Roleplay Theory - My take, the 4D SEALED-model

By user Diacritica on Wikimedia commons.

I have always appreciated those who put effort into researching roleplay theory. While I've been an old-school follower of the threefold/GNS/GEN models, I've always felt something was missing. I would say, it's the same feeling economists felt when they were originally presented the IS/LM model. Brilliant, explains most, though ... missing a vital part.

In terms of roleplay theory, the missing link to me was the very roleplayer. What drives a player to roleplay, how they form their characters and how they approach roleplay, without their factor merely reduces to one of three main categories in a "tier" or "level". An early precursor to this idea would be Robin D. Laws who highlighted casual players in his 2001 book on roleplay theory. I find a re-consideration of the roleplaying game theory vital with the emergence of all kinds of new roleplay mediums, with the internet and MMO games in highlight.

Another issue I found with most roleplaying-game theories that they tend to focus on creating categories for the most obscure tabletop roleplaying systems instead of taking the whole spectrum into account, from the cheesiest of linear "proclaimed RPGs" to the least regulated forum interactions.

Read on to see a four-dimensional model, built on the categories of player approach, player goals, centralization and player affinity, also followed by a wide range of other spectra in correlation to these.

The Inherent Paradox of Racism in Roleplaying and a Solution

By Simaelling from deviantart through wikimedia commons.

Racism is a prominent issue to combat, and only recently the fields of video gaming and roleplaying have become battlefields to it. On one side, usually those identifying as "realists" and generally paralleling the political views of conservatives & reactionaries tend to reason that racism has to be acknowledged as part of a game and setting to promote realism and raise attention. On another side, there are those who promote diversity, claiming that a fictional world has all the room for racism to be eliminated on a lore-level, where it is missing from the history of the universe as a whole.

As I tend to, I agree with neither side. From the years I spent with roleplay, something was made clear: the former tends to promote a homogeneous world that is infamous for satisfying the "inner racist" in players, whereas the latter leads to racial stereotyping and tokenism in most if not all cases. Read on this blog post as I aim to explain more so the latter point than the former and my proposed resolution to it: the shelving of fantasy races as a concept.