Goal #2: How We Came Here

We believe that pretty much all communication consists of stories.

So, I want to tell you a tale about the way we OCS-jammers tell stories, and how we came to this, and why.

Like any good epic, this one has multiple interconnected levels. Yes, there are the tiny, seemingly insignificant, but essential struggles of the protagonists (that's us!), and there's also the immersive world, the social environments that smelted us as surely as iron in the forge.

We've got a couple posts in the works right now. One is mostly about how I (Julian), left the traditional gaming village of my youth to learn about the great big world of narrative, and about how my mind still turns to home. This culminates in our current thoughts about an OCS/traditional game hybrid, that we plan to start testing with a group of players within the month.

The other is a take on the historical basis of traditional RPGs, and a critical look at the implicit assumptions of RPGs that we all once (and most of us still do) believed were the only way to play. I want to flesh out some of these assumptions because the story of Where We Came From helps us to craft the story of Where We Now Live.

It's usually easiest to talk about new things in comparison to old things. As we try to talk about the stuff that OCS is made of, I expect us to often fall back on contrasting it with traditional RPGs, with improvisational theater, and with freeform role-playing.

I hope that gradually, we can move beyond these comparisons, and learn to talk about what OCS is, not what it's not.

Finally, some food for thought for my crewmates aboard this sturdy vessel:

How did we come to OCS?
Why have we stayed?
How has it changed us?