Confirmation of Cool

[C. Edwards]

(From Popular and Damaging)

Rules-lite, just pick a few key stats and the rest is description: Unsatisfying. As a mass market newbie role player, it's not enough for the system to just let me do what I want, it has to take what I want and amplify it and tell me how cool it is. Basically, the problem John Kim described: doesn't tell the players what to do. Or more precisely, doesn't give them feedback that confirms that what they're doing is cool. (And if you think that's an absurd expectation, think again about what "mass market" means.)

I'd like to discuss (in a somewhat satirical manner) an issue stemming from Walt's quote. Always at the heart of any endeavor is the hardcore participant. For the hardcore, confirmation of "cool" is not much of a requirement. The hardcore pursue an activity out of need to pursue that activity. Call it passion, call it obsession, call it art. The point is that being "cool", or receiving feedback to that effect, is of almost no consequence to the ranks of the truly hardcore.

To (over)simply things we could separate participants of an activity into 3 categories, the Hardcore, the Softcore, and the Posers (a.k.a. Wannabe's). As you travel from the ranks of the Hardcore out towards the ranks of the Posers, you find that confirmation of cool (and the desired size of the "audience" that is needed to perceive that activity as cool) gains importance at an exponential rate.

I'm going to skip over a multitude of examples (such as the phenomenon of skateboarding) and jump straight to a question, and my point. Where does the "confirmation of cool" originate and what does the process of an activity becoming "cool" look like?

Well, it's a complicated equation with so many variables that I'm just going to hit some of the high points. First, take the activity itself. Many things, like butter sculpture, will never be "cool". That is to say that the activity will not spread beyond the ranks of the Hardcore. This can be chalked up to a number of variables as seemingly irrelevant as "butter makes your hands feel greasy, yuck" or as large and unwieldy as "the sensibilities of society are not currently aligned to be receptive to all the amazing possibilities offered by butter sculpture".

Here's how the organic, from the bottom up, magic of "cool" usually happens. Hardcore enthusiasts of an activity get noticed, maybe they've been enjoying their activity of choice for only a short time, maybe for decades. At first they're usually only noticed by friends, loved ones, slacker kids, and maybe the local news media. This is also the most fragile and telling time, this is where "cool" and "lame" are born and forever stamped upon an activity.

The treatment given to the activity by the media (and the slacker kids) is of extreme importance. We all know that for an activity to truly be "cool" it has to be seen as such by teenagers and people not past their early twenties. (This is hard, cold fact. Accept it.) If the mainstream news media seems excepting and generally unperturbed by an activity then it will likely fall to the wayside and never catch on in any meaningful "pop-culture wildfire" kind of way. If the slacker kids enjoy the activity at least it will gain some new blood and perhaps hold on until another chance at mainstream "cool" presents itself. If the mainstream media is at first dismayed by the activity AND the slacker kids dig it, then we have a hit. It may only be a cult, niche kind of hit, but it's place in the pop culture overmind is assured.  

(Being dangerous, rebellious, and sexy doesn't hurt when "cool" is at stake.)

"But what about Marketing?" you say. Good question, and perhaps the most relevant for our purposes. It's certainly one of the few variables of "cool" that we have any ability to manipulate. Marketing, without the previous organic phenomenon, can be seen as the top down "cool"-by-force method. You can market something as the most swank, sexy, and easy to use product to ever be perpetrated on civilization. If you have the money to mass market and your product actually comes reasonably close to what the advertisements claim then you're all set. If your product falls short in the swank, sexy, or easy to use departments just make it physically addictive and once again you're all set.

Perhaps you're becoming aware of the problem now. Maybe you already were aware of it. Role-playing games are not physically addictive. Short of V:TM, they are neither swank or sexy. Easy to use? You're kidding, right? RPGs are more akin to butter sculpture than skateboarding (coincidentally, they both take less skill when rendered as computer games. <cough>posers<cough>). As far as mainstream "cool" goes, the only thing RPGs have going for them is that religious fanatics rank them with devil worship. That's a mighty fine start, but without the proper marketing AND the appealing product to back it up, RPGs are just so much butter in the hand.

Before confirmation of "cool" as a feedback of play from within a game can make any difference to the popularity of RPGs the seeds for confirmation of "cool" from outside the game, in the pop culture mindset, must be established. Little inroads have been made here and there. (Hey, Vin Diesel actually said that he's a gamer, and I'm not talking video games.) But without a complete overhaul of the industry's dominant design mindset along with pop culture subversion  RPGs will always be niche. I'm not saying that is good or bad. Those are the breaks.

So, if it's all the same to you, I'm going to go bungee jump, drive a disgustingly expensive and incredibly fast car, smoke a Kool, watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, listen to some ever popular punk-pop, use some Colgate teeth whitening strips, blow up a Starbucks, find a drug to replace ecstasy and a dance to replace the Macarena, change my name to C.Diddy, and play some Dungeons & Dragons.

