Re: Lethality of events

On May 7, 11:58 pm, Ben Finney <bignose+hates-s...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> John Morrow <mor...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
> > As for acting in a play, can you really not tell the difference
> > between acting and role-playing?
>
> Rather than asking a rhetorical question and expecting others to have
> in mind the same difference you do, perhaps you'd like to express what
> difference, pertinent to this thread, exists between acting in a play
> and role-playing in a game.

If I may: In a play, you are doing what is indicated by a script. You
are carrying out the intentions of the playwrite, as interpreted by
the director. Some actors can get away with minor changes to some of
the lines, many can add or change bits of stage business to suit their
interpretation of the character and the play. However, the motivation,
the intentions, the free will, if you will, of the character is not
yours to tamper with. If you are an intense actor, you may create
motivations for your character's actions that are not explicitly
supplied by the playwrite or the director but the character still does
what the character will do when played by someone else a thousand
miles away and ten years later.

Playing a character in an RPG is something quite different. You may
have some guidance from the GM and there may be things in the setting
that cause you to have some constraints but basically, you make your
character's choices. Even more than writing your own "dialog," and you
do that too, you decide your characters actions and the reasons for
those actions. This is close to improv. Having done all three, I would
say that roleplaying in a game is closer to improv than either is to
acting in a play, although all are related.

Another activity that resembles acting in a play is acting as an Semi-
Player-Character Iothers would just call it an NPC) in the service of
the plot. I have done this for friends who run LARPs. I am GIVEN the
character's motivations and capabilities and I then act out his part,
using my own dialogue. Usually I play a murderous bastard who usually
meets a bad end. I quite enjoy the whole thing, including the bad
end.

Will in New Haven

--


>
> --
>  \          "What I have to do is see, at any rate, that I do not lend |
>   `\   myself to the wrong which I condemn."  -- Henry Thoreau, _Civil |
> _o__)                                                    Disobedience_ |
> Ben Finney