[UA] "Real-World" Syncronicity

[Doug Stalker]

> 
> Anyone got a UA explanation for these perverse pieces of plastic?



When you roll dice, it's a random act.  It pulls a random number from
reality and displays it for you.  In a games of snakes and ladders, this
works fine.

Role Playing in NOT snakes and ladders.


The very act of role-playing is to create a breakdown in reality,
allowing us to push through to a alternate setting.  Sure, we tell
ourselves it's just make-believe - but at some level, you are the
character.

In a typical DnD game this doesn't create a problem - you can't identify
strongly enough with your character, and the emotional effect on the
player comes form the effects on what the player views as a piece of
their property - like the way you'd be upset if someone destroyed your
Television Set, but you wouldn't think of it as destroying you.  

UA is NOT DnD.

In UA the players are tied a lot closer to their characters.  There is a
lot more emotional carry over, and if things get intense it's almost as
if the events are happening, in part, to the player.  They can get so
deep into it, that it's almost as if they are the one traking down the
cultists, they are the one being shot at, they are the one having the
skin slowly removed from their body as part of a dark ritual. And when
the nature of the game causes characters to question reality, the
emotional flowback causes the players to question reality.  You might
think that you're immune; you might convince yourself that you can
comparmentalize off the character, that you and the character are
completly seperate entities and that what affects one does not affect
the other.  But that's denial - you can't have two entities exist within
the same mind without some crossover.  

A bunch of people sitting around a table, their minds divided. 
Concentrating on a specific alternate reality, to teh point where it's
almost as if they are in teh alternate reality.  This weakens the
boundries.  It weakens them to a point where randomness starts to take
on patterns. 


When this happens, it is a good idea to take a break from roleplaying. 
Move out of your alternate reality and back into this one.  Discuss real
world events.  Plan real-world event. Discuss your characters as sets of
numbers, not as people.  Whatever it takes to get you grounded back into
a single reality.  Reaffirm that roleplaying is all in your mind, that
it's just a game.


Because you don't want to go too far over.  You might not be able to get
back.  

 - Doug



-- 
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