Switching frames in role-playing games

Courtesy University of Chicago Press

In Gary Alan Fine's book, Shared Fantasy, the author identifies gaming "frames of reality." He defines a frame as "a situational definition constructed in accord with organizing principles that govern both the events themselves and participants' experience of those events." Fine breaks down the various frames into levels of the role-playing game experience.

The primary framework is what gamers commonly refer to as real life.  It is separate from the game but inextricably part of it. Real life is understood to be outside the rules and its realities may define or even contradict the game itself (i.e., having to finish a game quickly because the players need to go to work).

The secondary framework is the player framework.  Players operate within the game using the rules as they understand them. They operate their characters according to what the game allows, make dice rolls, take damage, and otherwise interact with the variables of the game abstractly (usually through dice rolls).

The tertiary framework is the role-playing aspect of gaming. Players are their characters, inhabiting a role in a way few games emulate.  Most games, like chess, never extend beyond the secondary framework.  The tertiary framework is what sets role-playing games apart from other forms of gaming and it is the source of much controversy in the "roll-" vs. "role-" playing debate.

Fine breaks down the tertiary framework further by examining the various forms of engagement by players with the game and their characters.

Character awareness of person reality: The character knows things he would not normally know because the person playing the character knows it.  This information can be as esoteric as how to build a flamethrower or as oblique as knowledge of SWAT team tactics. The more removed the setting, the more difficult it becomes for a player to filter his own knowledge when role-playing. This disconnect is a common criticism in fantasy-derived media wherein the characters speak in a lingo and cadence familiar to modern audiences. On one hand, it is clearly an inaccurate depiction of the universe in question; on the other, a certain level of accessibility is required to allow the audience (or in gaming, the players) to comfortably engage with the setting.

Character awareness of player reality: Characters can take many dynamic actions that are not suitable for players sitting around a table, including being physically separated.  They can also be in proximity to each other but not capable of experiencing the same thing; one might be blind or affected by an illusion.  It is assumed by many gaming groups that the players will filter this information out of their characters' knowledge; others pass notes and send players out of the room to prevent "contamination."

Conversely, in systems where there are clear target numbers to perform an action, characters may gauge their actions depending on the likelihood of success. Characters do not necessarily view the universe as game rules, but many players are accustomed to having some level of "meta-knowledge" like hit points or ability scores. Indeed, this is why many massive multiplayer online role-playing games still have numbers for skills and damage inflicted.

Player unawareness of character reality: Just as players can unintentionally or overtly provide their character s with information they would not normally possess, players almost certainly lack information their characters should know. My Arcanis character, a Roman standard bearer (signifier), certainly knows more about military protocol and procedures than I do. It is often up to the game master to adjudicate situations in which the character should know something but the player doesn't. This is obviously less of a problem the more similar to the gaming world is to modern day, or the more similar the character is to the player.

Awareness context of the game master: Game worlds are massive universes, fabricated by another game company or by the game master himself. As such, it is only as detailed as the amount of time and effort invested in it.  There's only so much detail a game universe can realistically contain – by focusing on too much of a macro- or micro- level, such as asking what the population numbers are for a particular race across a continent or the different kinds of microbes that infect a peculiar breed of sheep, the game details break down.  It is up to the game master to fill in the blanks, essentially creating this information on the fly. If the game master doesn't have this information, the characters hit a wall.  During an investigative-style game, one of my players correctly deduced that a character wasn't important because I didn't immediately have the details of her profession at my fingertips.  If she was important, he declared, I would know immediately what kind of lawyer she was. He was right.

This analysis of frames helps provide a framework for the numerous arguments over the "right" way to play the game.  A live-action role-playing games minimize character awareness of player reality, since the player literally inhabits the character's body through his action.

Your turn: Have switching frames and character awareness caused issues in your game?  How did you resolve it?