Or more specifically, Philosophy in Your Game. In the
Violence in gaming, everyone's focusing on the media's reaction to violence in games; it's an interesting discussion, but it caused me to think about how violence is portrayed within roleplaying games. Thinking about my own games, I prefer to keep violence to a minimum, and when it does happen, there tend to be rather nasty consequences. I realized that it's because I believe violent solutions tend to beget nastier outcomes than nonviolent solutions; I find violence bad on a conceptual level, so it has harsher consequences in my games.
This got me to thinking about the exploration of philosophical concepts in gaming. In some ways, gaming can be seen as a philosopher's lab; pure thought experiments can actually be played out within a game. For example, consider the
mind-body problem.
1 Philosophers can only consider the problem from an abstract standpoint; they make conceivability arguments
2 and argue for or against monism and dualism. But as a gamer, I can run a game where the alternate philosophical models are reality. The characters playing in my game act out the subject through roleplaying, making arguments based on their actions. This kind of game can give everyone playing a stronger understanding of an idea while everyone is still having fun.
I suspect everyone who decides to run a game does this. Ross, for example, once mentioned that he finds how his players make difficult decisions to be the most interesting part of gaming; he wants to study ethics through his game. My games usually touch upon solipsism and the uncertainty of external reality; this is why I'm fascinated by the strangeness of Carcosa and
Don't Rest Your Head. I've noticed Caleb's games usually have an underlying theme of the Cost of Truth; in Know Evil, joining Firewall means you're more clued-in to reality, but you also have to fight ex-threats. In the Leviathan mini-campaign, you learn all sorts of things about a super-prison, but it also means the government may be out to get you.
So, what interests you most in games, and how does that come out in your own games?
1 For those uninterested in reading through the link, the problem involves the relationship between the mind and matter, or consciousness and the brain. Is consciousness another aspect of one's body, electrical signals firing off to make thought? Or does the brain merely house consciousness, which in itself derives from something else? If the first case is true, then we live in a deterministic world; all the neurochemical reactions that cause electricity to spark through your brain were caused by something else, which was caused by something else, and so on back to the big bang. If the second option is true, then we have to accept that there is a physical and non-physical world, that the universe isn't governed by a single set of rules.
2Conceivability argument: in philosophy, if something is conceivable or imaginable, it must be metaphysically possible, but certain models of consciousness cannot work if other models are conceivable. Let's say I conceive of a world where everything is identical to my own, but no one is actually conscious; they act identically to humans in all their actions, (yelping when stabbed, smiling when complimented, saying what you would say when asked a question) but they have no internal monologue, no consciousness. They're robots (or
zombies). Since the world is identical to our own, that means there must be a zombie Teuthic running around doing whatever it is that I'm doing at this moment, but he has no consciousness; our bodies are identical in every way, but I'm conscious. If our bodies are identical, but I'm conscious, then conceivably, this means my consciousness is not physically part of me.
Show Posts
