The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [4]
Role-playing games differ from other forms of recreation through the act of co-creation. The role-player creates his own experience through personal feelings and emotions. He inhabits a character and feels the character’s experiences in a way that a book or film cannot directly convey. In this way, players interact with a game through a uniquely tailored frame of reference (Mateas 2004:21).
In Shared Fantasy, Gary Alan Fine (1983:188) defines a frame as “a situational definition constructed in accord with organizing principles that govern both the events themselves and participants’ experience of those events.” He breaks down the various frames into levels of the role-playing game experience.
The primary framework is what gamers commonly refer to as real life. It is separate from the game but inextricably part of it. Real life is understood to be outside the rules, and its realities may define or even contradict the game itself (i.e., having to finish a game quickly because the players need to go to work). The membrane between imaginary worlds and real life has become increasingly porous, allowing participants to take the very best elements they enjoy most from each gaming medium (Castronova 2005:158).
The secondary framework is the player framework. Players operate within the game using the rules as they understand them. They operate their characters according to what the game allows, make statistical checks, take damage, and otherwise interact with the variables of the game abstractly, usually through random number generation.
Some players are comfortable interacting with the rules of the game from a purely simulation point of view, focusing exclusively on hit points, character attributes, and the like, rather than providing any narrative structure for their character. Many single-player games that are low on media cues provide these rules as a shortcut to make up for the lack of narrative structure. The intelligence, wisdom, and charisma attributes define the mental characteristics of a character that a player may be unable to provide from a narrative perspective.
The tertiary framework is the role-playing aspect of gaming. Players are their characters, inhabiting a role in a way few games emulate. Most games, like chess, never extend beyond the secondary framework. The tertiary framework is what sets role-playing games apart from other forms of gaming and it is the source of much controversy in the “roll-” vs. “role-” playing debate.
Fine breaks down the tertiary framework further by examining the various forms of engagement by players with the game and their characters.
Character Awareness of Person Reality
The character knows things he would not normally know because the person playing the character knows it. This information can be as esoteric as how to build a flamethrower or as oblique as knowledge of SWAT team tactics. The more removed the setting, the more difficult it becomes for a player to filter his own knowledge when role-playing. This disconnect is a common criticism in fantasy-derived media where the characters use lingo familiar to modern audiences. Although these forms of narrative shortcut are an inaccurate depiction of the universe in question, a certain level of accessibility is required to allow participants to comfortably engage with the setting.
Character Awareness of Player Reality
Characters can take many dynamic actions that are not suitable for players sitting around a table. They can be physically separated. They can be in proximity to each other but not capable of experiencing the same thing—one might be blind or affected by an illusion. It is assumed by many gaming groups that the players will filter this