thread: 2005-02-03 : Roleplaying Theory Open House
On 2005-03-17, Charles wrote:
In order not to interfere in the child solo roleplay thread, I'll post this here.
Eric talks about children not seperating stances, and I am pretty sure I agree. But then he lists the stances that he means, and of course there the forge stances of Actor/Author/Director, not the old Narative Stances of IC/Actor/Author/Audience, and suddenly I don't get it. Children don't distinguish whether what the play with is a main character, a person, or a thing?
So this raises a couple of questions I'd like to talk about, and I'll totally accept if they fall into the "I'm not interested in arguing over the theory terminology" category.
Question 1) Where did Audience and IC go in Forge Theory? They're still obviously important when we talk about games, but I don't understand what structure they are part of. I can see that argument that the 4 stances did not necessarily make a coherent whole (in that they can be thought of as breaking down into the answers to several different questions "How do I decide what the character does? How do I view what the character does?"), but I don't see where the other parts went.
Question 2) What purpose does forge stance theory serve? For me it seems to reduce down to "Am I interacting with the game world via my character, a non-PC person, or a thing?" and I just don't understand how that is a particularly important question to ask.
If there are Forge threads that answer all this, I'd be greatful if you could point me towards them, if you don't feel like opening this particular can of worms here.
Thanks.
