Real Life: A Conceptual Game

[Rich Forest]

Hi ChefKyle (Kyle, I presume?),

Welcome to the Forge! A skeptical voice is always a welcome addition to any discussion, and I think you're coming down on the same side as some other posters here, so you're not the only voice questioning whether Jonathon's conceptual game is in fact an RPG. But actually, I don't think it's necessarily meant to be. Jonathon is imagining it in order to state one challenge he has for the GNS theory. Some people seem to think GNS does stand up to that challenge: Gordon's clarifications in particular make sense to me. Other people are exploring other places, other discourses, other theories we could draw on: Eero and Chris are asking what we might have to gain by learning from established disciplines—not blindly, but critically. Both these responses seems to me to be within the scope of Jonathon's initial goals for the thread, I think... but of course Jonathon will clarify that, and I might be missing some things.

But I'm honestly a bit confused by your semi-rant about the possibilities of drawing from literary theories or other academic disciplines to expand our understanding of RPGs. I don't think you're really reacting directly to anything that anyone has said here, in particular with your dismissal of a "Grand Unified Theory" of roleplaying, which no one has really suggested as a goal. I think Eero and Chris are saying that it would be a huge but worthwhile job to see what insights could be gained by drawing on existing academic discourses to discuss RPGs. And why not?

I think also that your criticisms of what literary critics do, what scientists do, and to what extent any of them are self-aware about the strengths, weaknesses, and limitations of their studies are honestly based on somewhat oversimplified representations of them. It seems to be common culture now to assume literary theorists are so caught up in what they do that they think it has the answer to everything. Probably some of them do. But you might be surprised at how often they approach ideas in their own fields critically. Certainly Eero and Chris are approaching these ideas with open, but critical minds. I hope everyone would do so.

Eero has mentioned Alan Sokal and the spoof article (also available in .pdf) that he published in the journal Social Text, which proved an important point and acts as an excellent cautionary tale that cultural theorists in particular will not soon forget. I think it's important that we not be simply dismissive of any intellectual traditions, in particular based on what sound to me like overly limited and inaccurate impressions of their methods and their purposes. Now we may investigate them, draw from them, and then discover that they do not meet our needs. But we cannot find out which ones do meet our needs without engaging critically with them. If we simply react against them and dismiss them, we may be ignoring something that could be useful. But we'd never know.

One of the great things about a place like the Forge is that its members can bring a variety of different angles to bear on a problem, all of which I think have contributed constructively to knowledge here.  

Rich

[Jonathan Walton]

Eero, Chris, Rich, etc.

No worries about hijacking the thread.  It was mostly meant as a declaration of my slowly building dissatisfaction with GNS as a tool for my own purposes.  Now that I finally feel that I understand where Ron's coming from and what he designed his theory to do, I've realized that what I want and need (as a player and designer) from a comprehensive theory of roleplaying is different than what I think Ron wants.  GNS, like most theories, is really good at doing what it seems to have been designed to do.  But in the areas where I want to go with my games, I'm going to need something else.

I've been reading a ton of aesthetic theory lately, and there seems to be a general consent that one of theory's main purposes it to justify and explain the existence of (and our aesthetic reactions to) emerging and avant-gard art.  You can't, after all, judge a machine that makes random noises the same way you'd judge a painting by Rembrandt.  They're very different things, but art theory is required to explain the nature of both works.  

Personally, I view roleplaying theory very similarly.  In recent years, Ron and others have pushed GNS forward to explain what they were trying to do with games like Sorcerer, Trollbabe, Inspectres, Universalis, My Life with Master, etc.  However, to talk about what I'm trying to do with Humble Mythologies and Beneath This Facade (and to a lesser extent, Argonauts and what Shreyas is up to with Torchbearer), I feel I need new roleplaying theory that focuses on different areas from what GNS currently covers.  I need a deeper understanding of aesthetics and how you create color and tone.  I need components like Emily Care's suggested "exploration of self."  I need more attention to be payed to our subjective experience of roleplaying and not just demonstrated behaviors.

So, I think you guys took the thread in a completely appropriate direction.  I very much agree that it's time to apply existing art, literary, and conceptual theories to roleplaying.  Academics don't get to live in the ivory tower for no reason.  It's high time we drew on the work they've been doing instead of constantly trying to reinvent the wheel, as if roleplaying was something completely unrelated to other forms of creative expression (note: I'm not accursing the Forge of this, but I think the attitude is pretty common in much of the RPG theory that gets thrown down).

P.S.  Yeah, the nature of the game isn't the point, though I would still argue that it's roleplaying.  You have Social Contract.  You have Exploration.  You have Shared Imagined Space ("These events never happened.  Imagine that you're not repeating the events again, but experiencing them for the first time.").  I don't actually think choice is a necessary requirement for roleplaying.  You could roleplay a game that was completely scripted, something that blurred the distinction between roleplaying and theatre.  You don't have to have chosen a particular outcome to Explore it.

EDIT: Typo in post that significantly changed the meaning of what I wanted to say.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Great post Jonathan, you certainly explained the twofold nature of the thread. It seems to me that both matters are resolved, though; some people think that you need decisions for a roleplaying game, while others think that the text is sufficient, and while some think you could use lit-theory for rpgs, others are not convinced. Not much else to say without going to details, is there?

Coming back from the theory discussion, I would actually argue for this game not being roleplaying in the conventional sense: it certainly is a part of the continuum of literary forms, but I see no use in extending the terminology this far. This is however "only" semantics; there is no significance to the limit between this and actual roleplaying games.

