Brand Robins and I have discussed these kinds of thoughts pretty extensively over the years, and have ritual procedures that are built in to our one one one games in the neat half through intention and half through comfort repetition, the way that rituals most often get made in the world.

This is pretty important to our style of play, which in our communal sweet spot naturally dives deep in meaning making specifically about people and their connections and their ideas – even our “for fun” games are concerned investigative, strive for nuance, are meant to challenge our ideas about things.

I think that there are a lot of different kinds of priorities for play and that altering the state of mind is more and less important depending on what kinds of sweet spot a player is seeking. Catharsis is an important space in my personal play, and is an important component of many narrative arts, and it is in itself an altered state – where by plugging into a narrative space we transfer and transmute and purgate our internal emotional state. There are a lot of other paralells out there like this.

Plus altered state is a fascinating concept when we think about it – asking what quality is altered in the state. Altered perceptions such as under the influence of drugs, altered emotions such as working through the mental model of a character (and the alibi they give) altered ethics, altered moral frameworks, altered experiences, altered worlds. There’s a fruitful shittton of stuff to talk about in there.

And as per everything I still think that it starts with sockets, but only +Brand will get that joke.