Current location:	Shoulder to the Wheel
Current mood:	Behind
Current music:	NPR vs the Headlines
Entry tags:	blog-a-day, other

The Problem with Seconds
All this buzz about Second Person from MIT Press reminded me about the things I've learned about novel writing.

The relevant parts in a nutshell:

1. First-Person:
• Is good for creating valuable surprise for reader
• Feels somewhat more 'intimate' than other perspectives
• Can only depict events narrating character is privy to
2. Second-Person:
• Directly addresses the reader
• Can reveal some omniscient details as 'narrator experience'
• Puts the reader 'into the action'
• Often fails to connect without early engagement of the reader
3. Third-Person:
• Omniscient Perspective
• Offers less intimacy
• Often divorces the reader from the action

Obviously, second-person POV is a good way to engage the player as they anthropomorphize their character(s), with all players referring to each other (as far as out-of-game narrating). This often happens very quickly without anyone taking note. Things go from, "Your character sees..." to "You see...." It also fits right in with my proposal that role-playing games are about hypothetical thinking characterized by anthropomorphizing entities within the game's domain. (I just had to throw that out here, because I've only just conceived of it.)

You could very easily liken typical gamemastering as a third-person approach or perhaps the significant narrator of play. This will usually present as multiple limited third-person narration, restricted to the POV of the player-supported characters.

You might even consider that, if extant, first-person gaming occurs within the head of a player as they present their character's inner dialogue. However, this is where you can begin to see the breakdown of this metaphor for gaming. Now, I'm not going to point out all the different levels where the various POV are shared (for example a player working third-person omniscient by consulting the source material or rules).

There are two important problems. The first is that this metaphor breaks down when addressing gaming outside of the storytelling ideal. Participant roles in gaming blur to the point of making literary POVs unusable. That may be the practical problem, but it is by far the lesser problem to the role-playing game theorist.

And then there is our old friend, synecdoche. Once you start using literary terms to describe gaming, too many people to contend with lose sight of the fact that storytelling is only one form of role-playing games.

F