This comes back to the matter of defining roleplaying, once again. "Communication in a SIS" is a great and accurate definition as far as I'm concerned, and I think this doesn't fall inside it: there is no communication happening when you repeat something (where communication is to be understood to be interactive, to differentiate with a book communicating to the reader). If, on the other hand, you apply artistic liberty to choosing what to repeat, it becomes theater (which carries information, but still isn't communication in the interactive sense).

For roleplaying to be differentiated from theater, you need to assume interactivity between the participants and a focus on the participants as the primary audience. Without the first we include historical recreation (which incidentally is exactly what you have described) and without the second improvisational theatre. These two conditions are conjoined in the term 'communicate' as far as I'm concerned: the word implies both interaction with your target and focusing on him. Thusly "communicating in a SIS", to further differentiate from any old communication.

Anyway, I've probably resolved the definition problem to my satisfaction, and the discussion about the bounds of theory is probably better assaulted in another thread, wouldn't you agree?

[ChefKyle]

Jonathon is imagining it in order to state one challenge he has for the GNS theory.

It doesn't fit into the GNS theory, because it's not a game (no choices, no chance), and it's not a Simulation (no character-building, etc). It's just a Narrative. For it to be a roleplaying game, it has to have present all three functions, to varying degrees. The GNS theory quite simply doesn't work for things which are missing the G and S. It's like trying to apply laws of motion under gravity to protons in an atomic nucleus. It doesn't work. It's an entirely different field.

People sitting around discussing their life history is just group therapy. That's not roleplaying, that's psychology. And psychology isn't art, and thus, not really subject to artistic discussion. It's entirely valud and useful - but it's not art.

But I'm honestly a bit confused by your semi-rant about the possibilities of drawing from literary theories or other academic disciplines to expand our understanding of RPGs.

I ranted because such actions are pointless. They please us, but produce nothing. The key question for roleplayers is not, "do I have a correct heuristic understanding of the aesthetics of roleplaying in the context of the post-modernist society?" but "will there be a game on this Tuesday, and should I bring pizza?"

You can have the perfect analysis of a game system, and yet still have no players. You can have absolutely no understanding of any of the jargon of literary criticism, and still write a damn fine story or run or play a damn fine game.

I don't think you're really reacting directly to anything that anyone has said here, in particular with your dismissal of a "Grand Unified Theory" of roleplaying, which no one has really suggested as a goal.

It was suggested as a remote, but desirable possibility. I would suggest that it is extremely remote, and not at all desireable.

I think Eero and Chris are saying that it would be a huge but worthwhile job to see what insights could be gained by drawing on existing academic discourses to discuss RPGs. And why not?

Why not indeed? I was not saying it would not be enjoyable for them. I was just saying it would not be productive, or useful in any way.

I think also that your criticisms of what literary critics do, what scientists do, and to what extent any of them are self-aware about the strengths, weaknesses, and limitations of their studies are honestly based on somewhat oversimplified representations of them.

Of course it was simplified. This is a forum, not a doctoral thesis. We can hold ourselves to a high standard of discourse, naturally - but not to academically high standards. Such simplifications suffice for ordinary discussion.

I'm well aware of what literary critics do, I studied at university with them. What they do is to never actually create anything, but simply cut it up into analytical pieces, and relate random pieces of the writing with random pieces of society, history, culture and religion.

Thus, one critic reads the last chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses, which last chapter is a "stream of consciousness" of a young woman feeling horny and thinking lewd thoughts - one reads it and claims it as "female empowerment of her sexuality," and another reads it and claims it as "patriarchal oppression of women by forcing masculine concepts of sexuality on them."

Which is it? "Neither, and both," answer some literary critics. Thus, nothing is true, and everything is true. Well, I didn't consider that a particularly useful insight.

Before applying the techniques of literary criticism to roleplaying, we might ask, "what has applying literary criticism to other literature done for our understanding of it?" The answer is: very little. Literary criticism does not make bad writing good, or a dull story enjoyable, or an obscure story clear. It may, in fact, make the good writing seem bad, the enjoyable story dull, and the clear writing seem obscure - as we analyse things to death.

Now, this kind of analysis must be distinguished from a deep study of a piece of writing, which can improve our enjoyment of it. Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, for example, becomes more enjoyable if the reader knows something of medieval history and culture. If all the reader knows is King Arthur in the latest Hollywood installment, the reader will say, "huh?" as they turn the pages.

For practical people who have something to do with their lives other than literary criticism, the following suffices to analyse any piece of writing.

Any piece of writing - or any other kind of art -  has but three purposes:
1) to please the writer
2) to convey information
3) to give aesthetic pleasure

Now, as to the first purpose, the rest of the world is indifferent. It doesn't matter to us if the writer enjoys themselves. If they don't, they ought to stop writing.

As to the second purpose, this is a very broad category; as is the third purpose. A phonebook conveys information, but is generally not aesthetically pleasureable; a playboy magazine is aesthetically pleasureable, but conveys little or no information.

Now, naturally these categories are subjective. Name of the Rose, for example, generally if the person doesn't already have the basis of the information (medieval history), then they can't get to the aesthetic enjoyment, the little jokes and vivid descriptions, the exploration of ideas modern and medieval about god and society. And of course in other, simpler works, taste determines aesthetic pleasure.

And so, consideration of those three purposes suffices for the vast majority of readers. Of course, some would suggest that deeper study is needed, regardless of the common man's needs; just as the common man doesn't know how his car work, but that doesn't stop the study of physics in the world.

That would be true - if literary criticism were a science. It pretends to be one, but it isn't. Science consists of the cycle: data-hypothesis/model-experiment, then back to data, endlessly. But literary criticism cannot experiment. Literary critics are typically terrible writers, because they use faculty-specific jargon and obscure latinisms in their writing.

