I'm building something

Finished my therapy last week

2010-11-22T20:20:00.000+01:00

I've been talking a lot about sense of security on this blog. What I feel lost on the way is that sense of security is just the foundation to build a sense of freedom upon.

Trust might be a better word. Life coaches and conservative patriots tells us that perfect security is a possibility - Just hold on hard enough to positive thinking or nationalism, or what have you, and we will never fall. That's not how it works, though. Real security, a sense of trust, is trusting we will survive failure. Real trust comes from trying, falling, doing hard work. You must find trust in that failure is not a catastrophe, but life goes on.

It is not by enforcing our models and thoughts that we find trust, it is by challenging them, working with them with someone we trust, exposing the parts that makes us uncertain, stiff, fearful.

Tear it down. Build it up. Be free.

So, I've been doing a lot of building. My blog is called "I'm building something" for chrissake. I think it's time to take a break from that - Building thigs is too safe, I do it all the time. Now I'm going to try feeling instead.

Maybe I'll see you later

Arvid

A talk with Halling

2010-10-21T22:26:00.004+02:00

This summer, I interviewed Tomas Halling, dadaist and improv performer. You can listen to our entire talk and download it at this location:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/816672009e2799fb/

Tomas Hallings performs his show XgLosCho2 on Teater Sesam, Gothenburg, Sweden this weekend. (Friday, saturday and sunday at 19.00)

The entire interview is in swedish. Originally I had intended to film the entire event and include english subtitles, but technology was not on my side, so I settled for this. What I will do though, is publish a few themes here that emerged from the interview. I wont write a lot on each, just let the quotes themselves sink in.

Survival

AAC: "You're self-taught, how did you find improvisation?"

TH: "The word that springs to my mind is survival, pure survival. You have to find yourself a world that works for you, where you can do what you like, express what you like, and feel exactly what you like"

Freedom

On freeform improv:

TH: "And it doesn't have to lead anywhere, anytime, you don't have figure out where it is supposed to be going"

AAC: "And there is a freedom in that"

TH: "Yes, it is the complete freedom. (exhaling puff) It's bungeejumping without a cord."

"You can do anything - and that's fun! It struck me just now - "Of course you can", of course I can do that, if I want to build seventy-eight galaxies, then I'll do just that. It's super simple... but it doesn't work at the employment center (laughter)"

Spontanity

On word association: TH: "It can never be captured, never domesticated. Put a false tiger in a cage - what am I saying? (laughter) That's what I'm talking about. Well, everything wild you put in captivity - It dies."

You can not force creativity out of someone else, that's a pet peeve of mine in traditional roleplaying which has a guy not conducting, but rather demanding creativity from the other players.

There is something here you can find in the moment in improv, that just isn't there in something that is planned and prepared.

Clarity

AAC: "People always want to have some kind of insight in what's going to happen. You wish to understand, you wish to know what the conditions are. It's so important to provide a clarity in this"

TH: "Clarity, that's it, right! To give clarity to the wildness"

TH: "Is there anything more explicit and clear than a wild animal?"

I spoke a lot about the meeting and the meeting of audience and performer. By being clear, you are there, open and present, but oftentimes we are obtuse and unclear with our wishes and our intentions. I think it's a form of defense.

Insecurity

TH: "You pretend to be confident. Before, I used to think "If I'm in the blackout, liberate me into the complete abyss", my improv always looked like I was hanging in an endless chasm, and it was great performance."

TH: "The more you stayed in it, the better it was"

I have always imagined that all creativity stems from a sense of security, knowing that the scary parts aren't really dangerous, but Tomas describes how pure insecurity could actually fuel his performance. Makes me think of locus of control - If it feels like you're being annihilated by the abyss, but you also believe in your capability to beat it, survive it, perhaps that channels into a great performance? Man will survive.

Planning an improv night

2010-09-26T18:10:00.001+02:00

On tuesday, it's the first night for our new improv group. I'm sitting here, writing a program that will get people hooked, with new and interesting exercises...

Wait, hold it!

There's three things going on here:
1) Fear of rejection
2) Trying to be original
3) Planning real hard

None of these really belong in improv, at all. So, maybe I should just write a program with classic exercises that I know by heart and are, simply, fun.

Hey, maybe The Flow-er Model applies to this group activity as well? Let's translate it to seven steps for building a group:
1. Create an interest
2. Create a sense of security
3. Formulate a vision
4. Get everyone involved and active
5. Be open
6. Be clear
7. Listen and build on that

Well, that makes sense to me. For our first session, let's make it fun and interesting, and then safe, let everyone get a feel for each other, and then we can start talking about expectations and visions for our group, and involvement in it.

Cool.

Okay, I'm officially an over-analyzer. Rather than feeling uncertain before our first session, and picking simple and fun exercises, I have to instruct myself to do things in a fun and safe way. :-)

Why Apocalypse World flows

2010-09-26T14:37:00.002+02:00

This is what it's all about.

Okay, so in my last post, on Why Apocalypse World rocks, I wrote that "[the] game is fluent, fast-paced, involving and fun."

Why is that? Let's take a look with the steps outlined in The Flow-er Model.

Step 1-3.

1. Player investment
I've got to admit, I was pumped as hell before diving into this game. Reading it, I felt that this is my idea of how improv roleplaying should be designed - So it had better work, or I would be wrong. I also got a group together I thought would be right for the game and my improv playstyle.
Okay, so that was a huge boost of energy for the game "for free". But there is also a way to increase player investment in your game design, by making a good first impression, and here Apocalypse World shines - When the players picked up the playbooks, they got invested. This was a game we wanted to play!

2. Sense of security
I think AW makes a very, very important point when establishing that the characters are sexy, the MC should be a fan of the characters, and that the MC should play with the other players, not against them.As I wrote in The Flow-er Model, if you make the players feel safe in their control, they will let go of control. If you try to yank their control out of their hands, they will just hold on firmer to it. Without this, I don't think AW would work, at least not in the way it does now. Apocalypse World is such a harsh place, it requires trust in your game group.

3. Shared vision
Here is where the benefits of a distinct style for your game comes in full force, and of course the fact that it is an improvised game.
The book specifically states that for first session prep, you should "day-dream some apocalyptic imagery", without committing to anything in particular. As the world is created through play and pre-play, the vision is shared. No-one knows anything anyone else doesn't know.
The game also has one move and one principle for the MC to ensure everyone is the same page: Tell consequences and ask ("This is what you think would happen, do you still want to do it?") and Draw maps like crazy. Basic advice, but very sound.

Step 4-7

4. Agency
Nothing happen that the characters doesn't make happen.
Except for fronts. Fronts are these clusterfucks of badness to be managed before they end in catastrophe. That guy raising an army to take over your hardhold, the army itself, and your rival holds, that's a front.
What is neat about this is, as long as the characters creates trouble for themselves, you don't have to touch the fronts - But if you want to ramp the game up, or if things are slowing down, you bring in the fronts, they do something that brings them closer to fulfilling their agenda. And this in turn, encourages agency.
What I love about Apocalypse World is, every time you do something, you stick your neck out. You risk getting burnt, but if you don't do anything, then your guaranteed to sink and drown when trouble catches up with you. That's what the apocalyptic world is like - You can not be safe, unless you carve that safety out with tears, sweat and blood.
If you manage to convey the idea that there is no right or wrong, no story, and make both triumph and defeat interesting, the players will just keep acting. Great agency, great game.

5. Blocking
This is interesting. In a way, Apocalypse World has the ultimate blocking - When you fail a roll, you are punished by an MC move. It doesn't feel like blocking though - Because even if you fail, you get something, something interesting that adds to the story.
Again, for this to work, the players needs to feel secure in the game, and be interested in exploring their character rather than playing to win. This is of course not a unique stance, most story games share it.

6. Clarity
This game is so simple. Whenever a player says they want to do something, it should be pretty obvious which move that is. Make that move. Roll 2d6 plus one of the five stats. Miss, bad things happen. 7-9 good things happen, but maybe trouble too, 10+, perfect.
MC'ing just consists of following the to-do-list in the Master of Ceremonies chapter.

7. Yes, and...
I define Yes, and... techniques in roleplaying as a point where a player or the game says something, and then hands this over for another player to build on and interpret. It's a very inspiring and productive technique, and to my knowledge, AW uses three Yes, and... techniques:
1) There are lists to pick from everywhere, both in character generation, resolution you get to pick from lists and interpret just what that means.
2) Making a dice roll opens up for new story contributions.
3) The MC is constantly asking the players questions, which means the MC starts something that the player finishes/interprets. There is a balance here: The questions run from open, vague questions that leave a lot to the player; and strong questions that really are more of statements for the player to interpret. ("You killed his brother. Why?")

Does it work?
Oh hell yes

This analysis might be a little unfair even, as I built The Flow-er Model to map out and explain flow in roleplaying games such as Apocalypse World, Lady Blackbird and Berättelser från Staden. Of course it's going to "score" in a test constructed on itself.

Nevertheless, I feel Apocalypse World brings a great clarity to a design philosophy used by story games for some time now, and this model really stresses clarity throughout it's steps. Clarity both opens up this design philosophy for trad gamers, and makes a good design, really.

Why Apocalypse World rocks

2010-09-25T11:43:00.022+02:00

It has style
Apocalypse World oozes in style. The high-contrast illustrations, the words, the writing style... I can pick up a playbook and instantly know what Apocalypse World is about. Like, I see a picture of an woman (?) in a welder's mask, and beneath the picture it says

THE GUN LUGGER

in big, bold, broken letters. I flip it, and the back says

-The Gunlugger-

Apocalypse World is a mean, ugly, violent place. Law and society have broken down completely. What's yours is yours only while you can hold it in your hands. There is no peace. There's no stability but what you carve, inch by inch, out of the concrete and dirt, and then defend with murder and blood.

Sometimes the obvious move is the right one.

I open it up, and it tells me to pick moves such as Fuck this shit, Insano like Drano, Battle-hardened, Prepared for the inevitable, and NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH.

Okay.
I know what the gunlugger is about.
I know what Apocalypse World is about.
Let's play!

This style runs through the entire book, even when Baker speaks straight to the MC (Apocalypse for GM), and it just sets the tone and imagery for what kind of game this is.

Style is a underused aspect of game writing. By picking the right words, you will evoke images in your readers head, set up a vision of the game that is very loose but also very tangible. Excellent for improv games.

It's spot on
Vincent Baker has an eerie ability to point to exactly what is relevant, and then do just that.

In Apocalypse World, he points to dice-rolling and tells us what is relevant in that. We are given a list of moves that everyone can do. Act under fire, Seduce/manipulate, Seize by force, Go aggro, Read a situation, Read a person, and Open your brain to the psychic maelstrom.

This is when you roll dice.

All of them are supposed to be used in a charged situation, except for Open your brain, which can be used in a charged situation. All of them either opposes other persons, or help you figure out what you want to do (to oppose other persons)

Now roll. On a 10+, you get what you wanted. On 7-9 you basically get what you wanted, with some complications. On a 6 or less, you get trouble.

If it's not charged situation, and if it isn't the PCs doing things, don't roll, basically

What Baker tells us here, that is spot on, is when we roll dice, why we roll dice, and what should happen when we roll dice.
We only roll dice when it matters. We roll dice for the PC's agency, when opposed by other people's will. When we roll dice, it should add to the story, not just sucess-failure, but build on that.

My players quickly grasped this, and love rolling their dice.

It's queer
And not just queer, the whole of society is gone in Apocalypse World.

A human life isn't sacred anymore. A human life isn't secure anymore. Sure, we've seen post-apocalyptic people in stupid hairdo's and with stop sign shields before, in Mad Max and the entire genre... But still I got the feeling those were today''s people, dressed up. I get the same feeling from much of the fantasy genre: People in a historical setting, acting, thinking and talking like modern people.

The people of Apocalypse World are truely post-modern. Society, values, tradition, it all broke down, and you can tell people are lost, or rather they have lost the foundation for their lives. This is post-apocalypse I can believe in.

But my most favourite part of this is that it's also so queer. Names aren't gender-coded anymore, you can be girl named Bill, or a guy named Mother Superior, or Shit Head for that matter. Ethnicity, sexuality and gender aren't important anymore, their meanings are forgotten and lost.

Everyone has sex. With whomever they like. There are six genders to choose from, varying from playbook to playbook: Male, female, ambigous, transgressing, concealed, androgynous.

This makes my group play things we haven't tried before. It's exhilirating.

The characters rocks
Okay, I already showed you the gunlugger, which is the baddest ass. But there is also the Maestro D' who owns an establishment, the Hardholder who owns a freaking town, the Driver, the Hocus, the Battlebabe, the Operator, the Chopper... They all move on different scales - One of the players is a doctor, one is a mayor, and one is just a troublemaker - They all have their different kind of trouble and ways to influence the story - And it works! I can see why a Battlestar Galactica hack is in the progress - It's basically the same story structure.

All of these characters are evocative, sexy and awesome. (When the players want to play everyone and pick every move, you know that's a good sign.) And when you pick them up, you know what you want to do with them, what they are doing in this world, right away.

This mystifies me still - Just how do you write characters that players will pick up, and instantly be ready to act on, yet two people will play the Battlebabe in two different ways?

And they need to act. There's no status quo in Apocalypse World, and no story either. What we do is we follow the characters around and see what they do, see what happens to them, because they are dead sexy.

It's got the flow
And here's the big one.

Apocalypse World is how improv games should be written. Game is fluent, fast-paced, involving and fun. We consistently have flow when playing, and two sessions were all flow. That's something of a record for me at least.

And I knew it would. In a way, Apocalypse World was proof to me that my ideas where not totally off the mark, they were true - At least for my game. That was a great feeling.

In my follow-up post, I will analyse Apocalypse World with my Flow-er Model, and try to explain why it delivers in this aspect.

...

Part 1 of 2. Part 2 can be found here: Why Apocalypse World flows
Apocalypse World, the forums and the playbooks are here: http://apocalypse-world.com/

Give me myself back

2010-09-22T14:23:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I posted a link to the song "Ge oss Sverige tillbaka", which translates into "Give Sweden back". ("...the way it was before the nationalists started hating")

After today's therapy, I listened to it again, but this time it wasn't about Sweden. It was about me.

Sometimes, rejecting someone is how you take hold of them.

I want to be the post-modern man

2010-09-21T04:06:00.005+02:00

I voted for the swedish environmental party, even though they aren't nearly as radical as we need them to be.

The winners of yesterday's election though, was the right wings, so our country is ruled by an alliance that have actually replaced environmental progress with environmental regression, as the environmental crisis comes closer.

On top of that, our nationalistic party got 5,7 percent, 2 more percent than last year, crossing the line for representation in parlament, (4 percent) sending the swedish people into shock, grief, and anger.

I need to get into politics. If I do not fight delusion, denial and projection with truth, science and acceptance, who will?

Everywhere around me, I see tradition and narrow-mindedness that demands me to fight it. Everywhere I see potential improvement and triumph - If I get into politics, who will fight to explain and spread my ideas on roleplaying? There are such a heavy tradition of injustice, labor and confusion in roleplaying design, and the swedish scene suffers badly from it's small scale and isolation from the international story game movement.

Only these last few years, I've begun to grasp the huge implication of gender theory, another oppression of ourselves born out of ignorance and small-mindedness.

And how will I find the time to do psychological therapy and research?

Somehow, I'll just have to do my best in this world and choose my battles. I want to map out what we're doing, show the fear, prejudice and short-comings, wash them away, find the better way. I want to be the post-modern man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN1UlpfCXn4

The Flow-er Model: Step 4-7

2010-09-11T21:08:00.007+02:00

This is the third part on the Flow-er Model. The first part is here.

Step 4-7 in The Flow-er Model concerns the process of play, it concerns how the players' input to the game are handled.

4. Agency (The will to grow)
The will to grow is what makes a plant out of a seed. Agency, to take action, to make decisions, is what makes play. Without choices, you're not playing a game anymore, or even interacting with the others. No matter if the choices are tactical, in-character or story ones - As long as they feel meaningful to the players, they will involve, activate and energize the players.

If you have a safe and secure environment (2), a clear and inspiring vision (3) and an openness for everyones' input, the players will jump to get involved in your game and start interacting with it! Active players means energy for your game and fun for everyone.

Now, I talk a lot about improv roleplaying, but I actually quite like D&D 4th ed. as well. What?!

Well, that game places player agency in its combat instead. Combat isn't planned, it's just a collection of conditions: These people have these powers, these people have these. They are at this place, and they have opposed interests. Now, let's see what happens! That is a very open setup, one that invites player input with cool powers. Also, between the encounters, our DM let's us mill around and explore his world at our leisure, going with the flow on our ideas and initiatives.

5. Blocking (Obstacles)
When players contribute to your game, they're adding valuable energy to it. Blocking is saying "No" to these contributions and energy. Blocking are big, ugly rocks in the way of your growth.

Instead of saying no, say yes. Say "Yes, and..." or say "Yes, but..." or say "Yes, if..." to other players' ideas. Take their contributions, accept them, and build on them.

That does not mean you shouldn't provide adversity to the players! You can definitly provide adversity by building on other players' contributions:
Don't take away their stuff, but let their stuff put them in trouble instead.
Let them see the impossible to see-high ranking official by their ludicrous plan, but have him angered by their hijinks and demand something from them.
Don't cancel out something that the player's have spent energy to obtain or plan or create, just raise the stakes instead - Add another risk, or raise the cost of failure.
Let the player's decide if it's still worth doing. Let the player's keep their agency and momentum.
Always build on top of what you get. Never take away.

