So, this social socket idea is a very interesting one, and one I’ll have to consider carefully. My initial reaction is ‘nuh uh!’ but I’m not sure that that initial reaction is right. And even if it turns out that I don’t primarily socket socially, I think that the idea is tremendously useful for understanding why many people take traditional GM roles. Sometime at a later date you should totally ask me about this again because I’ll have it tumbling around in the back of my head for a couple of weeks and it’s possibly something fun will come out.

Thomas

I’ll gret around to posting, once I’m back in Canada… which I will be in about… 32 hours or so! If I am comfortable and awake enough on the plane I might just work on something there to abate the boredom.

As a point of note… although most of the net world probably would be aghast to think of me this way, I too have been prone to emotional distancing, over-abstraction, and (not that you said this one) morbid introspection. I am substantially less so in the last number of years, due largely to Brand’s presence in my life, both because, well, the *lurve*… but also in no small part because of the amount of highly cathartic roleplay that I do in the games we play together.

And related to all of those other conversations we’ve had… character socket immersion is my conduit to get at the catharsis. Remember my Epicaric Virago Manifesto? I create situations to launch the character into terrible situations, then get in them to feel what it feels like. Maybe, if you, as you say, get it only from a distance, you are socially socketed and are best skilled in getting it vicariously through another player’s achievement of it? Like, the way you engaged powerfully with your mother’s emotional engagement of Water.

And… yeah… I think we aim at the same things. I don’t mind the pushing, it’s useful to make me think about it. Because, as you say, my reaction to seeing it in others suggests that I personally get it only from a distance.

But… I don’t think that changes my motivation. I see in RPGs this tremendous potential for direct emotional stuff (I need a better word for this). I turn to RPGs for it because I, for the most part, am unable to access it in other forms of media. I abstract to readily, I employ emotional distancing techniques. Emotional stimulation is something of a rarity for me, generally occurring when I read Kipling’s poetry while sleep deprived (which, shockingly, isn’t all that common an occurrance).

I think it is a goal that I often lose sight of, but that sits in the back of my mind. I am still at a point in my play history (I’m shocked sometimes to realize just how young I am) where I am trying to find what I want in play. My techniques are in flux, I don’t know what works and what doesn’t.

Now, I may be misdiagnosing my goals. I’ve done it before, and I’m sure I’ll do it again. But at this moment, having gone for nearly 24 hours without any sleep, I am mostly convinced that I play for the emotional thing. Catharsis, perhaps.

Thomas

Is it though? Is it really?

I mean… Hrm.

There’s no goal that’s more noble than any other in this context, and that’s something not everyone gets, or wants to get. We all have one goal when we come to play, regardless of the kind of player we are, or the kind of play we do. We come to the game to get out of game what we want out of game. People talk about the concepts of “art” or “game” or “play” or “creation” as if they are lofty ideals. In reality, gaming has a payoff for everyone who engages in it, which is why they come and do it rather than golfing or stamp collecting or singing in a choir or whatever else might have an appealing payoff from them.

This means, at least in my boat, that whatever it is that any particular person’s payoff is just as worthy as anyone else’s, as long as two people with diametrically opposed payoffs are not playing in the same game.

So all that to say, despite the fact that my language is loaded with devotional charge to my own payoff, I don’t consider it any more worthy than: “participation in creating an epic that was worth telling”, or “spending 5 hours in a fantasy world with my friends” or “forgetting that I am me for the next 3 hours” or “feeling fully, really challenged in a social engagement while making something that feels lasting to me.”

I’m rambling, but I wanted to make sure that I was clear that there was no bad/good, value/no value statement when I say that it doesn’t feel like
your payoff (or even Vincent’s) is the same as mine, Both of you feel however, like even if your payoff is different, that it is perhaps more compatable than mine than many others in the forums.

If the honesty and awe of your mother in your LJ post above is as heartfelt and true as I believe it is, then I find it really hard to believe that the payoff you get from games in the same emotional quadrant as the one I roll around in. If you strive for it in game, if you even achieve it sometimes, I don’t think that you could/would be as in awe of it as you so beautifully write above.

Just a gut thing.

Sorry to push at this, just something I’ve been thinking of posting about over on SA for a while.

Thomas

Now, I can’t speak for the great mass of people, but I can speak for myself: That is also the ideal I strive for in play. I am not yet good at it, and thus achieve it only rarely, but that is my ultimate goal in play too. And I read a lot of other people (Vincent, for instance) as doing the same thing.

Which is interesting since we almost never talk about it that way. Which means I could be misreading. It could also be a blind spot. We simply assume that everyone understands this, and we forget to analyze how it works (which is silly, of course).

Thomas

I am saying that when I play, one of the goals is to have the game emotionally change me. Not just to intellectually engage, not just to emotionally engage, not just to be in the emotional vice grip of the moment, but to be emotionally revolutionized in the moment and in a lasting way.

In every game that works optimally for me, I am your mother in the final moments of watching Water.

Do I remember it? Only vaguely, and at great emotional distance. It is much like pain that way for me. I can’t remember how it feels to be really hurt (it may actually be the same thing at work), I just remember times when I was in a lot of pain.

And I actually don’t feel that RPG discussion is trivializing, though I appreciate your sensitivity there. And, yeah, I think you’re probably right about discourse and emotional context. I think that the dominance of the Forge paradigm on so much serious discussion of play is a negative. It’s better than no discussion, but the Forge paradigm is high on analysis and low on intuition. That’s a huge weakness.

Thomas

This was a good post.

(I’m putting this in brackets to over-illustrate how much I don’t want to trivialize this post by bringing it into an RPG context… but this was also a very good post in illustrating to me excactly why I often feel like the forums and the blogsphere react to me like I am speaking a different language than the rest of the world. It’s because I am, in large part, speaking from a different emotional context, and I play on an alien playing field to most of the people I am talking to.)