Like many academics, economists, etc, they use jargon and latinisms not to make their point, but to obscure it, since their point is something wrong, or banal, or meaningless. I recall vividly hearing about, "the praxis of contemporaneous feminist dialectic" - which means, "the way feminists are talking nowadays." But the "praxis..." etc sounds more intellectual. It gives the speaker an aura of authority. It lets the speaker say something obvious, banal, meaningless, or even something wrong, and still sound valid.

Now, I would not toss all literary critics out of university. Universities are a place where the vast majority of people and work done in research is never of any use at all to the world. But very occasionally, something is, and in the meantime, they teach the people who pass through their halls how to think. While the work of literary criticism itself has proven to be of no use whatsoever in society, if nothing else, it can teach students to look at things critically and with deep thought. Alas, at the same time it teaches them to write very very badly, but to write badly with an intellectual air, so that nobody can criticise them. But then, almost all disciplines at universities do that, so we take the good with the bad, and treat the literary critics as the necessary evil they are.

It seems to be common culture now to assume literary theorists are so caught up in what they do that they think it has the answer to everything. Probably some of them do.

I disagree. I don't think most literary critics think they have the answer to everything. I think they're simply blithely unaware of everything. They become absorbed in the work. Like so much of our society, they suffer from over-specialisation. They are "expert" in their field, thus no-one outside their field may question them or their methods. But the different fields don't interact if they can help it.

Similar considerations apply to, for example, economics, which claims to be a science, but fails the first test of science, which is to check one's model against reality. How is this relevant? you ask. It is relevant because literary criticism is thus shown not to be a particular evil (or good), but simply symptomatic of a general malaise in our society, the malaise of over-specialisation. Its greatest absurdities come from this burrowing deep into the specialty, so deep that we find ourselves down a dark hole where we cannot see anything else.

But you might be surprised at how often they approach ideas in their own fields critically.

But they never approach critically the very validity of their methods. No-one does. You don't get a chemist saying, "Well, not much point in doing experiments, really." You don't get a chef saying, "why cook? just nuke it." No specialist ever questions the very validity of his specialisation; if he does, he goes off and does something else.

Now we may investigate them, draw from them, and then discover that they do not meet our needs. But we cannot find out which ones do meet our needs without engaging critically with them. If we simply react against them and dismiss them, we may be ignoring something that could be useful. But we'd never know.

I have engaged critically with literary criticism. Trust me, it has nothing useful to contribute to roleplaying. It will not get my players all there on Tuesday. It will not help me write a good plot. It will not help the player come up with an interesting character background. It will not give me a decent ruleset.

What can literary/art criticism contribute to roleplaying? Assuming that roleplaying consists of game, narrative, simulation... Game? No, literary criticism has nothing to say about dice, minimaxing, whether hit points, criticals or wound levels are better. Simulation? No, literary criticism has nothing to say about simulation, about Hackmaster vs Thespmaster. Okay, then, Narrative? Perhaps there literary criticism has something to say.

However, I would say that to be fair and reasonable, a literary critic should restrict themselves to deliberately-constructed works, which are somewhat polished. We don't give a teenaged-girl's diary to a literary critic, or my grocery list. Most roleplaying, most stories which the GM and players come up with, are very, very improvised. To subject these to literary analysis is, really, unfair on the people involved. It's picking apart something which was very loosely put together. Something which can fall apart easily.

Players want to game, they don't want to meta-game. But literary criticism isn't even meta-gaming. It's meta-meta-gaming. I mean, really, let's be serious here.

What can it contribute to roleplaying? It can contribute an enjoyable discussion, of that I have no doubt. But an enjoyable discussion doesn't have to be discreetly cloaked in obscure language and latinisms, which are necessarily the basis of literary criticism. After all, the praxis of contemporaneous literary criticism dialectic is obfuscation.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Vow, Kyle... you seem to really know your stuff.

Mr. Lehrich, this is what I meant about this whole conversation having kind of a deciding nature for Forge. We can agree here that literary theory is an issue non grata, and never come back to it. There's strong sentiment against it elsewhere in the scene, so it's no wonder if a like consensus develops in the Forge as well.

Kyle, I won't challenge your stand on literary criticism. You wouldn't state it so forcefully if it weren't a truth you are well versed with. I myself am just a dilettante in the field, and not competent to refute your argument.

However, I'd like some more background on the matter as it relates to roleplaying. Could you in interests of that goal provide some answers?

Human nature is to search for pleasure. If literary nitpicking of roleplaying games is enjoyable, then why forbid it on this forum?

How do you view mr. Walton's stated preference for "high art roleplaying", to state it simply? This is a delusion(?) many of us here share to some degree, so I'm interested in your view on how this ban of literary theory relates to the movement here. Is there any connection, or do you view mr. Walton's play and theories entirely different matters?

Do you really think that no good as ever been gained from either literary or roleplaying theory? Do you think that the successes of Forge designers (if someone is willing to place himself under this flag) are explained by individual talent or similar unrelated factors alone, or would the theoretical approach advocated by many here have something to do with it? Similarly, is there really no literature you like that evidently conforms with some or other theory? And if so, do you know that this relationship is coincidence, or could it be that such a writer would have learned such a theory and used it to a good result?

I've always been in the understanding, that although literary theory has produced much wankery, there's likewise some good. For example, when I say that "The themes of Lord of the Rings are predicated on a christian morality, as opposed to pulp fantasy, inspired by largely nietzchean zeitgeist." I'm stating something immensely useful for my own understanding of the book and history of fantasy literature, and possibly for others' as well. However, there's no way I could have said the above sentence without the work of aesthetic theory. The question: are you really of the mind that nothing is salvageable, that terms like "genre", "theme", "plot climax" and "symbol" are useless intellectual grandstanding?

