The Role of Roleplaying Games

Roleplaying games occupy a unique place in contemporary culture. They appear to be a relatively new invention that developed from the miniature wargaming hobby. War games are simulation-type games where each player controls a faction of military units, usually represented by miniature figurines. The player-controlled units are brought into conflict in a particular historical or non-historical setting, represented on the tabletop by a map. Typically in war games, one player acts as the referee, while the other players control the military units that enter into conflict with each other. Each player uses tactics and strategy in order to win. 

Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, both experienced miniature war gamers, are considered the modern fathers of roleplaying games, the most well-known being Dungeons & Dragons, and it is from their innovations that the new hobby sprung.

The first innovation that led war games to their transformation into roleplaying games was the reduction in scale of that which each player controlled. Instead of controlling a whole army, each player controlled only a single character.

The second innovation was the transference of the setting from the physical to the imaginal. Instead of representing the setting entirely through the tabletop map, the setting is represented in the imagination of its players.

In roleplaying games, each player plays the role of a single character, called the player character or PC. The player narrates the actions of their character in a setting that is devised and described by the referee, who also plays the part of other characters in the setting, called non-player characters or NPCs. The PCs team up to explore, interact with, and overcome challenges presented by the referee in the setting. Players may use strategy and tactics to overcome challenges, but the win conditions of a roleplaying game are open-ended.

The simplest round of play could be outlined as follows: the referee describes what the PCs see and asks them “What do you do?” Then the players describe the PC’s actions, in the first person (“in-character”) or in the third person (“out-of-character”), and the referee determines the outcome according to some combination of rules, dice rolls, and judgement. This process repeats, and can continue for an hour or over a number of hours. Players may gather again at another time to start a new game, or to continue where they left off, in campaigns that can span years or even decades.

Thus roleplaying games are not war games, nor are they purely “make-believe”. They are also not simply story-telling either, but instead are a strange and seemingly new cultural artifact.

As a part of contemporary culture, like most forms of entertainment, roleplaying games could be taken as merely a pastime where one briefly escapes and rests from the stresses one faces in life. Sure, this would make them empty of any higher potential, but it would be honestly so and as such would be serving their purpose.

But roleplaying games could have a higher potential. Roleplaying games could evolve into something of a higher quality, akin to literature that conveys important information such as history, ideas, and values. They could be a form of objective art.

On Subjective and Objective Art

Gurdjieff presented the idea of two kinds of art: subjective and objective art.

“I do not call art all that you call art, which is simply mechanical reproduction, imitation of nature or of other people, or simply fantasy or an attempt to be original. Real art is something quite different…. In your art everything is subjective—the artist’s perception of this or that sensation, the forms in which he tries to express his sensation and the perception of these forms by other people…. In real art there is nothing accidental…. The artist knows and understands what he wants to convey, and his work cannot produce one impression on one man and one impression on another, presuming, or course, people on one level.” (In Search of the Miraculous, p. 26)

Much of what we think of as art today is subjective art. It produces different impressions on different people. 

Objective art produces the same impression on different people of the same level of development. For example, the Luxor Temple, the Great Pyramids, the great cathedrals of Europe are examples of objective art, and those who speak of being in their presence have the same impression of them. Further, people of a higher level of development can read objective art and extract from it other intentional impressions the artist wished to convey.

Fortunately, works of objective art art not confined to the grand scale of the previously mentioned works. In relation to objective art, A.E. Orage had this to say:

“Examples of objective art are rare in so-called fields of the arts but are more frequent in life. Example: In the conducting of a group. The manipulation of the scale, perhaps for ten minutes, a genuine atmosphere will be created.” (A.E. Orage, Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York, p. 76)

It’s worth noting that roleplaying games are a group activity where the scale is manipulated and a genuine atmosphere can be created. So the potential is certainly there to be a form of objective art. I have participated in roleplaying sessions where such an atmosphere has been created that they have produced the same impressions on all of us that have not been forgotten after 20 years.

As a narrative form, roleplaying games also do bear a similarity to orally transmitted literature.

Gurdjieff had this to say about literature:

“…[A]ccording to the most reliable historical data which have come down to us from remote antiquity we have definite information that the literature of former civilizations had indeed a great deal to assist the development of the mind of man; and the results of this development, transmitted from generation to generation, could still be felt even centuries later.” – Meetings with Remarkable Men

Gurdjieff was very familiar with objective art in literature. His father was an ashokh, a kind of bard, who could sing from memory the Epic of Gilgamesh, A Thousand Nights and a Night, and countless other poems and stories of great cultural value.