And here is the big problem of pre-planning: When you've planned ahead of play, there is a right and a wrong, independently of what the characters are interested in. You have an investment in your ideas, you've already spent energy on them, and this means that at some point you are going to say "No" when you could have said "Yes", or you're going to let the characters head off in a direction you do not intend to build on yourself. In either case, you lose valuable energy and movement for your game.

When the players' wants to do something, that's a great opportunity for you as a GM. That's where their energy is, right now! That's what their interested in! Go there, meet your players where they are, and you'll have great reserves of player's energy and enthusiasm to scoop from and add to your game.

A big flaw in traditional game design is that skill checks are, essentially, blocking. You want do something - Great, either the game system let's you, or it says "No, you can't". It doesn't say "Yes, if..." or even "No, and...", it just says "no".

Crassly speaking, skill checks could be considered a blocking tool for the GM to keep the player's from straying off the right path of the scenario.

6. Clarity (Water)
Like water, both you and the game needs to be clear and transparent, or you will be blocking each other inadvertantly.

If the game rules are confusing and hard to learn, you will need to stop play and consult them. Only when you've mastered a game will it flow without interruption. So... don't design games that are impossible to master! (Duh.) Complex rules, sure, if you're okay with the player's spending the first sessions learning your game. Confusing, unclear and inconsistent rules, not so okay. Your players will never master those.

Also, the players need to be open and clear on what their intentions and interests are, what their visions are, either through conversation or through the system. Has the player's intentions and interests been clarified in step 3? (Shared vision) If not, the other player's are forced to guess, which makes nurturing difficult and blocking a hazard.

It never ceases to amaze me how hard it is for some practicioners of a hobby about talking with each other to actually talk with each other!

7. Yes, and... (Nurture)
"Yes, and..." is the opposite of blocking, it's taking another player's contribution and adding to it, nurturing contributions to make your game flow.

Mouse Guard is an example of a game that builds on player's contributions. When a player fails a roll, that doesn't mean sie can't do what sie wanted to do: Either trouble shows up, or sie accomplish what sie wanted, but at a cost, maybe getting angry, tired or lost. This adds more fuel to the story!

Is player reward, like XP, fate points, power points et cetera, a form of nurturing? Well, as long as it isn't a way to force the players to play a certain way, but rather something that stimulates the players and brings energy to the table - Sure!

A game can also invite the players to "Yes, and..." by providing inspiring output for the players to interpret. In the game Apocalypse World, when a character uses the move Sieze by force, you pick two or three keywords that define your action, and one them is "You impress, dismay or frighten your enemy". I can say "Yes, I frighten my enemy!" and then add "and I do this by quickly stabbing him, drawing my blade back, licking the blood off it and looking hungrily at him!" See what happened there? The game gave me a contribution that I got to accept and build on, I interpreted it according to the fiction and what it inspired in me. You can read more on this in my post on Designing with "Yes, and..."

A player can be nurturing by being a good listener, meet other players where they are coming from, understanding their contributions and adding to them. A good, nurturing player also feels safe, (Step 2) and doesn't try too hard. Sie doesn't try to be awesome, which makes play feel forced and unnatural, instead sie is obvious. Sie simply keeps an attitude of curiousity, spontanity and interest.

If you wish to learn how to be a nurturing player, that's beyond this model. Go buy Play Unsafe by Graham Walmsley, which explains it in an extensive and accessible way. Just as The Flow-er Model, it is rooted in improv theatre, but there should be something for everyone in it.

If you wish to learn how to becoma a nurturing game designer, that book hasn't been written yet. I will post analyses of games that inspired flow in me on this blog though, under the label "the flow-er model". Check that out for my thoughts on game design that makes flow happen.

The Flow-er Model: Step 1-3

2010-09-11T21:01:00.002+02:00

This is the second part on the Flow-er Model. The first part is here.

Step 1-3 in The Flow-er Model concerns the basis for energy and flow. You can think of these steps as taken before the game begins, in how the game designer prepare you for the game, in how the game master (if any) explains the game to the other players, and in the play group's already set play culture and expectations. However, there aren't clear, hard borders between step 1-3 and step 4-7. It does make pedagogical sense to split them into these two categories, though.

1. Players' investment (The sun)
Energy is the basic currency of creativity. Just as everything starts with the sun, nothing will happen in your game if your friends doesn't show up and invest energy into it.

The more energy the players invest into the game, the more energy reserves it has to spend. You can invest energy by coming to the session eager to play, cook food for the other players (which builds group coherence as well!) and write little bits of in-game fiction or play reports, and prepare sessions, write scenarios, make hand-outs.

This is can be risky though, for if the other players do not invest as much as you do, you risk disappointment and bitterness, just as in any other relationship. (See my post on trust and investing it)

2. Sense of security (The soil)
As human beings, one of our top psychological needs is a need for control and understanding of the situation we're in. Therefore, a creative atmosphere requires the players to feel secure, and secure in their roles, just as a seed needs to sit secure in it's soil. For that to happen, the game needs to adress four points:

1. What is expected of me as a participant?
2. What contributions am I allowed to do, what authority do I hold over the fiction?
3. What if I lose control over play?
4. What if I mess up and do it wrong?

The first point (What is expected of me?) is all about what you need to do to make play good. Are you supposed to be inquisitive, tactical, obedient or creative in the game? Should your characters be reckless archetypical adventurers or ordinary people with great character nuance? If it is unclear what kind of mood and playstyle your game is going for, it's going everywhere and nowhere.

The second point (What authority do I hold over the fiction?) are all about making authority, stance and narration rights clear for the players. For traditional games, these are not a big issue: As a player, you decide whatever your character says, thinks, feels and attempts. To see if you are succesful in your attempts, you roll dice. Everything else, the game master decides. Whenever you leave established tradition (could be traditions and conventions of story games as well, of course!) of story authority however, you must be clear on these points.

If the players are confused with what is expected of them, how they play/run this game, or what they are allowed to say and do to the fiction, this creates insecurity. Timid players will feel intimidated and avoid doing anything while they feel confused, while brash players will just act to release tension, perhaps trampling more timid players in the process. Insecurity and confusion makes flow impossible, so always strive towards clarity!

The third point (What if I lose control over play?) is about creating a safe environment for your players. If the GM or the game have an attitude of punishing, opposing and controlling the player's characters, the players will close up and spend their energy to defend themselves against the GM's contributions, wasting energy both they and the GM could use to move the game forward. It is only natural that the players try to retain control over their characters' fates: The player characters embody the players' investment in the game, and the means through which they interact and play the fiction. If you take those away, the players have nothing, so the players will protect what they have.

As a GM, if your players are defensive, try telling them "I will never harm your characters against your will, and nothing will happen to them that you find not funny or uncomfortable". Maybe you'll see them relax a little bit, right there! A sense of control begets a sense of security, and a sense of security begets creativity.

Now, someone might object that danger and opposition is what makes the characters' lives interesting. Well, have you ever done the trust exercise where one person falls backwards, and another peson catches them? If your players feel 100% secure they will not lose control of their characters fate, they will willingly let themselves lose control. They will willingly fall backwards, have terrible things happen to their characters and explore catastrophes for their characters. Instead of you doing it against them though, you will do it with them, enhancing the game's energy rathe than blocking it. To have a sense of control is a very, very deep human need, and when we trust that feeling, we allow ourselves to do scary things.

The fourth point (What if I mess up and do it wrong?) sounds trivial, but it's huge. Being creative and improvising is scary! Everyone can improvise, but everyone also fears failure and looking like the fool. This too, is something deeply human. Playing towards flow demands a great deal of agency through your players, and not everyone feels safe with this!

But; If you cultivate a game where expectations, authority, vision and expectations are legible and clear, if you cultivate a safe and friendly environment, that will go a long way to make players feel more secure in their agency. Also, you can design your game to use techniques of Yes, and... (step 7), and then the game will go half the distance for your players, easing the load of performance anxiety markedly. Just going the second half of the distance is a lot less intimidating.

Also, fear of failure is probably the biggest difficulty for GM's to abandon pre-planned stories and start improvising instead. Give them the tools and the security they need in your game design, if your game is meant to be improvised!

3. Shared vision (The seed)
The seed holds an idea, a vision, for how the plant as a whole will turn out. Likewise, the players of a game will have a vision for what they're interested in, what they expect from the game, how the game world works and operates.

Much like sense of security, this step needs to provide a clear framework to the players - The game should evoke images in the players' heads, and these images needs to match up to each other. A game that conveys an unclear concept of what the characters do and what the world around them looks like will leave the players lost and confused, maybe heading in different directions.

The setting need not be detailed, it's enough to describe some details in evocative language for the players to get a vision and a feel for it. Again, it's a question of sense of security - As long as the players get a feel for the world, a feel for what kind of contributions and mood belong there, they feel safe contributing to it.

If the players' creative visions for the game differ, they will in best cases talk it through and reach a shared vision, and in worst cases fight each other to enforce their vision, or suck it up and feel bitter. This will make the energy and investment from step 1 fly all over the place, crashing into each other, and this is the one source of roleplaying drama.

Once again, a problem with pre-planning your story as a GM: You will have a strong vision that your players do not yet share with you, which makes it harder for your players to approach your vision. Furthermore, you have already spent great investment in your vision, which makes it harder for you as a GM to approach your players ideas of what should happen. In other words: When you have created a cool scene to show your players, you will steer play towards that scene rather than adapt to flow, encourage flow, and go with the flow.

The Big Model places great emphasis on shared vision, look up Social Contract and Creative Agenda in this article. Also, I talk a little more about shared vision here.

The Flow-er Model: Introduction

2010-09-11T20:53:00.003+02:00

This is The Flow-er Model. Go ahead, click it. Check it out.

The Flow-er Model as illustrated by the wonderful Anders Bohlin (DeBracy)

In short:

Energy is the basic currency of roleplay gaming. If your game has energy, it is going somewhere, it is interesting, dynamic and involving. Simply put, energy is what makes roleplaying feel good.
This model identifies seven steps to cultivate this energy and bring it into a state of flow, which is what make roleplaying feel great.
The model is meant to be useful for both players and game designers.
The model places great emphasis on clarity, sense of security and sense of curiosity. It stresses confusion and rigidity as antagonistic towards flow.

Before diving in, a short introduction on my assumptions in this model:

Flow
Flow is psychological term for a state of total focus and immersion in what you are doing. You cease doubting and planning, you know what to do, and just do it. Performance is at it's peak, and all you need to do is to follow the momentum and your intuition, hence the term "go with the flow". Flow can be achieved in almost any task that requires concentration. The article on wikipedia describes flow as a very strong experience, but remember that flow is a gradient, not a strict category - You can have both slight and enormous sensations of flow, and everything in between.
For this model, let's consider flow as the moment when you're immersed in the game, whether you're immersed in your character, the story or overcoming a challenge. Everyone is active and throwing out great ideas, the mood is at it's top. Simply put; roleplaying that feels great.

Interplay
Energy and flow is something that happens in play, in the group. To me, roleplaying is primarily a group process, it's what happens between the players. It is not primarily obeying, exploring or using a game book.
What the game book is though, is a participant in this process, just like the other players, one that shapes this interplay. A game as written can facilitate or inspire energy, but the game book never has flow or energy in itself..
Also, when I refer to "players", that includes the game master. (If the game utilises a game master at all)

Play style
This model is drawn from my personal experience, it's a way for me to map out what makes roleplaying feel great. Although I feel that energy and movement is what makes roleplaying enjoyable, other people might of course emphasis other qualites of roleplaying.
Also, the model places a great emphasis on improv roleplaying and story games, which I feel are the kind of games that lend themselves best to flow. If you are new to improvised roleplaying, this is as good a place as any to start learning about it, and how it works.

Improvisation and pre-planning
In my model, I draw a lot from improvisation theatre, and in a way the model is born out of my experience in both improv and roleplaying. Throughout the text I problemise and criticize the tradition of planning stories and scenarios before playing. This is not because I hate that kind of roleplaying, but because I hope to develop both the traditional and the improv style of roleplaying with my writing. My goal is to make a model that is useful for all kinds of roleplaying, that inspire and provoce development in the entire field of roleplaying games. I hope everyone can find something informative, inspiring or useful from this model.

Okay, let's go!

Lead me into your darkness

2010-09-09T03:04:00.009+02:00

When I was little, I was afraid of the dark. I am not afraid anymore, which is good, for people will lead me into their darkness.

Let me tell you about tonight.

I live next to a fantastic park (Slottskogen) and tonight I went for a walk. One part of the park was without lightning, and I walked in near-complete darkness for a while.

I understand why we fear the dark - It's loss of understanding, loss of defense, and thus loss of control.
When someone tells me they have a darkness inside them, and I believe everyone does, it means they have something inside them that they can't control and that they fear.

But darkness in itself, I'm not afraid of anymore, perhaps I even have a sort of lust for it, to stride into our dark sides.

Freud described a lust for death and destruction, called Thanatos, and placed it next to his lust for life and sex, Libido. I don't think destruction is the same as the loss of control I associate with darkness, though.

Destruction is to exercise control. It's the power to reject self-loathing, fear, shame and guilt, by destroying what would wake it, just as we wish to disintegrate ourselves when we feel ashamed. (To "sink through the floor", to disappear)

Well, I don't know.

But as a therapeut, I will contain your darkness, I will show you that it can be endured without disintegration, I will accept it. I will tell you it's okay.

As I walked home, I listened to Insoluble by Dave Gahan. You have nothing to fear.

The sexism of roleplaying games

2010-09-07T18:46:00.004+02:00

In my previous post on women in roleplaying I asserted that:

You don't need to design roleplaying games for women. You just need to stop designing roleplaying games for slightly autistic men.

Traditional roleplaying games require extensive learning and understanding of a game world and a quite elaborate rules system before play. These are qualities that most people do not quite see the charm with, but it is a great bit more appealing if you're high on the Autism Spectrum Quotient. .

This set roleplaying up for a specific crowd upon it's inception, a crowd of which women are not as common as men. Nerds, so to speak.

Okay, why the hell did I need to point this out? Haven't we gamers had enough of stereotyping and name-calling? The answer is, I was feeling frustrated with the issue of recruiting new players and more women to roleplaying. From my community and contacts, I get the feeling that many are asking themselves how to do just that, without recognizing that roleplaying games are traditionally designed to appeal to a minority.

In the discussion that prompted my blog post, and in the discussion that followed it, I was humbled by some very insightful comments on the subject, and I'd like to expand this analysis - Okay, so the first roleplaying games where designed for nerds and autists, of which many were men. What kept the roleplaying hobby from changing? What preserved these demographics?

Objectification - I did not consider chainmail bikinis and objectification of women in fantasy illustrations as such a big deal, gender bias if anything. As some posters brought this up, I started imaging what it would be like for me to enter the hobby as a woman, rather than a man. Jesus! I feel alienated by trad gaming already! What if I had to confront illustrations that said "You're not part of us, you're for our pleasure", as well?
Masculinism - As I outlined in my previous post, male values (conflict, groups, hierarchy, etc) are strongly present in the traditional roleplaying game design. This sends the message that these games are by men, for men.
The Other - As in preserving The Others different from Us. A friend of mine pointed out there are some real asshole male gamers in the hobby, gamers with a habit of treating female gamers in a really shitty way, pouring their stereotypes over them, belittling them or assuming they don't know how to play, what they're looking for in a game store... This is the kind of attitude that can grow in a group that's already homogeneous.
Invisibility - Another friend of mine pointed out that tabletop roleplaying, doesn't have... stuff the way that LARP or boardgames do. It's a lot harder to show, photograph and describe the hobby, making it harder to promote it. New players come by word of mouth, which cements old patterns and demographics.
Minority in itself - And of course, by a feedback process: These patterns preserve themselves. They reproduce. Do I want to be the only woman in our gaming club or group? Do I want to go into an established system and fight to change it myself? No, not really.

I'm still just figuring these things out, and I've seen more insightful analyses on priviledge and power structures in gaming, Geek Feminism Publish Post 101 for instance, dealing with things I'm still learning and internalizing from feminism. It does feels good to piece together what I've got so far, to connect my frustration with the assumptions in trad gaming design, with feminism's tools and analyses. That's how I learn, I write.

Despite this, I believe that things are changing. I have no statistics to back it up, but LARP has a rather even distribution of gender in Sweden, and Story Games seems to attract a more varied demographics... I think? I've heard testimonies both pro and against this statement.

Also, there are very few immigrants playing roleplaying games in Sweden. I don't know what to say about that though.

The terror of climate change

2010-08-27T13:43:00.000+02:00

I've previously written on norms and normality, and quickly related it to our unsustainable lifestyle. I wish to do research on this.

I would like to devout my life to therapy, therapy research, and to the research of norms, society and lifestyle - how to change a society to reduce and cope with environmental disaster.

I have blog on improv and roleplaying connected to psychology, but I do not have one on environmentalism.

I do avoid eating meat, flying or driving (Not that I would afford or need a car), but I am not a part of any environmentalist movement.

Perhaps a part of me do not wish to dive into the issue of climate change. Climate change is terrifying, it's a threat that's so great and with so much momentum it can be paralyzing to approach it. It's so much easier to deny.

