorities came out, you were last on the list.”
The conditions which aggravate Malori’s illness have roots in her biological, emotional and social worlds. Ultimately too, her illness can be seen in part as a cultural disease, for she must deal with the effects of a rapidly changing cultural conception of womanhood, and all this entails in terms of her self image, needs and wants. Because symbols of Self and Woman were central to Malori’s conceptualisation of the problems she faced, it is not surprising, given her background, that she began to explore these problems through her roleplaying.
Malori’s roleplaying abilities had always contributed to her self-esteem. When, in the midst of her depression, she turned to roleplaying for solace and escape, she made a surprising discovery.
“I had begun roleplaying in 1981. I was really thrown in the deep end. After playing just a few months we attended a roleplaying tournament. There were a hundred and fifty entrants, and I won. It came like a bolt out of the blue. I discovered I was very good at it. Initially this was my prime motivation for roleplaying. I think that time was the beginning of my depression - I was at university. It raised my self-esteem enormously. I was good at it, I knew I was good at it, I had proved I was good at it, and I was going to prove everyone else that I was good at it.”
“I enjoy it on a very different level now. I noticed that when my illness was first diagnosed that when I roleplayed, I had no symptoms! I wasn’t depressed, I wasn’t physically ill. I was happy, I was strong. The difference between when I was roleplaying (especially when I was playing Jack) and when I wasn’t was really quite strange. On one hand I was extremely ill, and on the other I was bouncy and energetic and having fun. I thought it would take drugs or intensive counselling to get that much relief from the sickness.”
There is always an element of escapist catharsis in roleplaying. Yet the fact that the effect centred around the character of Jack (to the extent that Malori gave up her other characters and began to play Jack in all of her regular campaigns) indicated that the answer lies in the characteristics of Jack himself.
The character of Jack varies slightly (mainly in terms of age and elements of background) between Malori’s campaigns. In the nineteen twenties Call of Cthulhu campaign he is a young English aristocrat, a dilettante with a Masters degree in linguistics (a copy of the game character sheet for Jack is attached). The character is consciously based around the figure of Jack Celliers, as portrayed by David Bowie in the 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Jack’s appearance as described by Malori closely resembles Bowie in his portrayal of Celliers. Malori felt that it was very important from a psychological point of view that Jack should have suffered, so she decided that he had been a prisoner of war.
“In the fantasy campaign... he’s very much a heroic character, he’s very sad, he’s very battered.
In the nineteen twenties campaign he’s ten years younger, just out of Oxford, very personable, very clever, very charismatic. He gets a real hike out of being in dangerous situations - he goes looking for them!”
In developing Jack’s personality, Malori was very conscious of the fact that she was creating a symbol which she compensated for her own perceived inadequacies.
“There is a certain amount of idealisation in the character. He provides things that I haven’t got but would like to have. I’ve tried to bring out the more masculine parts of my character, to encourage them, but I’ve also tried to encourage some of the more feminine aspects as well - the ones I consider positive at this place and this time. So in many ways he’s a composite of myself, but that’s not all that he is... There are a lot of things that I could never do, that I could never be.”
In creating the character of Jack, Malori was sorting through the gender concepts of Man and Woman which threatened her and which she believed to have contributed to her illness. I questioned her as to why she had chosen to do this through a male, rather than a female, character.
“A male character isn’t inhibited, isn’t bound by my sorts of problems. I had earlier tried it with Coyote, with Windhover [female characters], but neither of them jelled in quite the way that Jack did. With Jack I wasn’t saddled with the feminine parts of my character that held me back. I could make a choice and I could cut some of them loose. I kept the one’s I wanted to keep or which would be useful to a man”.
“... I kept the nurturance, protectiveness, sensitivity to other people’s emotions, the desire to see people happy. ... I made Jack bisexual, made him not afraid to be thought effeminate. I gave him a caring, maternal attitude. I a woman those things could become a problem. In a man they don’t”.
In the creation and game life of Jack, Malori was able to pull out individual components of her psyche and examine them in a new light. By placing them onto a male character, she could examine each characteristic for its actual worth without having to worry about the values that conflicting role expectations placed upon them. Paradoxically, many characteristics - nurturance, sensitivity to others emotions - took on a very positive light when seen as part of a male personality, yet these same characteristics caused Malori great distress as components of her own personality because she equated them with the passive role model of Woman that she was trying to discard. In exploring the oppositions and cultural dichotomies that comprise gender role models, Malori is slowly reconstructing the balance of her psyche and consequently of her self image. She is able to judge her own personality in a new, more positive light. Through the personality of Jack, she is beginning to understand that characteristics such as assertiveness and sensitivity are not polarised oppositions but can in fact peacefully co-exist within the one person. Malori is reconstructing her models of masculinity and femininity, creating models that do not threaten or accuse her.
Malori has gained more than a cognitive understanding of her gender models through her use of Jack. In a roleplaying environment, she uses the character to experience some of the personality attributes she is trying to develop within herself. This is achieved through her actions within the game, with the support and cooperation of her gamesmaster and fellow players.
“I identify very heavily. I end up feeling what he feels, to the point of being physically frightened. But I’m in a controlled environment, so it doesn’t trigger off the depression.
It’s very effective. I can think of all sorts of things and feel all sorts of things through him. I get a very great sense of victory if he succeeds at something. I get that as well as he”.
“Escaping [from a very difficult situation] gave me a tremendous sense of victory. Having been rescued by the others gave me a tremendous sense of belonging. When they pulled him out alive... that was the best bit of all, tremendous release.”