Regarding deep study of a piece of writing as opposed to literary analysis, could you explain the difference a little further? At first it would seem that literary analysis you like is relegated under a different term here, to protect it from the annihilation. I'm sure there's a difference. Is it limiting the study to background needed for gaining use of the text, as opposed to analyzing the text itself?

About literary criticism as science: I'm not American, so I don't have any real certainty of the terminology. However, I've come to understand that there is somewhat of a divide in the use of the terminology there. In Finnish, for example, the word "tiede" means all the academic disciplines, including usually even philosophy. In American discourse I've come to learn that your schools teach to consider only so-called hard sciences as science proper, with the other academic disciplines as some kind of frauds. This is usually supported by teaching elaborate definitions for science, definitions that usually limit science to what is called "luonnontieteet" in Finnish, or natural sciences in some parts of the world. The question: is there a greater point in your considering literary criticism "not science" than the fact that American use indeed doesn't seem to include it? Should I draw some conclusion from criticism not being science? I mean, there are many useful and beautiful things that are not science, so what do you want to say when you emphasize the point?

About use of terminology: There are many fields that use special terminology. Would you say that Ron, for example, is wrong to develop his own for discussion of roleplaying games? When I start talking about N-manifolds as a mathematician, what words should I use instead? How is use of terminology different in literary science from other fields? I believe you when you say that there's much needless use of such terminology, although I've found that new words are often needed simply to mould our thoughts in new forms. Why do you think this fraudulent culture has developed?

If Hackmaster is referencing old D&D culture, simulation is entertaining because of immersion, My Life with Master forces narrative turns, Vampire calls itself a storytelling game, 7th Sea beckons to model the game on swashbuckling adventure, Sorcerer has an explicit theme, there's no discernable difference between player and movie dialogue, Exalted advices to preserve player protagonism, and my pleasure from a game evidently comes from it's similarities to literature, why is it that literary science cannot give us anything, when clearly the exact same terminology and concepts are used all the time?

I've myself always construed a really close relationship for literature and roleplaying, even when the game is very "gamey". Is there really no similarity between the two? I understand that I've asked a lot of questions, but there's much I didn't understand in your last message.

[clehrich]

Kyle,

I'm not going to debate you point-by-point.  Forge etiquette is against it, first of all, and besides I don't think there's a lot of hope of convincing you anyway.  But there are a few points worth making.

1. Literary Criticism as Target
If you go back and read the thread, you'll note that Eero occasionally uses the phrase "literary theory" rather loosely to refer to any form of theorizing about written language.  No one has mentioned literary criticism except you.  I am not in any sense a fan of literary criticism, nor do I think much of it particularly useful to RPG theory.  Indeed, the point of my original post, to which you objected with such venom, was that I do not think formulating a total theory of interpretation on an RPG basis is something worth doing.  But I am confused as to why you would think that "interpretation" and "meaning" entails literary criticism per se.  That's exactly the error that gets so many literary critics into such trouble, and thus I would think it would be something you yourself would want particularly to avoid.

2. Theory and Practice
I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again:

You can have the perfect analysis of a game system, and yet still have no players. You can have absolutely no understanding of any of the jargon of literary criticism, and still write a damn fine story or run or play a damn fine game.

Academic study, in most disciplines, is analytical.  The idea in biology is to understand life, not produce it as such.  To paraphrase you back at yourself, you can have absolutely no understanding of any of the jargon of biology, and still create a damn fine life.  It's called sex, you may have heard about it, it seems to be all the rage these days.  Must be a postmodern thing.

3. Deep Study

Now, this kind of analysis must be distinguished from a deep study of a piece of writing, which can improve our enjoyment of it. Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, for example, becomes more enjoyable if the reader knows something of medieval history and culture. If all the reader knows is King Arthur in the latest Hollywood installment, the reader will say, "huh?" as they turn the pages.

You have chosen a singularly unfortunate example.  Umberto Eco, a – uh oh – literary critic and semiotician, is on record as having written both Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum as semiotic allegories.  This is the sort of thing one discovers from deep study.  If all the reader knows is medieval history, the reader will say "huh?" as he or she turns the pages.

4. Meta-

Players want to game, they don't want to meta-game. But literary criticism isn't even meta-gaming. It's meta-meta-gaming. I mean, really, let's be serious here.

This is the most fundamental problem, IMO.  What's called Narrativism around these parts is precisely about meta-gaming.  In fact, it's arguable that all of the big three CA's in the GNS theory involve a certain amount of meta-gaming.  You're trying to discard analytical work on the grounds that it can't help gaming, and your primary argument is that meta-gaming doesn't help.  But if you really think that, you will find yourself in a small minority here.  After all, RPG theorizing is precisely the point in, let's say, the RPG Theory Forum.

- - -
Ultimately, I think you're trying to make an argument from authority.  You're trying to snow your readers into thinking that you are very knowledgeable.  I hope Eero was just being polite, and was not actually snowed.  You have certainly learned something from the literary critics with whom you studied, and if that's what they were teaching I'm not surprised you have a negative opinion of the discipline.  But I don't think it's reasonable to derail a theoretical thread about meaning by announcing that all theory about meaning is inherently worthless, as you know because you studied it at university.

Chris Lehrich

P.S. On "Unified Field Theory," the point (as Rich noted) was that I don't think this is likely any time soon.  I'm also dubious about how useful it will be in physics if they ever achieve it, and I think there's an awful lot of time and money wasted seeking it; I'd rather not see that happen in RPG's.  In fact, I think one of the nicest things about GNS is that Ron argues that there is no possibility of a Single Theory in the sense of a single "correct" way to play.