Every human must struggle with the unsolveable problem of mortality and death. This life issue is now even more poignant: Now we must struggle with the mortality of us as a species and as a civilization. Things we've taken for granted will come to an end.

But I believe I need to confront this terror, live through it and accept it.

Going from denial into the crisis can break a human, or give hir tranquility and acceptence. Maybe then I can find the strength to act on it. Today I'm ordering litterature.

("Requiem for a species", on the subject of why we're letting this happen and "Makten över klimatet", The power over climate)

Roleplaying games: Designing with "yes, and..."

2010-08-24T18:32:00.000+02:00

This is how you make characters in the storytelling game "Do, Pilgrims of the Flying Temple", by Daniel Solis. Basically, you look around the room and choose an object for how your character helps other people, and the word that describes that object describes how your character gets into trouble.

I love it!

Check it out, I spent some time just coming up with characters:
* Unlit Lamp - Illuminating to others, but lacking an insight in hirself.
* Half-full glass - Makes things transparent and clear, but constantly hungry for more.
* Solid Tree - Nurturing and lifegiving, but set in hir ways.
* Dirty Machine - Efficient and uncomplaining, but uncouth and rude...

I think this is excellent design for roleplaying and collaborative storytelling. It is both simple and inspiring, which I consider the two most important principles for designing roleplaying games.

So, why do I choose "simple" and "inspiring" as the two chief principles of roleplaying design?

I'm going to springboard off of this and describe the foundation of my improv/roleplaying theory. What is improv and roleplaying?

Improv

I've written an introduction to improv here, but what is relevant to us right now is the process called "Yes, and..."
This is the cornerstone of improv, and it means that instead of blocking other peoples contribution you first accept them, and then build on them. Simple!

Here, check out this short game that plays with the "Yes, and..." principle! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe2a3ppacUk

(I lack a better word for "yes, and...". In swedish there is a great word, bejaka... (to actively accept, affirmation sort of))

Roleplaying

I consider roleplaying as basically the same process as improv theatre:
* A bunch of players talking to each other, creating, accepting and building on each other's contributions.
* Building on other people's contributions rather than blocking them is crucial, because then the game goes somewhere. Blocking instead blocks progress of storytelling.
* Thus, movement is the basic measurement of interesting storytelling. To have a good, creative movement is to have flow. This is the ultimate goal of roleplaying.
* Roleplaying has a unique oppertunity compared to improv, through! There is also a game present in this interaction. A good game will inspire flow, a bad game will block it.

Roleplaying games

I think many roleplayers would consider the roleplaying game as a simulation which you emerge into. Roleplaying is primarily the game, so to speak.

Personally, I consider roleplaying primarily the interaction between players, with the game as another participant. It is the players who set up expectations for the game and a shared vision of the game world, but the game does a very important job of informing these expectations (For instance, saying "You're all supposed to play powerful mages in a medieval Europe setting") and the quality of interactions between the players. (For instance, saying "When you are working magic, roll these dice and tell the game master the results")

Roleplaying can be focused on making strategic and tactically sound decisions, immersion into and acting your character, or creating a story together. All of these cases though, are about immersion into the game, and thus a possibility to attain flow.

Designing with "yes, and..."

Okay, so those are some improv-roleplaying theory basics.

So, if all roleplaying games should aspire to attain flow in the participants, how do you write a game with visions, game rules and other game structures to reach flow? I say there are two principles of game design to attain flow when playing:

1) The game must be clear, and not distracting from flow
Meaning, it should be easy enough to grasp and not slow or requiring referencing during play. It should be clear, rather than confusing or ambigous.

When playtesting Berättelser från Staden, I found that when the rules were newly written, they were often unclear and ambigous, and the players became too occupied with figuring out what they actually were allowed to say and not to say within the game, who held story authority over what, etc. Rather than just going with what they felt like, they had to first figure out the game before they could feel safe in the game.

Just as people can't function in daily life without a sense of security, players needs a sense of security when playing a game. The structure of the game, the rules and boundaries needs to be clear. Not to avoid cheaters, but rather to make the players feel secure in what they are supposed and allowed to contribute to the story. The players needs a shared vision, shared expectations, they need to know where they are, and what what they're doing.

In other words, the players should not be spending time figuring out how to play the game, they should be spending time playing the game.

2) The game should inspire flow
Meaning, the game should add it's own impulses, inspiration and movement to the game, to which the player's can answer "Yes, and..." and add their own interpretation of these impulses.

This way, the game does half the work for you, and you do the other half. It is always more interesting to work on and interpret the impulses of others, than just straight up telling a story on your own - Which is not interesting at all, but rather intimidating, even!

Inspiring flow

Some different ways to do half the work for someone and thus inspire flow are...

1) Lists
Lists from which the players can pick concepts. In Berättelser från Staden, play starts with the players choosing from a list of ideas to build a story on, such as...
- The crows whisper their secrets to a man on his balcony
- A young man is going insane over the murder he has committed
- It is the hottest day in summer
The same model is used in In A Wicked Age by Vincent Baker, and called oracles. I provide basic concepts, the players pick one and use hir interpretation of that concept, the inspiration and images that pop into hir mind.

2) Concepts
Rather than a long list with short concepts, you can make a short list with extensive concepts. Character classes are a good example of this, highly stylized character concept choices which inspires and awakens ideas in the players minds. Dungeons and Dragons and Apocalypse World are excellent examples of these. Choosing between an Avenger and a Warden is inspiring. Choosing between proficiency in Electronics or Rifles is does not evoke the same imagery, for instance.

3) Questions
By asking someone a question, you have done half the work for them. When I say "Hey, what does The Great Frog Cave look like? What does it sound and smell like?" I'm making a contribution for someone to build on. Likewise if I ask "This woman, Beth, is coming at you fist firsts, trying to beat you up, why is that?". That is something you can say "Yes, and..." to! Again, Berättelser från Staden and Apocalypse World.

4) Looking at things around you and then interpreting them
Which I've never thought of, but Daniel Solis proves it can be done! Do, Pilgrims of the Flying Temple.

All of the above methods sets the style and vision to work with, relieves you from complete storyship authority (which can be very tiring and anxious-inducing, as we fear failure) and brings ideas to you, ideas you wouldn't normally think of, ideas which hopefully inspires you to creativity. Also, note how they all require you to make meaningful choices. Playing is making meaningful choices, which is a whole fundamental part of game design on it's own.

In conclusion

Good game design achieves the following:
1 - Gives your players a sense of security.
2 - Inspires your players.
3 - Let's your players make meaningful choices.
4 - Clarity, meaning the game does not block flow.
5 - Gives your players techniques to avoid blocking flow.
6 - Profit! (Achieves flow)

The foundations of these achievements is built by communicating a shared vision of the game, through setting, rules, design and accessories (dice, cards etc) and even the wording of the text. A game should put images in the players' heads, and the basis of these images need to be roughly the same.

Cross-platform
Compare the rules of a roleplaying game to the set up or rules of an improv game. Improv games also provide some structure for the players to act within. ("The rules are, you may only speak in gibberish, which your mate then translate as he wishes. The setting is, you're holding a lecture on frogs.")

It is interesting to see how my opinion on game design mirrors my views on mental health, with emphasis on sense of security-creativity and meaningfulness. (See my Model of mental health and Meaning, story, understanding) Then again, that's why I started this blog.

Breath of air, diving in

2010-08-24T13:43:00.000+02:00

All of my life, I've been very good at distancing me from my opinions, keeping myself sceptical and doubting, nuancing things carefully. At this point in life, I feel like I have reached a sort of peak, a sense of security and confidence in myself and what I have to say.

I've started believing in my ideas more, ready to fight to prove that they are in fact true.
I believe in my capabilities, I know that there are things that I can do, and that I can do real well. I feel secure in this.
But I still feel that I will hold on to this foundation of skepticism and doubt, a good insurance from losing perspective of oneself.

This blog has probably played a major role in this.

I feel I've found proof that the models and ideas that I have written here mean something. They might not be universal (for everyone) truths, but they are most definitly truths.

Yet, there is one thing this blog lacks, and that is other people. The perspectives of others, the discussions that can challenge my thinking just enough. (I'm very good at critizing myself as it is!)

I got what I was asking for with the discussion thread on Story Now and rollspel.nu, replying my Why don't women play roleplaying games?-post, so I'm writing a follow-up to that. I think I'll remain in the topic of roleplaying for a while, I have some other posts in that domain coming up. I've also done a really nice interview with Tomas Halling, dada performance artist, about improvising. That'll go up once I'm done editing it.

Why don't women play roleplaying games?

2010-08-19T20:59:00.000+02:00

Let's take a look at Dungeons and Dragons. It's the first roleplaying game ever, and there has never been a roleplaying game more popular than D&D. Throughout the 30+ years of roleplaying history, it has defined roleplaying more than any other game.

D&D is...
-Group-based and class-based, rather than based upon individual relationships.
-Hierarchial, with a game master that holds authority over story.
-Focused on performance and problem-solving.
-Based on conflict and combat.
-Systemized, with pages upon pages with an intricate ruleset.
-A simulation (system) of a fantasy world so detailed that it requires a streak of obsessiveness for the reader to be interested in processing and understanding this whole body of information.

These qualities have been nigh-on omnipresent in roleplaying design throughout it's history.

All of these qualities are qualities associated with masculinity, and to a lesser extent, autism.

That does not mean these qualities are biological or pre-determined to be masculine, but right here and right now, in peoples perception of gender, they are.

So what does this tell us? Just as feminism pointed out that the world order that we take for granted is actually defined to favour those in power, men for instance, we as roleplayers needs to realize that our hobby is not an universal one, but an exclusive one.

You don't need to design roleplaying games for women.
You just need to stop designing roleplaying games for slightly autistic men.

Like all traditions, these tendencies has reproduced, it's hard for women to break into a male-dominated hobby. With the modernization of roleplaying design, and the Story Games movement, I predict this will change, though. Let's take a look at my new favorite game, Apocalypse World. (I will take a closer look at this game and why it is important in my upcoming posts)

Apocalypse World is...
-Based on a loose group of allies with their individual relationships and motivations.
-Improvised, so there is no story authority, and the master of ceremonies (GM equivalent) is instructed very specifically to be a fan of the players' characters, not a counterforce for them
-Focused on drama, relationships
-Very, very violent, yes.
-The system is very streamlined, and a way for the players to "come up with cool things to say". The system subjects itself to the players, rather than the other way around.
-A game improvised in the moment, creativity is rewarded rather than obsessiveness with pre-made facts.

So, my prediction is that Apocalypse World and Story Games can appeal to a broader audience. Broads, for instance. (To clarify: Among story gamers and story game writers there ARE a greater number of women players and writers than in the traditional gaming environment I've "grown up in". Also, there's been pointed out to me that "broad" is not such a neutral pun in english that I imagined it to be. Sorry!)

What I would really like to do now is to compare the ratio of female to male fans of different roleplaying games on Facebook, but there seems to be no way of doing such a thing for a mere user. Any advice?

More on sense of security: Status

2010-08-16T14:08:00.000+02:00

Status is such a fundamental part of our psyche - Not only are the rules for who is high status and who is not very elaborate, but everybody knows them and everybody follows them. You can not not follow the rules for status - Either you have status or you don't.

Yes, you can try to act above your status, which will succeed or fail. But if you are succesful, then you have in effect not just acted high status, but actually risen in status. You have it.

Status is confidence. Confidence is to feel secure in oneself. To feel secure in oneself is to have a trust in oneself. Just as mastery of a task can be understood as a sense of security in what you can do, status can be understood as what you may do to others.

A person of high status can expect (trust, even) others to pay attention and respect to hir, and a person of low status is expected not to act outside hir station.

It's like...

- Our confidence is a meter that shows how important we are to our society or the group we belong to. (1)
- When we sense we are important, our confidence goes up, when we sense we could easily be replaced at any time, it goes down. (2)
- This confidence, in turn, is signalled outward with status behaviour, such as body language. (3)

An intricate system which I suppose every flock animal shares. It makes evolutionary sense - The best and most useful of us are brought to the front, so that their qualities may express themselves in the group at large. It is much more desirable to have the smart and succesful lead us, than the stupid and clutzy.

But, as usual with evolutionary psychology, this is not necessarily the most favourable way for modern humans. Many people have an insecurity or aren't that good with people, thus losing status and confidence in themselves, even in the abilities they are actually quite good at, and which would benefit the group as whole. Also, today we subscribe to the belief that all humans are equal - But still, we follow the old status rules to a letter, rules that say that some people just aren't worth our time. That is how strong they are.

In my post on trust, I made the simile that trust is the basic currency, the basic worth of life, and that this can be invested or betted. This is very much the case with status - Can you imagine anything more despicable to people in general than a low-status person who tries to act high status but fails? That is, being cocky, mean and proud but coming off as small-minded, stupid and insecure. That can be understood as betting your status on a high status move, but losing.

Myself

Status is one of my issues, something I've been occupied with figuring out and worrying about.

I've never had problems with finding friends and gaining the respect of those I care for, but I've always felt a bit outside in school classes. Sometimes in class discussions or at parties, I've felt like some weird prophet - They would listen intently to me, but I wasn't a part of the conversation. I've found myself finishing a thought, and see everyone look at me for a second, waiting for me to go on or something like that, rather than picking up on what I said - And, you know, discuss.
Probably related to another issue of mine - I need confirmation that what I do, what I say, what I give, is something valuable and meaningful. I've needed that affirmation.

During my university years, I identified myself as low status, but I'm starting to realize that I'm actually a high status individual.

Weird, scary and interesting.

More on sense of security: Mastering a task

2010-08-15T19:10:00.000+02:00

Task mastery

One of my textbooks cites a study on hysicians and their initial assessment of their patients - The young and unexperienced physicians did it "by the book", using their textbook theories. The more experienced physicians started out by just getting a feel for the patient, working by intuition, then switching to theoretical knowledge and deduction, and back to intuition and so forth. When asked to describe what they're actually doing, experienced practicers of all kinds have trouble putting words to it - It's like second nature to them now.

When you know something so well it's automatic, so well you don't have to think about it, that's when you perform best. Actually, asking an expert to describe what hir is doing while hir is doing it, will reduce hir performance significantly. It's a flow state.

So, paradoxal in a way, those who have mastered the conventions, the theory and the structure of how to perform a task, are those who have the easiest time deviating from convention and structure - To improvise and be creative. When your skills are so ingrained you don't have to spend cognitive resources on them, the task in itself is routine, you can use your resources to experiment and improv.

But there is also a sense of security in this: When you know you can do this task, when you feel you have it under control, that's when you dare leave your foundation. You stop using your resources to protect against failure, and start using them to reach beyond, reach something higher and novel.

Imagine an acrobat balancing on a chair. He has practiced falling in the right way, so doesn't have to fear hurting himself. He's practiced balancing on a chair until he's mastered it, so he doesn't even have to concentrate to do it. Now, he can get creative, juggling and balancing the chair at the same time, making little jumps with the chair, balancing another chair on the tip of his nose...

Sense of security

What is interesting is that developing a skill follows the same path as finding a sense of security in a life issue. Let's compare the model for mental health...

(Maybe "Borders" and "Process depth" should be replaced with "External" and "Internal")

With a model for mastering a task:

Panic: Confronted with a task where you don't even know in or out, you probably feel lost and anxious, panicked and out of control. You are occupied with defending against catastrophy.

Control: A task where you know the basics, there is a sense of control. You know what to expect and what to do. You are occupied with working with the tools you've been given.

Creativity: When working a task which you know by heart, you transcend the simple know-how. You do not need to fix your attention and problem-solving to handling the tools at hand, you fix your attention to a vision of creativity, and use these tools to reach it. You are occupied with creating beyond the borders.

So, just as a Bowlby described how a child needs a foundation of security to be brave, to build a secure base with hir parents before sie dares to explore around said base...

Just as Maslow describes how you need to find a basic sense of security in the domains of life to start realizing your higher creative potential...

So too need you build your foundation of theory and knowledge before you can leave it, venturing into creativity. Hell, I've read huge improv books on how to be more spontaneous!

Does mastery underlie mental health?

Let's go back to the model of mental health. What makes me excited here, is that we may take what we know about skill and mastery, and view life's issues as nothing more than tasks to be mastered and worked out correctly.

- The one who haven't been given the tools and the confidence to handle a life issue doesn't even feel in control of the situation. Sie is occupied with defending oneself against the threat of catastrophy (real or imagined), and these defenses take the shape of symptoms of mental illness. (Abnormal)

- The one who knows how sie should act in response to a given situation can handle hirself well, feels safe and in control. Sie knows socially accepted ways of resolving these life issues. (Normality)

- The one who feels mastery of the life issue, who feels secure in it, can go beyond it, explore it, handle these life issues in any way sie wishes, choosing the most optimal answers for hirself. (Health)

Hmm, I should really check out the Control-Mastery theory.

Trust is the basic currency of life

2010-07-30T23:16:00.000+02:00

Today, I wish to tell you that:
- Trust is the basic currency of life.
- As such, it can be invested, or bet if you will.
- A balance between trust and distrust must be managed
- In finding this balance, we construct working models of how to live our lives
- But perhaps evolution has put a greater emphasis on distrust than is optimal for the modern human

So yeah, I believe that having a sense of security, or trust towards oneself, is the one basic measurement of both our mental health and our ability.

