Over at Electronic Book Review, they have a “thread” that started out being about First Person, and has now moved on to being about Second Person as well. Will made a post about their collection of fantastic essays recently.
Since then, they posted something new that I wrote, a “riposte” to some of the material in Second Person. By “riposte,” they mean something like “a response to the content.”
When invited to respond to anything in the collection I wanted, I wanted to contribute a perspective that I felt might move us closer to what we ought to be asking about whether it’s possible to combine games and stories. I want to know what it will look like when we finally figure out how to combine games with good stories.
Go read Jeff’s Riposte first, then return.
Righto.
Steven King has occasionally discussed what he terms the “3 Levels” that can exist within Horror writing: Grose-Out, Fear and Terror.
The Grose-Out is a visceral depiction of carnage, kinda thing ole’ Clive Barker really excels at, which should cause the reader to be squicked, or at the least discomforted. The Grose-Out is a staple of the genre, but can be taken to far. For some writers the Grose-Out is pretty much as far as they ever bother to go.
Fear is invoked when the writer has set up a situation which causes the reader to strongly empathize with the characters within the story. This is obviously easier to achieve if the reader finds the characters likeable, though not specifically necessary. When a reader actually feels real dread for the characters within the story and worries about their sanity/survival what have you, you’ve hit the Fear level.
Terror is its own realm and highly subjective, for Terror is achieved when a reader ceases to fear for the characters within the story and begins to actually feel fear for their own well being. Despite the fact that this “internalized fear” can instantly be put to rest by simply not reading, at one level or another, the reader feels compelled to continue. Terror is so subjective because a story that causes Fear in the majority of its readers is likely to cause Terror in a relative few. A story featuring a really skilfully written Grose-Out, for example, make set off a brief Terror in some readers.
I think role playing games and certainly these games that tell stories strongly tap into this. I’m sure most long-term roleplayers can remember some of those nights when everything came together just so and the table with all those pretty dice just faded away in the face of the epic events that occurred that night.
I think an answer to your question Jeff is somewhere within that moment – when a game hits just the right notes to invoke emotions and thoughts so strong that they transport the players/observers right out of their senses. I’m not certain how to achieve it with regularity – but past experiences tell me that it always takes active player involvement to pull it off.
I can pretty clearly remember at least one Call of Cthulhu session that creeped me right out, probably advancing straight to (according to King’s definition) Terror.
It’s interesting that you bring up the horror genre specifically. Thinking about it, I’d guess is that it’s a relatively “easy” genre to transfer emotion from inside a story-game directly outside, to the players. Moreso than a romantic story, right? And a lot moreso than a hack-and-slash dungeon crawl, since I don’t think aversion to character death as it represents failure in the game qua game probably counts on any of these three levels (or their equivalents in other genres).
What would their equivalents in other genres be, anyway? That’s kind of an interesting question.
It’s a very interesting question, one I’ve kicked around before. I agree that a lot of genres stretch our disbelief suspenders a bit too much to readily transfer over. But here’s an equivalent “3 levels” that I’ve been considering for the Adventure / Pulp genre, very raw mind you: the Clever Gag, Thrill & Exhilaration.
The Clever Gag is familiar to anyone who has ever seen an action film. Basically, a Clever Gag is when someone does a stunt or makes a manuever during a fight or action sequence that is so cool we gasp out loud or spontaneously cheer the uncaring screen. Jackie Chan excels at them, especially when he is using “unlikely” props. I’ve certainly had these moments around the gaming table during sessions of Feng Shui, Exalted and Spirit of the Century.
Thrill, like Fear above, is when the observer is once again empathizing with what is going on within a story or game, only unlike the “negative” connotation associated with Fear, the observer is cheering right along, “Yeah, get ’em Indy!” I’ve certainly felt this around the gaming table on “important nights” when finally facing down a Big Bad after a protracted campaign.
Exhilaration is a subtler than Terror. It’s swinging a fist at the cackling Nazi and imagining the crack of his jaw against your knuckles. It’s cheerfully air-guitaring. It’s that wonderful chubby kid leaping about with his lightsabre and screw what all the snarky jerks of the net think…
p.s. Jeff – Did ya get that thing I sent ‘cha?