Common Understanding

The joy of roleplay lies in making the most interesting decisions possible. The boundaries that define ‘possible’ are set by what the table knows about your character and their context. What makes that decision interesting is the degree to which it refines, alters, or deepens this common understanding.

The common understanding is the information shared by the players about how the game works, and the story being told. It includes knowledge of book-rules, homebrew-rules, plot revelations, images of characters and places, and the memories of everything the players just said. Roleplaying games generate so much information it’s hard (impossible?) to remember it all, and also players get it by listening. As such, zone-outs and mishearings and misinterpretations add to lapses of memory to constantly knock holes in the common understanding. Much game-time and prep-time is devoted to repairing the holes, or putting pre-emptive reinforcements in place. We have to do this. The common understanding is both the foundation and outcome of our play.

This I think is where we can draw a line between roleplay and the other collective creative arts, film and theatre and videogames. A common understanding among the artists of the rules and purpose of their project is necessary for all these others, but, it is also a prerequisite for a physical outcome, not the outcome itself. In roleplay, the common understanding is the outcome.¹ This makes the art a phantom, and baffling to my parents.

A roleplay story, once complete, disperses like mist in the sun. And yet, the labour and the success of getting three to six people to all imagine the same thing at the same time, with such synchronicity that everyone present can constantly change and update the imaginary without anyone losing grasp of it… That experience lasts like bones.