Which is, you know, kind of a given, since a sense of security is just that: It’s an emotional assessment of the given situation, a belief that things are under control and won’t end in disaster. (See my post Man will survive)

But it runs both ways: We can have a sense of security in ourselves because we are well equipped to deal with the current situation, but we can also become better equipped to deal with the current situation by finding a sense of security in ourselves.

I would say that this sense of security, is the one single biggest psychological issue for the modern human. Trust in that I am capable of handling myself, trust that I am a valuable person, trust that I am accepted and loved by my peers. This is sort of an expanding on the concepts I introduced in A model of mental health.

We are today living in an individualistic society without authorities and traditions which can tell us what profession to pursue, what life to live, how to judge our worth as a humans, which was the case in the old collectivistic societies of tradition, family and religion. Suddenly, we need to make these calls ourselves.

There is plethora of psychological and layman-psychological terms for these issues: Self-efficacy, self-worth, self-esteem, locus of control, self-image, attachment style, insecurity-security.

In fact, everything that is good in humanity requires trust.

Generosity towards others requires a trust in that these people will not exploit us.
To dream and to work towards that dream requires that we trust in our visions, that we do not fear failure and disappointment.
When we create and express ourselves, we show others our innermost being, and we need to believe that this is something valuable that other people will respect.
Listening to and caring for other people requires a belief that their inner darkness won't hurt us.
Love, to open up to another person, requires trust.

By the same token, many things in humanity which are not so great, are a form of distrust or defense, a way to close yourself up and keep others away.

To be mean-spirited, aggressive, distant, anxious, afraid, delusional, psychotic or borderline are different ways to be defensive, to keep people or thoughts away which could otherwise hurt our selves.

Domains of security
From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that this balance of trust-distrust and security-insecurity is so central. For an organism to maximize it's chance of forwarding it's genes to offspring, it should be ambitious in order to gain advantages when the situation allows it, and cautious in order to survive when the situation requires it.

Attachment theory is a great example of this evolutionary readiness for adaptation. Bowlby proposed that we have in our brains basically three pre-wired models of approaching other people; Secure, clingy or avoidant. (Generalizing, of course.) Which model we choose depend on how we are treated by our parents, and this is to adaption to the environment we grow up in. For instance, if we are born in a place where food and protection is scarce, and our parents doesn't always have time available to tend to our needs, it makes sense to be clingy to maximize one's chance of survival. If a child is given a sense of security or trust, sie instead learns that the world is not such a bad place, and that sie should be ambitious, open and trusting, because that will be the adaptive stance to maximize one's chances for survival, development and procreation.

As I touched in my post A model of mental health, one can see Abraham Maslow's model of needs in much the same way.

Attachment theory only accounts for the intimacy need, how secure we feel in that other people care for us and love us. In the same way, Maslow proposes that you can have a sense of security or insecurity in any need.

If, for instance, my need for esteem isn’t satisfied properly by those around me, I understand that I need to work hard to feel esteem, and that it cannot be taken for granted. This becomes an internal working model for how I view and handle the world, what strategies I use to maximize security, love and satisfaction.

With a sense of insecurity in esteem, I become worried and preoccupied with securing esteem, even when I’ve found friends who accept me and who I am - Our internal working models doesn’t change easily.

I believe that confidence and status is a sort of security (or trust in oneself) as well, but I'll save that for another post.

Trust, or don’t?
Everyone must walk a balance between trust and distrust, between openness and defense.

When we use trust, we are capable of the greatest feats, but we are also at our most vulnerability - Vulnerability towards disappointment and deceit.

If trust and sense of security is the basic currency of life, you can certainly invest it. You can invest trust in other people, and you can invest energy and belief in your dreams. If you have invested wisely, then the results are glorious. You realize your dreams, or grow close to someone you've opened up to. If you invest in something that fails, it’s our most terrible moments of disapointment or betrayal.

So we certainly need a certain amount of distrust and skepticism, but I also believe that since no-one has to fend for their survival in our modern and peaceful nations, we are pre-wired for more distrust than we need to be. Prisoners dilemma. It pays to be distrusting because other people are distrusting/cold/protective of their own interests. At the same time, by tradition, we put way too much trust in an unsustainable lifestyle, the one big threat against humanity today.

(4/4) Roleplaying tradition

2010-06-24T19:48:00.000+02:00

This is the fourth part in a series of four. The previous posts have been on accepting tradition in cognition, identity, and ethics.

Traditionally, designing roleplaying games have been based on writing simulations of a fantasy world. The setting is written in an effort to construct a complete and cohesive fantasy world, and the rules are written to arbitrate what the most probable (and thus realistic) course of events would be in a given case. For instance, the rules tell me whether my character succeeds or fails any given endeavour. They tell me if my character hurts hirself, and if so, how badly. (And that's basically it, really)

Just as there is a tendency to accept the norms of society, the norms of roleplaying design have for long gone unquestioned. This is enhanced by the striving towards realism in roleplaying games: Since the rules are based on reality, the design and focus of these rules can very easily be considered given by nature and thus right.

The last five or so years, this has changed. There are indie games with setting based on storytelling rather than world simulation, with rules to guide said story telling rather than provide realism. The design traditions of roleplaying games as a whole is changing, accomodating new perspectives.

Just as we need to scrutinize the traditions of our society and ask us what the effects of these traditions are, what it means to use these rules, even if they are justified by realism.

These are some of the traditions I'm thinking of:
- Failing a roll blocks your creative input.
- The game master and players' nfluence on the story is discussed from the perspective of authority and force, and not from the perspective of trust. This teaches the game master and players techniques that run counter to creativity.
- The game master is expected to pre-plan the scenario and lead the players through it, putting all the work on the GM and none of the creativity on the players. Players building little dice towers out of boredom, and forced combat encounters where not uncommon in my youth, simply because the story didn't feel relevant to the players and their characters.
- Communication between players and GMs are not adressed, players are supposed to accept what happens in the fiction, even if it isn't enjoyable fiction for them. Either that, or force the story their way through their characters.
- In short, there is no way of synchronizing the expectations of players.

Many of these, I've adressed in my posts an interplay model of roleplaying and creative roleplaying.

These problems do not need simple fixes, they are the symptoms of something fundamental missing in roleplaying design. What they need us as game designers to finally and fully do is to adress roleplaying as a creative interplay process, not only as a simulation.

Players has learnt to cope with these problems by their own intuition, but they need to be brought into design, tested and analyzed methodically. Tradition is not enough.

(3/4) Follow the rules or follow your conscience?

2010-06-16T16:44:00.000+02:00

Third part in a series. First part here, second part here.

Alright, for this post I'd like to switch gears a little, go into a mode of contemplation.

I've written one post on why we do not wish to challenge our basic assumptions, and one on how norms and identity foreclosure can be harmful to your personal development. Now, I'd like to share some thoughts on the morality and ethics of deviation or rejection of authority.

I'd like to point out that this series of posts aren't leading to some specific conclusion, I would rather say I'm examining the bricks and laying a foundation to use the building analogy.

When to follow the rules, and when to follow your conscience?
First, an anecdote. During secondary school/high school, our class did a discussion exercise, which started with us being told the following story:

A duke was leaving his castle for a trip. Since he suspected his wife to be unfaithful, he ordered his guard to kill her if she tried to get into or out of the castle while he was gone, and he let her know this. He then left.
The duchess did indeed sneak out to meet her lover, paying a ferryman to whisk her across the moat. She spent the night at her best friend's place and then went to meet her lover. After the encounter, she would leave to sneak back into to the castle, but had no more money to pay the ferryman. The lover and her best friend refused to help her, and the ferryman refused to ship her over without payment. She pleaded with the guard to let her in, but he refused, and warned her he would have to kill her if she attempted to enter the castle. Out of desperation, she tried to enter the castle anyway, and was killed.
Who's fault is it that the duchess died? The duke's, the guard's, her friend's, her lover's, the ferryman or herself's?

My opinion was that it was the guard's fault, which was met with protests from my classmates, and the rationale "He was just doing his job!"

After a few years of reflection, and encountering the Milgram experiment (Which I have linked to before), it is my belief that "Just following orders" is not a moral argument.*

Terrible actions are made possible by people just following orders. Rather than a moral actions (By moral action, I do not mean an action for good, but rather an action that is evaluated morally, that can be moral or immoral) blind obedience is the rejection of morality. It is a rejection of yourself as an agent, as a human with the capacity for reflection and morality. Blind obedience makes you simply an extension of the morality and reasoning of the person making the decisions, an idea the wikipedia article on the Milgram experiment labels "agentic state theory".

I see humans in an existential light. It is our capacity to make meaningful choices that make us human, and even surrendering this power, or not doing anything at all, is a choice. Doing your job, following normality or following orders is not an excuse to act against your ethics... But, as the Milgram experiment clearly shows, we want someone to tell us what to do. We do not wish to take the full responsibility, or challenge the stability and security of societies structures. (Man, I guess really should read Sartre.)

But to what extent can you stay true to your own morality in society? I've just finished the course on ethics and law in psychology, which raised this question especially.

Psychologist ethics
As a psychologist, you are in a position of power in your relation to your clients. You must handle your relationship and your intimate knowledge of your client in an ethic way. You must treat your client, and the system sie is a part of (such as hir family), with respect. As a psychologist you generally work alone, and you alone must weigh together all these considerations, somehow integrating your morality, the law, the professional ethic of psychologists, and of course pragmatic reality.

What if it is against my morality not to treat this client, but we just do not have enough resources to treat everyone we would like at this clinic? In this case, it is impossible for me to do the fully moral thing, and I must somehow accept this. I must somehow become neither despaired or jaded when I'm forced to go against my empathic impulses.

Likewise, ability takes a part in ethic conduct, to treat someone with respect is a question of ability just as much as morality. In an interpersonal profession such as mine, doing the right thing requires reasoning, as well as emotion and empathy, as well as ability. A psychologist needs to have wisdom, and not only to be a moral psychologist, but to be a succesful psychologist at all.

Laws
I would even question if i obeying the law is inherently moral. The law tells us what we must and must not do, but it doesn't tell us what we should do. As a psychologist, there are many things I can do in my work which are not illegal, but definitely not ethical either.

I sometimes feel people are justifying their actions with solely the fact that they had the right to take them, not at all adressing that they were, in facts, assholes just now.
Just as a person can hide their moral responsibility behind an authority, they can hide their own tendencies to greed and small-mindedness behind the fact that they have the right to do so.
But of course, there is a big difference between having a right, and doing right. The laws are only concerned with the former, and that's a good thing too. The state has no business in determining who is and who has the right to be an asshole.

Furthermore, there are even moments when I can feel the law is inhumane, and to follow my ethics would require me to go against the law, for instance when the law declare immigrants illegal.
This is a difficult situation. If I do not wish to go against my belief of what is good and right, I should break the law. At the same time, I wouldn't wish other professionals to break the law when treating or handling me - The laws protect me when I'm in a vulnerable position and at the mercy of policemen, social workers, doctors and psychologists.

So what do I do? Follow my consciousness? Obey the law? Or I could follow my conscience and break the law, but also follow the law and accept my punishment, as the law must be upheld for society to function.

Reality
So let's be pragmatic. Some things can only be achieved with orders and hierarchy. Without routines and standard procedures, lives would be lost everyday. Perhaps the act of submission to authority can be a moral action? I'd like to point to the movie Hero, in which the protaganist sacrifices himself to the authority in the end, because he reaches the conclusion that in this case, the authority is the good cause.

And if I enter a group, such as a community, a workplace or an organisation, have I not implicitly accepted the rules of this group? If I start work at a hospital only to work according to my personal conviction rather than standard routines, I sabotage everyone's work, doing more harm than good.

Finally, I believe that some aspects of society wouldn't function without the possiblity to "escape responsibility". The decision makers does not have to carry out their own decisions, and the executors does not have to make a decision. It is possible for both parties to scoot over the responsibility to the other.
Again, the example of illigal emmigrants: The police escorting them from their homes are just "doing their job", they do not have to justify their actions to their conscience or to the family being sent away. The decision makers do not have to confront those they send away, or their own feelings empathy for these people. And The Job gets Done.

When it comes to illegal immigrants, I do not believe in sending people back to something they've run away from, whether they are officially refugees or not, but we still need a cold, objective and just standard of procedures for many of society's functions. Individuals can be prejudiced against other people, or swayed into making exceptions for charismatic people. The official standard can not.

But we must remember that laws, rules, standard procedures and authority are in the end the formalized reasoning of ordinary hum,ans. They are not given by God or nature. They can be changed. They should be subject to critical scrutiny and revision.

I suppose my conclusion would have to be that, as usual, there are no simple answers. Just as you can not completely surrender yourself to laws, you cannot completely entrust yourself in a simple moral principle. Doing the right thing requires ever vigilance, care and thoughtfulness.

----
* We can consider my process of finding arguments for my cause in the light of my first post in this series. Here I examined the idea that humans often make emotional decision and then intellectually justify them rather than vice versa.

As a high schooler, had I already then grasped the problem that blind obedience meant, and later Milgram and the third reich simply provided me with the articulation of this into concrete examples?
Or where thes examples rather a way for me to intellectually justifiy a gut feeling against blind obedience?

(2/4) Norms and identity

2010-06-14T15:25:00.000+02:00

Second part in a series. First part here: Accepting and justifying traditions.

So humans have a tendency not to question established norms and tradition, not to become overloaded through them. In this post I will discuss when this becomes a problem. Accepting normativity can lead to opression or foreclosed identity. First, let's look at opression.

Norms and opression

First of all, structures can confer power to some people, and we then might consider this power natural and not something to question. Patriarchalism and gender roles for instance; There are heavy expectations on gender roles, especially the female role. These gender roles disempower women, but we consider this role something naturally feminine, and thus it needs not change.

Secondly, people may be refused their way of life if it deviates from the norm. People become very, very provoced when other people prove to them that another way of doing things is possible, and thus cognitive dissonance prompts them to stop the deviants. Same sex marriage and adoption for instance - What if you don't need a man and a woman to make a family? Then what is our traditions and norms good for? What if they are pointless?

Humans must have clear borders to live within, our the anxiety over what to do will become too much. Some people will fear these borders and measures of how to live will shake and crumble when we challenge them. Even the opressed people may promote these norms to avoid the cognitive dissonance of realizing they're accepting abuse from other people.

Identity and mental health
Finding your own answers and forming your own identity is preferable to accepting normativity.

Again, let's go back to my model of mental health. In this model, I have put health above normality. (As did Lucien A. Buck) I stated that it is better to find your own answers to who you are, what is moral and how to do things than to uncritically accept these from society, parents or other authorities. The process of "finding oneself" is described by James Marcia (epigon of Erik H. Erikson), who outlines four states of identity. Once again, I'm quoting Wikipedia.

A) Identity Diffusion, is the status of individuals who have not yet experienced a crisis or made any commitments. Not only are they undecided about occupational and ideological choices, they are also likely to show little interest in such matters.

B) Identity Foreclosure, is the status of individuals who have made a commitment but not experienced a crisis. This occurs most often when parents hand down commitments to their adolescents, usually in an authoritarian way, before adolescents have had a chance to explore different approaches, ideologies, and vocations on their own.

C) Identity Moratorium, is the status of individuals who are in the midst of a crisis but whose commitments are either absent or are only vaguely defined.

D) Identity Achievement, is the status of individuals who have undergone a crisis and made a commitment.

So, what is the problem with foreclosure? Well, the first is that by not challenging and scrutinizing societies' norms and answers, you might allow yourself or others to be oppressed, as outlined above. Secondly, withouth properly thinking through who you are and how you wish to live, experimenting and searching during a moratorium, your sense of self won't be as stable. I'll elaborate:

When searching yourself for answers, you get to know yourself. You feel more at ease with yourself. By working your answers through, you reach a deeper understanding of them than the hollow granted-at-surface of foreclosure - You can present rationals for the choices you've made, rather than justifications.

Furthermore, as you walk the metaphorical landscape of your inner world to find your place, you learn your way around these landscape. You know them, and thus you can change your position if need be. You can adapt. These are the reasons I've put Health at a greater sense of security than Normality.

In contrast, if you have just decided on a position and stuck with it, rather than exploring it, your understanding of it is more shallow. You cannot backtrack and adapt so to speak, so instead you must defend this position.

A note on normality

Normality and normativity is something powerful. We fear and condemn the abnormal. To be called unnormal is to be denied you humanity and fellowship with other humans, and it stirs up powerful emotions. The "abnormal" and isolated people, such as schizophreniacs and autists who are unable or unwilling to participate in human society, reject their labels and diagnosises. But do they reject them to maintain their sense of belonging with other people, or do they (in the case of severe symtoms) reject them simply because they've do not care what other people think of them, and thus the concept of insanity holds no meaning to them?

Next part here: Follow the rules or follow your conscience?

(1/4) Accepting and justifying traditions

2010-06-12T10:53:00.000+02:00

Hello internets! My full-time practical training is over and vacation is here. Let's write!

I've got a series of posts lined up for you about norms, authority and traditions.

In this first post I'll discuss why we are unwilling to challenge the traditions we follow, and in the following posts I'll go into when this becomes a problem with norms, ethics and even game design.

