I don’t know where this is going. And that is probably quite fitting.
I think a lot about play and what constitutes a ‘game’. There was a Reddit thread on /rpg recently where users were debating whether children playing make-believe was them playing a sort of roleplaying game. I don’t think it’s a particularly interesting debate and ultimately where you stand comes down to semantics. But it made me question the term ‘roleplaying’.
I came across this video on TikTok from a satirical Dutch show in the 90s called Jiskefet where they parody the absurdity of cricket (and by extension English-ness).
The particularly enjoyable thing about the video is the comments. Again and again users have commented as if this is a real sport. They’re in on the joke, obviously, but the effect is to elevate the original premise. Each comment adds a detail and suddenly it is real in this particular universe. The participants are writing the fiction — about made-up positions like outside flunker and warble, former greats like Marlon Charrit and his heartbreaking turn in the 89/90 finals. I spent a long time scrolling through all the comments when I first saw the video, expecting someone to break the illusion. No-one did.
This is familiar, right? This is that sparkle — that spiciness — you get in tabletop roleplaying games when things just work, when the players are creating something where before there was little. They’re collectively embellishing an imagined world. You even have the original poster, like a GM, really bringing it all together by responding to the comments and building on them, which further entrenches the fictional contract.
So are the people commenting on the Jiskefet video playing a roleplaying game? We’re back to that debate about children and make-believe play.
The Jiskefet comments are reminiscent of things like Blaseball and SCP. They’re shared fictions, borne out by participation. There was a game at the heart of Blaseball, but arguably the real play was in fans’ interactions, their digging of the trenches to accommodate deep lore. It’s a sort of extreme observer’s paradox where the subject isn’t simply influenced by the presence of observers, it IS the presence of observers.
Ah, so this is where I was going with this post… That’s the thing with TTRPGs: you play to find out. But this idea of shared fiction feels freer than ‘roleplaying’. When I’m having fun playing a TTRPG, it’s usually because there’s some joy in the act of informal creation — be it creating lore, shenanigans or simply bonds with my friends. Semantically ‘roleplaying’ kinda feels restrictive, like you’re acting out a script rather than spitballing its creation. It is, in one sense, a difference of structure; a difference of how you providee foundations for participants to work from.
Basically I’m keen to find ways to explore this sense of large-scale collaborative fictionalising in the games I make. I say fictionalising and not storytelling because the latter feels like it entails a big commitment and a fully coherent endgoal. But those commenters on the Jiskefet video weren’t individually trying to construct a story like some grand, fully-realised building. They were sculpting funky lil gargoyles that when combined might just make for a pretty unique and evocative structure.
It’s a low effort approach to gaming that relies on a high number of players, somewhere, I suppose, between posting on a forum and engaging in a megagame. What sort of play experience is that exactly? Right now I have no clue.