The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. — Aristotle
The problem with education today is that praxis, the hands-on, the actual practice, is often ignored in the classroom, especially in higher education. Instead, we embrace theories in the classroom, and not much more, over praxis. If institutions of higher learning want to remain relevant, they will need to bring praxis back into the fold.
I am reminded of a recent conversation with someone close to me who has experienced the decline of higher education in the United States. He mentioned a coworker, who had several IT certificates from a reputable college, was unable to fashion and/or troubleshoot basic ethernet cables. The person I talked with works in wireless networking, particularly wireless Internet service. This is one of many examples where our educational systems are failing those who are going out into the larger world outside of academia. Although I agree that theory is important, as it gives structure to praxis, praxis shouldn’t be ignored like it is in our classrooms.
My pathways to roleplaying games through wargaming and other tabletop adventures…
I might as well confess from the beginning that I did not grow up playing tabletop (pen and paper) roleplaying games. I was a war gamer from an early age. I played behind grand armies, rolling dice to decide the fate of entrenched enemies, and even my soldiers, for that matter. I came to roleplaying games at a critical juncture in my own life—a time when I was bored with wargames and needed some form of mental stimulation that went beyond what television and video games could offer me at the time. Roleplaying games, to me, signify a significant step in a process of self-exploration through games and gaming—a sort of natural progression from one gaming genre, such as wargames, to the next, roleplaying games.
Mage Knight
I roll the dice—they’re high numbers—what exactly, I can’t recall after nearly fifteen years. Probably a six and a five on the six-sided dice. All kill shot, I remember. I also remember the ugly orange carpet of the room and the dozen or so people crammed into the tiny spare room in my junior high school. My opponent’s face, a fuzzy, easily forgotten face, scowls at the loss of her Mage Knight miniature, her prized soldier on the battlefield. She removed the plastic warrior from the table, which is decorated with sand table terrain—i.e., stone masonry structures, such as fortified walls, square towers,m and sagging buildings with thatched rooves all of which are fashioned from painted soda box cardboard. I’m winning at a game that is, at its heart, very much like chess, although it’s different. In other words, it’s hard to say it tastes like chicken, when, in fact, it isn’t chicken, doesn’t even come close, in many respects. The endgame is the same as chess: Kill off your opponent’s pieces until s/he capitulates. It’s a game my pubescent self prefers over chess because of the options available to one playing the game. No more strict movements on an undecorated board. The pawns of war move in ways that chess pieces only dream of, duking it out over neatly modeled sand table terrain. Dice rolls act as the great equalizer, as much as a good strategy. (And good strategy doesn’t hurt either.) Chess, after playing Mage Knight, feels anachronistic and tastes bland.
There’s a catch to playing Mage Knight: I have to keep it secret because it is one of those things forbidden in my household. It’s far too similar to a game called Dungeons & Dragons in my father’s eyes. When he finds out that I want to play this game with my friends, and on a Sunday of all days, he flips out. My old man decides the best punishment is to force me to read aloud Bible passages. He thinks, hopes, that this activity will purge, scrub away with an intellectual version of a wire brush, any interests I have in such games. My father hands me an old Bible and says, “Here, read this. Make sure I can hear you reading this from in the living room.” I ask him why. He says, “Because I told you to. Now read!” My father truly believes the rumors and theories surrounding the connections between devil worship and suicide among those who play games like Dungeons & Dragons. This is strange to me. My father doesn’t treat my younger brother in the same way. He can play with his friends on a Sunday, and so can my sister. Instead of playing with my friends, instead of playing a harmless game of Mage Knight, I read from Judges, and the fantastical stories from this part of the Bible only serve to kindle my interest in playing out such stories in game form. I can almost imagine reenacting the battles with my miniatures, bought with earned and stolen quarters, all in the name of G-d.
Those familiar with Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck will know that agency, especially dramatic agency, is a big part of the future of cybernarratives.