People have a tendency to accept the norms, traditions and power structures around us as natural. Rather than asking ourselves "Why do we do it this way?" or "What does these traditions we follow lead to in practice?" we instead say "It's always been this way" or "It's just the natural way to it" to find justification for our way of life.

There is nothing strange about this. As you might remember from my model of mental health, we need some parts of our lives to be automatized, we need some rules that doesn't change. We just don't have the cognitive capacity to consider every action and decision in full. As a matter of fact, we want to avoid scrutinizing our assumptions and traditions... Because, what if we discover that we've been wrong all the time?

Cognitive dissonance

The sense that what we are doing is counter to our ideals, or that we act on different principles in different situations is nigh on unbearable to us, and we go to some lenghts to reduce this feeling. In social psychology, this feeling is called cognitive dissonance. Wikipedia has an excellent article on it, check it out! I quote Wikipedia:

The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing them.

So let's say I beat up my kids every day to foster them into obeying my moral rules.

- One day a person comes along and tells me that moral humans are raised with a sense of trust, not with punishment.

- Holy shit! So I've been hurting my children with no good reason all this time? But I love my children! And loving and hurting someone does not match up!

- To avoid this sense of cognitive dissonance, I animatedly describe what an idiot this person is and how totally wrong sie is. By rejecting this idea and declaring it false, I can maintain my moral consistensy.

In fact, people spend a lot of time justifying their own behaviour. We like to believe that we always make decisions based on reason and ideals, and then execute these in action. In actuality, more often than you'd think we act first and afterwards justify what we just did with explanations, rationalizing our actions or feelings.

Instinct first, then reasoning

I bet all of you have been in a discussion when someone brings forward an argument for a cause, and when proven that this person is wrong in hir argument, sie changes the argument. Take a look at this, for instance:

Person A: "We need a death penalty as a deterrant for crimes like homicide"

Person B: "Actually, countries with a death penalty has a higher frequency of homicide than states without."

Person A: "Well, it's insane to spend money to bunch murderers up together in prison, they'll be out again soon, and worse than they were before!"

See what happened there? If person B is right, and person A truely believe that we should lower the amount of homicides, sie should rationally change hir position on death penalty, not change hir argument.

Rather than reaching his position through rational consideration of for and against arguments, Person A first of all feel strongly that murderers should be put to death, and then justifies hir feelings with intellectual arguments.

This is not necessarily wrong, we need our feelings to guide us and inform us of a situation. The most skilled practicioners leave room for intuition and gut feeling in a decision making process.

Generalizing and building ideologies

Also, by turning what we experience personally into something general, or law of nature, we can justify our feelings. "You ALWAYS leave your dirty socks on the floor! Can't you pick them up after yourself like a normal person?" justifies my frustration more than "I don't like it when you leave your dirty socks out". Feelings turn into arguments.

And this goes for ideologies as well! Let's compare conservatives and liberals:

On a neural level, conservatives react stronger and faster to scary stimulus. The ideology of conservatism is basically a body of intellectual arguments justifying why we should remove these scary stimulus. In the same way, the ideology of liberalism can be understood as a way to justify curiosity, sensation-seeking and egocentrism. Personally, I experienced a sense of not always being taken seriously as a child, and my own ideology can be understood as a justification of my longing for acceptance and approval.

This can be disheartening, but I feel there is something beautiful in how humans can create meaning. In the end, we live in a cold and objective world of chemistry and physics, but we have the ability to turn a meaningless nature into meaningful ideology, art and society, to build a rich world of the mind atop the world of materia.

Brain damage

People who have lost the part connecting the two brain hemispheres together, have in effect two brains working independently. During these conditions, the process of justification becomes extremely clear.

Show the message "Take out your red coat" to the persons left eye, and the right brain hemisphere will register and process this message, and have the persons left arm reach for the coat.

Then, ask the person why sie reached for the coat. Language is located in the left hemisphere, but the left hemisphere doesn't know about the written message, and the person will reply "Oh, I felt like taking a walk" or something to that extent, that is make up a reason on the fly for the action just taken!

First part in series. Next part: Accepting normativity.

Anyway

2010-05-03T20:23:00.000+02:00

I felt I just had to get the first draft of creative roleplaying out of my system and down in electronics, and I think the writing suffered as a result. Originally it was just one post that grew into two, the first being rather dry and the second being rather passionate.

I saw "Where the wild things are" yesterday. Really nice, with relevance to this blog. It has life issues, the frustrations of growing up and not being able to articulate these frustrations yet, and portrayed in a way I could believe in. Furthermore, there is a lot, like a lot on expectations there, expectations for the future, on other people...

At one point, one of the wild things smashes up his work of love. When he returns to it, Max (the main character) has a left a little twig heart with his acronym in it. He raises his hand as if to smash that too, but he can't. It's just too strong and he gives in. I cried a little bit then. Okay, well, I choked up like a bitch. It was awesome. :D

Impro and creative roleplaying

2010-05-02T18:35:00.000+02:00

On impro theatre
You can read my introduction to impro theatre here.

Since impro is made in the moment, the actors have to remain in the moment, spontaneous and open to their own and others idea. If you get an idea, act on it; If you notice it feels right to tap your foot, then do just that, and then build on that. If you notice another player bringing an idea into the scene, accept it and then build on that.

In effect, you have to remain sensitive and open at all times. Never plan, never force the scene to become what you would like it to be. Impro is a collaborative effort, you need to get a feel for where you as a group are going right now, and go that direction.

Imagine that our story is a train, and that our ideas are it's fuel. Whenever someone brings an idea to the scene, they bring energy to the scene, moving it forward and energizing the other actors. You need to recognize energy when you see it, grab it and use it.

On blocking in improvisation theatre
Blocking, or rather avoiding it, is a central concept of improvisation theatre. When I introduce an idea and you reject it, that's blocking.

Let's say we're playing a scene about a burglary, and we're considering how to get through a security door. I say "I've got just the thing, I brought the dynamite!"

You could say...

"We'll have to find another way around!" which would be ignoring the idea. Perhaps you're not paying attention to the other actors because you're occupied with planning a window-break in-scene.

"No, this door is dynamite proof!" which would be cancelling the idea and making the last exchange pointless, not moving the story forward and thus dull. There is a tendency to add complications to stories in impro and roleplaying, to make them more exciting, but this is still blocking, putting a dead stop on the idea.

"You doofus, the door is wide open!" which would be sure to draw some quick laughs from the audience, but it would also be rejecting the idea.

All of these are blocking in some form. I've offered energy, but you've discarded it, pulling the brakes on our scene. That's bad. Energy and momentum is vital, our scene cannot live without it. Let's look at accepting:

"Great, let's do it!" Alright! You take my idea an add more energy. Let's go!

"The dynamite!? Whoa, that's dangerous! Can you handle it?" Here you take my idea and add a complication for more energy. Notice the difference between adding something to the idea and cancelling it. (The dynamite proof door-reply) The story is still moving forward! This is the proper way of adding complications.

So complications != blocking. Undoing other players contributions is blocking, and that can be both by providing roadblocks or solving their character's problems for them, if they were interested in exploring these problems.

Blocking in roleplaying games
What's funny is, while blocking is a deadly sin in impro theatre, traditional roleplaying games are built on blocking. The game master has complete control of the story and the players have complete control of their characters, what they do, etcetera. But consider this: If the control of the characters belong to the players, then all the numbers and dice rolls are a way for the game to say when they can't do whatever they like, effectively blocking them

So we're playing, and you say "I run across the roofs to escape, jumping from building to building, staggering on the slick roofing tiles in the moonlight" Cool! That's an idea that inspires me, it gives me energy, get's me engaged in the story and we're heading somewhere. Now the game master says "Roll for Athletics, difficulty 5", so you roll the dice, and they say... "No, you didn't".

And that's it! Talk about roadblock! All that investment and the game just throws it away.

Now, you could argue that it's up to the GM to keep the game moving even with failures, but the matter of fact is that games have traditionally been written so that;
1) If you want to act, you roll.
2) If you fail your roll, your action fails. The game doesn't give you tools or advice to keep the story moving from this point, at all. Hey, most players wouldn't provide the kind of creative input I quoted above, as it would be in vain anyway if your dice roll failed.
3) As a matter of fact, the game can punish you for failing. Injuries provide negative modifications to your stats, making future failure more likely.
As a matter of fact, I've seen GMs use dice checks with the purpose of blocking, so that the players doesn't stray from the pre-planned course or scenario, or to make sure the players doesn't get anything for free. I don't think these are rare cases, either.

Consider that: The players (the players, not their characters) want something, and it's your job as a GM to make sure they doesn't get it. Why should you do that? When the players want something, that's where their energy is, where their interest lie, that's how you get them fired up. You need to go there, give them what they want, add complications if you wish, but give them what they're interested in.

Forcing
In traditional roleplaying, the GM has a pre-planned vision to lead the players along with. In a tradition were communication between participants is seen as distracting from immersion, the only way for players to realize their vision is to force it through the rules.

Trad gaming is soaked in this philosophy of influencing the game through force.

When trad games implement player influence, it is usually in the form of points with which to buy your influence. When trad gamers discuss shared storytelling, it is in terms of authority, rules for when you as a player may force your vision on others.

But force never leads to creativity. Trust does. Forcing is blocking.

No wonder the game master doesn't trust the players to muck up the story by forcing their influence on the story, because force is all they have.

But enough with the critizism.

To play with creativity
Improvise. Collaborate. Keith Johnstone says in his books on impro that everyone is creative, if they just trust theirselves. Trust your players. Provide a clear, shared vision, and create from it. Don't use force, use openness. Let your character and your ideas be vulnerable, allow them to change. Find the ideas in the shared imagination, not in what you have planned out for yourself.

Listen, like really listen, to each other. Communicate. Do what you feel is fun and gives good movement to the game. If you don't like something, say so. You needn't have anything happen to your character if you feel it is tedious, unpleasant or not fun for you as a player. There aren't winners and losers in roleplaying.

Don't block.

Rules should be written not as laws or maybe even mechanisms of rewards, but as something to relate to, to make the story more tangible and inspiring.

Litterature
For now, I'll have to point you to further litterature rather than developing this theoretical body.

Graham Walmsley has written the book Play Unsafe on how to adapt Johnstones ideas of impro to tabletop roleplaying. The books, Impro and Impro for storytellers by Johnstone are just as relevant.

John Harper has written Lady Blackbird, a free quick-read game which is improvised, provides a clear and inspiring vision, minimalist rules, rules that inspire story-making a very non-blocking resolution system, and advice how to encourage collaborative creating. Harper is also working on the excellent game Danger Patrol, where a single scene is all the prep the GM does pre-game.

In Mouse Guard by Luke Crane, all actions are successes. If a roll fails, the GM either introduces a complication or gives the character a harmful condition - Sie gets what sie wants, but at a price. No blocking, just adding to the story. The condition mechanic is present in Lady Blackbird as well.

On traditional roleplaying games and indie games
As I critize the traditions of roleplaying, does that mean I wish to promote indie roleplaying games and devalue trad roleplaying?

No. Roleplaying as a hobby is just 30 years old. There is no money in roleplaying, and thus there are no professors of roleplaying and you can't go to roleplaying design college. Thus, the development of roleplaying games are happening right here, right now, and to me, challenging and analysing the assumptions of trad rpgs is how to develop trad rpgs.
Indie roleplaying is just 10 years old, and even moreso trying to find its form. Is creative roleplaying the same as indie roleplaying? Is it narrativism? Or is it something else? You tell me.

An interplay model of roleplaying

2010-05-01T16:02:00.000+02:00

Background
My thoughts on roleplaying are influenced by my interest in impro theatre and client-centered therapy. Here, I intend to make a general model of roleplaying, and in the next post follow up the general with the specific, going into detail of "creative roleplaying", a style of play I am particulary interested in exploring.

In this model, I view roleplaying as movement, a process that is happening in the here and now of a group. Also note that one of my key concepts, flow, is said to require great experience - So perhaps my model is only accurate in capturing the process of experienced roleplayers?

In any case, In this post I make four statements on roleplaying in general:

1) Roleplaying is a group process
As a tradition, roleplaying games have been written as simulations. The books contain rules and the setting that together describe a world and its set of laws, and you are offered to bring your character to life within this world and experience it through that character.

But I believe that the act of roleplaying is not primarily a simulation, but a group process, an interplay between players. This is an aspect of roleplaying that just cannot be ignored, but historically it has been grossly neglected in the writing of roleplaying games. How often does a roleplaying book concern itself with how to take care of the other player's creativity, or how to settle on a social contract together? Oftentimes, writing roleplaying games seems to be lacking the assumptions that some people are actually going to play this. Perhaps the worst example of this is the following rules which where present in all (?) of roleplaying games released by the leading swedish roleplaying publisher in the 80s-90s:

1) The GM is always right
2) If, for some reason, the GM would not be right, see rule 1)

This is denying the interplay in roleplaying.

2) The ultimate goal of roleplaying is flow
Flow is the sensation of losing oneself in an activity, to be completely immersed and absorbed in concentration. All of your cognitive (thought) resources are in the game, so you don't have to consider what to do next - You just do it. You go with the flow, so to speak.

In my introduction to roleplaying I mentioned three aspects of roleplaying: Game, immersion and story. I believe flow can be achieved in all three.

I have experienced flow sensations in story-focused games when going on a creative spree with my fellow storytellers. To immerse completely in your character is the equivalent of immersive play. I haven't encountered flow in game-focused roleplaying, but since the sensation of flow is common to most task-oriented human activity it should definitively be possible when trying to best an in-game challenge, such as tactically mastering a combat scene.

Now, achieving this flow state should be understood as exactly an ultimate goal. Casual roleplaying can have the goal of meeting and relaxing with friends, but I believe that working with the assumptions that leads towards flow also work towards easier achieve casual roleplaying. Working towards flow is making the game smoother, simply put.

It might also be prudent to point out that constant flow is not necessarily a good goal for roleplaying - In most stories, we switch tempo between energy-filled intense scenes, and refreshing and slow ones. In any case, I wish to make the point that a good game is one that moves forward, one that has energy.

3) Blocks are counterflow
So the game needs to go somewhere. It needs to move forward to be interesting and captivating, and anything that breaks this energy is counter to flow and enjoyment of the game. As these elements are blocking the game, let's call them "blocks". They are the phenomena that block the games movement, disrupts and distracts players when they are in the game.

Imagine that you know what do next in the game, you have a vision (I'll return to this) in your head, you just need to verbalise it to bring it into our shared imagined world. If you're interrupted in that process, you have been blocked. Your movement loses its momentum, and thus the game loses momentum.

What counts as blocks depends on what you're concentrated on, of course. A player immersing in hir character and the fantasy world is blocked by out of character-discussions between players, or the game master breaking out the rulebook.
A player focused on creating story is blocked and disrupted if elements that run counter to the storys established mood is introduced.
Most everyone is blocked by long discussions on how to interpret game rules during game time.

4) You need to share the same expectations on the game
When doing roleplaying, I believe that shared expectations on the game is the very foundation without which rewarding interplay between the players are impossible. The greater extent of shared expectations, the better the game works.

Expectations can be social expectations, such as "We all show up at Daniel's place at six o'clock" and "We don't make fun of each other's characters". Let's call these the social contract.

They can also be expectations on the game world, such as "My character is a real upstanding hero, I expect others to view that way too" or "I expect those vines would be a perfect to climb that wall". Let's call this vision, how we see the game world.

We can use expectations to construct three levels of how well the game is going. I will use a graphical representation of the interactions between four light-beige coloured people around a gaming table. Pardon the eurocentricity. :)

4.1) The expectations aren't shared

If this is the case, you have a problem. If the players have different ideas of how to conduct themselves, what goes for this group, which mood is appropriate in the game, and how events should resolve in the game ("I hit you, you're dead!" "No I'm not, you missed!" to quote a classic line from children's play) you get frustration and conflict among the players.

Players might resort to try to enforce their vision on the others rather than working collaboratively. "Okay, your character is making mine look bad, but I expect him to look cool, so I'll have to kill your character" or development along such lines is one way of reaching your personal vision by force. This means constant blocking of each other.

4.2) The expectations are shared

If this is the case, the vision of the game in each players head are matching. When you verbalise your vision, it doesn't block anyone elses vision, but rather works in concert with them, creating a shared, sustained fantasy. The game gathers momentum and it goes somewhere.

4.3) Flow

Without blocking, the players can get into the flow together so to speak, and their visions are not only matching anymore, they become a communal vision shared by all, almost tangible. The players can scoop story ideas, in-character lines, et cetera from this shared vision without hesitation, just creating and creating together. Each contributition builds on the previous, moves the game forward and energizes the other players.

This should be understood as a continuum. There are always some amout of blocks appearing in all games, and a flow or sensations of flow can be achieved without being completely immersed in the game.

You can draw a parallell to my model of mental health, at the bottom we have defensive-aggressive, in the middle communal and at the top creative. When roleplaying, just as when living our life, we need a sense of security. A sense that my contributions works, that they are worth something, that they won't be blocked, and that I won't have to justify myself.

Conclusions
No matter your creative agenda (Game, immersion, story), roleplaying is a group process. As a player and a game designer, you have a responsiblity to take care of other players creative input - Probably most relevant to immersion and simulation games, where it is easy to hide behind in-game logic. "But that's what my character would do!"
Games should be designed for clarity above all things, as confusion will lead to blocks of the game. Clarity builds a sense of security of which the players can work creatively from.
Games should be designed to provide energy to the group, not to drain energy.

