Overview: Safety and Identity in RPGs
Welcome to our unit on Safety and Identity in RPGs! In this unit, we will deepen into concepts related to safety design. Several issue that can arise with regard to psychological safety during games. Examples include schisms in role-playing communities; issues with online communication; issues arising from intimate and/or romantic relationships; creative agenda disputes, i.e. when players have different styles of play they most enjoy; power struggles between players and facilitators; and bleed-in and bleed-out that has not been processed effectively (see Chapter 2). Serious psychological safety issues can also arise related to issues of inclusion and accessibility; players experiencing crisis states; and sensitive content.
Such problems can lead to emotional flooding, when a participant is cognitively incapable of processing further information due to psychological overwhelm; dysregulation, when a participant’s psychological well-being falls out of balance; activation and/or triggering, when a situation activates a survival response in a person, e.g. fight, flight, fleeing, or fawning; and harm, when a person or a situation inflicts psychological damage on another person, whether purposefully or accidentally. However, in some cases such problems can be avoided or addressed directly, leading players to re-establish psychological safety within the group more quickly. Therefore, we will explore different strategies for promoting and maintaining psychological safety before, during, and after role-playing games.
Related to the psychology of play is identity, or one’s self-concept. Identity refers to both our psychological sense of self and the ways in which we are categorized and integrated into society (or rejected by it). As we know, role-playing involved players enacting characters that are experienced as distinct from the self due to the fictional narrative. However, we will discuss some of the complexities connected to our notions of our identities, which are often not as stable or unified as we would like to think. Role-playing games can help players explore new facets of their identities, with a notable common example of players exploring alternative gender or sexualities. Personality aspects and archetypes can spillover to player’s off-game identities in a phenomenon Whitney Beltrán’s has termed ego bleed. Such experiences can help players transform their self-concept and/or social identity in everyday life should they wish to do so. With all of these components interacting, role-playing can be considered a sort of “magic” in terms of its transformational potency. We will return to these concepts throughout the courses in this programme.
In this Unit, we will cover:
- Conflicts leading to safety issues
- Safety strategies before, during, and after games
- Identity (psychology)
- Identity (social psychology)
- Identity transformation
- Ego bleed
- Psychomagic
Note: Some of the materials below may not be available outside of this course. We have linked resources that are open access. Do not distribute PDFs.
***
Required materials:
- Diakolambrianou, Elektra, Sarah Lynne Bowman, Simon Brind, Josefin Westborg, and Kjell Hedgard Hugaas. In review. “Chapter 3: Theory, Central Concepts, and Inspirational Materials.” In Transformative Role-playing Game Design, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman, Elektra Diakolambrianou, and Simon Brind, 66-110. Transformative Play Research Series. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala University Press.
- Bowman, Sarah Lynne, Elektra Diakolambrianou, Josephine Baird, Angie Bandhoesingh, and Josefin Westborg. In review. “Chapter 5: Safety and Community Container Setting.” In Transformative Role-playing Game Design, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman, Elektra Diakolambrianou, and Simon Brind, 147-185. Transformative Play Research Series. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala University Press.
- Bowman, Sarah Lynne, Simon Brind, Elektra Diakolambrianou, Kjell Hedgard Hugaas, Guus Quinten van Tilborg, Josephine Baird, and Alessandro Giovannucci. In review. “Chapter 6: Key Concepts and Techniques: Myth, Symbolism, Ritual, Magic, Narrative, Culture, and Conflict.” In Transformative Role-playing Game Design, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman, Elektra Diakolambrianou, and Simon Brind, 186-225. Transformative Play Research Series. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala University Press.
Choose one (1) of the following to examine:
Reading:
- Baird, Josephine. 2021. “Role-playing the Self: Trans Self-Expression, Exploration, and Embodiment in (Live Action) Role-playing Games.” International Journal of Role-Playing 11: 94-113.
Video:
- Baird, Josephine. 2021. “Designing for Trans & Nonbinary Experiences & Exploration in Larps – Josephine Baird #knutepunkt2021.” Nordic Larp, October 11.