Since discovering Janet H. Murray’s work on storytelling, I have been searching for answers on how to make stories more immersive, and, more importantly, I have experimented to see how I can bring dramatic agency into the stories I write. For those unfamiliar with dramatic agency, Murray offers a wonderfully poignant definition on her companion Web site to Inventing the Medium:
The experience of agency within a procedural and participatory environment that makes use of compelling story elements, such as an adventure game or a interactive narrative. To create dramatic agency the designer must create transparent interaction conventions (like clicking on the image of a garment to put it on the player’s avatar) and map them onto actions which suggest rich story possibilities (like donning a magic cloak and suddenly becoming invisible) within clear story stories with dramatically focused episodes (such as, an opportunity to spy on enemy conspirators in a fantasy role playing game).
Those familiar with Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck will know that agency, especially dramatic agency, is a big part of the future of cybernarratives. According to Murray, agency is often limited by traditional forms of storytelling. For example, when we read a novel, there isn’t a whole lot of wiggle room when it comes to asserting one’s agency within the immersive narrative world or universe.
The re-imagining of our world/universe or even the imagining of a secondary world/universe is something that makes us tick as humans.
The re-imagining of our world/universe or even the imagining of a secondary world/universe is something that makes us tick as humans. If Lisa Cron is right, we are wired for stories, and, if that assertion is indeed correct, we build imaginary worlds/universes or renditions of our world/universe to satisfy the very human need for stories. Don’t believe me? Consider this: re-imagined or imagined worlds allow storytellers to have room to create characters, situations for characters, and immersive qualities we expect from stories. Although world-building, as we will call this imagining/re-imagining, as a word has its origins in the 1820s, it has been an integral part of storytelling for millennia.
The serious world-builder, whether hobbyist or budding or seasoned novelist, will find that human beings have some weird, and if we’re completely honest, unhealthy, habits that have been conditioned via culture.
…the whole people would not have taken for general a good liking there-of if they had not by experience found it very savoring and good for them. — King James I, A Counterblaste to Tobacco, 1604
The serious world-builder, whether hobbyist or budding or seasoned novelist, will find that human beings have some weird, and if we’re completely honest, unhealthy, habits that have been conditioned via culture. One such habit, or cultural practice as I will call it, is that of smoking. Below I have included the banned Kool Cigarettes commercial from 1958(?).
As we can see from the commercial shown above, our cultural attitudes toward smoking have always been (say) problematic. The push against Big Tobacco has produced some rather interesting results in the last twenty-odd years. Nevertheless, smoking has been known to be an unhealthy practice for some time, despite recent research proving so. Why the heck is it so prevalent? Why do people kill themselves smoking?
The future of storytelling, if we are to take Murray seriously, isn’t about simply telling stories. It’s about telling stories that are immersive in their depth, richness, and accessibility.
In short, he so buried himself in his books that he spent the night reading from twilight till daybreak and the days, from dawn till dark; and so from little sleep and much reading, his brain dried up and he lost his wits. He filled his mind with all that he read in them, with enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooing, loves, torments, and other impossible nonsense; and so deeply did he steep his imagination in the belief that all the fanciful stuff he read was true, that to his mind no history in the world was more authentic. — Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, pp. 20–21
When I first read Janet H. Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, I felt like it had spoken to a part of me that I didn’t know existed as a storyteller. Murray’s wit and depth of knowledge made this academic treatise meets storytelling manifesto an instant classic in my mind. Murray’s text also forced me to reconsider the nature of storytelling in the twenty-first century. The future of storytelling, if we are to take Murray seriously, isn’t about simply telling stories. It’s about telling stories that are immersive in their depth, richness, and accessibility. Moreover, to add to what Murray is saying in Hamlet on the Holodeck, the story becomes less about a single author, artist, or creator creating, but, instead, about collaboration between various individuals (and technologies). In other words, a real-world or universe is created in such a way that there is a blurring between the lines of reality and fiction. There is a blurring in the distinction of ownership. And, lastly, there is no end to the story. Instead, the story simply exists beyond the bounds of a single medium, a single chapter. If we are to create the future of storytelling now, we will need to embrace immersive, collaboration-oriented storytelling.
Sometimes meaning comes from the weirdest of sources. For me, meaning hasn’t come from a religious awakening or even my career, but, instead, from the imagination….
To imagine is to represent without aiming at things as they actually, presently, and subjectively are. One can use imagination to represent possibilities other than the actual, to represent times other than the present, and to represent perspectives other than one’s own. Unlike perceiving and believing, imagining something does not require one to consider that something to be the case. Unlike desiring or anticipating, imagining something does not require one to wish or expect that something to be the case.