Flow

2010-04-18T21:51:00.000+02:00

Two weeks ago I attended the annual swedish roleplaying convention, GothCon. I organize Indierummet, an event we've ran the past five GothCon's now, where we demonstrate indie roleplaying games. I played/GM:ed/demonstrated Berättelser från Staden of my own design (I'll get more into that game later on), and Lady Blackbird by John Harper. Go ahead and check it out, it's brilliant. A very interesting read whether you're a seasoned roleplayer or just curious of what the hobby is like. You can read it in, like, five minutes anyway.

Playing these highly collaborative and creative games, we got into a real flow, something I've experienced doing impro (In a previous post I described it by linking to Higher Love by Depeche Mode) but never really in roleplaying games, I think.

Discussing this with my two co-organizers, the pieces started to fall into place, and I began sketching up a model for understanding this feeling through impro theatre theory, and that's what I'm writing for this blog right now.

Just wanted to drop a little background ahead and a link to Lady Blackbird.

Expectations

2010-04-07T21:14:00.000+02:00

Expectations are huge. Once you have your sense of security and a sense of coherence, I'd say expectations is the one big deal in life. Take a look at expectations in these subjects:

Life happiness
Our overall life happiness and satisfaction is not primarily determined by actual life conditions, but rather our expectations, comparisons and outlook on life. Did we expect more? Then we are disappointed. Did we expect less? Then we feel lucky. It is interesting how having a monetary windfall will make us happier, but having a lot of money does not make one happier, our expectations soon adjust to our newfound wealth. The book "The Art of Happiness", written by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, explores this idea further.

(A friend of mine poignantly pointed out that she felt truly happy in the moments you cannot compare to others, moments of strong community together with friends, or meaningful moments)

Therapy
In Psychological Therapy, Klaus Grawe describes positive expectations, or hope, as one of the most important things to establish in psychotherapy. Thereapy must change expectations to the better, and positive expectations on the therapy and a trust in the therapist energizes the client, giving a positive effect very early in psychotherapy, and this is can in turn strengthen the positive expectations.

Cognitive behaviour therapy can, in a way, be said to work entirely with faulty expectations, since it works with our inner assumptions such as "If I get up on stage in front of people, I will make a fool out of myself" or "I will never, ever find true love". - The models and answers to life issues.

What is interesting is that my model of mental health is based on sense of security, and a sense of security is just about the same thing as positive expectation on the future, based on experiences in the past.

Impro
In impro theater, we spend a lot of time to be obvious. Stay within the circle of expectations! Do what you could expect from this scene! Be obvious! What is neat about this is, what is obvious to us will seem genius to others, just because it fits so well. It doesn't have to be mundane and boring - Maybe to you it is obvious that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father, for instance - So you go with that! Others will think it's genius and go "Of couuuurse..." (because it is obvious)

Since the scenes I've done impro on is always without props or the background of previous scenes, a improv scene really is built out of nothing else than the actors assumptions (or expectations) of what objects are present, the mood of the scene, the characters and their relations... When all the actors share these visions, act on the imagined objects and relationships, the scene becomes tangible, alive - It's only in the mind of the actors and the audience, but it becomes an entity of its own. This generates a great sensation of presence, and community with the other players. It lifts you higher! (Remember my last post?)

Roleplaying
In roleplaying games, I'd say expectations... are king.

Conflict when playing invariable spawns from differing expectations and visions, or from real life issues played out in the context of the game. Different players can have different expectations on how the fantasy world should look, how it should work, what a character should be able to do, what style of play should be pursued, etc.

This can be almost completely avoided by carefully adressing just what kind of expectations the players has on the game, instead of just making assumptions.

The opposite is true as well: When all players share expectations, when their visions come together, the same high and immersion can be achieved as the one i described in impro.

Myself
What's interesting is, I've primarily analysed my expectations as something negative: I can charge something or someone with expectations, only seeing one possible route which will end in either success (yay!) or failure (gaaah!). When my expectation doesn't match up with others, this can be a very painful situation.

Conclusion
I think the conclusion to be drawn is that expectations are powerful forces pointed towards others and towards the future. When expectations are open, positive, and shared by others, energy and success is almost inevetable. A sense of security can provide these positive expectations.

But when expectations are negative, the energizing charge of positive energy is lacking.
(Another friend of mine described how she used the strategy of pessimism when she was a child, so she would never be disappointed. It worked, but how can you invest and actually succeed, if you always assume you will fail?)

When expectations are stiff and forced, you will be too, pre-occupied with how things must turn out, rather than taking in, and adapting to, how they are right now.

When different people have different expectations, someone will be disappointed or frustrated. These expectations set you up for failure.

Lifted higher: Improvision Song Contest 2010

2010-04-05T13:55:00.000+02:00

This is Siv-Britt Turesson, from a small Swedish village no-one remembers the name of. She has always loved listening to the radio stars, dreaming she could be like them, to sing like them. After winning a small contest of three participants, she got the chance to perform at the Improvision Song Contest of 2010.

She enters the stage nervous with anticipation, and she takes the microphone and sings to us how she wish she could be among her music idols, pausing to look at us excited, hardly believing she is here, and then unleashing a full opera chorus of how she can't sing like them, but oh how she wishes for it, and the lights go on, and she is there, the place she's dreamt of, and we're with her, clapping and cheering, the entire stage is lifted to a higher place.

Siv-Britt Turesson is a persona played by Karin Fjellander, opera singer, one of the participants of last sundays Improvision Song Contest 2010. Each participant came to the event with a prepared persona to portray, but the song, the music, the lights and background choreography were all improvised. Audience members provided the titles of the songs and a random genre was picked for the band to improvise from. Choreography and lights were improvised as well, everything coming together in the moment.

We all watched as the artists entered the stage, climbing up and standing on the cliff of impossibility, and then, without fear, throwing themselves forward, not falling, but soaring, singing.

The winner was not Siv-Britt, but Arne Brun, played by Michael Blomqvist. Arne Brun was a similar concept, a nobody, vulnerable and ordinary. Arne Brun had ended up at the competition by accident, but completely blew us away. Here is his act.

Notice how the audience is melting with laughter in the end, not because the act is very, well, witty funny (Impro actors are never trying to be funny) but because it is exhilarating funny: What we saw was something genuine, vulnerable, real, happening right now and right before us, and thus very hard not to be swept away with, to emphasize with the singers and be a part of it all. To be lifted up along with the soaring artists, to a higher place.

Impro can be a rush of freedom, to shake off the fears of failure and make them something insignificant and harmless, something funny to laugh at. It touches a place we dream of reaching, self-actualization. A psychological idea that it is in our nature to seek to be all we can be.

I'll end this with another song from Depeche Mode's album "Songs of Faith and Devotion", expressing my emotions of elevation when doing impro acting:

http://www.myvideo.de/watch/1145957/Higher_Love

Man will survive

2010-03-18T22:47:00.000+01:00

Remember the song I posted? After the first verse, Martin Gore sings just that, man will survive. And pauses. The sentence seems to hang in the air on it's own, complete in it's message, before it is concluded with the harshest conditions

The fact is, those words do stand on their own. They convey an idea I've heard before, in the classes of psychology - The belief that I will survive this. And not only in the prosaic way of living on, but this concept also encompasses not losing hold of yourself, becoming lost - My ego will remain intact.

The storms of life will be difficult, and sometimes you have to risk breaking your heart... but you can still have this sense of security, have faith in that you won't be overpowered, disintegrated. The storm might end in heartaches, but not in uncontrollable catastrophe.

This is important when growing up.

- A child with a sense of security uses hir parents both as a secure port to find solace in and a safe base to explore the world from. When the storms come, mother and father will come to you, hold you, and put you together again.

- My lecturer describes the difficult development tasks (life issues, we might call them!) and how a difficult task (like separation from our parents, for instance) that we manage to master works like a vaccination, strenghtening us the next time something like it turns up (when breaking up with our loved one or losing a relative) – But a much too difficult task leaves us bewildered and feeling overpowered, frightened of it and certain that we cannot handle it the next time it turns up.

- Also, let's look back at Antonevsky's model Sense of Coherence. Antonovsky said that everyone meet stress in their life, but it is whether you find life manageable, understandeable and meaningful that decides whether you handle it successfully. Belief would have man survive.

- In the same way, when going through therapy you will call the storm to you, go into the dark and difficult places of yourself. You must have faith in that this won't destroy you - Grawe describes hope in the therapy and trust in the therapist as the most important components of successfully therapy.

My next post will be on hope.

Writing this, I'm at Kulturhamnen once more.
A woman is reading her poems to us. She is visibly nervous, restless, her swedish grammar falls short at times, but her words ring true to us. Before reading the third poem she tells us ”This one, I haven't practiced at all”

But she goes through with it, with heartfelt applause. Goes into the storm.

Man will survive.

Triforce

2010-03-17T16:39:00.000+01:00

I think my triforce is Courage, Sensitivity and Hope. These are my three strengths, my greatests assets in life and as a psychotherapist-to-be.

I have Courage when exploring myself, trusting others with my serets.
I have Sensitivity when I'm listening to others, being careful with their inmost feelings.
I have Hope when finding joy in humanity, putting trust in my fellow humans, believing in them.

But they are also my vulnerabilities.
Too much courage, and I force myself to be self-revealing rather than open, exposing myself and alienating others.
Too much Sensitivity, and I put guilt on myself, project others' disapproval upon myself, closing myself up rather than opening up to others.
Too much Hope, and I charge my life with expectations rather than optimism, I put great expectations on what I will accomplish, what heights I shall reach in my relations to other people, becoming rigid rather than open, anxious of failure rather than hopeful.

One force is balanced by the other two.
Courage needs sensitivity to feel and stay in touch with reality, and when sensitivity recognises a difficult place, it needs courage to actually go there. They both need hope to tell me that, "Yes, people do like you just the way you are, you don't need to be strong or compliant". Hope needs a moderation of courage and sensitivity when meeting reality.

...

Notice how I define my healthy self as balanced and open, in line with the model of mental health I've posted here. Open to and in touch with the inner and outer world.

Notice how this coincides with good impro: A good impro actor should dare to let out hir inner impulses, stay sensitive to and pick up hir fellow actor's ideas and stay open and trusting, rather than rigid and planning. To stay open.

Notice how psychotherapy could describe these attributes as life problems, but I have decided to describe them as strengths.

...

Do you have a Triforce of your own?

Meaning, story, understanding

2010-03-09T16:00:00.000+01:00

I've been reading a book on school psychology. (Psykolog i skolan, Schad 2009) This is what Leif Strandberg has to say about learning (my translation and emphasis):

"Letters, symbols, thoughts and knowledge are the tools of freedom and creation of meaning: The freedom to move beyond the world they [the pupils] occupy right now; the freedom to visit strange places and visit people they otherwise never could reach; the meaningful experience that the air they breathe, the water they drink and the stars glittering above are not only wonderful sensory impressions - they can be understood (!), and when they understand one thing they will discover that there is still more to understand, there is always another step to take, and then yet another one..."

And it struck me like a bomb. No, not the point he was trying to convey, but a different idea made up with the same images:

Meaning = Story = Understanding

We can imagine early humans, gazing up into the sky and conjuring stories of what the stars were, from where they came, what their names were... For man must understand the world.

Understanding
In his book Psychological Therapy, Grawe cites Epsteins four basic human needs, the need for orientation and control being the most basic one. (The other ones being increasing pleasure and avoiding pain, the attachement need and the need for self-enhancement) This makes sense - What point would there be to all your mental processes if you couldn't use them to predict and exert control of the world?

So man conjured stories to explain and predict nature, and at the same time gave meaning to nature.

Story
Today we can explain and predict nature through science, but science cannot provide meaning. Meaning is the sign of storytelling, the idea that there is a point to what we just heard - Things doesn't happen for no reason in a story, they happen because there was a lesson to be learnt, symbolism we could recognise or themes we could relate to our own lives. Back in the day, the Pleiades were not just a random configuration of stars, they were seven sisters, transformed into stars for a reason; Zeus had put them there to protect them and comfort their father Atlas, and the reason one of them doesn't shine quite as bright as the others is because she is shamed eternally for having an affair with a mortal. Now that's a story, there is a point to it, and it relates to us humans, our lives and our emotions.

Meaning
Humans are meningsskapande, (creators of meaning) that is, we seek to understand things in terms of what they mean to us, what emotional significance they carry for us. Events in our life must be interpreted in terms of meaning and emotion to be fully understood and integrated into our psyche. Thus, it can be said that every person has not only their own mental models, but also their own narrative (or story) of their life and the world around them. Psychologist Erik H. Erikson stresses our need to string our history of life events and choices together to make a coherent narrative. If we are unable to make sense of our actions and thoughts, predict them, find a meaning in them, this is a very distressing situation indeed - Our life doesn't make sense anymore!

Sense of Coherence
There is a questionnaire for measuring this in psychology, called Sense of Coherence, or SoC. It measures to what degree your life is characterized by comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness. Sociologist Aaron Antonovsky, who designed the model argues that everyone encounters stress in their life, but it is those with a sense of coherence that pull through and manages it, choosing to focus on health rather than disease in his model.

Our lecturer told us that SoC is a good asset when measuring therapeutic progress - Oftentimes other measurements and tests doesn't show improvement: There might be slight improvement on all symptoms and life issues, but no single factor has changed enough to provide statistically significant differences. With SoC you could show that that all these small improvements have lead to a point where the client now feels sie has control of hir life, can understand what's going on in hir life, and that there is a point to hir life - And in the end, that's the one most important thing.

Psychology, sociology, philosophy
In general, therapeutic psychology and psychological qualitative research stress understanding someone's narrative and and their feelings for the world, rather than the cold, hard and objective facts. To be understanding is to know what another person feels, to see things from their perspective.

I suppose this is obvious stuff to students of sociology, but this was the moment things fell into place to me - I suppose you could say I went from knowing it to understanding it, a process sought after in psychotherapy: When the client process something not only intellectually, but also emotionally, it becomes a real process. You need to activate the emotions and work with them to really make a difference. (Process activation)

I think you could also make a parallell to existentialism, the philosophy where mankind must find meaning in a world where science has replaced stories.

I don't really know much about narrative psychology or related sociology, but I think I should check it up. Anyone suggestions for good reads?

Oh, and I picked up Play Unsafe yesterday. Looking forward to it!

Färgen Sisu

2010-03-06T05:00:00.000+01:00

I just have to tell you about last night. I was visiting Kulturhamnen where a friend of mine were playing and singing.

A small, nondescript door in a brick building by the water, with an old sign reading "Greek restaurant" hides the world's most secret music stage. Some people under the banner Färgen Sisu have taken this place and made it their own, a tiny little house of culture. Cramped together on odd, worn couches and chairs, munching on home-made chocolate balls, we sat and listened to David Bergkvist singing of the big human issues of existence - of love, regret, dreams and revenge in a way that felt ancient and new in the same time, to an audience completely captivated. (Sorry, I didn't have the presence to bring out my camera until at the end of night) Yliari, a band made up of eight young friends separeted by life conditions, played reggae full of love. There was a rock band called Fake Snakes as well, not my kind of music, but I was happy to see them there, nevertheless.

And I sat there, in a place people had made their own, listening to musicians singing their own songs and their own words to us (well, except this one, that was a cover), as I wrote of the healthy person seeking hir own way, actualizing hirself on another path than that of norms.

It was genuine, and the audience were with them all the way. It was magical, and when their time was up they didn't want to part with us. The singer said "Since you've all been such good listeners, we would like to play a song that just the two of us made". Just the singer and the guitar player stayed on the stage, singing a song very different from the rest of their program. This is that song. (In norweigan, not swedish)

When you give people your full attention, when you give them empathy, genuinity and acceptance, they will find the safety to show their true selves. To bring it out for you to see, to let it grow.

A model of mental health

2010-03-05T20:00:00.000+01:00

During these last few weeks I've been working on a model for understanding mental health and therapy. It is a way for me to make sense of, to make a map of what I'm learning in classes and what I'm exploring in my own therapy. This is my personal understanding of mental health, but I'm hopeful that it will be helpful in understanding and helping others, and curious of which clients and which diagnosises it models well.

I - Life issues
As we grow up, struggle through life, we must all find our own answers to the big questions – Things like....

Who am I?
Is the world a safe, good place?
How do I protect my self from those who would do me harm?
Do I deserve love?
How will I convey my own love?
What sources do I draw from to strengthen my self-esteem, what makes me feel good about myself?
How will I handle a neurological handicap I was born with or a brain injury I sustained mid-life?

Life demands answers to these questions. Our answers become models for handling everyday life, they shape who we are, what we think, what we feel. Without these models, life would be impossibly extorting.

There are some patterns that keep re-emerging as answers to these questions, for instance:

- People neglected by their parents as children become insecure of their self-worth, typically beccoming withdrawn or clingy and love-hungry.
- People denied their individuality and integrity and self-worth (and with the right biological sensitivity) can protect themself by displacing their guilt and shame into an accusing voice or delusions of other people controling them, becoming schizophrenic.
- People who are wrought by difficult loss (by a parent, for instance) and lack of love in their early years may come to the conclusion that it is actually they who doesn't deserve love. This is to retain the feeling they are in control of their life and protect themselves from the very frightening insight that they have to rely on people that deep down doesn't give a shit either way.

