The limits of cultural play...?

[John Kim]

Okay, I'll cede that point too.  Role-playing has, in a sense, generated its own subculture with distinct memes, norms and practices; furthermore, the act of roleplaying is sufficient to propagate and perpetuate that subculture.

So you've proven to me that role-playing can transmit and enable faith and culture.  What about education?  I'm not talking about just learning the rules to a game, either.  I want to know how role-playing can be usefully educational right now, not just in theory.

Sure.  I know of a number of teachers who are using RPGs -- primarily in language education.  There are RPGs used by the Lutheran Church of Sweden in youth group education.  I think that many past or current games can be excellent for both math and history.  Notably, I have ranted a few times about the importance of Traveller to my own math and science education.  I have a page of links (along with my own brief essay) on the topic at:

http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/whatis/education.html

I was really going after the fact that the basic rule books can't become literature due to thier very nature. They are rule books for playing a game, not literature.

Er, this depends on your definition of literature.  The term "literature" has been used to refer to everything from political essays to travelogues to journalism to scientific treatises.  So, for example, Darwin's writing is sometimes classified as literature, as do play scripts (even though they are meant to be performed rather than read).  So I think RPGs are certainly within the broader definition of literature.

Edited to fix attribution for the latter quote

[Brendan]

If I didn't think I was doing real art, I'd go write novels instead. Everybody here who doesn't think we're doing real art: why don't you go write novels (or whatever; choose your form) instead? Then you wouldn't be screwin' around wasting your time.

-Vincent

I'm inclined to think I'm on your side in this, Pete, but in the interest of infernal advocacy:

Vincent, I absolutely believe that role-playing is art.  I tore through my new copy of Dogs last week and I've been trying to convince my gaming friends to play it since then, because I believe it's art, and a masterwork at that.  

I'm playing devil's advocate in this thread--as Pete requested in his original post--because I'm interested in building the strongest case against RPGs as art that I can build, and seeing it torn apart.

Thanks for the link to the Shakespeare thread.  I have actually seen it linked and read it before, but I'd forgotten about it.

I find it interesting that you're the first person to bring up drama as an analog to role-playing in this thread.  I've been waiting for someone to make that argument, because I have no defense against it.

Is theatrical drama reproducible?  Only in poor forms like videotape and scripts; even with the same book and the same people on stage, you never see the same play twice.

Is it art?  Yup.

Is it capable of conveying culture, faith and education?  Absolutely.  I actually don't think drama (or any art) must be didactic to be valuable, but that's a whole nother discussion.  It certainly can be.

Is role-playing capable of the same things as theatrical drama?  Yes.  Therefore, I have to drop my argument.

John, thanks for the link to the essay!  I've delicioused it for reading tomorrow, but...

I was really going after the fact that the basic rule books can't become literature due to thier very nature. They are rule books for playing a game, not literature.

I didn't say that!

[Bankuei]

Hi Lacan,

I don't think anyone here is arguing that the rule books themselves are Literature in the artistic sense anymore than books on "How to Write" are either.  If anything, a good set of rules can produce a consistent type of experience(though not exactly the same), and that type of experience can be worthy in an artistic sense just as much as oral storytelling, improvisational theatre, or improv jazz.  

These experiences are equivalent to any form of performance art- and, also with an equal range of quality- from crap to good.  Unlike performance art where the goal is to impress the audience, in this case the audience IS the performers, so there is less pressure for improvement.  It is the same as a group of guys who get together as a "band" and jam in their basement, or a freestyle cipher in hiphop.  The artists are the audience, and so, pressure to improve and the criteria of good/bad performance depends completely on the participants.

People CAN & DO hit things in a way that is both intellectually stimulating and entertaining in play- so I don't think that's barring actual play from being in the same category as art.   If anything, I'd say its just the fact that the real entertainment is imaginative- and therefore (at least until we get brain-reading technology), not reproducible in any appreciative manner for non-participants without that layer of post-play interpretation.

Chris

[contracycle]

I don't see why cultural limits should imply "story".  Story can be, perhaps is necessarily, an outcome of the RPG activity, but I don't regard this as definitive.  Possibly for Narr gamers its as good as, but this seems to substitute the product for the action.

I would suggest that IF RPG's are to be comparable to literature, they must be so in their gameness, not in their post-play output.  The game itself must be valuable.

In this regard I suspect MLwM and kpfs are possibly already there, the first sort of as a study of coercive relationships and the second as psychological investigation, or self reflection, or commentary on the human condition or similar.  If MLwM were stripped of its fantastic overtones and set, say, in Belsen, it would be fucking grim indeed, and the questions about "I was only folowing orders" it raises would be directly pertinent.

Another candidate would be the 9 games about dictators, in each case the game qua game delineating and then animating a specific and recognisable social relationship which speaks to human experience.

If a game can voice a premise, then it can surely be Literature, whether or not it contains or produces story.  Story is a red herring IMO.

