Narratives Against the Time-Machine

how playing stories can affect people’s perspective on time, the universe and everything

This is not a peer-reviewed academic article.

This is the end-term essay for the Chronobiopolitics seminar, a module within the broader Bachelor in Digital Media Studies.

Written by Alessandro Piroddi.

Submitted on the 11th of March 2021.

Re-edited and published on Patreon on the 24th of May 2022.

Enjoy...

Intro

Stories have the power to influence ideas and shape minds. While an in depth analysis of how this process works is beyond the scope of this paper, I’ll focus on one specific kind of idea: the perception of time in western culture. In this frame I’ll consider one specific kind of story: the one procedurally emergent from the act of playing a modern tabletop roleplaying game. One game in particular will be taken into exam for its design choices and the effect they have on the players.

The idea that stories and fiction can impact real life is not new. In the essay “Further Considerations on Afrofuturism” writer and filmmaker Kodwo Eshun talks about the concept of Science Fiction Capital as a force capable of affecting real world economy: be it found in political rhetoric and propaganda, religious doctrine or everyday advertisement, storytelling can influence the way people feel about the past, the present and the future, sometimes achieving results as radical as fabricating memories of a history that never was or conjuring hopes and fears about a future that has never (yet) been, altering the way people act in the present.

West Time Story

In the past three centuries the Western (mostly Northern-Central Europe and Northern America) notion of time has been intimately entwined with our history of colonialism and capitalism, shaping its biopolitical impact in a precise way. From the “evolutionist” rhetoric of the 19th century (Stocking 1968), to the concept of technological and cultural “development” of the 20th century (Bonneuil 2000), to the contemporary narrative of “resilient adaptability” against existential threats (Massumi 2015) the Western way of conceiving time has always shown a few core traits that, one epoch to the next, have fundamentally remained the same, if they haven’t been distilled and exacerbated.

Time is linear. It flows unidirectionally from a past beginning towards a future that might or might not end, but is nonetheless ahead, in the distance. No matter who or when or how or where we experience time, time works in this way. We may not always perceive it, but that’s just a sensorial artefact, a cognitive glitch, an illusion or hallucination. In truth time is universally linear. This leads to...

Time is progress. In the past we were savages, then we evolved to become civilised. In the past we were primitive, then we developed to become advanced. In the past we were fragile, then we adapted to become resilient. The past is always less than the present, and the present is meant to work on the fulfilment of a future that will be more, and more, and more, endlessly.

Past < Present < Future

Nostalgia, a tremendously effective biopolitical tool, mixes things up by picturing the past as more than the present, but only for the purpose of exacerbating how the present is unjustly less than the future, albeit the future could be inspired by a mythological past.

Time is universal. Every culture, population or individual experiences time in the same way: as a linear progression. In a way this makes everyone the same. There is no “other”, there is no difference, there is only the relative measurement of where one sits along the linear path of time: A is more or less civilised than B. Everything is reduced to a point on a line representing the amount of progress achieved. Less progress is always worse and equates to being uncivilised and primitive and weak. More progress is always better and equates to being civilised and advanced and strong. The more progress one has, the better they are: more fortunate, more efficient, more experienced, more knowledgeable, more intelligent... more worthy... better.

As above, so below. A person’s life can be measured and weighed against their amount of progress relative to both other people and to the general socio/economic expectations. Time is productivity, time is money, time is fleeting and must be transformed into something tangible and permanent that an external judge can recognise as something of worth.

This depiction of the Western sense of time is a simplification as the different nations, cultures and populations that could be loosely included in “the West” present unique perspectives that color their sense of time and their reaction to time-charged narratives. But for the purpose of this paper the simplified and generalised version is a serviceable approximation.

Other Times

In contrast with the aforementioned Western concept of time and its colonialist / sovranist / capitalist roots, many cultures have started to reclaim their own sense of time, producing alternative narratives that reinterpret the past and reimagine the future, thus producing a different kind of influence on the present.

Afrofuturism is probably the most relevant example of such a trend, but other similar movements exist too: from the prominently native-american Indigenous Futurism (Dillon 2012), to the highly philosophical explorations of Japanese sci-fi and cyberpunk (anime like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Laputa and Nausicaa being a few examples), to the timeless Dreaming stories of australian aboriginal culture (Polak 2017). 