Malori has invested so much of herself into the Jack character that she can experience his fantasy world victories as though they were her own. The character is compelled to seek out and challenge impossible odds - and even survival is seen as a victory. Perhaps Malori sees a symbolic parallel to her own situation, for beating her illness means continually taking on tremendous emotional risks, and trusting to the support of those around her. Like Jack, Malori survives, and in surviving prospers.
“You practice facing things that bother you. Whatever happens in a game you’re physically safe, although obviously, having such a strong emotional identification, it would hurt me very much if he were killed.
I actively seek out things that bother me, that challenge me. I’m leading the party and so the decision is mine, and nobody else’s. If it goes wrong, it goes wrong, and I take responsibility for that. If it goes right, everybody’s pleased and they’re pleased with me as well. That for me is a terrifying situation, having to make a decision and stand behind it, to take the responsibility if it fails. Through Jack, I also have to deal with physical danger, to overcome passivity, and to stay cool in a crisis. It’s very challenging.”
With two friends, Malori has recently begun a campaign especially designed to challenge them as individuals rather than as characters. Malori, of course, plays Jack. A friend seeking to overcome shyness and social inexperience has designed a character to challenge her own inhibitions. The GM has introduced a new rule especially for this game, which is called the “psychodrama” campaign. The rule is called “The Rewind”. If one of the players feel that a given situation has gotten out of hand or that they have not responded as they should, they can request a “rewind” and the scene is played out once again. With the introduction of such techniques, roleplaying moves away from being a purely recreational milieu into something that is pedagogic and explicitly therapeutic.
Malori has learned to apply her personal symbols (and the attendant emotions and orientations which they evoke) in such a way as to control her depression in everyday situations.
“Often, very often, I find myself imagining how Jack would handle a situation that I find difficult. Sometimes that helps. Just thinking of him, I gain energy. The character has a certain power.”
“Being able to adopt a character in a game means to a certain extent you can also adopt him/ her/ it in real life if things get too hard. I often switch into “Jack mode” if I’m very tired and have a lot of work to do, or if I’m very frightened of having to do something. I don’t make a sudden and complete switch and become someone else, but there are elements of his personality I can pull out of mine that will help me in a given situation.”
It seems that on certain levels at least, Malori realises that much of what she has created and projected onto Jack already exists within her own personality. However, the progress of her illness and the gender roles against which she is fighting have meant that an affirmation of such characteristics within herself would be accompanied by strong feelings of guilt and denial. By projecting them onto Jack, the symbol can mediate the struggle between the differing gender models at war within her psyche, allowing her to draw upon emotional resources such characteristics provide without being wracked by the accompanying guilt. I believe that as Malori continues to regain control of her life, the power of Jack will slowly fade, to be replaced by an affirmation of his characteristics - confidence, assertion, leadership - within her own personality. Until that time, Malori will continue to draw upon the power that Jack and other associated symbols from her roleplaying can provide.
“Jack has a Japanese sword - a katana. It was stolen for him by a friend who helped him to escape... it has a very strong significance for me. It signifies that one can escape from bondage... it’s very hopeful. Outside of roleplaying, I use it to think with. If I find myself getting into a negative thought cycle, I say “This is going to stop, to stop NOW!” I visualise the sweep of Jack’s katana. The thought is cut off. It’s a very, very strong image.”
Over the last few months, Malori has grown steadily stronger, more confident, less afraid, less tired. Many factors have contributed - changes in her medication, improved diet and exercise, learning to relax more effectively through Tai Chi. In August, despite extreme physical sickness, Malori journeyed to Melbourne with some friends and took first prize in a major roleplaying tournament. Despite her depression, this was her second major prize within a year, and it seemed to mark a psychological breakthrough. In her own mind, Malori rates the therapeutic effects of her roleplaying equally with the support of her husband and the insights provided by one particular counsellor as being instrumental in her recovery so far.
What of the future? Malori has visualised an image of her depression as a living creature, a pathetic, tentacled Cthulhoid monstrosity. With the support of her companion roleplayers and GM, she plans to face the creature within the context of a game. What insights will such an encounter bring? Will Jack attempt to destroy the beast, to master it through confrontation or will he attempt to entrap and starve it? Malori is not sure how she will react to the encounter, but she feels strong and confident in preparing to face the creature. After all, the dice never lie.
In an exploration of the common characteristics of psychoanalysis and shamanism, Levi-Strauss (1963:325) saw both as
“... stimulating an organic transformation which would essentially consist in a structural reorganisation by inducing the patient intensively to live out a myth - either received or created by him - whose structure would be, at the unconscious level, analogous to the structure whose genesis is sought on the organic level.”
While cautious about wholeheartedly applying such an analysis to Malori’s circumstances, I do find the basic premise - living out a myth in such a way as to effect a mediation of opposites - a very useful one.
Malori has indeed created her own myth (on several levels) and in living that myth out has brought about a reconciliation of the conflicting gender roles that have made her live so difficult. What is perhaps unusual in this case is that Malori has created her own framework for healing (in effect, an indigenous healing system) out of elements available to her, namely the recreational milieu of roleplaying.
On the structural level, Malori created the symbol of Jack - unflappable, courageous and strong, to stand in opposition to the poor self-image of herself that was either a cause or effect of her depression.