[pete_darby]

Just a quicky... as one of the perpetrators of the use of Lit Crit as a term on these boards: can we agree that Literary Criticism as such is of next to no use in assessing games, but that textual analysis, with play as text, can be? They're very different beasts, the first being concerned with is it any good, the second with what is it, how has it come about, and what happens when the author / reader does this...

The former would be of interest if anyone was aiming for literary merit as a goal of play, which I've repeatedly argued against. The second is, to my mind, a necessary complement to GNS. GNS asks why we play, textual analysis asks how.

[pete_darby]

Oh, and Jonathan: it's still not a game. It's acting!

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Narrativist players might enjoy seeing the patterns and themes emerge, watching how, on second view, even day-to-day events seem to address the major issues of human existence.

I don't think this is so because of my current understanding of what story is.

I have been on a kick lately that a story is an artistic construct which bears a resemblance to life, but is not life. A narrativist may enjoy seeing patterns and themes emerge, but this happens in a story-later sort of process. As in, this would make a good story, not, this is a good story right now.

The thing about story is that it is meant to be taken as a whole. I currently work for a commercial lawnmower manufacturer. On the walls are posters of various print ads they have had. One is a picture of one of the mowers completely disassmbled and laid out, down to the last screw. The caption reads "You have twenty second to find the most important part of a commercial mower." The answer, of course, is that every part is important. Without even the smallest screw or washer, the mower is not complete. It is tempting to judge which part has the most important function, but every part has a function that is necessary to the functioning of every other part.

So it is with story. Also, a story is to be taken as a whole. So in a well-crafted story the begining foreshadows the ending and the ending recalls the begining.

Example: After watching the Behind the Music, I though a movie based on the life of Ozzy Osbourne would be a good (and there apparently plans for such, but I digress). My personal choice would be to begin with Ozzy being told he was kicked out of Black Sabbath. The words I hear drummer Bill Ward saying are "It's been decided you've got to go." This is partially because kicking Ozzy out was more an idea of guitarist/band leader Tommy Iommi, who had gone to school with Ozzy. Fast forward in the hypethetical film to when Ozzy drinks a bunch of exotic vodhkas and goes "beyond drunk," in his wife Sharron's words. She comes home and Ozzy/no-longer-Ozzy says to her "It's been decided you've got to go" and attempts to strangle her. This scene later in the film recalls the begining of the film and the audience's mind rushes back to that moment and there's that moment of "Aha!" and the movie suddenly makes sense, or hopefully makes more sense. These are two ends of a thread that would run through the film about how Ozzy, the poor boy who dropped out of high school because he suffered from undiagnosed ADD and dyslexia, just wanted acceptance and Black Sabbath was the first place he belonged and no amount of fame, fortune, or even his loving wife and family would ever heal that rift.

Hopefully, I haven't lost you completely with this. Suffice to say, I would probably end with the no five years gone reunion with Black Sabbath and not even bother going into his more recent mainstream success on the TV show "The Osbournes" Those events are beside the point of the movie. They are facts, but facts that have nothing to do with the story.

I sort of picture a story as a tight bundle or a smoothly shaped object. This real life roleplaying does not produce that. although it might produce fodder for it. But that's story later, not story now.

[ChefKyle]

Vow, Kyle... you seem to really know your stuff.

Yes and no. I know what I know, and speak of what I know. I'm happy to be disabused of my wrongful notions, if wrongful they are. Despite the comments of the chap below, I am not making "an argument from authority" and stating that I'm the authority. I'm simply stating my beliefs forcefully. I know it's a habit of modern writing to pad things out with qualifiers and obscure latinisms, so that we say, "it is in my opinion a not unijustified assertion that," instead of "I think," - but I don't consider that useful, or honest. In fact, "I think" can be done away with, too. If I'm saying it, then obviously it's what I think.

Anyway, "argument from authority"? No. I just mentioned my university experience to foil the usual argument one gets in these matters of, the person puts on a smug smile and says, "well, obviously you haven't studied it, or you would have a greater appreciation of its genius."

I myself am just a dilettante in the field, and not competent to refute your argument.

Again with too much humility. That might be fair enough if we were talking about biochemistry or something. But reading and roleplaying are things which don't require a university degree in to do well.

Human nature is to search for pleasure. If literary nitpicking of roleplaying games is enjoyable, then why forbid it on this forum?

I'm not "forbidding" anything. I've no right to, nor would I forbid it if I did have the right, say, being a moderator on the forum. I'm merely saying I really cannot see how such a discussion is productive, or at all relevant to the concerns and needs of the vast majority of roleplayers.

How do you view mr. Walton's stated preference for "high art roleplaying", to state it simply?

How Mr Walton plays is the business of him, and his players. None of my business. If he can manage "high art" in his game, though, I'd be rather surprised. I've seen a lot of aspirations to high art, but not much achievement.

Do you really think that no good as ever been gained from either literary or roleplaying theory?

Not "no good." But very little, certainly. Let's take the simplest roleplaying game theory - the GNS structure. How many game authours, since the advent of that theory, cite it as an influence on their game design? Let's limit ourselves to regularly published authours.

Not unpublished authours, because that's every GM who's ever run a single session in their life - as soon as you write a page of notes for a session, you're an "authour." And not web-page published authours, since, hell, even I'm one of those, that takes no particular ability.

So, how many published authours say, "geez, I'm glad I read about that GNS theory, without that, I'd not have been able to write such a good game!"

Now, extrapolate that number (small or zero) up to the "higher" levels of literary and game theory.

Do you think that the successes of Forge designers (if someone is willing to place himself under this flag) are explained by individual talent or similar unrelated factors alone, or would the theoretical approach advocated by many here have something to do with it?