Gurdjieff also, when he found it necessary, produced his own objective art in the form of literature, that is, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, in which he conveys all of the ideas of his teachings that can be understood by initiates.

The question arises: even if a method of objective art (as roleplaying games could be) was used to reliably transmit information to present and future generations, do we currently possess any information, history, ideas, and values that are worth preserving? Do we possess any information of lasting value at all?

And as noted earlier, roleplaying games aren’t merely “story-telling”, so they are not exactly oral literature. But they do resemble another much older art form.

Esoteric Roots of Roleplaying Games

The innovations found in roleplaying games could be a rediscovery of a form of art with much older roots, that, if re-established, could serve to elevate the hobby to a higher level. 

In Beelzebub’s Tales, we are told that in Babylon around 500 B.C. that there was a gathering of learned beings who wished to preserve certain important ideas so that they could survive periodic wars and revolutions and other disasters, during which periods such ideas were often lost. They decided to codify their ideas in a particular way into the culture, in various forms of art: painting, sculpture, music, ceremonies, dance, architecture, and theater.

Interestingly, in its full form, roleplaying games can include painting (illustrations in books), sculpture (miniatures), music (ambience), ceremonies (ritual), architecture (maps), and theater (roleplaying)—all but dance. Though once my players did dance around the table when the right music and mood struck.

In Beelzebub’s Tales, these art forms are described in their original forms, before they devolved into what most contemporary art consists.

The art of theater is described quite differently than most theater today. There was still a stage, and there were still players, but there were no scripts to memorize.

“Saturday, the ‘day-of-the-mysteries,’ or, as it was also called, the ‘day-of-the-theater.’” – Beelzebub’s Tales 30:465

“So it was in this way that the learned members of the group of the mysterists then in Babylon became players of strange roles and demonstrated before the other learned members of the club the experiencings and the actions ensuing from them, which were produced in accordance with the directing of their well-informed Reason.” – Beelzebub’s Tales 30:485

Initially, to use gaming terms, in order to develop these ‘mysteries’, a series of play-tests were conducted. Each play-test was initiated by one of the players taking on a certain role and setting the scene, as the referee typically does, while the other players took on corresponding roles, improvising the scene based on the given scenario and chosen roles. From the results of a number of these play-tests, a series of encounters were developed. These results were not a script, as contemporary actors would use, but a collection of typical characters and encounters to be played through. In contemporary roleplaying games, this would be called a “module” or “adventure” that included pre-generated characters, in order that others players in other groups could also play through the scenarios. This should all sound familiar to roleplaying gamers.

So it seems a lost art form is being rediscovered. But a problem does lie ahead for its continued evolution.

Objective art does not merely happen. It is not accidentally produced by accidentally produced men. It is produced intentionally by people who rediscovered or were introduced to higher ideals. Men who strove for self-perfection and service to something higher. Gurdjieff points to luminaries like Pythagoras, Da Vinci, and ancient societies dedicated to higher ideals and self-perfection. These were the men who produced works of objective art.

It is necessary that men of quality must be produced before the culture itself can be changed. And this is the real purpose of civilization, if it is working properly—to produce men of quality. Though sowing the seeds that influence men towards these ends can help, to attempt to change the culture before having quality human material would be to a certain extent be putting the cart before the horse. 

The course begins with esoteric ideas. Below, I’ve outlined one idea that should be easily grasped by role-playing gamers themselves.

Roles and Identification

In roleplaying games, one plays the role of an imaginary character in an imaginary world. The player plays this role somewhat like an improv actor. One’s lines and actions aren’t scripted; instead, one’s role is played out based on one’s understanding of how a certain type of character is motivated and what one might do when placed in different circumstances.

In life, in a similar way, every person plays one or more roles. Each person has a limited set of roles they have acquired, each with its own set of motivations and behaviors. The most common role a person plays is oneself.

However, when playing a role in life, one is usually identified with it. This means one forgets and does not realize one is playing a role. One takes the role to be who one is, not realizing that the habitual behavior displayed was acquired mostly by accident and happenstance. To be identified with one’s role is to be a slave to it. One desperately clings to it, because one knows nothing else and inwardly has nothing else.

“Outwardly play a role; inwardly don’t identify.” – aphorism of Gurdjieff

Gurdjieff’s teaching offers methods for learning how not to identify and how to observe the roles of oneself and others more objectively. Without this, one is not free and is a slave to the role one plays, like an NPC. When one begins to wake up, one can begin to play one’s role consciously, intentionally, with some objectivity, and can learn how to play other roles as needed. One can also form something that is more real and permanent than the temporary assemblage of accidental factors that make up the roles one plays.