The Angel's Cocktail

This post is about a TEDxStockholm Talk given by David JP Phillips entitled “The Magical Science of Storytelling” which I discovered recently to be rather descriptive of why I write roleplaying game stories the way I do.

As far as I can tell (from a brief perusal google search hits) David JP Phillips isn’t a well known writer, academic, guru, or celebrity, but rather a fellow who started a business teaching people how to be better public speakers and storytellers. He has another well-known TEDTalk called “How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint” and his self-proclaimed title is “Mr. Death-By-Power-Point”.

In “The Magical Science of Storytelling”, Phillips describes the power of stories to release neurotransmitters and hormones in the brain, namely dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins, which create what he calls the “Angel’s Cocktail”. He gives some excellent examples of the power of storytelling and chides the audience that he is going to alter their brain chemistry in doing so. I encourage you to watch it. I was struck at how similar this was to my breakdown of why roleplying games are so satisfying. Perhaps I’ll call it the Angel’s Potion, to make it more fantasy.

The ingredients

Here are the basic points of the talk in more detail, with some added information from the world wide web:

Dopamine

Effects:

• Increased focus and attention
• Increased motivation
• strengthens memory

Activities that increase dopamine are typically:

• Eating
• Exercise
• Accomplishing things

Endorphins

Effects:

• Increased resistance to pain
• Increased relaxation
• Increased creativity
• Increased focus

Activities that release endorphins are typically:

• Exercise
• Emotional stress
• Pain
• Orgasm
• Laughter

Oxytocin

Effects:

• Social bonding, including increased generosity and increased trust
• Bonding during sexual reproduction
• Bonding during and after childbirth

Activities that release oxytocin are typically:

• Sex
• Breastfeeding
• Empathetic interactions

The potion recipe

Phillips puts all this information into a storytelling context by first demonstrating the effects of each neurotransmitter in the brains of the audience while he tells them a story, and by then indicating which parts of the story, or which kinds of stories, are having that effect. He tells us that dopamine is released during all storytelling, but in particular those stories featuring excitement, action, suspense, and cliff hangers. He gives an example of people who watch James Bond films and come away feeling like they want to be more like James Bond, and that dopamine can be released subsequently if a person does something thereafter that makes them feel like James Bond again, such as buying a watch the character was wearing in the film. He tells us that endorphins are released during laughter, and that stories involving comedy have the effect of releasing endorphins. He tells us that oxytocin is the most beautiful hormone of all because it makes you feel human, and that it can be released through a sense of empathy, especially in storytelling.

Because I believe that roleplaying games are primarily storytelling, I believe they can and do reproduce these three hormones’ release. But storytelling aside, I believe that roleplaying game sessions have inherent dopamine- and endorphin-releasing aspects. For example, we get a dopamine release from the sense of accomplishing things like good die rolls, pretending to be someone with skills and abilities beyond our own as during character creation, winning combat, getting treasure, and eating the ever-present snacks. Furthermore, we get an endorphin release from laughing with our friends around the table and the emotional stress of the activity itself (stress not having negative connotations in this context).

But there’s a gap here - something’s missing. Where does oxytocin come in? How can the Angel’s Potion be complete without it?

The secret ingredient

Unless you start every session with commiserating about the weeks woes and tragedies, or by dwelling on the most recent mainstream media catastrophes, there’s nothing in a roleplaying game session that inherently brings on a sense of emotional bonding, a sense of empathy, or a sense of feeling human - in other words, a release of oxytocin. This is what is missing from the standard roleplaying game session... the human quality. (No offense to Elves or Dwarves!) Which means, if we are to include this, it must become part of the story if the Angel’s Potion is to be complete.

How do we do that?

