Oh gosh, I had those elaborate boarding-schools as well, with class lists and floor plans and everything. Mine were all based on a dream I had that involved a murder, a swimming pool, and a headmistress who was close kin to (perhaps identical with) Glinda the Witch of the North. Never, ever would I have told anybody about these pretends, shared them with anybody, or acted them out with anybody. I so, so sympathized with Nicola on this one, too.
In the late 1970s at college I fell in with a group of older students who did their own elaborate role-playing game, all Renaissance and ballads and Dorothy Dunnett, and I greatly admired their imagination (several are now fairly well-known fantasy writers). I was not a very enthusiastic player; I just watched them do it and somehow knew that I couldn't, not really, not right. Their whole fantasy thing ended rather badly, however--I was involved in the denoument. Afterwards I considered basing a book on the whole episode, a plot where role-playing becomes too intense for a few participants while the others don't realize this is happening, and therefore gets mixed into life with unfortunate consequencees. I even outlined the book one summer.
It was only a year or two later that I found PW and discovered that AF had done this already. I don't think you need to be ahead/behind your time or to generalize about role-playing to see that, when the participants in a fantasy world have different levels of commitment, when some are more vulnerable and some more manipulative, the boundaries between fantasy and reality can easily become blurred, the human dynamics can be distorted, and the consequences can be disasterous.
I admit that I've never been able to stomach those bits of PW, the Gondalling bits. The first time I read it I just skimmed by them, eager to get to the "real" parts of the "real" characters. I only vaguely knew about the Brontes and just wasn't very interested. Each time I reread the book I try to force myself to read the Gondal stuff more carefully, and I think I've probably covered it all by now and understand how it fits with the overall plot and the individual characters. I think of the book as another Forest experiment--you know, a horse/hawk book, a spy story, a 'problem teenager' story, a role-playing-meets-reality story... I like the book for that experimental quality (and for some of the non-Gondal scenes, like the hunt) but it doesn't work for me.
no subject
In the late 1970s at college I fell in with a group of older students who did their own elaborate role-playing game, all Renaissance and ballads and Dorothy Dunnett, and I greatly admired their imagination (several are now fairly well-known fantasy writers). I was not a very enthusiastic player; I just watched them do it and somehow knew that I couldn't, not really, not right. Their whole fantasy thing ended rather badly, however--I was involved in the denoument. Afterwards I considered basing a book on the whole episode, a plot where role-playing becomes too intense for a few participants while the others don't realize this is happening, and therefore gets mixed into life with unfortunate consequencees. I even outlined the book one summer.
It was only a year or two later that I found PW and discovered that AF had done this already. I don't think you need to be ahead/behind your time or to generalize about role-playing to see that, when the participants in a fantasy world have different levels of commitment, when some are more vulnerable and some more manipulative, the boundaries between fantasy and reality can easily become blurred, the human dynamics can be distorted, and the consequences can be disasterous.
I admit that I've never been able to stomach those bits of PW, the Gondalling bits. The first time I read it I just skimmed by them, eager to get to the "real" parts of the "real" characters. I only vaguely knew about the Brontes and just wasn't very interested. Each time I reread the book I try to force myself to read the Gondal stuff more carefully, and I think I've probably covered it all by now and understand how it fits with the overall plot and the individual characters. I think of the book as another Forest experiment--you know, a horse/hawk book, a spy story, a 'problem teenager' story, a role-playing-meets-reality story... I like the book for that experimental quality (and for some of the non-Gondal scenes, like the hunt) but it doesn't work for me.