Welcome to the Heresy, Paul

We’re lucky to have you.

Great podcast, by the way. Everybody should give it a listen, as he really nails the ongoing shift away from the 1980s-1990s “roleplaying is adult make believe / modern oral storytelling” perspective currently happening in some parts of American tabletop (thanks to Nordic influences and the return of play styles that are less about story, thanks to Agon, D&D4, and the like).

As a long-time advocate of examining roleplaying primarily as a socially mediated experience, it’s exciting to see these kinds of ideas being voiced in public again. I don’t think Paul takes it quite far enough, since I believe that tabletop/larp roleplaying can take virtually any form, as long as you have a group of people creating an experience for themselves, but it’s probably good that there are folks a bit more theoretically conservative than me. It makes sense to define roleplaying both by what it is (what people are already doing that they call “roleplaying”) and also what it could be (what kinds of things could I, a roleplaying designer and practicioner, call “roleplaying” without having the community reject that label).

Thanks for HGWT:FAFGMmas, Paul. It definitely revived my excitement for thinking about and talking about games and theory, which had been waning recently (though I’m almost always excited about play).