Re: When Can We Stop Making "Games"?

[Callan S.]

Fighty fighty = Killing things and taking their stuff, to be honest.

Its just that I think that's a lot easier to sell to my friends and possibly a larger audience if needed. I'm not putting the game idea down, its good.

[Callan S.]

BTW, to anyone, this question: Are RPG's already creating an artifact? Has it been an unconcious desire to do so, with every character sheet ever made? They are somewhat like sculptures of meaningful numbers and opportunity.

[contracycle]

No to the last, IMO.  I think charsheets are more akin to instruments, employed in the creation of the work not in the appreciation of it.

[Callan S.]

You couldn't have another group who does lean that way? Given the amount of time people put into their characters design and advancement, it reminds me of sculptors. I've heard some sculptors, like those who would carve, basically examine the block, see its potential for a certain creation and then start working there. It sounds familiar.

Besides, what else is left after the campaign ends? Even ephemera is reveared and collected by some museums. What once was a cheap bit of printed advertising designed to be thrown away in a day is stored and cherished because latter its a signpost of culture in those times.

Not to mention things like doctors bags, etc, being stored and on display in various museums and archives. Tools, yes. But they are also an artifact.

[M. J. Young]

Callan, I think RPGs are creating artifacts; in most cases, these are ephemeral--the memories of the players. However, in many (perhaps all) of my games, there have been character journals, party histories, written letters to NPC family, filed reports to superiors, all fixing the memories in a lasting form for the future.

I think character papers might be part of that; I've saved many that might have been discarded, from characters in many games, in a sort of character morgue--not just dead characters, but characters who outgrew the old sheets. I stopped to a significant degree when I started using word processing for character papers, because there were just too many copies, but sometimes I regretted not having the old ones around.

--M. J. Young

[neelk]

It's possibly worth distinguishing between artifacts that are adjuncts to play and those that are part of the play itself. For example, transcripts of "blue-booking" sessions are clearly artifacts arising from the play itself. But things like character portraits or a well-designed custom character sheet are artworks inspired by the game.

A digression: some of the most memorable moments of gaming for me came up when I or one of my friends were compelled to sing for the other players. Of course, singing usually reduces the other players to helpless laughter (we are not professional musicians), but oddly this never seems to weaken the emotional impact of the play. Typically, I find that laughter is a distancing device, such as the classical example of players who start cracking wise in a horror game. I speculate that the sort of laughter that having to sing produces is a kind of bonding laughter, where it's funny, yes, but it's also an acknowledgement that it's okay to take the game seriously enough to be silly in front of your friends. Has anyone else has seen things like this happen?

[Callan S.]

Hmm, I'd even suggest blue booking and character journals are artifacts inspired by the system and not of the system, much as a frustrated players 50 page PC history isn't part of the system. The system had no effect on these...its numbers and rules are like brush and paint, and they weren't employed in their contstruction. You might look at the pot of paint to see the right color to use, but if your using the same color from another source, its inspired by the system, its not a product of the system.

[Mike Holmes]

I'm not sure if it's art, but like I've said in other threads, I don't care. It's close enough for me, and I can self-actualize via RPGs. In fact, if I didn't via RPGs, I wouldn't at all.

Keep in mind Maslow's Heirarchy. To get to Self-Actualization, you have to first have all the other levels satisfied. That includes the one below it, social. So, yes, ghetto-ization of RPGs is very problematic for them to ever become a consistent source of Self-Actualization for anyone. It makes for social barriers that have to first be overcome before the next level is achieved.

Mike