Excuse typos; I'm at a party.
If you've only just booted up, PG is Psychological Gaming, modeling fictional or real role models to experience, copy and learn their skills. Chapter 6 of ICMM will give you all the details of how modeling works in NH.
The advantage of doing this in a group is that you get treated as your character which gives you invaluable practice AT their skills, while at the same time helping others just by responding with your characters pov to their characters.
Why its a good idea to try PG
Firstly, the research is in and we know that the modeling effect works regardless of real life face to face meetings or whether we believe in it or not. It's how kids can learn to ride a horse just by watching Indiana Jones even though they never met him (or a real horse). Its why professional athletes spend so much time on VR/imaginary workouts.
Sure, every step towards full reality is better; videos are better than just words, PG is better than just imagining on your own, real people are better than videos. But as far as I'm concerned, any tool that works will do, and words are better than nothing at all.
Secondly, PG is fun, teaches us about dealing with anxiety in social interactions in a sandbox where we can practice safely and no real people can get offended or hurt if we fuck up, it enables us to encounter characters we would never normally encounter (such as computers, aliens, animals who talk, movie characters or famous historical figures.) It's a playground for practising real life communication, play, cooperation, modeling, imagination and interaction skills. That's a pretty cool tool.
The only sensible reason for avoiding any kind of healthy interaction we haven't tried before is that doing it currently makes us anxious, and that just means we're not ready for that particular kind of interaction right now. If we've tried something and didn't like it, then we learn why and move on. But we can't sensibly judge any experience before having it*.
The idea of doing it making us anxious is no excuse. Only if we try it and find it raises anxiety too much right now do we have a sensible reason. We can go in as cynically as we like, absolutely convinced it won't have any effects on us at all, (to save time, try the same approach to alcohol and see what happens) : ) A good way to tell reality from fiction is that reality doesn't go away, even if nobody believes in it.
Problems can occur! If a player doesn't have enough awareness of the NH process they can start losing the boundaries of in game/out of game, which spoils it for everyone else. It's fine writing to Mr Spock on a PG forum. It's not fine emailing Leonard Nimoy and asking for Spock's land line number since you are getting along so well online, it's not fine thinking you really are Spock.
Although this sounds obvious, because you cannot break out of character and have to make it as real as possible for it to work, people can become confused.
So if you are going to play PG, make sure you know what the hack is and how it works, because if you know that it doesn't matter if you fuck up; you can creatively think your way out of it : )
Best,
AR
*Excepting time lords and a few of their friends : )
Edited By: Alex
Sep-03-11 17:26:30