-Chris

[Marco]

So, if it's all the same to you, I'm going to go bungee jump, drive a disgustingly expensive and incredibly fast car, smoke a Kool, watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, listen to some ever popular punk-pop, use some Colgate teeth whitening strips, blow up a Starbucks, find a drug to replace ecstasy and a dance to replace the Macarena, change my name to C.Diddy, and play some Dungeons & Dragons.

-Chris

Damn, man. And here I aspire to be a poser-butter-scluptor.

:: hangs head in defeated manner ::

Maybe I can download |3utt3rSklupt0r v5.3 off the warez newsgroups.

:: sigh ::
-Marco

[Walt Freitag]

Holy cow, what a great post!

I hesitate to even mention that the confirmation I was thinking about is from inside the game system, not on the social level of non-participants' perception of the activity. And what I meant by cool, that is, what is being confirmed, is that their decisions are appropriate and effective in play, not that the activity as a whole will impress anyone else.

(Example: I'm a comics fan and I want to play Champions. I have a great idea in mind for a character. He's a guy who can -- get this -- shoot lightning bolts from his fingers! He's got this temper problem like the Hulk, and when he gets mad, the sparks literally start flying, but he can get so mad that he can't control the lightning and it sometimes hurts his friends. I delve into the system (probably with the help of a friend who already knows it) to create the character and discover that there's a power called Energy Blast that's just perfect for things like lightning bolts. Then I discover that having the lightning only work when he's angry, and having it sometimes go out of control and hit his friends, are both worth big reductions in the cost of the power, so that the dice of lightning in the power can be cranked way up. And if I make up some sob story about how he's all guilty because his power went out of control and he killed his best bud, I get even more points to spend on even more dice. Awesome! It's like the system is telling me, great idea for a superhero, man! This is a form of feedback that writing "Shoot lightning bolts from fingers 4" on a character sheet just doesn't provide. Of course, I have to be able to figure out the system and understand it clearly enough to realize this.)

But never mind. I like this discussion better. Carry on!

- Walt

[Jonathan Walton]

Cool thread.

I think part of roleplaying's deal is that a ton of young people "know what roleplaying is."  That is, they know it's that thing that the losers in their high schools did.  "Like Magic Cards."  Spoken with that air of condescention.  You know how to do it.  Say it as if you're talking about hardcore D&D munchkin power gamers.  Everyone cultivates the tone of voice that says "well, at least I'm cooler than THEY are."  Of course, they're pretty ignoarant about it, but they cover it up by pretending to know.  Just a couple weeks ago, I overheard someone talking about this loser friend of theirs who spent all his time "designing ROLE-playing games," as if that was the epitome of loserness.

So, basically, young people (at least in the US) have already discovered roleplaying and determined that it's lame.  At this point, the struggle is to change an existing image.  Vampire tried to break out and build a new image from scratch, under the title "Storytelling Games," but it didn't quite work.  After a while, the Vampire "losers" got thrown in with the D&D "losers."  It'll take more than Vin talking about his Drow Ranger to get us out of that pit.

To be honest, what roleplaying needs is cool, sexy poster children.  Too often you get the unwashed gamer masses full of people with the social skills of 8-year-old boys playing king-of-the-mountain.  Basically, roleplaying needs more people like me ;)  20-something, fairly attractive, charismatic, sensitive, energetic, excited poster children.  And games that reflect that kind of thing.  Games not for people who want to be sexy and cool, but for people who already feel sexy and cool (and want to be sexier and cooler).  NO MORE ESCAPISM FOR THE LOSERS!  WRITE GAMES FOR THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE!

[sirogit]

I felt obliged to say that, though teens/twnety-somethings are the most vocal opinioned people and spend alot of disposable income, they are not nessecarily a market that is uniformly esteemed, largely because, the more cool something is because it appeals to the young people, the less cool it is when those young people turn 25 and no longer matter anymore, and it becomes remembered as it was defined by the johnny-come-lately's, usually as fake and toned down, if not "Run out of steam" as such a life-support state would naturally define.    

Take Jazz, at some point in the 70's it stopped being "That thing the cool, free kids and those neat black people listened to" and started being "What those damn yuppies who try to associate themselves with the cool, free kids and those neat black people, were listening to".

Get more "every-man" people into gaming, sounds great, remove the whole sociolly inept stereotype, sure. But I'd have considerably less intereast in a hobby that tries to get the pop-punk kid overflow, largely because adventures would be about freeing tibet from those dumb commies or being those totally radical rich kid in europe who likes a guy/girl named Ziff.  

I personally like playing with goths, 'bears', geezers, androgynes, girls with glasses, as well as the 20-something 'ideal person' if they got that way by mistake.

[Michael S. Miller]

Just a couple weeks ago, I overheard someone talking about this loser friend of theirs who spent all his time "designing ROLE-playing games," as if that was the epitome of loserness.

