Post by Aureantes on Jan 27, 2013 5:04:47 GMT -5
It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, so the saying goes - or in this case, until someone (and then more than one someone) start having epiphanies about the true nature and content of the game.
Then it starts getting interesting.
About a decade ago, I was given the moderatorship of the first PBEM RPG I'd ever been involved in, by my enthusiastic but less-articulate roleplaying partner at the time. We had other roleplayers join; I invited my other online friends as well - over time and gradually and in and out, people left and there were fallings-out, and my original partner tried to delete the group in a fit of pique but couldn't, because she'd deleted her old profile who was the listed owner of the group because of having hastily made a new one to match my covert roleplaying-only profile once she found me out....(yes, some of us remember those days)....so we made a new group and moved everything and let the old group expire, and along the way from the very beginning of that story, we had started to have ideas and make connections in fiction that turned out to have significant relevance in fact - once we started looking back deliberately in pastlife memories.
Not exactly, because that would have been unrealistic and all-too-convenient for wishful thinking - but significantly. Bits and pieces and themes and interpersonal connections emerged, and the game of roleplaying itself became a means to other ends of deeper exploration.
And so we use it here, and amongst ourselves, as well as in any of my RPGs that are still remaining or may revive with additional interest. I actually run another messageboard by the name of Scholomance Dramatica [scholomance.proboards.com], which is entirely for/about online text roleplaying and its skills/techniques/resources - but I haven't yet shared much there about the psychically-explorative uses of roleplay, even though some members are quite aware of this off-board.
And of course, the natural question is "How do you know?" - how do you know that the thing you call a memory isn't just another fiction made up out of your own head, another product of your own imagination?
And the answer is, a memory is a story that you cannot bend by mental effort. It's a narrative that plays out and plays through regardless of what you would consciously desire. Wishful thinking can change a made-up story - something that has happened for real cannot be made otherwise.
One can avoid and repress it, or it can be veiled or scattered in its rising (which is how truth seeps through subconsciously into fiction, collaborative or not). It can be tampered with and twisted in extreme situations and by extreme malice, to trap the worst in a loop and block release. It can be made to appear by assumption that the sight and recollection of one person is that of another, so that they can claim the benefit of any emotional connection with the person remembering. I have dealt with and even been the victim of these distortions. But the one thing that is true in the end is that the true event-narrative of the past - whatever one may believe of the nature of time and reality - persists and remains beneath and beyond all attempts against its integrity.
If you will a vision to change its path and it actually changes in content or detail, then it is not wholly real. If it is inexorable in its procession, then it's not just make-believe...the story is a true one.
And so even in deliberately made-up scenarios and through utterly-fictional characters, the inexorability of true things has come through. And we build upon that by consciously opening its door.
[This post will be duplicated inside the Consortium territory for further member discussion.]
Then it starts getting interesting.
About a decade ago, I was given the moderatorship of the first PBEM RPG I'd ever been involved in, by my enthusiastic but less-articulate roleplaying partner at the time. We had other roleplayers join; I invited my other online friends as well - over time and gradually and in and out, people left and there were fallings-out, and my original partner tried to delete the group in a fit of pique but couldn't, because she'd deleted her old profile who was the listed owner of the group because of having hastily made a new one to match my covert roleplaying-only profile once she found me out....(yes, some of us remember those days)....so we made a new group and moved everything and let the old group expire, and along the way from the very beginning of that story, we had started to have ideas and make connections in fiction that turned out to have significant relevance in fact - once we started looking back deliberately in pastlife memories.
Not exactly, because that would have been unrealistic and all-too-convenient for wishful thinking - but significantly. Bits and pieces and themes and interpersonal connections emerged, and the game of roleplaying itself became a means to other ends of deeper exploration.
And so we use it here, and amongst ourselves, as well as in any of my RPGs that are still remaining or may revive with additional interest. I actually run another messageboard by the name of Scholomance Dramatica [scholomance.proboards.com], which is entirely for/about online text roleplaying and its skills/techniques/resources - but I haven't yet shared much there about the psychically-explorative uses of roleplay, even though some members are quite aware of this off-board.
And of course, the natural question is "How do you know?" - how do you know that the thing you call a memory isn't just another fiction made up out of your own head, another product of your own imagination?
And the answer is, a memory is a story that you cannot bend by mental effort. It's a narrative that plays out and plays through regardless of what you would consciously desire. Wishful thinking can change a made-up story - something that has happened for real cannot be made otherwise.
One can avoid and repress it, or it can be veiled or scattered in its rising (which is how truth seeps through subconsciously into fiction, collaborative or not). It can be tampered with and twisted in extreme situations and by extreme malice, to trap the worst in a loop and block release. It can be made to appear by assumption that the sight and recollection of one person is that of another, so that they can claim the benefit of any emotional connection with the person remembering. I have dealt with and even been the victim of these distortions. But the one thing that is true in the end is that the true event-narrative of the past - whatever one may believe of the nature of time and reality - persists and remains beneath and beyond all attempts against its integrity.
If you will a vision to change its path and it actually changes in content or detail, then it is not wholly real. If it is inexorable in its procession, then it's not just make-believe...the story is a true one.
And so even in deliberately made-up scenarios and through utterly-fictional characters, the inexorability of true things has come through. And we build upon that by consciously opening its door.
[This post will be duplicated inside the Consortium territory for further member discussion.]
my name is James 