[pete_darby]

Please note folks, in the original post, the claim was that it can't yet be "comparable" to literature, rather than directly equivalent.

Reading generously, allowing that theatre, film, even TV at it's best, are comparable to literature in their ability to achieve a goal higher than mere "fun", ie entertainment, in what way, presuming they are, do RPG's fall short?

Please note, note "most RPG play", but the best of RPG play. Also note that I'm specifically not interested in rulebooks as literature: that's a related but separate question, similar to considering a Shakespeare text when I want to talk about specific productions or performances. Rulebooks can be assessed in traditional literary terms for quality of writing, or as facilitators for meaningful play, but they shouldn't be mistaken for the bearers of the defining aesthetic vaue of RPG's.

RPG's as played, as an activity, as a performance; why, someone tell me, do they not yet have qualities that qualify them as artisitic pursuits like literature or theatre?

Yes, this is posing a question that I believe is entirely false, but I really want to find why especially Vaxalon believes otherwise.

We started with an implied dichotomy between art and entertainment, between fun and meaningful statements. Perhaps my own position that these are false dichotomies means I cannot see the argument against me.

Gareth, I'm definitely with you: the value of RPG play as a cultural or artistic artefact must rest on the qualities of live play, not the product of a transcript, narrative, or anything else that can be pointed to afterwards as the "story". It is this activity, this interaction, which is unique to RPG's, and where any claim to aesthetic value must lie

[Sean]

I think that playing RPGs is an art form. Furthermore, I think it's one which actually has some theoretical importance for one currently prominent aesthetic theory (Kendall Walton's), as a transitional case between children's make-believe and passive-spectator art forms.

The burly hunters might have laughed at the weedy little pot-smokers drawing stick figures on the walls at Lascaux too. The difference in these discussions, which always makes me a little sad, is that we're all stick-figure drawers here, and yet some of us persist in drawing stick figures even while we chide other stick-figure-drawers for caring about it more than we do. (That cuts both ways in my opinion, BTW.)

I think that writing rules for RPGs is a kind of craft which supports an art form. It's sort of like set design in theater - I don't feel comfortable calling it 'not-art', but to call it 'an art form' in its own right seems misleading too. Of course there's 'an art' to all these things. On the other hand, someone who doesn't understand the art (theater, role-playing) won't often be good at the supporting activity either.

I think that the distinction between 'art' and 'entertainment', in its most common use, is psychologically destructive for most of the people who use it that way.

You can say: "I don't care how good I am at tennis (chess, etc.), I just play it for fun." You're not automatically at fault for this. Why are people so damned resistant to saying "I don't care how good I am at role-playing games (D&D, etc.), I just play them for fun"?

There's nothing wrong with this. Einstein wasn't less of a person because he was a crappy amateur violinist. You're not less of a person if you're a weeknight dungeon-hacker or vampire wannabe.

The problem (and, in some ways, liberating virtue) of the art form of role-playing is that it is very hard to make interesting to spectators. This does not make it not-art though.

So Vincent, the answer to your question would seem to me to be: because I'm not interested in making art, I'm interested in running my business (getting elected to office, sleeping late and smoking weed, whatever), and I just participate in this art form for fun. The problem is that a lot of people don't seem willing to give that answer: they want to say "well, but what I do is just as valid as what you do, because it's not an art form, it's entertainment." Well. Einstein's passion for violin was perhaps as 'valid' as Heifetz's as an expression of desire, but there's obviously a difference as to product. Nobody would dream of saying that violin music was 'not an art form' and therefore 'Einstein's music was just as good as Heifetz'".

RPGs come in for a beating because (a) they're new and (b) the actual art form is not easily packageable or saleable, only supporting materials are. Several other reasons which suggest themselves involve stereotypes to which artists in other forms are not immune. Well, here's a third: (c) they tend to be associated with genres that have a second- or third-tier cultural status. (Though the old war between 'serious literature' and 'minor genres' is at a low tide at this point, with so many comic-book readers now the 'major literary authors' and college professors of our generation.)

A courageous artist who really cared about the form would shrug that off, as artists in 'more established' forms have always had to against their banker, soldier, and shopkeeper parents.

[pete_darby]

Sean,

All well and good, and very well said, but it has been raised that we're "not yet" at the stage of being capable of art, or literature, or deep cultural value, whatever you want to call it, and that's what I want folk to offer a coherent defence of.

And again, the idea that to be pro-depth is to be anti-fun needs to be hit over the head repeatedly until it stops moving.

Saying "I don't care whether I'm creating art, as long as I'm enjoying myself" is fine and dandy by me: what I object to is being told "I'm not creating art, and neither are you! We're all just having fun!"

Frankly, I think worrying about whether you're creating "art" is just about the best way of creating lousy art, but that's just me. But the ability to look back at what you've done and say, "That was beautiful, that meant something, that was a thing of quality", that's a big plus to me. It gives me joy. It's, dare I say it, fun.