Both the “sick” image and the positive elements of the Jack image existed within Malori: the illness had emphasised one aspect, the roleplaying emphasises the other. As Malori gradually brings her illness under control, she is able to understand both aspects of her nature and bring them both under control as she reorganises her gender constructs. As the Jack symbol essentially signifies the elements of her personality she could not emphasise without feeling guilty, over time the following transformation has occurred:
ORIGINAL SELF IMAGE : JACK :: SICK MALORI : WELL MALORI
Because of her intense emotional involvement with the Jack symbol, Malori was also living out a myth on another level - within the roleplaying game itself. With the cooperation of a small group of friends, who provided a structure of support and encouragement, Malori emotionally explored the implications of the Jack symbol, and gradually came to realise that Jack was an extension of herself, a symbol of self, and a symbol of both her condition and cure.
The heavy emotional involvement with the symbol meant that such an exploration carried risks, but ultimately, rewards as well - the opportunity to reorder elements within her psyche. Through Jack, Malori has begun to balance the conflicting cultural frameworks that place demands upon her - the image of womanhood inherited from her early life and the image which informs the day to day life of her marriage and career.
Initially, Malori regarded her roleplaying as a distraction, a temporary escape from the effects of her depression. As she came to understand the nature of Jack, she was able to gain a sense of self control, of self efficacy, and at least a partial liberation from the “script” of her socialised response patterns.
The roleplaying also provided Malori with such a method of visualising her condition. With such visualisation, the act of “naming the unnamable” (Young), Malori was able to manipulate and thus understand her condition, and gained the potential for suggestion and affirmation. For example, in visualising her illness, Malori saw it as pathetic, weak and frightened, inviting her sympathy. Examining this image, Malori was able to recognise her own ambivalence towards the depression, and how the illness had been protecting her from taking responsibility. In bringing this realisation to consciousness, Malori was able to deal with it, and thus move one step closer to health.
In the course of the essay I have explored in detail one case in which the conscious manipulation of personal symbols has led to a reorganisation of frames of meaning with a resulting personal empowerment and an eventual return to health. The case is unusual in that it has not dealt with an established healing system but one synthesised in extremis by an exceptional individual utilising symbolic frameworks available to her. As such it stands as one further example of the pervasive power of symbols in our daily lives.
This essay would not have been possible without the time given so freely by James, Jamie, Liz, Paul and Malori in allowing themselves to be interviewed by this amateur ethnologist.
Above all, thanks to Malori, without whose courage and imagination these insights would not have been possible.
Fine, G. A. (1983). Shared Fantasy: Roleplaying Games As Social Worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goffman, I. (1974). Frame Analysis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Holmes, J. E. (1980). Confessions of a Dungeon Master. Psychology Today, November, 84-94.
Holmes, J. E. (1981). Fantasy Role Playing Games. New York: Hippocrene Books.
Kovel, J. (1976). A Complete Guide To Therapy: From Psychoanalysis To Behaviour Modification. New York: Pantheon Books.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1963). On the Effectiveness of Symbols. In Lessa & Vogt (Eds.) (1979). A Reader in Comparative Religion. New York: Harper & Row.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1967). The Sorcerer and His Magic. In Structural Anthropology. New York: Anchor/ Doubleday.
Moore, R. L. (1983). Contemporary Psychotherapy as Ritual Practice: An Initial Reconnaissance. Zygon, 18, 3 (September), 283-294.
Singer, J., & Pope, K. (Eds.) (1978). The Power of the Human Imagination. New York: Plenum Press.
Young, A. (1977). Order, Analogy and Efficacy in Ethiopian Medical Divination. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 1, 183-199.
Appendix: Jack’s Character Sheet |
University of Manitoba Summary.
Fantasy role-playing games have been portrayed by the media and various social organizations as being linked to, and causing, socially maladaptive behaviour including criminality. Based on this social perception it was hypothesized that roleplaying experience should be positively correlated with self-reported criminality. 20 experienced role-playing garners and 25 nonplayers completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, a demographic questionnaire, and a 20-item criminality measure. Regression analysis indicated that role-playing experience did not relate to self-reported criminality; however, Psychoticism, which was higher in the nonplayers, did predict criminality. The popularity of role-playing games has increased dramatically since Gary Gygax first introduced Dungeons and Dragons into the game market in 1973. Dungeons and Dragons (D & D) is now only one among many roleplaying games but it is among the bestsellers with over eight million copies sold (Brooke, 1985). As part of the game players take on the personality and actions of characters they invent and then guide the characters through imaginary worlds in search of adventure, experience, wealth, and power (Gygax, 1978).
Supporters of these games (Bonilla, 1978; Dear, 1984; Johnston, 1980) have claimed that these games attract highly imaginative and intelligent people as well as improve the social slulls and grades of the players. The Association for Gifted-Creative Children suggested that D & D encourages players to read quality literature by Asimov, Tolkien, and Shakespeare (Adler & Doherty, 1985) and Sullivan (cited in Mather, 1986) described a psychiatrist's use of the fantasy role-playing computer game Wizardry to build selfesteem in an uncommunicative, emotionally disturbed boy. However, some people are concerned that role-playing games reduce the ability of players to distinguish between fantasy and reality. The National Coalition on Television has linked the games to 29 suicides and murders since 1979 (Schuster, 1985). One woman blamed her son's suicide on his involvement with Dungeons and Dragons. Because of this she formed the organization Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (B.A.D.D.) to call attention to its perceived ill effects (Schuster, 1985). The Christian Informa- 'This study, carried out by the first author under the supervision of the second, was submitted to the University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the honours degree in psychology. Requests for reprints should be sent to ames J. Forest, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Cana d a R3T 2N2. 1188 S. ABYETA & J. FOREST tion Council has stated that, "Playing these games can desensitize players to murder, suicide, rape, torture, robbery, the occult, or any other immoral or itlegal act . . ." (Brooke, 1985, B-1). There is very little empirical evidence to help decide between these two views. Simon (1987) examined the claim by game detractors that D & D was connected to emotionally unstable behaviour such as suicides and homicides. His results indicated that role-players showed a mundane profile lacking in the emotional instability associated with suicide and homicide. He also found that claims that role playing games attract highly intelligent individuals were not valid. He concluded that role-players had healthy psychological profiles and that previous experience with D & D may have been an incidental rather than etiological factor in an individual's display of unstable behaviour.