All these are different ways to understand time and how it applies to the past, the present and the future. How a different concept of time produces different stories. How such stories are carriers of different ideas and values, potentially affecting and transforming the cultures and the people that get in contact with them.

Roleplaying Games

An introduction to the concept of “roleplaying game” (or RPG for brevity) as intended in this paper is now necessary. In general the term “roleplay” is used for a host of different activities: psychological therapeutic exercises, thespian techniques, company training, sexual games, etc. None of these have anything to do, if not very remotely, with the topic at hand.

A popular concept of “roleplaying game” is linked to the world of videogames. Videogames have “rpg elements” when presenting a permanent state that gets updated when the player performs some core action. In layman terms, the classic arcade game Double Dragon is not an rpg because the player’s avatar in the game mechanically behaves the same from the start of the game to its end: how fast it moves on screen, how hard it punches an enemy, how resilient it is to enemy attacks, which actions the controls allow the player to perform. All of this is fixed. If the same game allowed the player avatar to change, maybe applying a +1 here or a -1 there to keep track of the player’s progress and choices throughout the game, then these would be “rpg elements”. This, in and of itself, has nothing to do with storytelling and narratives, although it’s a tool that could be used to tell some kind of story. Games like the famous Witcher series put this to great effect, delivering a grand narrative supported and propelled by a complex structure of “rpg mechanics”: skill ratings go up and down, new powers are unlocked, new equipment is collected, progress in the primary and secondary quests is saved. But then again, other games present incredible stories that, lacking some number that can go up or down during the game, are classified as anything BUT rpgs: the classic Monkey Island is a point and click adventure, the narrative experience of Gone Home is a walking simulator, the compelling Her Story is an investigative game, etc. Long story short, in video games the concept of “story” has little to do with “roleplay” and is therefore not the focus of this paper.

Tabletop Roleplaying Games (shortened as TTRPGs or just RPGs) are a subgenre of boardgames, so games meant to happen around a table in real life, although the strictures of the current pandemic have highlighted video-chats as a viable alternative.

The core activity is a conversation mediated by the rules of the game: instructions telling the participants WHO can say WHAT, WHEN they can say it, and HOW they can say it. Through this structure, which often includes physical tools such as pen and paper to take notes or keep track of scores and numbers, dice or cards to generate random results,  tokens and sometimes even miniatures to represent special states of the game, the participants weave together a narration, a story built one description at a time. The creation of a shared fiction is both the goal and the mean of this kind of game.

Born in the late 1970s, ttrpgs have focused on light escapism through power-fantasies: almost all games would be about action and adventure, with the participants playing the role of explorers and heroes. While the creative and open ended nature of ttrpgs would allow the participants to also inject more human themes in their stories, this was largely an effort not supported by the game mechanics, even in games that tried to present themselves as more mature or to explore different literary genres such as horror or social intrigue (Applecline 2013).

But with the turn of the millennium a new design philosophy emerged and, since the early 2000s, has produced a counter-culture of “indie” games focused on telling all kinds of stories. As a reaction to more than thirty years of almost exclusive escapist power fantasies, many of the new games focused instead on introspective, thoughtful, highly emotional narrative experiences. This led to real progress in game design techniques, as the old ones were sorely inadequate to handle this kind of fiction. Enter Ikigai...

Small, precious things

Ikigai: One Tiny Life is a ttrpg designed in 2018 as an entry for the “200 Word RPG Challenge”, later developed further and ultimately released as an ashcan (Piroddi 2019). Although unintentionally, this game exposes its players to a narrative that showcases a different concept of time that what Western culture usually takes for granted.

The title itself is a direct reference to the japanese concept of “ikigai”: the worth of life. It’s a complex idea that folds together multiple core elements:

• what makes life worth living, on a personal level
• what gives worth to a life, within the grander scheme of things
• what could constitute the drive and direction of a life
• what could be the meaning of living, both in general and personally

(Tamashiro 2018)

While the game itself does not provide any direct and obvious answer to any of these questions, it uses it’s cute and endearing gameplay to surreptitiously pose the same questions to the players. It’s design also betrays a “loaded” opinionated approach that will only emerge through active play.

