Un article de Rolistique.

R o l i s t i c s

[ Version Française ]

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1st colloquium of Rolistics
19th april 2008

In memoriam Gary E. Gygax (1938-2008), his family and RPG fellows...

This colloquium will be held at the Université Paris 11 (France), at the same time than the second gaming convention at the campus (Royaume des Avatars, la Croisée des Légendes, eXpressions Ludiques).

This first symposium aims at setting up the corner stones of a new multidisciplinary fields of research, "Rolistics", that could be defined as "the art and science of roleplaying". Roleplaying can be thus considered as opening both rich artistical questions (being a new kind of literary language), as well as technical, scientifical and even philosophical questions (following its innovative approach of virtuality).

This colloquium would provide space, time and facilities (like this wiki...) to gather roleplaying games (RPG) amateurs & professionals, as well as personnalities from academic communities (cognitive sciences) and artistic communities (theatre, litterature ...), and allow them to exchange and build a new, active and organized community about rolistics topics.

Scientific organization: Marc Torregrosa
Local organization: Philippe Marty
Sponsor: Université Paris 11 ( http://www.u-psud.fr/ )

Sommaire 1 Call for participation 2 Place & Time 3 Programme 3.1 Welcome Session (12:00-13:00) 3.2 Talk Sessions (13:00-19:00) 3.3 Pause Repas (19h - 20h) 3.4 Tables Rondes (20h et +) 3.4.1 thème imposé : 20h-21h 3.4.2 dicussions libres : 21h et + 3.5 Evénements annexes 4 Organization 4.1 Logistics 4.2 Fees & Funding 4.3 Food 4.4 Accomodation 4.5 Travel 5 Rationale

Call for participation

To present your work, thoughts, point of view on following topics, 2 possibilities:

• oral presentation
• poster

In both cases, please register to our scientific organization ( mailto:marc@rolistique.org ) before the 12th april 2008, with following indications:

• references: name, forename, RPG type (amateur, professional ...), gaming/work place or institution, etc.;
• presentation title;
• abstract;
• electronic paper easy to edit (wordpad, word, open-writer, abiword, latex ... no PDF nor PostScript please...) corresponding to your presentation, which will published within the conference proceedings (single document for download, as well as independant wiki articles).

Note: if you cannot attend the colloquium but wish to publish anyway within our proceedings, this is possible; please follow described registration directions!

If you wish to simply attend without presentation, please join freely, without pre-registration!

Nota Bene : Rolistics or RPG professionals and associations, attending with our without presentation, are also invited to communicate about their activities; some booth places will be available in public areas, common to the colloqium and gaming convention. Please register for a booth to our local organization ( mailto:phil@rolistique.org ).

Place & Time

The colloqium will be held at the university campus in Orsay (France), building #450, in parallel to the second campus gaming convention (Orsay - XL 2008 federated to the Rencontres Multijeux Essonniennes 2008).

19 april 2008
Bdg. 450
Campus Université Paris-Sud 11
91400 Orsay
France

Access maps are provided below...

• Welcome booth starting at 12:00
• Communications from 13:00 to 19:00
• Round Table from 20:00 to 21:00
• Free discussions beyond 21:00...

The spirit of this colloquium being to allow people from miscellaneous origins to meet and establish collaborations, we invite all participants (speakers and free attendees) to attend this event as long as possible and talk together around posters and booth areas during coffe breaks.

Programme

Welcome Session (12:00-13:00)

In order to allow for optimum presentation quality, we strongly suggest ALL participants to register at the welcome desk (bât. 450) BEFORE 13:00.

Talk Sessions (13:00-19:00)

The final programme will depend on answers to the call for participation. Two coffee breaks will allow for some rest and free talks around the posters area, during the afternoon.