[snip]

Basically, roleplaying needs more people like me ;)

Hey, Jonathan. Forgive me if you were doing a tongue-in-cheek thing that I missed, but doesn't your initial anecdote go to show that even if someone as cool as you (namely, you) designs RPGs, folks still denigrate him mercilessly, rather than wonder "What's cool enough to interest Jonathan Walton?"

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah, there was definitely some tongue-in-cheekness there.  After all, I'm not the coolest person in the world or one of the beautiful people.  But my point was that if people who's "coolness" is well-established are able to appear confident about their interest in roleplaying and explain what's cool about it, it's pretty easy to convince people to give it a try.  I don't often convince people to go out and buy huge tomes, because they usually don't become THAT interested, but I'm pretty easily able to convince people of the potential of roleplaying, that, even if there are no games out now that would really appeal to them, the medium as a whole has the potential to be truly fun, fulfilling, and "cool."  So, basically, you can slowly change people's perceptions about roleplaying without converting them to a gamer.  This is something I think the community has been historically bad at.  Everyone usually gets approached as a potential player that needs to be converted, not someone who's simply interested in the existance of roleplaying (and not in playing).

[C. Edwards]

The people who currently play RPGs are certainly the biggest obstacle between the hobby being seen as "lame" and gaining more widespread acceptance.

I personally like playing with goths, 'bears', geezers, androgynes, girls with glasses, as well as the 20-something 'ideal person' if they got that way by mistake.

Hey, me too. Variety is the spice of life and all that. One big problem I see is how decades of marginalization by our "we only celebrate shiny happy people" society has devastated the self-confidence and/or social skills of a large number of the hobby's participants. The effect is not limited to role-players of course, but pile stigma upon stigma and you've built a tower of dubious stability.

No, not all role-players are misanthropic geeks who live under the stairs, not even close. But when a large section of role-players resemble such on just a casual glance (even if their self-confidence levels and social acumen are Grade A), then there's no escaping the stigma of overwhelming "lameness" that role-playing has been tagged with by society as a whole.

Now, here's the real issue as I see it, particularly where the Forge is concerned. Do we want to continue to design games that break out of the industry standard mold and continue to push the envelope of RPG-dom into areas that might, consequently, appeal to some "mainstream" audience? Silly question. Of course we do, to one degree or another. So, that leaves the dilemma of our already heavy rep of "lame" among Mr. and Mrs. Joe Normal.

Unfortunately, this looks like a "chicken or egg" conundrum. The more noticeable face of role-playing, the supposed misanthropes, are already considered to be left of center by polite society. They play RPGs so those must be off center too. How does a process that is self-reinforcing on both sides get reversed? Well, you have to disrupt the cycle on at least one side.

Now, I have no illusions about altering the ecology of the gamer, not directly at least. That leaves us with altering the perceptions of non-gamers. I don't know about you, but that sounds like better odds than "shaving down gamers and teaching them how to speak." What we need is tastey bait in an attractive package, the kind that will appeal to non-gamers.

Well, traps of all shapes and sizes are being built, refined, and redefined right here at the Forge. Eventually we should have some really effective traps built. The main thing is to set them out in places that gamers do not frequent. We don't need our quarry getting startled by the presence of a gamer and if our non-gamer traps get mixed in with the gamer traps then our chances of bagging our target prey are slim to none.

Maybe, eventually, if even a small level of success is attained and the stigma associated with gaming loses some of it's potency, then the gamers themselves will start to hold their heads a little higher and speak legibly and with confidence. Oh, and bathe, definitely bathe.

-Chris

[C. Edwards]

Hey Walt,

Yeah, I knew what you were talking about. Your post just got me thinking about how it's a two-pronged problem (at least). Designing the penultimate non-gamer game is a great goal, but doesn't add up to squat if a non-gamer won't come to within 100 feet of it. There are a few things that need to be done all at the same time, and repeatedly to get any result.

-Chris

[C. Edwards]

Hey Jonathan,

To be honest, what roleplaying needs is cool, sexy poster children. Too often you get the unwashed gamer masses full of people with the social skills of 8-year-old boys playing king-of-the-mountain. Basically, roleplaying needs more people like me ;) 20-something, fairly attractive, charismatic, sensitive, energetic, excited poster children. And games that reflect that kind of thing. Games not for people who want to be sexy and cool, but for people who already feel sexy and cool (and want to be sexier and cooler). NO MORE ESCAPISM FOR THE LOSERS! WRITE GAMES FOR THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE!

I agree 100%, with your point as well as your tongue-in-cheek-ness. :)

The image of "lame" can only be reversed by injecting some of it's opposite directly into the hobby. And for that, people that already feel sexy and cool (and appear that way to the prime time t.v. viewing audience) are definitely what is needed. Of course, they don't often wander into game stores.

You know, this has me thinking about what kind of RPG I could convince Victoria's Secret to carry...

-Chris