Questions resolved in a healthy fashion doesn't follow common patterns of development in the same way, perhaps because mental health is characterised by self-realisation, individuality, to become your own person – That is, to defy patterns and go your own way.
Or maybe just because there is far more research on mental illness than mental health.

Whereas some life questions are resolved in a way that leave the person vulnerable and frail in that domain, others are resolved successfully, and will be a source of strength and confidence for the person, following hir through life. Though typical models keep reappering in the care of mental health, each person, both ”normal” or ”abnormal” must be understood as made up of a unique disposition of life models.

You can understand these "life issues" as a mix of existentialism (It's up to everyone to find answers in life) and cognitive-behaviour therapy. (People live by automatic models, programs so to speak, of behaviour.)

II - Normality
Let us revisit Lucien A Buck's model of normality, placing different answers and strategies to life issues on his continuum of mental health.

Buck describes the abnormal position as a defensive one, protecting oneself from regressing, losing what one has. The schizophrenic person fears sie might disintegrated any moment, and keeps a paranoid wall against all other people. The bipolar (or manic-depressive) person goes into manic states to defend hirself from the soulcrushing darkness of depression. It's all or nothing, either you surrender to unbearable anxiety or you wall yourself off to survive. Abnormality is characterized by this all-or-nothing stance, it is rigid and without flexibility.

To have achieved normality in a life issue is to have accepted the answers provided by society as good. There is safety in this, community and efficiency, but normality is not without it's own problems: There is still a stiffness in letting a norm define you, not daring to explore your own answers. There is stress and ulcers in societies' norms, and it is difficult to change when you are dependent on other people's ready-made answers. And we all change with age, thus the age crisis.

Whereas abnormality and normality is defined by rigidity and stiffness, health is characterised by a form of softness – When you trust yourself this much, you can allow yourself to change according to situation, without losing track of who you essentially are. You can be playful, adaptive, open-minded. You can also be thoughtful and genuine - You know yourself well enough for that. You have explored yourself and found the right answers for your questions, whether they are part of norm or not.

Buck encourage us to take caution when exercising mental care, not to squish a person into a normality that sie doesn't fit into, and would feel alienated by. We should rather give security to abnormal issues and take care of and develop the healthy ones.

The model is actually a continuum and should be drawn as a line, but I like the thought of someone standing in the circle of normality/health/abnormality at a given moment.

III - Security
The difference between these positions can be explained with the words "sense of security".

At the greatest level of abnormality, security is none. Your life issue is at constant threat of regressing, desintegrating, collapsing, so you protect yourself against others fiercely.

Going from abnormality to normality is characterised by establishing outer control: Limits, borders, structure in your life that provides predictability and manageability, even protection from yourself.

At normality, the borders and norms have been internalised - They are a part of you now. Your self is secure enough to let other people near without exaggerated fear of being hurt. There is still a sense of insecurity though – There are still parts of you unknown to you, since you have just accepted the answer rather than exploring the question fully.

Going from normality to health is characterised by process depth: Exploring, understanding and taking control of your inner processes.

At health, security is greatest. Imagine you have built a very sturdy house – You then have the safety to leave it, to explore. You also feel safe going into your dark places, the parts of yourself you don't normally think of, confident you can handle any anxiety it wakes up. The house will hold together.

There are parallells to different psychological theories on security here:

Attachement theory describes how the children with a well founded sense of security are the bravest in their exploring. Safe in the knowledge that you can always return to your parents and they will provide safety, they will go explore the world, not needing to conform to other people for validation and approval. They already have an internal approval firmly placed in their hearts.

Humanist Abraham Maslow has an interesting idea of how humanity have a series of human needs (physical safety, social, self-realization etc), and just like the child can establish a sense of security in their parents, people can establish a sense of security in these different needs. For instance, if I have a sense of security in my social needs, I do not need constant confirmation from my friends that they still like me.

Maslow has also written on the subject of the self-actualizing person, the healthy person so to speak, who seeks to explore and express hirself, actualize hir inner potential, to grow. Just like in Buck's model, Maslow characterizes this person as someone who is genuine, who follows hir own way, not in a forced way but in a curious and open-minded way. Self-actualization is not a goal that can be reached, but rather a process, to be in movement, to be open-minded and fluid.

I associate this model to learning theories as well, but that's for another post.

IV - Therapy
All therapy must somehow first establish a sense of security. This is called therapeutic alliance, a sense of trust and hope between the client and the therapist. When the client feels safe in the therapeutic room, sie can let hir models of thought out into the light and examine them. Sie can, not necessarily consciously, test the therapist with them - If I expose you to what I was exposed to, will you react like I did, or is there another way you can show me? In this way, people's model are changed.

Acceptance, empathy, genuinity ->
New mental models ->

Now, the big question is, does security lead to healthy models, or does healthy models lead to a sense of security? Like so often in psychology, you can work in either direction:

Humanistic therapy creates an atmosphere of acceptance, empathy and genuinity, building on the sense of security. Provide the sense of security and carefully prod the client towards processing depth, and sie will spontaneously explore hirself. Having written it down, I can see that this model implies that in humans there is a natural movement towards health, growing and development as long as safety, security and acceptance is supplied, and this is a foundation of humanistic psychology.

Cognitive-behaviour therapy works the other way around, first you assess the clients mental models and provide more healthy alternatives, and with this competence the client will gain a sense of security.

V - Soft-Hard
"Defensive" is a word which has made it's way into everyday english, but it is originally from psychodynamic theory. According to psychodynamic theory, defenses are something we must have to protect ourselves from anxiety, but when defenses are too strong, too primitive or too inflexible they may become a problem.

This points to how different people will handle issues differently: In a way I inhereted my fathers sense of guilt when he raised me, but whereas he keeps this guilt away by intellectualization, I have instead become sensitive and vulnerable to other people's disapproval and sensible to their own insecurities.

Strong defenses also illustrates the rigidity of abnormality: In the hard circle of abnormality, you can either let the problems and anxieties of life issue manifest themselves freely, or you handle it with strong defenses - throw it away completely, deny it, unable to confront it. All or nothing.

The softness and adaptivity of the healthy individual remind me of the ideals of taoism: Do not force yourself onto nature. Be fluid, like water, and you cannot hurt yourself. Be accepting, humble, genuine and happy in the way of the ever-curious and innocent child.

Coincidentally, it also reminds me of impro theatre.

One of my difficult life issues has been romantic love. I've never actually achieved a romantic relationship, which has been the source of great stress - I felt that I had to have it, I had to reach normality, and through reaching this normality I would reach a sense of self-worth. I've had problems with expectations building up - Love encounters became confrontations with the only possible outcomes a) high expectations fulfilled or b) nothing at all. As you can tell, there was a great deal of stiffness involved.

With a greater sense of security, with the safety to explore these feelings, process them deeper and understand them better, with a chance to experiment without the have-to's, love can become something playful and lustful. Something healthy. I can stay in the moment, fluid, enjoying the present rather than building up to some wishful future state.

I don't actually have to have a single relationship if it doesn't feel right - The one important thing is that I find my way to that bright and gentle circle of health.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3phAqQeMMcc&feature=related

Right now it's all about psychology

2010-03-01T23:39:00.000+01:00

I started this blog when my personal identity, and upcoming identity as a psychologist, entered a process of change, as a way to vent and construct my thoughts. I was very much inspired by the philosophy of impro, and wished to re-evaluate my relationship to the roleplaying hobby, so this cross-platform blog was born. I'm very much still in that process, which feels like a movement towards a clearer and more unified future self. As things have moved towards clarity, I've come closer to understanding what I want to work through here.

You only need to look at the tags right now, to see that there has been very much psychology, some impro and almost no roleplaying. I wanted to make up for that by exploring life issues in roleplaying games next, but I find I would much rather be telling you about a model of mental health I've been working on.

Since this blog is for myself, first and foremost, and since I want to let it grow spontaneously, I'm going to stay in psychology for a while more. It's good to work through things while you're in it, while it is activated. Maybe it will stay primarily a psychology blog, maybe it will start something else, maybe I'll just lay a good foundation of science and psychology for exploring the story-making of impro and roleplaying. We'll see.

Anyway, next up: A model of mental health.

Life issues

2010-02-21T11:35:00.000+01:00

Buck is, of course, not the only psychologist to explore life issues and what they mean to us. I'd like to take a look at some other psychological ideas, based on the concept that people have to find answers to their issues in life, building their own identity and strategies to handle the world in the process.

A very strong proponent in people's lives is to find answers, to be able to predict and understand their life - Even more so than having a pleasant life. A life you cannot understand is a very frightening thing indeed... Furthermore, we need our assumptions and models to get us through everyday life, not to be completely overloaded by every decision.

Let's have a look at Erikson's stages first:

Erikson's stages of psychosocial development (link)
Erik H. Erikson lists a series of life stages, each in which a growing person has to find an answer to an issue in life: Can I trust? Can I act? Can I love? What is trust to me? What is my relationship to my industriousness? In what way will I convey my love?

Here are some examples of Erikson's stages:

Trust vs Mistrust (0-1 years old) Will my parents take care of me when I need it? Are people basically good and trustworthy or unpredictable?

Initiative vs Guilt (4-6 years old) Suddenly I'm old enough to do things with a purpose. Does my actions give me pride or guilt?

Identity vs Role confusion (13-19 years old) Who Am I? This is the big one, the crux of development, where the previous stages are evaluated and an personal identity is formed.

Intimacy vs Isolation (20-34 years old) How will I handle intimacy, friends, loved ones? What does friendship and love mean to me?

Ego integrity vs Despair (65 years old and onwards) Can I make sense of the life I've lived? Looking back at it all, does it make me wise and fulfilled, or bitter and regretful?

As we grow a little older and and a little wiser, the outcome of these stages provides answers to what life is and how we handle it. We learn life as we live it, as we grow up, so to speak.

Freudian psychodynamics
A paragon for Eriksons model is present already in Freudian psychodynamics; The oral, anal, phallic and genital phases, where the child encounters and must try to master gratification and separation, control, etc.

Attachment theory
Attachment theory is based on the idea that we adapt to how our parents treat us. During our first years, we learn models for how the world and the people around us works, and how we should handle this. Is the world a safe place? Is it a loving place? Can I trust? (Eriksons first psychosocial stage)

A child which believes it is loved and safe will grow up with a sense of security, and dares to explore the world, to open up to it - Another child might keep itself closed up not to get hurt, a third child might have strong ambivalent feelings to the world, reaching out, desperate for love but at the same time rejecting other people, fearing to be rejected itself. These models follow us through our life, shaping our view of the world.

Existentialism
Existentialism stresses how we must find our own answers about ourselves and the world in this modern time - The priests, kings and traditions doesn't give us the holy, unquestionable answers anymore. Existentialism stresses the questions which are common to all humanity, though: Life and death, love, identity... They are a part of our existence, and so everyone must face them at some point.

I have previously mentioned how humanistic psychotherapy, inspired by existentialism, uses the client's own words rather than theoretical psychological terms. Every client must decide hirself what hir questions are, what life issues are important, unresolved, and how to understand them. These subjects are called themes. I guess you could define them as "stuff the client feels like talking about again and again" ;-)

Cognitive-behaviour therapy
In cognitive behaviour therapy, an emphasis is placed on (not necessarily conscious) assumptions of the world, answers to how the world works, and from these we form behaviours to handle the world. I believe that when people see me for who I am, they will reject me, and thus I act out whenever we start talking about me, anything to change the subject... for instance.

So the answers to our life issues, or life questions, become models for how to live our lives, which we enact every day.

...

Oh hey, my mother just called. We talked about how hard it is to change the answers you find out in childhood, the models your parents give you. It can be done though, by re-learning from persons that become close to you, or through therapy.

I'm introducing: Lucien A Buck

2010-02-13T16:55:00.000+01:00

While doing research for a paper on normality and self-realisation, me and my partner stumbled across the research of psychology professor Lucien A Buck, a paper titled "Normality, abnormality and health". In this paper he makes several references to patients with autism and patients with schizophrenia, the people farthest away from our normality and community.

But Buck argues that instead of placing a diagnosis on the abnormal and move them towards normality, we should see the individual strengths and weaknesses that exists in every person... Screw it, I'm just going to quote his abstract:

Most forms of psychotherapy are limited by assumptions about abnormality that focus on pathology while ignoring the potential for growth that exists in all. Effective psychotherapy requires respect for human complexity. Each person needs to be perceived as embodying a unique balance of strengths and weaknesses: The potential of normal people cannot be properly evaluated if their limitations are ignored, nor can individuals diagnosed as abnormal be understood by relying upon a pathology perspective. "Normalization" - psychotherapeutic practices aimed toward producing normal behaviour - can deprive people of existing strengths.

What he is saying is basically, instead of seeing people as mentally ill (With different diagnosises as the subcategories) or normal, we should see all people striving with the same human basic goals (which constitute the terms of human existence and what it means to be human) Almost no one person is entirely sick or entirely healthy. I'll quote Buck again:

"It is possible to conceptualize abnormality, normality and health as segments along a continuum of increasing capacity for managing the essential issues of living: autonomy, identity, work, creativity, propagation, aging and death."

As you can see, Buck separates normality and health: He argues that normality means letting everyone else decide on your life issues for you, resolving these issues based on conformity. Normality is an efficient way to live, but it also brings "normal problems", such as stress and age crisis.

Abnormality in life issues means you haven't given up and let society define your issues, but it isn't in your own power to define yourself either. The life issue is ruled by chaos instead of control, it is ruled by the fear of losing control of it rather than the security to evolve it and let it develop. The abnormal position is fortified one, and it means the person aggressively defends against other people's expectations and conformity which threatens to take hir over.

Health is also a sort of deviance from normality, but a balanced one. You have managed to reach your own conclusions on these life issues, and the healthy issue is characterized by originality, creativity and genuineness.

Let's draw a model to illustrate. I've chosen four issues and made a slice of someone's life. Let's call him Tim.

So instead of saying "Tim is a schizophrenic", we assess that Tim has great problems with identity, keeping a stable sense of himself and what he is, as he fears he might be desintegrated any moment. Love is really difficult as well, with no point of ego to fix it to. Tim has a great health in creativity, though. Work is alright.

So instead of trying to make Tim normal and potentially crush his creativity and alienating him from himself in the process, we should take care of his abnormal issues and encourage his healthy ones.

Let us now combine this with humanist psychology founding father Abraham Maslow's idea of the healthy, self-realising person.

According to Maslow, this person is genuine, original, brave/secure and has a healthy bit of perspective on normality. Maslow describes the healthy person as someone who "can wear normality as a coat", so to speak, put it on or put it away as sie likes. When the situation calls for it, sie can put on a tie and a suit, and respect norms and courtesies to smooth out human interactions, even if sie considers these rituals rather pointless...

For you see, the healthy person can do this without endangering hir own sense of identity and security - It takes great deal of security and confidence in your life issues to be able to venture out of the safe zone, explore the issue without fear and needing to defend your standpoint.

What really strikes me about Buck's model is that he interprets normality as being stiff, abnormality as being completely stuck, and health as a creative, playful stance. Remember what I said about impro?

I love this dude. Check out his tribute:

http://www.dowling.edu/wikis/pmwiki.php/LISSHistory/ATributeToDrLucienBuck

Next up: Life issues, sense of security and playfulness. After that, we'll take a look at life issues in roleplaying games. (flags)

Crazy week

2010-02-12T23:33:00.000+01:00

Boy howdy. I just started my practical training, so this week I've been out in reality doing work from 8 to 5 (8 to 5 in theory at least) which has been exhausting. I've decided not to write anything if it feels forced to do so, so... I haven't really written anything. Perhaps this weekend I'll return with an analysis of Lucien A Buck and life issues, I really want to dive into this issue. Lots of relevance to roleplaying game theory and the impro mindset as well.

For now, you can have a look at a real nice theatresports scene of "One word at a time", get a feel for what I'm talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmjqhhp0Gzs

I particullary like the second scene, on broom sweeping.

Thoughts so far

2010-02-06T13:59:00.000+01:00

I like it. This has becoma real constructive process for me, a kind of parallell to my psychotherapy. You could say that aside from psychology, impro and roleplaying, I, myself, am the fourth pillar of this blog's content. In the end it is about my thoughts and how I relate to these topics, and I will put emphasis on things I feel relate to my own life and my life issues.

Even though I've made a list of things I want to bring up on this blog and started planning ahead, I felt that this "just let it grow"-attitude has worked real well - Even summarising an established field of science (psychology) stimulated me with new ideas during the writing process. I didn't really expect this blog to be so humanistic-philosophical, so that's interesting.

I felt a bit of a speed bump when writing up the roleplaying summary. I think it's because there is a lot baggage there: I've been a part of the roleplaying community for very long, I've discussed and debated roleplaying theory so much, I've explained the hobby so many times. I suppose what this is about is that I just don't want this blog to turn into another roleplaying blog with psychology and impro on the side, but to stay truly multi-discipline.

The lack of comments have been really sobering, and reminded me that I'm primarily writing this for myself - I don't want to either get caught up in other people's expectations or feel I'm ignoring other people's input because I'm doing my thing.

Oh, and to me, learning is building. I'm always processing things as I go, and I often go back and edit and re-edit a post even after I've published it.

...