Sometimes meaning comes from the weirdest of sources. For me, meaning hasn’t come from a religious awakening or even my career, but, instead, from the imagination….
Although I’m far from what you’d call a traditional Marxist or even a Neo-Marxist, I would argue that Karl Marx was right when he pointed out that the very economic system we hold dear — that is, capitalism — tends to alienate people not only from their labor but also from the very products they produce. If we develop this notion of alienation a bit further, we find that the current economic system we hold so dear strips our world down into calculations, transactions, and meaningless abstractions. Therefore, our economic dealings leave our world devoid of real meaning, something that presents several people with a dilemma: Do I go along with this meaningless (devoid) world and what it has to offer, or do I go somewhere else entirely?
This ain’t no place for no hero to call home.
–The Heavy, “Short Change Hero”
Arguably, the issue of moral ambiguity is a guiding hand for much of my fiction these days — and I’m not the only one. I am a child of the 1990s and 2000s, a time of great moral ambiguity at every level of society. My mother and father were children of the 1970s and 1980s — again, another time of moral ambiguity. I grew up with plenty of the good guys wearing white hats. The sheriff rides into town, ready to face off with the baddies. I also grew up with morally conflicting stories like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, something I saw on a tiny twenty-five-inch screen (Sorry, crusty grognards, no giant silver screen for me, and I happened across the film via reruns on television) about thirty times during my youth. (Oh, I cannot forget films like Kelly’s Heroes, another Eastwood film with plenty of complex moral implications.)
From the pages of a classic literary work, Beowulf, we have an intimate glimpse into the lives of pre-feudal Europeans and some cool fodder for fantasy world-building…
After defeating the terrible monster, Grendel, and Grendel’s demonic mother, Beowulf returned to his homeland, where he was given a real hero’s welcome.
What is interesting about Beowulf’s return is a small detail, often overlooked by most readers that highlights the important relationships pre-feudal kings had with their retainers. Moreover, the socio-political and economic bonds that build these relationships are key to understanding pre-feudal and feudal societies in Europe.
Kings of the pre-feudal and feudal eras had a very different role than those absolute, divine right monarchs of the early modern period. They were like a CEO of a corporation. Yes, they had titles and some powers, but their power was not like those wacky early modern monarchs we know about from history. These men gained honor and status as leaders by being able to support as many retainers as was humanly possible. Retainers would join their kings, or, really, warlords, in battle, in drink, and in special meals as his guests. The king’s largess provided gifts to his retainers, giving them status and positions within the group of retainers. Special status might be given to a retainer the king or warlord favored. This special status was expressed in several interesting ways. Expensive gives, having a close seat to the king or warlord, and so on, showed a retainer’s status within this pre-modern society.
These men [and women], subjected both externally and internally to so many ungovernable forces, lived in a world in which the passage of time escaped their grasp all the more because they were so ill-equipped to measure it. — Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, Vol. I, p. 73
Our concept of time — specifically, our mechanical, abstract sense of time — is an artificial (cultural) construct. Time outside of the abstractness brought on by the mechanical, or, now digital or even atomic, clock, should be seen as a different concept altogether. For those looking to develop rich and realistic worlds or universes for fiction, for gaming, or for the sake of passing the time, one must be able to conceptualize time. Not all cultures, even in the modern age with atomic clocks and time-keeping servers, have the same conceptualizations concerning the nature of the passage of time. This has led to several cultural conflicts. If you don’t believe me, consider this. When I worked as a tutor at the local university, we had several tutors who were from all over the globe — China, India, Eastern Europe, and even Japan. Their conceptualizations of time were vastly different than many of the American tutors. Being on time, at least in a U.S. context, is a sign of professionalism and respect. Whereas, in other regions of the world, this isn’t always so.
In the West, the development of what I will term abstract time can be linked to the rise of the capitalist economic system of the early modern period. According to Moishe Postone, abstract time was developed to be independent of those external forces or events we all experience living on planet Earth — Think: lunar cycles, seasonal rotations, night and day, etc. The separation of concrete events from time itself created an abstract conceptualization of time that was easier to control, easier to measure, and, if we’re honest, made it easier to exploit the masses through the new capitalist economic system.