Les thématiques que nous souhaiterions voir abordées :

• le JdR au fil du temps
  • évolution de la définition du JdR (historique centré sur le thème de la définition du JdR)
• le JdR ludique :
  • déroulement d'une partie standard (mise à niveau de l'auditoire pouvant venir d'horizons divers)
  • variantes et parties non-standard (aperçu rapide et synthétique)
• les autres formes de JdR :
  • thérapeutique, pédagogique, etc. (en quoi la codification de ces JdR est-elle différente ? voire moindre ?)
• le JdR avec / sans règle(s) :
  • pourquoi (origines, avantages)
  • implications techniques (comment traiter les situations ?)
• le vécu des joueurs : (que les joueurs retirent-ils spécifiquement de leur pratique du JdR ?)
  • modèle standard : socialisation / prise de contrôle sur le récit / aventure
  • la réalité du terrain : interventions de joueurs (exposer puis analyser une situation de jeu particulière vécue comme une forte experience humaine)
• le rapport entre intériorité et extériorité du rôle play :
  • les limites de la perception extérieure VS la richesse du vécu intérieur
• le JdR comme langage littéraire novateur :
  • propositions
  • conséquences : diffusion du paradigme JdR dans d'autres domaines
  • conséquences : paradigme de l'interactivité / improvisation / virtualité
  • etc.
• la singularité du langage esthétique du JdR :
  • en quoi le JdR est-il spécifique et non soluble dans les autres arts ?
  • illustrations par référence à des thèmes particuliers ; exemples non-exhaustifs :
    • théâtre : fusion acteurs / dramaturge / public (Grotowski)
    • cinéma : le personnage a conscience de lui-même
    • littérature : interactivité du récit / construction collective (filiation avec le récit collectif)
    • conte : opposition au modèle proppien

Pause Repas (19h - 20h)

Où vous pourrez profiter de la buvette et des événements annexes.

Tables Rondes (20h et +)

thème imposé : 20h-21h

Une table ronde commune sera proposée aux participants aussi bien de la convention de jeux de simulation que du colloque de rôlistique, sur le thème de l'implication des personnages dans un scénario.

Il arrive (trop souvent ?) que des parties de JdR tournent court faute d'avoir bien adapté le scénario aux personnages (ou l'inverse), voire les personnages aux joueurs ...

Les débats seront centrées sur la question de la relation entre le scénario et les personnages joueurs, ou encore les motivations des personnages pour continuer tout au long de l'histoire (qui détermineront les motivations des joueurs à continuer leur interprétation, leur immersion), et surtout la place réservée aux personnages, les enjeux qui leurs sont proposés ...

Conseils d'écriture aux scénaristes, conseils d'interprétation aux joueurs, points de vue d'amateurs et éclairages de spécialistes seront les bienvenus !

dicussions libres : 21h et +

L'esprit de ce colloque étant vraiment de favoriser l'émergence d'une communauté active, les locaux resteront utilisables jusqu'à très tard dans la soirée pour les courageux qui souhaiteraient poursuivre leurs discussions de façon informelle.

Nous vous invitons donc à prévoir une participation la plus extensive possible et à profiter au maximum de nos possibilités d'accueil et d'hébergement !

Evénements annexes

En prévoyant de rester tout le week end dans les environs, vous pourrez aussi :

• profiter de la convention de jeux de simulation (notament le dimanche 20 avril) qui se déroulera en parallèle dans le même bâtiment que le colloque, et ainsi rejoindre des parties d'initiation au jeu de rôle ou à des jeux de plateau, ou encore participer à des parties programmées ;
• profiter de visiter le campus universitaire d'Orsay, en grande partie classé "jardin botanique" ;
• profiter de la proximité de Paris pour faire un peu de tourisme ...

Organization

Logistics

Timing for oral presentations: 20 minutes maximum each.

Talks will be held preferably in French, but english contributions are also welcome!

Presentation media could be:

• purely oral,
• blackboard (chalk),
• retro-projector (transparencies),
• video-projector (to plug onto your personal laptop, or onto that of a local organization member if you've got a standard PDF file on USB key for instance).

Warning: there probably will have no network access within the symposium area.