Gameplay Overview

The game has a singular protagonist named Iki. Players are only told that this creature is a small humanoid person. That as an infant they are as small as a bean. That the game will showcase moments from the whole of Iki’s life. And that this life will only last for the span of a single day.

Every other detail is left to be defined through players’ consensus and active play: Is Iki female or male or something different entirely? Is it even relevant? Is Iki unique, or part of a population? What does Iki look like? Do they eat, sleep, mate, talk, fly? Etc.

Players randomly select a Season card, to be on the backdrop of their story (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter), and a Scenery card, to offer an evocative starting location. They then randomly determine the time of the day in which Iki was born (Dawn, Morrow, Noon, Vesper, Dusk, Eventide, Night, Aurora). Then the game starts.

Players will take turns narrating, through a specific procedure, bits and pieces of ideas and details that will eventually amount to a Moment in Iki’s life. The game follows a linear trajectory that encompasses 1 Childhood moment, 2 Teenage moments, 3 Adulthood moments, 2 Maturity moments and finally 1 Elderness moment.

Multiple moments can take place during the same time of the day, while others will force the time forward. In terms of fiction this can be narrated however the Players see fit... one Moment could begin as the immediate continuation of the previous one, or as a completely new event further down the line of Iki’s life.

Once the last Moment of Iki’s life has been played out, the game ends with a brief chat among all participants, guided by a small set of questions meant to reminisce and reflect on the story that emerged.

Time, by any other name

The game grounds itself on the time-unit of the single day and the hours that add up to it. It’s a familiar concept that perfectly sets up the upcoming twist in perception. But even within such familiar context the game starts to subtly manipulate the players’ frame of mind by shedding any notion of accurate measurement. Players are repeatedly encouraged to notice and describe the current time of the day, but they are also openly forbidden from expressing it with numbers, relying instead on details such as how the sky looks, the quality and color of light, ambient temperature, etc. The game board itself avoids the most commonly expected names for the phases of the day, using more poetic, less common, and ultimately vague terms.

Iki’s life then begins at an unexpected time of day. Most players intuitively look for it at Dawn, and yet the game mechanics make it an unlikely chance. Some stories begin in the dead of Night. Some begin in the lethargy of Vesper. Most begin in some hazy in-between time rarely associated with a classic “fresh start”.

Moments progress in a linear fashion through Iki’s life cycle, but their duration and impact vary wildly, influencing what the Players imagine and expect. Some phases of Iki’s life might all happen during the same time of the day, while others may sprawl throughout multiple sections of the day. Moreover, the aforementioned fact that there is no homogeneous rule regarding “when” each Moment happens in regards to the previous ones, so long as it is somehow following a forward motion, further heightens the feeling that Iki’s time is more fluid and malleable than one would expect.

In one Moment Iki is a teenager looking at the reddening Vesper sun while having a conversation with a friendly ladybug.

The next Moment everything is the same, the conversation is still going on, but Iki is now taller, their traits less soft, as they are officially grown to be an adult.

The next Moment the sun is settling and Iki is near a pond, trying to outswim a frog.

The next Moment the sky is turning to the purple-blue tones of Eventide while Iki takes care of little Picky, their curious newborn child.

The next Moment happens but a few gusts of wind later, but now Iki appears a bit wrinkled and a lot more solemn, as they are a mature little creature, writing on a book made of flower petals and dried leaves, while Picky is out riding a squirrel. Etc.

By both making players acutely aware of the time of day and by disjoining that time from the “amount” of things that could happen in it, and by also muddling the “continuity” between Moments without really mixing the expected order of past and present, the game eases the players in a sort of fuzzy mindset (temporally speaking) that helps them focus on exploring interesting Moments rather than stumbling on the minutiae and details of a temporally rigorous narration.

The same techniques are also used, on a smaller scale, to practically narrate each Moment. One player will start a given Moment with a brief description of Iki doing something, or perceiving/experiencing something, or meeting someone. Nothing more. This could result is just the seed of an event, or in a more articulated (albeit small) narration.

Another player will then enrich and extend the Moment by adding some additional detail, or by moving the initial narration a bit further. As long as a semblance of continuity is maintained, there is nothing preventing Players from expanding or contracting what can happen in a segment of a Moment.

