Modes of Existence Chapter 1 - Defining Charisma as an Object of Inquiry
I am a weird academic because I seek balance between human and non-human needs and represent them, their pairings via description rather than forcing my will upon existence. From my dissertation where I was evaluating the impact of automation in board games to recent work focusing on ! and ? in games over time, I try and sit myself in spaces that are within the space between disciplines, between modes of thought.
Given the state of the world, I think it’s time to pursue a new project. This is one that gets started with some sort of object of inquiry. However, defining the object of inquiry that sits at the center of my work is somewhat of an onerous task as it is somewhat able to be glimpsed but not altogether viewable.
At its core is its relationship with the end of a project that began with research into maps that are not of the world but of fictional places. I have explored this context quite a bit and its chronology has been:
- Making Maps Available for Play: Analyzing the Design of Game Cartography Interfaces
- Paper to Pixels: A Chronicle of Map Interfaces in Games
- “I See You!”: A Design Framework for Interface Cues about Agent Visual Perception from a Thematic Analysis of Videogames
- A Quest?!: The Secret Life of Gameworld Punctuation
And so, we’ve essentially taken the various aspects in and around video games and tied them to cues, certain forms of symbology, and other forms of using maps as a play space. But at the core of this, we have been pushing methods related to historicity in the human-computer interaction space.
In fact, we attempted to run a special issue related to history and computing which itself was the result of a workshop at CSCW just before COVID. That special issue’s introduction can be found here: (Re) Connecting History to the Theory and Praxis of HCI.
But there’s something missing in a lot of this. We are poking and prodding at some type of scab, wound, rash, or callus that needs to be dealt with. The red spot on this body is that the series of events that began with the desire to accurately map France, birthed the computer through endless conflicts in the late 1800s through the mid 1940s, saw an attempt to model human cognition in a variety of ways, and is currently addicted to a pattern matching machine we now call artificial intelligence is basically missing something.
Some. Thing. Or maybe a collection of things.
In essence, there is some sort of pearl in the middle of a black hole, caged up, protected by a dragon, housed in an MC Esher painting, and completely unable to be discussed in any sort of meaningful capacity. For you see, while we originally began to think about entropy in computation, the various problems of labor in computation, this was all replaced by a global adherence to the modernity project wherein we are always progressing somewhere toward some goal and so we do not concern ourselves with the underlying contradiction that we have no destination, nor definable goals.
In fact, I think Bruno Latour said it best when he said: “Modernization never takes the form of a way that could appropriately be brought to an end.” There’s an unknowable aspect of humanity that isn’t included in modernization and because modernization cannot end, we are stuck avoiding defining it for quite a long time. In other words, we harness the thing in the black hole as fuel more than as object of inquiry.
And through all of this, we see a relatively frustrating amount of resistance to the very idea of historical methods in computing, in human-computer interaction, or anything related to it because to look backward is to notice just how many giant gaping, seething, awful wounds have yet to heal. We will see the steps we purposefully took that have led us to the current moment in time very few of us actually want to be in. And yet, we still do not have an ability to understand it. We cannot understand how we got here because doing so would result in understanding the culpability every generation has in manifesting it.
So we see a potential project begin to form through Latour’s method that he outlines in An Inquiry into Modes of Existence. But to see the project form, we must define our object of inquiry rather than calling it a singularity that not even Matty Mac can save us from.
Just what is this unknowable object and how could we move it toward becoming an object of inquiry through which we can begin to unravel this ghost of the 9th (or 10th depending on Pluto’s status) Planet X.
We know it’s there, we know computing didn’t digitize all of humanity, we know there is endless work to do in computing, we refer to it all the time. “This isn’t intuitive” or all the work around augmenting labor versus replacing it via technology. And yet, that underlying premise is missing. It just can’t be studied because it hasn’t been identified.
As such, there is a need to pick a potential space of inquiry, a potential object of inquiry, and then follow it, see where it goes, see how it is, its network, its associations, its connections to other networks, its values, and how translations happen.