Posters: A0 format maximu; realization (PDF master for instance) is at the charge of the participant; local printing could be possible at the charge of the participant and provided the master file has been submitted at least 1 week in advance.

Fees & Funding

Participating to this symposium (for every kind of attendee as well as for accompagnying persons) is completely free of charge, except for travel and accomodation fees.

On the other hand, we have no fundings for people travelling from far away. Hopefully next year?!...

Food

Fast food (sandwiches, sweeties, coffee and other drinks at very low price...) will be available in the gaming convention area.

There are also many french restaurants in the vicinity (at your charge), but participants are invited to stay together at all time, freely discussing around posters or boothes area.

Accomodation

Participants who wish to stay until sunday (or later), because of travel schedules or in order to attend the end of the gaming convention, may book (as soon as possible please! email to our local organization mailto:phil@rolistique.org) a room within the students hall (ca. 10€ for a night) or within a hostel in the vicinity ("les Jardins d'Orsay", "B&B Hotel", "Resid'Ulis"... rooms from 30 to 90€ for a night).

Travel

Travel is at the charge of participants.

Access maps: http://maps.google.fr/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=fr&msa=0&ll=48.703004,2.180627&spn=0.000581,0.001403&t=h&z=20&msid=106248986612752189312.00044a268c66a2173f04b

• by car: national way N118, Orsay town centre exit, there are car parks next to the public baths & pool, at the door of the campus
• by plane: Paris Charles de Gaulle or Orly airport => train (RER-B)
• by train: Paris or Massy TGV => train (RER-B)
• by RER train: line B, southward, Orsay-ville station
• by foot: from the Orsay-ville RER station, it is straightforward!

Rationale

Starting in 1974, Gary Gygax (1938 - 2008) published the first Roleplaying Game (RPG), based on his wargame experiences, and distinguishing itself from Moreno's roleplaying therapeutics.

After more than 30 years of existence, RPG seems to have reached maturity and suggests the richness and originality of innovative and aesthetic semantics.

Shortly after its origins, the RPG got inspiration from theatre, movies and literature. This new medium then smoothly built its own narrative language, following its own rules, whose study now opens a whole new fields. Besides recreational, educational or psychotherapeutics, roleplaying gives possibility for a brand new literary genre in its own right, according to the predictions from playwrights Jerzy Grotowski ( "Towards a Poor Theatre", Simon & Schuster, 1968) and Antonin Artaud in his "Theatre of cruelty". Hence RPG seems to roots into an "art of life experiences rather than an art of representation" (Marc Torregrosa, "Traité de Rôlistique", in preparation).

Besides its literacy dimension, roleplaying also addresses issues in scientific fields, such as:

• Modeling "actions" (probability of an action being successful in a given situation) following wargames (started in the 70s),
• Modeling "individuals" (the being and the knowledge, psychological identity and social identity, personality traits useful to the game...) after simulationism (started in the 80s),
• Modeling "complex human societies" according to narrativism (started in the 90s),
• The nature of virtuality (in its epistemological aspects rather than technical or computer related...),
• The nature of the tale (theory of scenario, tree of game plots versus linearity...),
• Aesthetics (epic, intimate, baroque, neo-realist...),
• Etc.

Applications are now an issue not only technical and social, but also economical, and are expected to grow: cognitive sciences, modeling and interaction sciences (informatics among others), education, "serious games", industry of narration (video games, movies, literature)...

Some work, scientific as well as artistical, all over the world, is beginning to take the measure of the richness of this area, and to set up framework for a multi-disciplinary theory of roleplaying.

So, perhaps we could be on the same track than the cinema, which rose in a century of entertainment from a minor art to a major one, equal of literature?

This symposium ambitions to allow several communities (cognitive sciences, social sciences, theater, writing, boardgames and video games industries...) getting closer to each other and to contribute to the birth of synergies, including the development of communication tools that will in the future promote sharing and organizing knowledge related to roleplaying and finally the emergence of this new research topic.