DeRenard and Kline (1990) investigated feelings of alienation in a - group of role-players and nonrole-players. They found that, in general, there were few differences between players and nonplayers although fewer role players reported feelings of meaninglessness than those who had never played, and there was a positive correlation between commitment to Dungeons and Dragons among role-players and feelings of general alienation. The authors conclude that media speculations regarding the possible harmful effects of role-playing games are not supported by research. The present study expanded on this research by focusing on personality and socioeconomic measures of role-players and nonrole-players, and their relationships with criminal activity. Detractors of role-playing games appear to have focused on a few major incidents, and from these negative events they have assumed a causal connection between role-playing and criminality. They have not considered the possibility that other factors besides role-playing may be involved in the expression of the criminal behaviour. Their view requires a positive correlation between fantasy role-playing and criminality that cannot be explained by either personal or social factors. Using the detractor viewpoint, it was predicted that role-playing game experience would be positively correlated with self-reported criminality after controlling for personality and socioeconomic factors.
Subjects
Role-playing subjects were 20 male and female students at the University of Manitoba with a minimum of two years experience with Dungeons and Dragons who were recruited through ads and personal contact. Nonrole-playing subjects were 25 male and female introductory psychology students who received course credit for participation. Twenty-three male and female introductory students were recruited to rate the seriousness of the 20 items of criminal behaviour on the criminality questionnaire. An additional 45 introductory psychology students participated in an experiment measuring the test-retest reliability of the criminality questionnaire. Materials The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire contains 90 true-false items measuring Extraversion, Neuroticism, Psychoticism, and Lying. The test-retest reliabilities for these scales are .78, .89, .86, and .84, respectively (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975). The criminality measure consisted of 20 yes-no items measuring criminal behaviour ranging from traffic violations to sexual assault. Subjects also indicated the approximate year in which the behaviour had occurred. Testretest reliabilities were high for 15 items (phi> .90), moderate for two items (phi> .80), and low for two (phi = .54 and 35). An 8-item demographic questionnaire obtained data on age, sex, roleplaying experience, job activity, and parents' occupations. Parental occupations in conjunction with information from Statistics Canada (Statistics Canada, 1986a, 1986b) was used to judge the subjects' socioeconomic status in 1 of 18 wage-income brackets. Procedure Forty-five subjects served in a test-retest study of the criminality questionnaire. Individuals were told the general aim of the study in Session 1 and then completed both the criminality measure and the demographic questionnaire. They returned in 3 weeks for Session 2 during which they completed the same questionnaires. Twenty-three subjects each received the 20 criminal behaviours from the criminality questionnaire printed on index cards and were asked to sort the cards from most to least serious. The average of these ratings for each behaviour were used as a measure of the perceived seriousness of the crimes by university students. In the main experiment, subjects participated in group sessions lasting approximately one-half hour. Subjects were told the general purpose of the study, then signed a consent form and completed the three questionnaires in the following order: (a) Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, (b) criminality questionnaire, and (c) demographic questionnaire.
Results
The data were analyzed using SASISTAT release 6.03 (SAS Institute, Inc., 1988). Means and standard deviations for the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire scales, age, years of role-playing experience, income group, crime, and weighted-crime are presented in Table 1. The crime score represents the total number of items scored "yes" on the criminality measure. Weighted-crime represents the total number of items scored "yes" on the criminality measure multiplied by an item's seriousness rating. 1190 S. ABYETA & J. FOREST TABLE 1 MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS BETWEEN ROLE-PLAYERS AND NONROLE-PUYERS FOR PREDICTOR ANDDEPENDENT VARL~LES Variable Role-players, n: 20 Nonrole-players, n: 25 M SD M SD Psychoticism Neuroticism Extroversion Lie Scale Yem Role-playing Income Group Age Crime Weighted-crime t tests of the differences between role-players and nonrole-players for the predictor scores indicated a significant difference on Neuroticism (t,, = 2.04, p < .05), age (t,, = -2.74, p < .01), and years of role-playing (t,,, = -12.9, based on approximate t' because variances were unequal). As well, there was a significant difference between the variances of role-players and nonrole-players on Psychoticism. To test the hypothesis that role-players would report more criminal activity than nomole-players a standard regression analysis was carried out on both the crime and weighted-crime score using the seven predictor variables. It was predicted that the role-playing variable would be a significant predictor of self-reported criminality after the effects of socioeconomic status (as measured on the income variable), personality (as measured on the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire), and age were controlled. The seven-predictor regression model for the dependent variable crime was non-significant (F,,,, = 1.24, p < .3l, R2 = .19; Adj. R2 = .04). The only parameter of the regression equation to be significantly different than zero was Psychoticism (t,, = 2.03, p<.O5). The seven-predictor regression model for the dependent variable weighted-crime was also non significant (F,,,, = 1.14, p < .36, R2 = .18; Adj. R2 = .02). The only parameter of the regression equation significantly different from zero was Psychoticism (t,, = 2.24, p< .03). These analyses dichotomized subjects into game-players and nongame-players. The same two analyses were carried out using the variable years-of-game-playing which is a continuous variable. The results were the same; both F ratios were non significant and the only parameter of the regression equation that was significantly different from zero was Psychoticism. The above analyses are appropriate for assessing the unique contribution of the game-playing variable to self-reported criminality after controlling for the other variables in the regression equation; however, if game-playing correlates highly with several other variables, it may predict criminality if entered early in the regression model. To examine this possibility additional post hoc regression analyses were carried out using a forward selection procedure (entry level set at .