Brewing the potion

1. Emotional investment. Emotional investment doesn’t mean breaking down when game is cancelled, like your girlfriend just bailed on your dinner plans and it’s a sure sign she’s not into you anymore. No, no, no. Emotional investment means that you begin to care about the story and the people, places, and things within the story. It’s roleplaying the way a real person would feel in a real situation. Emotional investment means you want to save the innocent villagers, you want to reunite the child with the parents, you want to free the slaves, you want to accomplish the goals - in other words, you want the outcomes that the story and setting want.

You can build this into your character by being good-aligned. (It’s the main reason why playing an evil-character-campaign doesn’t work, because, not only is it hard to reign in the whims of the maniacal and psychotic, but none of the players have a reason to emotionally invest in the story because they’re legitimately roleplaying a lack of empathy and disinterest). You can also note when the events of the story are similar to the events of your character’s written history, and then note how the events of your character’s written history are similar to your own real history. Which leads us into the next point.

2. Identification. The process of identifying is a comparison of yourself and characters in a story, looking specifically at their lives, personalities, and circumstances they find themselves in. Finding something that is similar allows you to identify with the character. You begin to see aspects of yourself in the character, and you can see aspects of the character in yourself. This naturally leads to a sense of empathy. It’s the process of putting oneself in their shoes and honouring a shared sense of humanity. You can find ways of identifying with your own character, and with non-playable people, places, and things of the campaign setting by analyzing generally, rather than specifically. No, you’ve obviously never had a friend who was a Hippogriff, but you have had a friend. The aspects of friendship become what you identify with, like companionship or betrayal, rather than the Hippogriff aspect, like getting to fly on its back (companionship) or having it eat your pet hamster (betrayal).

3. Relatability. You can greatly ease and encourage emotional investment and identification by writing story material that is relatable or familiar to the players. It may sound difficult, because many of our roleplaying game campaigns are set in other worlds with fantastic people, place, and things, but one must look deeper than the descriptive flavour of the setting to see the nature of story, just as one must look deeper into oneself to see the nature of their humanity. Going with archetypes, tropes, revisiting settings, or including canon material rather than brewing up something unique is often worth it for its accessibility. Starting from scratch in the GM notebook means starting from scratch in the PC notebook, as well.

For example, a relatable job in a fantasy setting might be a farmer, crafter, or soldier, because there are rough equivalents in the real world, but it’s harder to understand a day in the life of a wizard who works in the wizards guild. It doesn’t mean your campaign can’t feature wizards, but if you’re looking to make a recurring NPC significant, relatable, memorable, and capable of creating empathy, best to go with farmer, crafter, or soldier.

4. And finally, another practical method of bringing empathy to roleplaying game stories is to consider emotions in a wide variety of circumstances. Feeling a sense of accomplishment at the receipt of a reward at the end of a quest is an obvious point of joy, but there can also be joy at reuniting long lost brothers, or arriving at a destination after an arduous journey, or learning that tricky spell at an opportune time. There will be obvious sadness at having a comrade die or failing to save innocent lives, but there can also be sadness in witnessing political unrest and social degradation, exclusion, inability, or a sense of doom. These less obvious scenarios can then lead you to a higher state of emotion, which is mixed emotions. For example, joy at the end of a story and sadness at the end of a story, at the same time, is described as being bittersweet. Black and white, success and failure are useful sometimes, but real life is much more complicated, and there are often avenues to feeling many different emotions at the same time in a given circumstance. This then aides the process of roleplaying for your players because they can create a unique character response without feeling like they’re going against the grain, being irrational, or just plain making it up (and not the good kind of making it up). These more personalized responses then increase emotional investment, and it becomes a fantastic cycle of roleplaying awesomeness. It takes a honed skill in storytelling to craft such plot lines and scenarios, but keeping opportunities for mixed emotions in mind will greatly aid you in the process.

David JP Phillips and I seem to be on the same page about the power of storytelling. I’m glad I came across the video and hopefully will be looking into more storytelling analysis and research to better inform my roleplaying games.

For now, I wish you plenty of dopamine and oxytocin, and a fulfilling Fiction Life.