That's something you'd have to ask the individual designers. I would suggest your limiting yourself to those who've published and sold works. As I said before, anyone can post stuff up on the web, or make a photocopy and give it to his friends; that's not "publishing" in the generally-accepted sense of the term. I mean, if I go to a party, someone asks me what I do, and I say, "writer," and they say, "oh, what have you published?" and I give them a web address... well.

Similarly, is there really no literature you like that evidently conforms with some or other theory?

It's well to note here that the distinction between literary theory and literary criticism is false. Without a literary theory, literary criticism is limited to, "well, I didn't like it." The theory determines the criticism, or analysis.

Now, the thing to note about literary theory here is that most theories are ex post facto. Someone writes a work, and someone else, afterwards, comes along and says, "aha! Well, if we view this in terms of X, what the writer means is Y."

Literary theory developed in its modern form from the 1920s onwards, mainly as a result of Modernist writers like James Joyce and Wyndham Lewis. Basically, these guys wrote things that were almost incomprehensible to most people. When asked what it was all about, they responded that you hadn't read the book properly. So, people went back and read the books, and argued amongst themselves what it was all about. To back their arguments, they developed theories. The natural human tendency is to try to develop all-encompassing theories, good for all times, all places, all situations.

So, some argued their theories in terms of Jugian archetypes, "aha! here is the Judging Father! And there is the Nurturing Mother! And oh, look, here's a Flood." Others argued their theories in terms of cultural theories becoming prevalent at that time, patriarchy, rites of passage and so on. There were zillions.

Of course, these theories were all about obscure writing. There's rather few literary theories about Robert E. Howard stories of Conan or Kull the Conquerer, just the occasional footnote in a feminist literary theory, "and this is well-demonstrated by the objectified depiction of women in the stories of Howard."

So, literary theory doesn't really go in the sequence: 1. Make Theory. 2. Produce writing. What it is, is, 1. Read something hard to understand. 2. Argue about what it means.

Now, in science, theories can produce good science, because you take the theory, see if it applies to situations other than those of the first experiment. Whether it succeeds or fails, you learn something.

But in science as well as literary theories, what can happen is that people get so fond of their own pet theories that they ignore all evidence to the contrary. It's happened many times in science, and happens even more often in literature. The difficulty in both science and literature come when the "evidence" is not obvious, and must be inferred, viewed only indirectly. In literature, this is almost always the case.

We also encounter the logical conclusion of cultural relativism (the idea that all cultural values and practices are "good", viewed in terms of that culture, and that there is no "objective good or bad.") This is that the meaning is not inherent in the text, and that we cannot even take any notice of what the authour themselves says about the meaning of the text. Because of the existence of the subconscious, it might be saying something he didn't want it to say consciously, but it slipped through unconsciously. Or, it might mean one thing when an adult male of caucasian race and christian background reads it, while it means something entirely different to, say, an old black woman who's a Scientologist.

Now, that's all true, more or less. But what it boils down to is, "the same words can mean different things to different people." Well, duh.

I've seen writing by prominent literary theorists. And, really, you have to be a literary theorist, and a particular student of their theories, to know what they're talking about. It's the equivalent of Tolkien writing a story in elvish, his made-up language. Perhaps his greatest fans will learn elvish just to read it, and they'll tell us it was worth the effort. However, most people aspire to being widely read, rather than just by a few fanboys, or a few doctoral students who have to read your tripe to make sure you don't mark them down on your thesis.

Scientists take their theories, and explore them further in their labs or out in the field. But not all scientists are Edisons and Watsons and Cricks. Many are Ponds and Fleischmans, thinking they've discovered something, and then finding they haven't. Here literary theory parts ways with science, because scientific theory is independantly verifiable. If it's true for me in my lab, it'll be true for you in your lab.

But the genius of literary theory is that it specifically states - in cultural relativism mode - "if you think it is not true, then it is not true for you. But if you look at it my way, then you will see its truth." That means the theory is true, even when it isn't. Or rather, everything is true, and nothing is true. I don't consider that to be a particularly productive insight into our world.

But let's set that aside, and suppose that literary theory is as valid and useful as scientific theory (which has its limitations, get me on that topic and I'll be ripping into science!) Well, you must admit, there are good scientists, and bad scientists. Some who advance science, and some who just potter around. And you can be a good scientist (theory), and be a hopeless engineer (practice). Contrawise, you can be an excellent engineer (practice) and not much of a scientist (theory).

Let's suppose that literary theory is not divided and obscure. Does it occupy the same place in relation to writing, as does scientific theory to engineering? Theory to practice? No, it doesn't. The place we're ascribing to literary theory is actually taken up by grammar, logic, and rhetoric. That is by the ability to express oneself making sense grammatically (a very wide tolerance, here - atrocious grammar can be quite understandable), logically (effect follows cause, etc) and beautifully.

Literary theory doesn't have anything much to say about grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Literary theory doesn't tell you how to write well, or interestingly. It tells you how to play with language, "memes", and themes in a very self-conscious and deliberate manner. Or rather, it tells you why you should play in such a way.

Literary theory and writing, or scientific theory and engineering, are different kinds of thinking. Using the terms of logic: Logical method: Analysis and synthesis; logical problem types: Convergent and divergent.

Analysis cuts things up into pieces which are easier to understand on their own than all together, like a dissection of a corpse. Synthesis brings things together. Theory is analytical; practice is synthetic.

Some people are good at analytical thinking; some are good at synthetic thinking. It's rare people are good at both.

Convergent problems are problems which have an exact solution. If 1 + X = 3, what does X equal? There's an exact solution. Divergent problems are problems which do not have an exact solution. A man balances on a tightrope in the wind. He sways this way, then that, but has to keep moving - balancing is a divergent problem.