Right, so I mentioned life issues in the first paragraph, and that is something I'm really interested to explore right now. Next up will be a little psychology background.

I'm introducing: Roleplaying games

2010-02-04T23:32:00.000+01:00

Roleplaying is a collaborative hobby where four, five-something friends meet up regularly and play a roleplaying game for an evening, doing a one-night thing or picking up where they left their story the last time. It is a wholly verbal hobby, a kind of storytelling.

So what is these games all about? Well, there is a huge span of just what roleplaying games can be in terms of setting, theme and structure, but there are three components that are common to all roleplaying games:

1) It's a game
2) It's a platform for acting and immersing in a made up world
3) It's a collaborative storytelling

These three components have always been there, and players can switch between playing, acting and storytelling as they wish, and different players are attracted to different aspects of the hobby. I'm going to use these three components to sum up the history of roleplaying games, the simplified version:

Game
Roleplaying started with the game Dungeons and Dragons in the late 70s, which was kind of an offshoot of a wargame - But instead of two players pitting miniature armies against each other on a battlefield table, a bunch of players teamed up, each controling a single miniature, trying together to overcome the obstacles that a referee set up for you. (That is, kill his monster miniatures)

Immersion
At some point, someone realised that, hey, you could do whatever you wish to with these characters. The focus was moved from playing with miniatures trying to win a challenge, to playing a character placed in the context of a made up world. You figured out a personality and history for your character, and decided how sie should realistically act in a given situation, and then acted that out verbally. Instead of dungeons full of monsters, the settings became made-up worlds; historical, fantasy, future, or mirroring our present day.

The referee became a storyteller that prepared a story for the players to explore with their characters, and characters of hir own for the players to interact with.

Instead of the win/lose rules of a game, the rules would either be very complex to simulate the laws of nature, or very simple and non-intrusive to leave room for immersion in the world. The main purpose of these rules where to realistically determine whether a given characters action would succed or fail, adding together the character's skill and an element of chance. (Roll a dice and add your skill number. Good enough? You succeed)

This is the playstyle that would dominate roleplaying games from the 80s to the 00s, and for a long time this game-immersion-story divsion was not seen as important, but rather if you prefered for "rules light" or "rules heavy" games.

Story
In the 00s there was a movement towards analysis of roleplaying and player dynamics, which resulted in a new design philosophy emerged where story took the front seat, the indie roleplaying games.
The story of the immersion playstyle of the 80s and 90s was often rather static, with the referee (or gamemaster) having planned the story out in advance and the rules in many ways actually serving the purpose of stopping the players from messing it up too much. (Oh, you wan't to seduce him? You'll have to roll a Seduction test, then! - Which is a textbook case of blocking in impro theatre)

The indie movement made the story about the characters rather than have them explore it, placed a great emphasis on story elements such as theme and premise, made storytelling more improvised and collaborative - Often the referee is done away with completely, and all players participate as equals.

The rules became guidelines for a particular style of drama rather than realistic success/failure laws of nature - You bought a game to tell this particular kind of story (that could be exported to different settings) rather than to explore a particular setting (in which you could play any kind of story)

In Scandinavia, there has also been a parallell development towards story called freeform or jeepform, pre-written scenarios built on a different structure than rules.

Summing up
I'd like to once more point out that all of these three components have always been present in some form in basically all roleplaying, even though the focus of them have shifted over time. For instance Dungeons and Dragons, which reached edition four last year, which has been a step back towards pure game, but more inspired and less clunky... Me and four friends play it regularly, but in addition to the game elements, we do lots and lots of immersion and storytelling in our playstyle.

Humanism
It is probably pretty obvious to everyone at this point what my preferred kind of game is, and what I consider to be the humanist sort of game: The story games. Story games are more improvised, there's less authority and more focus on communication between players - There is simply a much greater interest in human, personal issues and themes, and a much greater trust in the other players creativity, providing tools for them to use rather than subjecting them to a fixed world.

On a side note, it is a little interesting that the third force in both psychology and roleplaying games would be the humanistic one. In the end, the humanistic therapy sort of altered psychotherapy as a whole, merging with other kinds of therapy rather than becoming a separate tradition, and I can see hints of the same thing happening with roleplaying games and the indie wave.

Reflections
In a way, I think the indie games personal involvement of players and their characters is a vital part of what a story really is. A story is in the end about humans and humanity, a story must be meaningful and thus relate to the participants personally, because meaning is personal.

(I'll explore this in a future post)

When I bring up roleplaying on this blog, I will probably often be critical and harsh on general roleplaying design... But that's okay - I've grown up with this hobby, written for it, played it. I love it, and it's really for your own good, darnit!

Seriously though, roleplaying just doesn't have the history and research of psychology and theatre. Most roleplaying designers have "real jobs" on the side, writing games out of inspiration and love rather than to make a living, and the analysis and theory building of roleplaying games is a rather new one. There aren't any Rogers or Johnstones in roleplaying, though there are a whole bunch of very inspiring and bright people analysing and working with their hobby, so we all have a chance to critically examine and participate in forming the theory body of roleplaying games, which I'm doing here.

I suppose you could say that I'm very much exploring impro and psychology, relating it to my own life, while I already have the relation to and knowledge of roleplaying. What I'm exploring in roleplaying is rather how the hobby links with psychology and impro, and just what this means.

Humanism

2010-02-03T01:13:00.000+01:00

I have realized that in many ways I am a flaming humanist and existentialist, and this is perhaps the very reason I have decided to bring together the seemingly disparate domains of psychology, impro and role-playing in this blog. It is high time to examine this link, I believe.

Humanism is a rather vague concept, but to put it rather simply: To me it means a trust in other humans, their kindness and their capability, both individually and collectively. A sense of respect of, and inspiration from what other people find meaningful or important in life.

Humanistic psychotherapy
I described humanistic psychotherapy (or client-centered therapy) very briefly in my introduction to psychology, now let's take a closer look. I will stay out of the techniques and and theory framework of the humanistic psychotherapy, and just detail the therapist-client relationship.

Genuineness, acceptance and empathy has been labelled "the Rogerian triad" (Carl Rogers) and is the core of how to a therapist should conduct hirself in client-centered therapy.

The therapist should trust the positive force of change within the client and just, well listen, basically. The therapist should create a warm and accepting atmosphere with the client, in which the client will allow hirself to explore hir thoughts and worries fully and with hir own words, without any fear of failing or "doing it wrong".

With careful prompting the therapist can encourage this, deepen the clients processing, encouraging hir to think more deeply and with more perspective on hir issues, reaching an understanding of hirself.
There is also an emphasis on picking up on the clients wording and thought structure: To understand the client through hir own understanding of the world and hirself, rather than through a cognitive or psychodynamic terminology - What is meaningful to this person?

My material on therapy exercises (A translation, I don't know the original source actually!) also mentions seven common worries the therapist should forget about, and instead focus on the patient in the here and now.

Rogers' research is the reason psychologists of today goes "mm-hm" and "I understand you felt angry at that point" all the time ;-)

Impro theatre
Now let's take these principles and compare them to the five guidelines of impro theatre I outlined in the last post. Take a minute to think this over, try to see the same connections that I see.

Don't worry, listen = Be spontaneous (1)
Empathy = Always make your partner look good (2)
Acceptance = Always say yes (3)
Genuineness = Don't try to be funny (4), be spontaneous (1)
and finally
Pick up on the clients themes = Listen to and pick up what the other actors bring to the scene (1-5, really)

What does this similarity tell us?

Both impro and client-centered therapy is about putting trust in your own and your fellow human's genuine and unadulterated capability for creation and understanding (impro) or inner potential for growth and insight (therapy)

It is about creating a warm, creative atmosphere together, where something can grow, given space, a little nourishment and a little encouragement.

It is about using one mouth to talk, but two ears to listen, picking up everything your fellow human contributes, carefully building something out of it, be it the story of this stage, or the story of this human being's life.

To me, this is trust and love for other people.

Impro and client-centered psychotherapy mirrors each other in philosophy, and thus impro is the humanistic theatre.

So, are there humanistic role-playing games as well? Next up I'll introduce the third pillar of this blog, role-playing, which now is long due.

I'm introducing: Improvisation theatre

2010-01-31T11:04:00.000+01:00

Impro theatre is a technique drama teacher Keith Johnstone invented to teach his students to be more spontaneous. Impro turned out to be entertaining in it's own right though, and a new form of theatre was born. Most times it is done for comedic value, sometimes hysterical comedic, bu there is also a move towards more serious impro, such as Kenn Adam's book "How to improvise a full length play" and Johnstone's own stance on the matter.

Typically impro is done as Theatresports - Two teams face off in a good-natured and playful contest, taking turns of challenging each other to short scenes with given rules and themes. (Could be anything really, for example best enactment of a folk tale, best single actor scene, best scene with a audience member participating)

My experience is mainly from the local group gbgimpro (Gothenburg impro) and their after work impro nights. The formula here being:
1) The group explains the rules for the next scenes and then play it out (For an instance, whenever the audience shouts "Sounds like a song!", the actors has to do a music number of the line sie just said. Another example of rules would be that every actor has to speaks in three word lines)
2) The group asks for volunteers from the audience to play a scene according to the same rules
3) The audience provides a setting/mission for the scene (For an instance; robbing a bank or redecorating a house)
Costume and props are never used, except for chairs, whereas Johnstone is a strong proponent of using sets and props. This would probably clash with the audience participation of gbgimpro, though.

Kenn Adams sums impro up in the three following guidelines:

1) Be spontaneous
Don't plan in advance, act on your partner actors! In Johnstone's books, exercise upon exercise is spent upon training this very simple idea, to react in a second rather than trying to think up something "good".
2) Always make your partner look good
Stressing the collaborative aspect of impro. Beginner impro actors are often so caught up in their own performance and planning (Which they aren't supposed to be doing anyway) that they don't take notice of what the other actors are doing.
3) Always say yes
Don't block the story, advance it! There seems to be a great fear among the actors of impro of actually progressing the story, letting other actors take control, or even to accept their own spontaneous ideas, a sort of achievement-anxiety self-censoring.

Keith Johnstone doesn't provide distilled guidelines in his books, but if you boil it down, these two could be added to the guide to impro:

4) Don't try to be funny, just act on the moment
Going for the quick laughs will only feel forced and won't let the scene develop. In his exercises Johnstone even has his student trying to be as bland as they can, and to stay within the circle of what the audience expects (Which is rather complex, actually)
5) Allow yourself be altered
Johnstone describes how actors fear "losing", having the other actors get the drop on you. For instance, he describes a horror scene the victim takes delight in, instead of becoming horrified. The actor are striving to maintaining control for their roles instead of vanquishing it.

These guidelines captures the very essense of "letting something grow".
Impro is about being in the moment, being one with the scene together with the other actors - To let the scene and the other actors into yourself, so to speak.
Don't plan, listen instead.
Don't act like an actor would act, instead react, lend your body and mind out to the scene and just act on what happens around you, be natural.
Don't stop any ideas or events, let them come out, nourish them, and theatre will grow.

Let something grow

2010-01-29T00:13:00.000+01:00

A markedly nonnarcissistic attitude toward offspring informs the remarks of an 85-year-old frined of mine who reared 12 children during the Depression, all of whom have turned out well despite borderline poverty and some painful losses:

“Every time I’d get pregnant, I’d cry. I’d wonder where the money would come from, how I was going to nurse this child and take care of everything else. But around the fourth month I’d begin to feel life, and I’d get all excited, thinking, ‘I can’t wait till you come out and I find out who you are!’”

From the book Psychoanalytical diagnosis, by Nancy McWilliams.

What McWilliams describes here is a mother that didn't let her expectations and preconceptions force themselves unto her children, but instead kept an open-minded and attentative attitude. I think you'll agree with me that the word "curiousity" sums up this mother's stance towards her growing children.

I believe this has relevance for psychotherapy in general.
Klaus Grawe has written a tome of a book called Psychological Therapy, in which he has this to say: One of the most basic things in psychotherapy is that a psychotherapist needs to convey hope, trustworthiness and a sense of empathy and interest in the client, through verbal and non-verbal communication. (i e, looking interested)

After years and years of providing psychotherapy, how do you maintain that interest? How do you avoid growing jaded? How do you avoid reaching the point where you think to yourself "It's just another narcissist, I already know what this client needs" and start filling the client with your own ideas rather than seeing hir for who sie is?

I think the sense of curiosity is key for maintaining this sense of interest. Ask yourself Whatever new things will this client teach me? and you will also stay curious and attentative, and actually pick up on the unique secrets of this human being. I guess. As an undergraduate, I'm not really in a position of advicing jaded psychotherapists on how to handle their great mass of experience... Hell, maybe I am in just that position, on virtue of having no experience in providing real therapy. I can tell you this though: The number one complaint I hear about psychology is "It's just about trying to classify people into categories"
So hey, let's roll with it, see what comes out of it. Now check out this guy, Carl Rogers, one of the founders of humanistic therapy I mentioned in my last post. The very first thing he says when he comes into play (at 3:05) is:

From my own years of therapeutic experience, I have come to feel that if I can create the proper climate, the proper relationship, the proper conditions, a process of therapeutic movement will almost inevitably occur in my client.

Which sums up a big part of humanistic therapy pretty good, actually. It's an idea that thoughts and awareness will grow and develop if you give them the room for it, the trust, the careful encouragement. (You can see Rogers in action in part 2 and forwards, mm-hm!)

Everything needs room to grow.

Now, this subject is huge. I could go on about expectations, the connection of curiosity and playfulness, or taoism... but actually, I think this is a good time to introduce improvisation theatre.

I'm introducing: Psychology

2010-01-27T23:13:00.000+01:00

Whenever I feel like I need to provide some background before moving forward, I'll do one of these posts. See it as "getting the building blocks" before doing the actual building. Oh, and I use the word "client" rather than "patient", "sie" for "he or she" and "hir" instead of "his or her".

Psychology. It is the science of mind and behaviour, so you can tell the field is potentially vast. When I say this is a blog on "psychology", just what the heck do I mean? In this post, I will construct a crude map to orient yourself around the domains of psychology we're concerned with on this blog.

Psychology can basically answer two questions.
1) How does people work?
2) What is your story?

How does people work?
Psychology can be the charting of common human traits and mechanisms: How does perception and thought process work? How does workgroups develop? Why do people get stressed out when stepping up on stage? We're looking for answers to generalise.

What is your story?
Rather than understanding people, I'm working to understand you. Rather than trying to find out the true answers, I'm trying to see how you understand the world, your story. We're looking for an understanding.

Now, imagine we draw a line between these two points, like so.

Now we can place different kind of psychological research and therapies (the application of research) on this continuum, based on how much focus they place on answering these two questions:

Let's go through the labels.

Quantitative research
Research with numbers, basically. If I tell people to administer electric chocks to hapless victims when they answer my questions incorrectly, how many people will obey? And to what extent? (Best experiment ever) The questions are already decided upon, and the research is about finding answers.

Qualitative research
Descriptive resarch, working towards an understanding, basically. "The qualitative method investigates the why and how of decision making, not just what, where, when. Hence, smaller but focused samples are more often needed, rather than large samples." (Quote wikipedia)

Cognitive-behaviour therapy
Therapy addressing the patterns of thought and behaviour according to which we operate. Maladaptive patterns (Such as "If I let other people close to me, they will hurt me, I must reject them before they got too close") are transformed into more adequate patterns. Often, these patterns and thoughts are automatic and not conscious.

Psychodynamic therapy
Rather than changing the patterns of thought and behaviour, the therapist and the client are working to expose the underlying causes to these patterns. Big emphasis on your past life, your relationship to your parents which you recreate in relation to other people, how you cope with/defend against anxiety...

Humanistic therapy
Rather than interpreting the client's story according to psychodynamic therapy, the therapist is encouraging the client to process hir own story deeper and more fully, and find hir own answers. Instead of using psychodynamic theory, the terapist tries to find the client's own concepts of what is meaningful and important in hir story.

(I'd like to point out right now that there is a very strong connection between the words "meaning" and "story".)

As I said, this is a rather crude map. Psychological theory doesn't really divide between Facts and Story in the way I've shown here, but it's a convinient way to present psychology in it's entirety on a blog that is concerned with stories, such as this one. I have left out a whole bunch of different therapies and research domains, but this will do just fine for now.

I'm building something

2010-01-26T11:11:00.000+01:00

Something has started to emerge from within of me. A sort of philosophy made out of what I've learnt from studying psychology, playing impro theater and designing roleplaying games. That's what this blog is about. It's a psychology blog, an improv blog and a roleplaying game blog, but it's also something more, something of it's own.

First, this blog is for me. It's a place and a construct for me to explore and build something out of my ideas.

Second, it's for everyone. The psycho/impro/rpg theory will be broad rather than deep, and my aim is that anyone interested in any one of the three domains and how it can be applied in a different context should be able to read it with enjoyment - And I want you to read it! I want all of you and your ideas, your thoughts, the energy from a multitude of different readers. I'm also writing in english rather than swedish, my native tounge, which is something new.

But this blog is still just a seed. It may sprout, it may wither... I'm going to let it grow and see how it turns out. Who knows what it will read like, in what language, and look like eventually?

What do you think of the theme by the way? Too loud?

There are some things to be said about letting something just grow and see how it turns out, all very relevant to this blog. I will return to this subject. But for now - Welcome!