>), a maximum R2 selection procedure, and a stepwise procedure (significance level for remaining in model was .15). The forward selection procedure adds variables to the regression model based on selecting the variable having the largest F of the variables not yet in the model. The stepwise procedure is similar to the forward procedure except that variables already in the model can be dropped if they do not produce a significant E The maximum R2 procedure tries to create the best one-variable, two-variable, etc., regression model by adding and subtracting variables to determine which lead to the greatest increase in R2. The results of 24 analyses were identical to those of the previous regression analyses for both the crime and weighted-crime dependent measures; d F ratios were non significant at the .05 level and the only regression parameter that was significantly different from zero was Psychoticism. Psychoticism entered each regression model first and remained in all models. Indeed, in the stepwise analysis it was the only variable that entered the model; all others were non significant. DISCUSSION The results of this study do not support the detractor hypothesis of the connection between role-playing experience and criminal behaviour. The roleplaying variable was so unimportant that it could not even pass the liberal entry standard set in the forward selection procedure for a four-variable regression model. The only variable to enter the regression models consistently and predict criminality responses was the Psychoticism factor. Eysenck and Eysenck (1975) describe the characteristics of a person scoring very high on the Psychoticism scale as an individual who may be solitary, troublesome, not caring for people, and lacking in sympathy and feeling. The Psychoticism scale has been shown by Eysenck and Eysenck to be significantly higher in both male and female prisoners. In the present study it was the nonroleplayers who reported more criminal activity and obtained the higher Psychoticism scores although their Psychoticism scores were not in the range of those for male prisoners (M = 5.72, SD = 3.56) or even above their age norms (16 to 19) for male university students (M = 4.63, SD = 3.27). The underlying significance of the inverse relationship between Psychoticism and role-playing experience is somewhat unclear since the Psychoticism scale has lower reliability and internal consistency than the other scales (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975). Further, the generality of these conclusions are limited by the sample sizes in this experiment and by the self-report nature of the measure of criminality. The failure to find a positive relationship between fantasy role-playing and maladaptive behaviour in ths study or in previous research leads one to ask why the negative view arose and continues to be expounded. It may be 1192 S. ABYETA & J. FOREST that negative, and perhaps even positive, views of fantasy games among certain groups may be due in part to the use of the availability heuristic (Matlin, 1989). The availability heuristic is used when the frequencies or probabilities of events are estimated on the basis of how easily examples come to mind. This method of estimating frequencies can be biased by the vividness of the events (e.g., suicides), illusory correlations between variables (e.g., roleplaying experience and suicides), and the causal models used by people to explain events (e.g., play-acting murders lead to real life murders). Researchers interested in fantasy role-playing games need to (a) obtain nonverbal measures of behaviour from garners and nongamers to complement the current findings and (b) examine the decision-making processes by which the detractors and-proponents of fantasy games evaluate the effects of playing such games.
References
Adler, J., & Doherty, S. (1985, Sept. 9) Kids: the deadliest game? Newsweek, 106, 93.
Bonilla, E. (1978) Monster match. Houston City Magazine, 6, 12-17. BROOKE, J. (1985, Aug. 22) A suicide spurs town to debate nature of game. The New York Times, B-1. Dm, W. (1984) The dungeon master. Boston, MA: Houghton.
Mifflin. Dernard, L. A,, & Kline, L. M. (1990) Alienation and the game Dungeons and Dragons. Psychological Reports, 66, 1219-1222.
Eysneck, H. J., & Eysneck, S. B. G. (1975) The manual of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. San Diego, CA: Educational Testing Service.
Gygax, G. (1978) Phyers handbook. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR Hobbies.
Jonhston, M. (1980) It's only a game-or is it? New West, 5, 32-40. MATHER, N. (1986) Fantasy and advenme software with the LD student. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 19, 56-58.
Matlin, M. W. (1989) Cognition. (2nd ed.) New York: Holt. SAS INSTITUTE, INC. (1988) SASISTATuser's guide, release 6.03 edition. Gary, NC: SAS Institute.
Schuster, A. (1985) Critics link a fantasy game to 29 deaths. Christiani~ Today, 29, 65-66.
Simon, A. (1987) Emotional stability pertaining to the game of Dungeons and Dragons. Psychology in the Schools, 24, 329-332. S~~nsncs CANADA. (1986a) Employment income by occupation. Population and Dwelling Characteristics, CS 93-116, pp. 1-113, 1-128, Appendix 2, pp. XXXiii-XLVi. S~~nsncs CANADA. (1986b) Family incomes. Census Families, CS 13-208, pp. 18-19. Accepted December 2, 1771.
This article discusses the value of using fantasy and role playing games (FRPG) in the curriculum of gifted students. It lists ways that FRPG can supplement 26 academic subjects and develop 24 learning skills. Objections from religious groups to use of the games are addressed. Different types of games are compared. (CR)
A case is presented of extended character analysis of a person with a schizoid personality. Because of the difficulty in establishing a therapeutic alliance, the therapy was a form of modified play therapy using a game to enhance ego development. A theoretical discussion explores the reasons of this deviation from standard therapy works and its indications for other cases.