Fun, I think we're coming around to, is an art form, if we take fun as a form of appreciation of aesthetic quality that engenders joy. Maximizing fun is an art form, yes?

I think what we're all engaged in here is striving to make the experience of role-playing the most enjoyable it can be, of the highest aesthetic quality, as well crafted as it can be... these three things are the same thing. In big model terms, the CA are simply divergent aesthetics.

RPG's are a social, creative phenomena; by almost any definition of culture, the product of role-playing, the actual play, will have cultural value as an emergent property. It will always "say something" about the players, about their values, about what they celebrate or value.

[Sean]

Hi Pete,

I think you and I mostly agree about this stuff. I don't see how people could read the actual play threads around here and think that 'it's not art yet': people are clearly making art together that allows them to deal with serious themes, morality, culture, emotionally loaded stuff. What more do you want?

People say, or used to say, that comic books are 'not art' sometimes, but they're confused.

Here's something. I'd be willing to listen to someone who said that while there were great paintings and great etchings, the greatest of etchings aren't at the same 'level' of art as the greatest paintings. The painting form is more developed, more established, or maybe its tools just pick out deeper stuff in the human psyche when practiced at its best, whatever.

Likewise, if someone said that the very best novels and short stories up to now have been working at a higher level than the very best comics or RPGs, I guess I'd probably agree. But it doesn't follow from this that there isn't great comic writing or RPG play and that these art forms might develop and reach a higher potential over time, let alone that comics or RPGs 'aren't art'.

[pete_darby]

Well, I'd also be very suspicious of anyone pursuing the line of "art created in media X is inferior to art created in (invariably older) medium Y".

It's like saying savory dishes are inferior to sweet dishes, or vice versa. Even comparing a given savory to a given sweet is difficult enough. Comparing a whole type of food one to another is an act of, well, not madness, but perhaps prejudice.

The very things that make RPG's different, from, say, film (collaboration, immediacy, etc) damn well should mean we're applying different aesthetic standards. If not, we're forced to judge RPG's as inferior to film on the ismple grounds that it's less, well, cinematic. Which is crazy.

[Comte]

Er, this depends on your definition of literature. The term "literature" has been used to refer to everything from political essays to travelogues to journalism to scientific treatises. So, for example, Darwin's writing is sometimes classified as literature, as do play scripts (even though they are meant to be performed rather than read). So I think RPGs are certainly within the broader definition of literature

Yep thats the point I would argue if I read my post.  HOwever I will take your point a bit further.  I beleive that RPGs will hit capital L literary status.  I will take your point of it being included in a broader definition of literature a bit further by saying that it is a compleatly diffrent genra.  Much like Fellini is given credit for creating the mockumentary, RPG's are a compleatly seperate genra of thier own.  

To answer you my definition of the term literature, is anything written or visual that people wish to discuss on a scholarly level.  I would say that this site is my case and point.  Thouse theory articles are just as complicated as many of the diffrent flavors of literary criticism.  Anything written or otherwise that can sustain this level of conversation for this long deserves to be literature.

Hi Lacan,

I don't think anyone here is arguing that the rule books themselves are Literature in the artistic sense anymore than books on "How to Write" are either.  

Odd tto be honest I would start by claiming that the rule books themselves are literature.  They are a type of book in thier own right which provide the basis for litteraly thousands of stories.  But I can't get into that now class is interupting me.[/quote]

[Domhnall]

Good thread.

When it comes right down to it, we have to recognize that in spite of all of our aspirations in this forum, when it comes right down to it, the reason we play these games is because they're FUN.

The reason we're HERE, in the Forge, is to make our games MORE fun. By "our games" I mean both the games we run, and the games we write.

It's not like Literature (big-L literature) where not only entertainment is going on, but also the perpetuation of culture, education, faith... Role playing may someday take on these aspects, but I don't think it will be for a while yet.

I'd like to address the concept of "fun".  I believe that there is a difference between role playing for 'fun' and role playing for 'joy'.  The former connotes a light, "entertaining" activity.   The latter is a deeper experience.  It's best illustrated by citing other forms of media.  When I read Bored of the Rings, I can pick it up, read a chapter, and have great laughs.  When I read The Lord of the Rings, however, I am not seeking 'fun', but a moving experience which is best described as 'joy'.  Or, watching The Holy Grail vs Braveheart, or action movies vs. "whodonnit" ones—the motivation for the participation in (and the creation of) each medium is different.  

Now, I would argue against any who say that mediums aimed at 'fun' are necessarily less intelligent than those aimed at 'joy'.  However, while 'fun' is ... fun, it is 'joy' that touches the mind/spirit most profoundly.  The quest of my RP group is joy, not fun.  We have fun moments within the game, but the goal of our game is to experience something akin to "big-L" literature--meaningful, teaching, conflicted, etc., and we do experience it.  

As to whether what we do meets the criteria of Art or not, my jury is still out.