Hello Everyone!
A few weeks ago, I presented at the Canadian Game Studies Association Conference. The theme of the conference was "breaks," and I could think of few better examples of "breaks" in games then thinking about the In Character/Out of Character dynamics in Persistent World Role Play servers on Neverwinter Nights. I delivered a 15 minute presentation investigating PW RP as "Competitive Writing" to think about losing, winning, and collaborative speculative fiction.
Ultimately, my research concluded that to "win" at role play is to have the authorial intent behind a given character recognized, realized, and acknowledged -- to be seen. To that effect, my character Artastuna ran around IC asking, roughly 42 characters to participate in a research survey, so that she could include their responses in their research to make contact with an alternate plane of existence. Concluding the scene, I then asked them Out of Character if it'd be okay if I used their responses in my slides. Some folks asked to check out the slides for this presentation. However, when I was going over them, I realized they're pretty bare-bones visuals, so I converted my slide notes/script into a paper for folks to check out if they're interested. (This paper was not submitted to the conference folks for publication.)
Here's the collage I made out of everyone's responses. I put them on screen after the panel so folks could come up and read them.
(If your character told Artastuna they'd leave the message blank, the response was blanked out)
It also came together as a sick slam poetry piece.
I felt that if role play is about having your creative writing seen as sincere and effortful, this would be the best way to show case the wonderfully diverse way characters are and how players portray their character's identity through greeting (or death threat). Following the presentation, I invited the audience to break the fourth wall with me by writing a response to bring back. After all, the way a character is validated as "seen" is when someone else acknowledges their existence in writing (it's more complicated than that but it was a good way to introduce the idea.)
Here's what the Canadian Game Studies Association Conference had to say in response:
Yes, one person did include their actual real email. I made the executive decision to censor that. Sorry Gawain.
I did not ask them to write responses to any one specific person, but some of them did chose to write some to specific characters. I don't know why. In general, folks were really delighted and charmed by the collage. There were some folks fascinated by the ecological sentiments or references to pop-culture, and others who had questions about barrier of entry and how toxicity is managed. I can talk more about that if people are interested.
It was an honor to share Arelith with the academic crowd for my first conference. I did my best to represent NWN RP as earnestly as possible in conversation with existing research into D&D and role play, so hopefully folks feel good about it. Thanks for doing what you all do.
(An In Character version of this will also be available sometime this week)