Now, theories tend to be convergent problems in their formulation. There is a Final Answer - or we assume there to be one, and act accordingly. But writing is a divergent problem. There's no Final Answer. There's no one single way to write which is equally good in the eyes and minds of all people for all time. And so the writer does many drafts of their work, trying to make it better all the time. A divergent problem.

Some people are good at convergent thinking, and some people are good at divergent thinking. They're different skills, or abilities. Being good at one doesn't necessarily make you good at the other. Einstein may have been a brilliant theorist, but he still didn't know how to change the battery in his car.

In-depth knowledge of theories can, in principle, assist in the practice of things. However, this only applies in the case where the theories are generally agreed upon as "true." Which literary theories aren't. Literary theorists are like socialists - they spend most of their time arguing with each-other.

And if so, do you know that this relationship is coincidence, or could it be that such a writer would have learned such a theory and used it to a good result?

As noted above, I have yet to see any writer, other than a full-time academic literary theorist, ascribe the success or quality of their published writing to any literary theory.

For example, when I say that "The themes of Lord of the Rings are predicated on a christian morality, as opposed to pulp fantasy, inspired by largely nietzchean zeitgeist." I'm stating something immensely useful for my own understanding of the book and history of fantasy literature, and possibly for others' as well. However, there's no way I could have said the above sentence without the work of aesthetic theory.

Actually, I believe there's definitely a way to say such a thing without the work of aesthetic theory. If you know about Christianity, and you have read Conan stories, and then gone and read Tolkien, or vice versa - you'll be able to say, "hey, JRR obviously basically liked Jesus' ideas, but RE Howard wasn't so keen. JRR liked noble chivalrous types; Howard liked 'em rough."

It's not a particularly profound insight into either writer's works, and it's one we can have with absolutely no aesthetic theory at all.

The question: are you really of the mind that nothing is salvageable, that terms like "genre", "theme", "plot climax" and "symbol" are useless intellectual grandstanding?

No, I'm not of that mind. But I am of the mind that the "deeper" the "insights" into a piece of writing, the less you find they're "objectively true." For example, a deeper "insight" into Tolkien is that Sauron is Hitler, or possibly Stalin. The One Ring is enriched uranium. It represents absolute power, and some believe it can be used for good, but others are of the opinion that power corrupts, and it will inevitably be used for evil; better to cast it into the fires of Mt Doom.

This interpretation was presented to Tolkien, and he violently rejected it. Of course, literary theory tells us that he could be denying it, but it could still be true. He just didn't know he meant it. And in any case, that the writing has a meaning separate from that which the writer intended. It has whatever meaning we choose to ascribe to it.

I'm certainly not rejecting basic things like plot and climax. I'm not a complete fool, you know!:)

Regarding deep study of a piece of writing as opposed to literary analysis, could you explain the difference a little further?

By "deep study," I mean,
- reading it thoroughly, as opposed to scanning over it for the basic plot and characters; and
- studying up on the setting of the writing, if that setting is obscure to you.

So, if I read a novel set in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, it might make more sense to me if I know that Spain had a Civil War in the 1930s, and who were the protagonists, etc. I'm speaking of knowledge of facts associated with it.

Whereas literary analysis, well, "analysis" means cutting it up. It means picking up the cut-away pieces and saying, "well, taken by itself, this piece looks like something different." You get quotes out of context, and deliberate misunderstandings, and you throw in a few obscure latinisms and faculty-specific genre; and in this way, you can say banal things and sound profound.

About literary criticism as science: I'm not American, so I don't have any real certainty of the terminology.

Nor am I American, for which I thank god every day. I mean, they live in a republic, the poor fellows! I'm Australian.

In American discourse I've come to learn that your schools teach to consider only so-called hard sciences as science proper, with the other academic disciplines as some kind of frauds.

That's the teaching of Australian scientific institutions, also. And of course it's entirely wrong.

The question: is there a greater point in your considering literary criticism "not science" than the fact that American use indeed doesn't seem to include it? Should I draw some conclusion from criticism not being science?

The conclusion you should draw - forgive me for not being clearer earlier - is that literary theories often present themselves as science does: "this is the Final Answer, based on the Facts."

In actual fact, all of science is a divergent problem. There are no "laws"; there's simply models that fit the phenomena. No model is "true." Some models fit some data well, other models fit other data well.

For example, we have a model of the sun's apparent movement across the sky. Suppose my model is that the sun moves around the earth. Now, that model is good enough, if all I ever do is wonder when the sun will rise tomorrow. But if I want to navigate on the seas across the world, I find that model doesn't work so well; and so I come up with the model that the earth goes around the sun in a perfect circle. That works pretty well, until I build a spacecraft and go to the moon, and find I miss it by a few thousand kilometres. My model of orbits being perfectly circular didn't work for that purpose. So I come up with a new model, of elliptical orbits. And so on.

Each model is "true" in that it works for that purpose, and it fits the available data. But as further data comes in, we come up with a new model that fits the new data. But it's perfectly all right for people to go on using the old model if they want to. So long as the guy who has the "sun goes around the earth" model doesn't try to navigate the spaceship, there's no problems at all.

The mistake that scientists make is that they run out of data, and then they often confuse, "fits all the available data", with "fits all the data, so it must be objectively true for all times and all places." That is, the scientist pretends to complete objectivity.

Now, the liberal arts don't have this method. They don't believe in objective truth. They say, "if you believe it, then it's true for you." And so the scientist, who believes in objective truth and thinks he's found it, says, "baloney. If it's true for me, it's true for everybody - otherwise, I am mistaken in my measurements."