This article demonstrates how a young man with an obsessional, schizoid personality was treated by utilizing a fantasy game, Dungeons and Dragons, as a vehicle for releasing his unconscious fantasies. It aims to show how the game may serve to free fears and feelings for useful consciousness with enhanced ego development so as to improve the patient’s ability to interact with others and feel comfortable with himself.
Fred, a 19-year-old, single white college student, had cut both of his wrists in a methodical suicide attempt and had gone into the shower in an effort to prevent the wounds from coagulating. He claimed that he had been depressed for several years, actually since grade school and that he had always been a “loner.” Friendships he did develop were usually short-term and superficial. College, he reported, had been particularly lonely for him and he had done little outside of school work. Yet he could not describe any unusual events or possible precipitants. However he reported that school work, which had been an area of success for him, had lately been going badly.
Fred gave no indication of sleep or appetite disturbance, spontaneous crying spells, depressive dreams, constipation, weight loss or other signs of endogenous depression. He denied any hallucinations or delusions.
Fred grew up in a small town. His father is in the legal profession, “likes his work,” and is very formal and not close at all. The mother is a housewife but is “otherwise a pretty good mother.” He is the second of three brothers. The oldest brother is three years older than Fred and has an undefined physical condition, “a problem with the vessels on one side of his brain” (probably Sturge-Weber syndrome) and is retarded. He stays home, “mooching” off the parents. Fred never got along with his older brother, and he was constantly angry with him because of the extra attention he got from the parents. “They always took my brother’s side in any conflict.” He stated he always got along with his younger brother. Fred was sent to boarding school and was relieved to be away.
He described, with many examples, a history of slights by family and schoolmates and how awful it felt to be known as the brother of a retarded boy. Fred denied any form of homosexual ideation.
The mental status exam showed depressed mood and affect but was otherwise unremarkable. Except for his self-inflicted wounds, his physical exam was entirely within normal limits.
Fred was seen by me in the hospital and later in twice-weekly, 45-minute outpatient sessions in addition to group therapy with different psychiatrists. He was diagnosed as having apparently free-floating depression, and was given desipramine, 150 mg per night.
At first, Fred tended to keep distance from me. He was only involved in treatment superficially but appeared to need assistance in defining life goals for himself. He used intellectualization and other obsessive defenses, but there was also an element of emotional impulsivity.
Fred felt uncomfortable in dealing with male therapists because of the strong angry feelings that were, he said, much like those he had toward his father who had “let him down” in the past.
Fred took a leave of absence from school and worked to support himself. In the first year, much of the therapeutic work was to maintain an alliance, as he had no friends and no social contacts since the suicide attempt. Two attempts of living with roommates ended in his being cheated out of rent twice. My therapeutic function at this time was primarily to allow him to share his experiences.
During the early part of the second year Fred made his first social contact outside of therapy by joining a group of “fringe people like myself” in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. At first, I was reluctant to encourage his bringing me material from his game sessions as it appeared to be resistance; however, it did allow him some social contact, and the eagerness with which he told me about the game indicated to me the importance of his sharing this material. I began to encourage him to bring summaries of episodes into therapy and to ask about motivation and feelings of characters. Therapy was now confined to his displaced material, and emotional content began to emerge. He returned to school during this period.
After six months of this approach, Fred was able to verbalize feelings toward me and began to abandon the need to speak through the displaced medium of Dungeons and Dragons.
He said his parents made him feel rejected and punished through implied loss of love and attention. They criticized him for being angry at, or envious of, his deformed brother. This left Fred with the belief that there was “something wrong with me for having these feelings.”
He stated that he had been able to experience the full range of feelings from hate to love in therapy, first displaced, then toward me, and that my tolerant, encouraging attitude allowed him to develop the sense that these emotions are permissible. This helped him to gain mastery of these feelings. It further led him to state that it gave him a sense of being “OK,” and that much of his feeling of self-worth began with my first acceptance of his Dungeons and Dragons fantasies.
Dungeons and Dragons is an imagination game. Worlds are created and the participants play characters in this imaginary world. Each player’s character is created according to a set of rules that govern abilities and classes of characters.Through complicated series of dice rolls, a character is dealt strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, and charisma. The types of characters are clerics, dwarves, elves, fighters, halflings, magic users or thieves. Each of these has a characteristic range of the above abilities. All characters choose “alignments” of Lawful (good), Chaotic (or evil) or Neutral, which will further dictate behavior in situations: a complete personality or alter ego is thus delineated. These characters then work their way as a party (group of players) through the imaginary world, casting spells, undergoing adventures, fighting monsters, and non-player characters and seeking treasure. The outcome of each encounter is dictated by rolls of odd-shaped dice that take into account a character’s profile through a formula. All of this is overseen by a Dungeon Master or a character who acts as a referee.1
Two points stand out. The worlds, or dungeons, are very much primary-process creations. There is no sense of time or reality. Thus, walls may be alive and grab a passing character. Sexes may change, dead may be resurrected and so forth. In juxtaposition to the suspension of the rules of the real world are the complicated rules by which the game is governed. Every encounter is governed by rules. The game is characterized by rules. The introductory book of rules is 64 pages long and there are many additional books of rules beyond this! In order to become proficient, a player must study the rules at great length, as the game has no fixed end point. A single game may last for years. As the group of players masters a dungeon, it can go to lower (more difficult) levels to begin again.