Long ago, I wrote a paper that focused on those aspects of the creation of Dungeons and Dragons that are often not discussed. Its connection to history, its connection to war, and its connection to harnessing imaginative play that dominated the world because all materials were being funneled into the war machine. That piece, called A Tale of Dungeons and Dragons and the Origin of the Platform was meant to be a filler. I needed to reference it in the papers about maps as the various histories that did exist were not peer reviewed and were mostly self-published. But as I sit now thinking about an object of inquiry, I think about an aspect of that work that remains a fascination:
The Charisma Attribute
You see, in D&D, players flesh out a character that is mediated by variables. It is this aspect of the game that revolutionized computer-mediated play because the variables are tested against random number generation. So, by invoking a series of tests, I can know if my character has the Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Constitution, or Wisdom to do something. Each of these make sense with Wisdom being more difficult to define; however, the 6th is Charisma. This concept, more of a description than a something that can be quantified, has been an object of interest over the history of roleplaying games. When D&D was new, it was considered the most powerful attribute in the game because the character players made was not often forced into danger. Instead, the player used Charisma to recruit followers and would command them to do their bidding. This reflection of the wargame origin of D&D would quickly be diminished.
As players lost their retinue and became mostly superheroes, Charisma became this attribute where lowest values would be placed: the dump stat. And yet, the description itself wouldn’t change often.
Outside of games relevant to D&D, this stat is often used for shops, checks against persuasion, and things like this. And yet, it remains inconsistently defined as it is invoked in almost all of these games. When we look at videogames inspired by D&D (which is most of them), there’s a unique opportunity to look at how it has changed over time. For example:
On release, Charisma was described as:
Charisma is a combination of appearance, personality, and so forth. Its primary function is to determine how many hirelings of unusual nature a character can attract. This is not to say that he cannot hire men-at-arms and employ mercenaries, but the charisma function w ill affect loyalty of even these men. Players w ill, in all probability, seek to hire Fighting-Men, Magic-Users, and/or Clerics in order to strengthen their roles in the campaign. A player-character can employ only as many as indicated by his charisma score.
And yet the attribute is missing in both pedit5 and its successor dnd on the PLATO-based systems. Five years later, Lord British of Akalabeth and later Ultima fame did not use it in his initial game but used it only to influence the price at shops in Ultima games.
In later editions of D&D it becomes:
1st edition PhB:
Charisma is the measure of the character’s combined physical attractiveness, persuasiveness, and personal magnetism. A generally non- beautiful character can have a very high charisma due to strong measures of the other two aspects of charisma. It is important to all characters, as it has an effect on dealings with others, principally non-player characters, mercenary hirelings, prospective retainers, and monsters. It absolutely dictates the total number of henchmen a character is able to retain. It affects loyalty of all hirelings and retainers. It is the key to leadership. The following table expresses the facts regarding charisma scores.
2nd edition PhB:
The Charisma (Cha) score measures a character’s persuasiveness, personal magnetism, and ability to lead. It is not a reflection of physical attractiveness, although attractiveness certainly plays a role. It is important to all characters, but especially to those who must deal with nonplayer characters (NPCs), mercenary hirelings, retainers, and intelligent monsters. It dictates the total number of henchmen a character can retain and affects the loyalty of henchmen, hirelings, and retainers.
3rd edition PhB:
“Charisma measures a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness. It represents actual personal strength, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting. Charisma is most important for paladins, sorcerers, and bards. It is also important for clerics, since it affects their ability to turn undead. You apply your Charisma modifier to: Animal Empathy, Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Gather Information, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Perform, and Use Magic Device checks. These are the skills that have Charisma as their key ability. Checks that represent an attempt to influence others.”
And if we look at it in video games based on D&D it’s interesting in how it is operationalized.
Pool of Radiance:
Charisma (Cha). This is the measure of how well the character interacts with other characters. It is sometimes a factor when the character has an encounter with Non-Player Characters, usually called NPCs.
Secret of the Silver Blades:
Charisma (CHA) is the measure of how others react to a character. Charisma is sometimes a factor when the character has an encounter with NPCs. The higher a character’s charisma, the more that character can persuade others to do what he wants. The character with the highest charisma should be the active character when parlaying.
Outside of games relevant to D&D, this stat is often used for shops, checks against persuasion, and things like this. And yet, it remains inconsistently defined as it is invoked in almost all of these games. When we look at videogames inspired by D&D (which is most of them), there’s a unique opportunity to look at how it has changed over time.
And so, from Latour’s text, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthroplogy of the Moderns, there is a real opportunity to dig into both the networks surrounding D&D but also the connections this network has to other aspects of computing.
In fact, if we watch this single attribute get translated and reinvoked across history, we can see the values of computing in situ. What this means is that how we currently understand ourselves can be partially reflected in how we are operationalizing that aspect of ourselves that is under constant negotiation, under constant trials.
That charisma itself may represent a way through which to get glimpse the naked singularity is really interesting to me.
And while I may sound like a very crazy person, the truth is that at the very least I can put a final point on the work we began a while back that was mostly focused on understanding workforce development in geospatial professions that did not have adequate computational literacy to fully realize their potential.