Last week, I applied Timothy Leary’s definition of a “game” to role-playing and ended with a promise to discuss other passages in his presentation “How To Change Behavior” that, despite having nothing to do with role-playing, are strangely applicable to our hobby. Here’s the first passage I was talking about: “All behavior involves games. But…
This article, which reprints Timothy Leary’s International Congress of Applied Psychology presentation, “How To Change Behavior,” recently showed up in my newsfeed. What does Timothy Leary have to do with gaming? Well, in the case of “How To Change Behavior,” the whole presentation starts with the idea of looking at behavioral sequences as games: “The…
Editor’s Note: This article was originally written in the late 90s or early 2000s, so I’ve cut out an introductory bit that’s no longer relevant, which is why the thing starts a little abruptly. I’ve left the dated references in so you can make fun of how old I am, though. What follows are the…