Fred eventually joined several games and developed complete characters in each, with mores, personalities, hopes, fears, and emotions. As he described his ongoing adventures in therapy, it became possible to use each projectively and relate the characters’ thoughts, feelings and motives.
In one game, an encounter lasted for several months. Fred had taken a character who had a “lawful-evil” personality. His party had stopped in a village. He had gotten his character hired to work for the richest man in the village, a character controlled by the dungeon master. He related his progress to me as his character killed the sons of the rich man, conspired to marry his daughter, and ultimately seize the treasures of this man.
As he recounted this material in the therapy we focused on two questions: the motives and feelings of the character as he schemed and acted, and wether Fred had ever had such feelings, and in what situations. Gradually, he was able to relate that he had felt his brother had always gotten the family “treasures” of love and attention and that he had wanted to murder him much of the time. Further he revealed how such feelings were always difficult to express, but that he could see himself experiencing these feelings toward his brother again and again in many situations.
Another illustrative situation involved an episode when, in his group therapy, he had been confronted unrelentingly by the other members of the group about his lack of a girlfriend to which his only response was an angry, “Back off!” In individual therapy shortly thereafter, he revealed that the intervening Dungeons and Dragons encounter had involved his party’s striking out into an uncharted portion of a valley which they created as they went along. In this valley the party encountered five farms (the number of other group members in his therapy group). Because of an insult in the party, under Fred’s direction, they proceeded to slaughter the farmers’ families and livestock and burn down the farms. This incident involved his working through murderous rage at the therapy group in a safe, displaced way. He could talk about this incident directly only months later at which time he revealed a prior inability to find an outlet for such feelings. Similarly, grandiose and magical desires were revealed in his experience as a dungeon master; feelings of loss and separation over death of one of his characters and many similar examples.
The feelings this patient expressed in therapy were all threatening to him initially. The game provided a vehicle for the safe emergence of feeling within the context of organizing rules. As he first expressed them in a displaced way and got used to them in fantasy, he could feel safe with his feelings and begin to direct them more directly to another person. Slowly this man has been able to emerge from his isolation. He has developed self-esteem, made friends, lost his virginity, and has been able to date fairly regularly. He continued in therapy with me in more traditional ways, off and on, over a period of ten years after his suicide attempt. He is now a more openly emotional person who does not need to displace his feelings. Fred terminated therapy appropriately when his career required a move and was married about nine months later.
Freud described dreams as the “road to the unconscious” and pointed to the value of discussing dreams and a patient’s associations to his dreams in conducting therapy.2 As the century progressed, the principles were expanded by various authors to both waking fantasy and to play in children for their projective value and revelation of primary process. Thus Freud discussed the relationship between fantasy and dreams3 (p. 178) but also described how play could be used as a repetition-compulsion to re-experience events that overwhelm the ego and thus to master them.4 This observation was modified and expanded by Erikson5 to demonstrate that play could be used to gain mastery. Waelder6 saw play and fantasy as: “Instinctual gratification and assimilation of disagreeable experiences” (p. 222), in other words, mastery. Freud also suggested that fantasy provided immediate wish-fulfillment.2 Thus there is much to suggest in these observations that there is a relationship among play, dreams and waking fantasy. This relationship has been shown to be closer than analytic writers may have realized. Thus Cartwright7 demonstrated that the need for Rapid-Eye-Movement (REM) dreams could be decreased by waking, drug-induced hallucinations. Cartwright and Monroe8 showed that REM deprivation could be fended off by encouraging waking fantasy. In a study of WREM dreams, Pivik and Foulkes9 demonstrated that: “waking story telling ability correlated with NREM dreamlike fantasy” (p. 148).Klinger10 describes them as functionally interchangeable: “REM sleep suppression is reduced by permitting the substitution of waking dream description and related fantasy-like ideation for the dream loss” (p. 83).
The therapeutic use of fantasy is well known. It has formed the core of some therapies such as Guided Affective Imagery where fantasies are suggested to relaxed patients11-13 while Klinger10 suggests that: “Fantasy is incapable of reducing drives as such, but [...] can prevent or reduce the build-up of anger and can diminish anticipatory anxiety about unavoidable pain better than activities that [...] cure off anger and anxiety” (p. 315). Wolpe14 describes the use of fantasy as a means of “systemic desensitization.”
Dungeons and Dragons is a form of group-related, organized, controlled waking fantasy. It has all the elements of free fantasy and encourages free fantasy as there is no board or movable pieces to provide inhibitions to imagination. Players are encouraged to become their characters in the course of the game, which is to say, to become their own fantasies. Juxtaposed to this active encouragement of the merge of the player’ fantasies is the ever present structure of the rules that provide a vehicle for how one is to fantasize. This further offers reassurance that when needed, there are rules to provide structure for the wanderings of one’s imagination. For the patient, the game served as an organized vehicle to become familiar with his own unconscious. The use of this material in therapy, the questioning of motives and emotions allowed these underlying unconscious thoughts to come to awareness and be worked through.