After 5 segments total are added to the Moment, it ends, activating a dice roll that will “resolve” it in order to fix it on a common chronicle-sheet as either a Cherished Memory or as a Lesson Learned. This mechanic further increases the time haze produced by the game by presenting something that happened “just now” as an element traditionally seen as “past” (a memory, a learning experience) and projected to the “future” (when one will eventually reminisce about such past).

This often leaves players with an uncanny sense of unease, as they struggle to reconcile concepts traditionally linked to “years and decades” with Iki’s dimension of “minutes and hours”.

Finally, after the “elderness” Moment is played, the game ends. Some players end up narrating Iki’s death. Others omit it. Others (many) take the chance to somehow reveal that Iki’s day-long life was actually a cycle that sees the little creature reborn in some way. The very last action of the game is to offer a small quastionary that each player is supposed to answer, individually but out loud, expressing to the table their own version of the answers.

• How did Iki die? Was it a peaceful or dramatic end? Was Iki alone?
• For which quality will people remember Iki?
• What do you think was Iki’s most treasured Memory?
• How did Iki’s existence change the life of other people? Can you name someone in particular?
• What has been left behind by Iki’s existence? Is there a mark or a token that attests Iki’s passage?
• At the end of it all, would you say that Iki’s life had worth and meaning? Why?

Befores and Afters

Although this paper can not, and is not intended to, be even remotely comparable to any sort of research with statistical relevance, a few empirical observations can still be drawn from its author’s personal experience, accumulated in three years of making people play this game .

Players tend to come to the game with a markedly Western approach: they expect the game to be sad, tragic even, as they see a one-day-life as too brief, impossible to put to good use. What can be accomplished in such short time? Adventure takes time. Conquest takes strength. Even those that see the potential for beauty in the game, usually by comparing Iki’s life to that of a butterfly, do so with obvious reservations: it surely can’t be anything more than a pretty thing with little “real” value. And the very idea of a story that contemplates the end of the protagonist’s life is, inescapably, a tragedy. And an unsettling tragedy too! If it was a violent and epic affair, such a tragedy would be acceptable, proper. But a story contemplating death within the tale of a tiny child-like fay? A story talking about old age and its inevitable end? No, it feels wrong and undesirable. Must be a sad affair, something depressing and gloomy. Maybe it’s not a game they would like to play, after all.

Then they play the game. And answer the final questions.

In most cases the change is evident. They describe the story they helped create as heartwarming and endearing. They describe it as fulfilling and peaceful. They enthusiastically acknowledge the value of Iki’s life, and they find it not in things built, earned or obtained, but in the “human” (or at least anthropomorphic) relationships Iki established, in how they changed Iki and Iki changed them. By the end of the game Iki, a vague and undefined character, had become a known person, a friend, their existence meaningful on its own merit rather than being evaluated according to some measure of success or accomplishment. A story born of a fabricated past, enriching and affecting the present lives of those who played it, altering ever so slightly their expectations of what a “worthy future life” could look like.

Reference List

200 Word RPG Challenge - https://200wordrpg.github.io

Appelcline, Shannon (2013). Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Gaming Industry. Evil Hat Productions.

Bonneuil, Christophe (2000). "Development as Experiment: Science and State Building in Late Colonial and Postcolonial Africa, 1930-1970". Osiris, Vol. 15, Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise. 258-281.

Eshun, Kodwo (2003). "Further considerations of Afrofuturism". The New Centennial Review 3, no. 2. 287-302.

Dillon, Grace L (2012). Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.

Massumi, Brian (2015). "The Primacy of Preemption: The Operative Logic of Threat". Ontopower: War, Powers, and the State of Perception. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 1-19.

Piroddi, Alessandro (2019). Ikigai : One Tiny Life. Unplayable Games. https://unplayablegamesrpg.itch.io/ikigai-one-tiny-life

Polak, Iva (2017). "Futuristic Worlds in Australian Aboriginal Fiction".

Stocking, George W. Jr. (1968). "The Dark-Skinned Savage: The Image of Primitive Man in Evolutionary Anthropology". Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 110-132.

Tamashiro, Tim (2018). How to ikigai. Published 06.2018, last accessed 22.02.2021. https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_tamashiro_how_to_ikigai