Fantasy

Ludic Experience self_reflexive · both

Fantasy captures the experience of slipping into a role and being someone else – pirate, detective, dragon rider – in a place that does not exist. Players feel the as-if: for the duration of the game, the fiction holds.

Design question – Do you want players to slip into a role – and do they inhabit the role rather than merely operate it?

Reference example – Playing house: a cardboard box is the stove, and whoever is “mum” suddenly speaks differently. Tabletop role-playing: at the table there is no longer a teacher but a dwarf who doesn’t trust the elf. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: you read the newspaper, question witnesses and for one evening are an investigator in London.