In this way the game within therapy could be used to work through processes halted in childhood in the way Bettelheim15 suggests fairy tales do, by giving form and structure to day dreams and fantasies and, therefore, form to a person’s life. Beyond this, however, the use of game material in therapy served the therapeutic relationship. Bettelheim states that when parents do not allow a child an organized outlet for the “dark side of humanity” or convey the thought that such a side does not or should not exist, the child, experiencing natural thoughts and feelings, is left with the feeling of being a monster. Further, the fantasies of fairy tales teach children how to channel their emotions in a way that allows integration of personality by “meaningful and rewarding relations in the world around him.”15 Certainly this patient took something from the peer relationships in the games. In his own words, however, almost as if speaking from Bettelheim, the encouragement to become familiar with the emotions of his characters allowed him to “become familiar” with his own emotions. Beyond that, my patient’s acceptance of these feelings allowed him to see himself as not a monster for having them. His parents had left him with the impression that it was wrong to be angry with his crippled brother. In the patient’s words: “This fact, more than anything that was actually said in the therapy is what I’ve gotten from the therapy.” Langs16 points out that there is always a “spiralling unconscious communicative interaction” between patient and therapist, and that this is where the work of therapy transpires and that the patient’s communications are “adaptational responses prompted by emotionally meaningful stimuli.” Certainly this is what has happened in this therapy. The relationship allowed permission for feelings of anger and love and all in between to emerge. The vehicle to reach these feelings quickly and safely was through the use of projections and displacements of the fantasies onto the Dungeons and Dragons game. This was the vehicle by which this patient could interact with me as his therapist in an emotional way. This made possible the later work of therapy that might not otherwise have been possible in an individual who was so schizoid. It allowed this patient to experience as safe the working through of transference later in the therapy. This is essentially what Kernberg17 speaks of in emphasizing the need for structure in therapy to proceed. Structure will “[...] [U]ndo the confusion caused by frequent ‘exchange’ of self- and object-representation projections by the patient.”
Perhaps the most important aspect of all can best be summed up by the words of Winnicott: “Psychotherapy takes place in the overlap of two areas of playing, that of the patient and that of the therapist. Psychotherapy has to do with two people playing together. The corollary of this is that where playing is not possible then the work done by the therapist is directed towards bringing the patient from a state of not being able to play into a state of being able to play.”18 In much this way, play and fantasy were used as vehicles to help foster an ego-building relationship for this patient. He could develop better selfobjects out of the safety he felt in a therapeutic relationship where his fantasies were tolerated, encouraged and guided. It seems, therefore, that we could help many people for whom traditional modes of therapy are unavailable because they lack the capacity to regress sufficiently in the company of the therapist to allow the work of therapy for structural, emotional change to proceed. By introducing fantasy and play, Dungeons and Dragons appears to have been the vehicle that allowed the patient described in this paper to enhance ego development.
A process whereby fantasy is used to overcome the inability of obsessives, schizoids, borderlines, adolescents, and alexithymics to work toward emotional change may have considerable merit. The high degree of structure engendered by the rules of Dungeons and Dragons seems to bypass some of the risks of fantasy-based therapies such as Guided Affective Imagery while allowing emotions to emerge within the therapy in a nonthreatening manner. At the same time, the therapist’s interest and attention may serve a function of mirroring approval as patients become familiar with their own, but displaced, psychic structure. The use of this game as an adjunct to therapy can allow patients an opportunity to explore their mental dungeons and slay their psychic dragons.
A schizoid young man made a methodical attempt at suicide. He revealed a paucity of object attachments leading to profound isolation. His early upbring led him to extreme isolation of affect and a fear of fragmentation.
His inner life was not safely reachable by conventional therapy. After he became involved in playing a fantasy game, Dungeons and Dragons, the therapy was modified to use the game material as displaced, waking fantasy. This fantasy was used as a safe guide to help the patient learn to acknowledge and express his inner self in a safe and guided way. The patient ultimately matured and developed healthier object relations and a better life.
The theoretical underpinnings of this process are explored, both in dynamic terms and in terms of the biologic correlation and equivalence of dreams and waking fantasy. The utility of this game as a vehicle for treatment of selected individuals is discussed.
1 Moldvoy, T. (Ed.) (1981). Dungeons and Dragons Basic Rulebook. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR.
2 Freud, S. (1961). The interpretation of dreams. New York: Wiley.
3 Freud, S. (1953). The relation of the poet to day-dreaming. In Collected Papers. V.4, London: Hogarth.
4 Freud, S. (1959). Beyond the pleasure principle (1920). New York: W. W. Norton.
5 Erikson, E. H. (1940). Studies in the interpretation of play. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 22, 559-671.
6 Waelder, R. (1932). The psychoanalytic theory of play. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2, 208-224.
7 Cartwright, R. D. (1966). Dream and drug-induced fantasy behavior. Archives of General Psychiatry, 15, 7-15.
8 Cartwright, R. D., & Monroe, L. J. (1968). Relation of dreaming and REM sleep: the effects of REM deprivation under two conditions. Personality and Social Psychology, 10, 69-74.
9 Pivik, T., & Foulkes, D. (1968). NREM mentation: Relation with personality, orientation time and time of night. Journal Consultation and Clinical Psychology, 32, 144-151.
10 Klinger, E. (1971). Structure and function of fantasy. New York: John Wiley.
11 Kosab, F. P. (1974). Imagery techniques in psychiatry. Archives of General Psychiatry, 31, 283-290.
12 Leuner, H. C. (1969). Guided affective imagery. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 23, 4-22.
13 Wolberg, L. R. (1974). The technique of psychotherapy, 3rd Ed. New York: Grune and Stratton.
14 Wolpe, J. (1973). The practice of behavior therapy, 2nd Ed. New York: Pergamon Press.
15 Bettelheim, B. (1976). The uses of enchantment. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
16 Langs, R. (1981). Modes of “cure” in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 62, 199-214.
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18 Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing: A theoretical statement. In Playing and reality. New York: Basic Books.