But there's a kind of liberal arts academic who presents their stuff as "scientific." All they really know about science is that people respect it, and people respect it because the scientists say "it's objectively true." And of course, "objectively true" means, really, "the Word of God." Now, liberal arts types, scorned by scientists, naturally would like to turn around and say, "oh, er... no! We find objective truth, too!"

Both scientists, and liberal arts academicians, make claims that their fields can't support. But the distance between the claims of the liberal arts, and those of the scientists, compared to the messy confusing headache of the divergent reality, well... the liberal arts academicians are further away from their claims of the Final Answer, the convergent solution.

When I start talking about N-manifolds as a mathematician, what words should I use instead? How is use of terminology different in literary science from other fields?

It all depends on whether you want to be understood by non-mathematicians or not.

All of us use jargon. Chefs use pretentious french names for stuff. Karate uses japanese. Lawyers use latin, as do doctors. Lovers use special code phrases and so on.

Now, language can be used to include, or it can be used to exclude. If used to include, I use it in such a way that my current audience can understand me. If used to exclude, I use it in such a way that my current audience won't understand me. I use language as a wall between Specialist Me and Ignorant Masses.

I believe that often this is quite deliberate. Our society favours the Specialist. We're often told, in response to expressed worries about this or that, "ah, you don't understand, since you're not an economist/geneticist/general etc" It's not permitted to doubt the Specialist, except by throwing another Specialist at him. And certainly you are not permitted to question the very validity of his speciality. "What?! How dare you! I have studied this for years..."

Now, part of protecting the position of the specialist is that he uses obscure language and jargon. What's an N-manifold? What words do you use to explain an N-manifold to non-mathematicians? If you say, "ah, but there are no other words for it," then you cannot blame me if respond, "okay, then your work is useless, then." Perhaps I am wrong; but I cannot be blamed for my wrong opinion if you fail to clearly explain the reason for it.

Now, some jargon is reasonable, in all fields. But a lot is just tacked on to make banal, obvious, or reprehensible stuff sound profound or important. So, okay, your "N-manifold" is convenient shorthand description for a complex concept, which it would be tedious to say again and again. It's a complex idea for which there is no quick and simple explanation.

But then there is, "the praxis of contemporaneous feminist dialectic", which means, "what feminists are talking about nowadays." But the first is exclusive; it's language that shuts people out, and gives an air of authority to the person speaking. And that's exactly what it's designed to do.

So, abolish jargon? No. Consider the purpose of the word. If its purpose is purely to simplify - as in, mention casually a short word for a long topic (N-manifolds) - then it's good, keep it. But if its purpose is to complicate or obscure ("praxis" for "method", "dialectic" for "discussion", etc), then, I say, throw it out.

Why do you think this fraudulent culture has developed?

So that dumb people can look smart. Nowadays, with widespread education, there's a lot of people with qualifications. But there's no more naturally bright or original people than there used to be. Most are just unimaginative schlubs like me. There's three aspects to being smart: being smart, getting paid a lot for it, and getting adulation. You can get two out of the three just by faking it. Jargon, excessive specialisation - they're part of faking it.

why is it that literary science cannot give us anything, when clearly the exact same terminology and concepts are used all the time?

Because literary theory has given so very, very little to literature; so I would not expect it to give anything to roleplaying games, either. I say again: understanding of the theory does not necessarily make good practice; and in any case the theories are all argued over incessantly, so which theory should I base my writing on?

I would argue that it has this value for writing roleplaying games: if, in your development of your literary theory, you develop your own independant ideas, without slavishly following some tosser in an English Lit. Dept somewhere, the you will practice the faculties of analytical and logical thought. Analytical and logical thought will not help you in writing, which is a synthetic, illogical process, but will help you in editing, which is an analytical, logical process.

I've myself always construed a really close relationship for literature and roleplaying, even when the game is very "gamey". Is there really no similarity between the two?

Like I said, I believe there's a similarity between the two: literary theory is not much help at all in composing either one of them.

All that said, people are taking this personally - as people do, when you question the validity of their specialities, whether that speciality is for interest or career - and so it is perhaps better continued, this discussion, via private email: kas@alphalink.com.au

[ChefKyle]

If you go back and read the thread, you'll note that Eero occasionally uses the phrase "literary theory" rather loosely to refer to any form of theorizing about written language.  No one has mentioned literary criticism except you.  

As I noted above, the distinction's a false one. There's no criticism without a basis for criticism, a set of values by which to judge it; thus, the theory. And the criticism is related to the analysis; and without analysis, well, there goes the theory.

But I am confused as to why you would think that "interpretation" and "meaning" entails literary criticism per se.  

Criticism, analysis, development of theory, they all come to the same thing: picking it apart to see how it works. Criticism is to say, "it works well/badly", analysis is to say, "this is how it works," and theory is to say, "it works because -" They come to much the same thing.

Academic study, in most disciplines, is analytical.  The idea in biology is to understand life, not produce it as such.  

And it's entirely fair enough to want to understand things. But an analysis assumes that a theory may be developed (unless the analysis is deconstructionist), and a theory assumes that there's an underlying structure which isn't immediately obvious; that this structure is discoverable, meaningful, and useful to know about.

The difficulty with literary analysis nowadays is that it leads to different theories. It's all rather reminiscent of the three men standing in the dark feeling an elephant; the one feeling the trunk thinks it's a snake, the one feeling the leg thinks it's a tree, and the one feeling the tusk thinks it's a rhinoceros. Each focuses on the part they "see"; and each "sees" the part he wants to. It's for this reason that the last chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses can be seen as "patriarchal oppression", and "female empowerment" at one and the same time.

I think it was Stendahl who said that a novel is like a well - when you look at it deeply enough and long enough, your eyes adjust to the dimness, and you end up seeing a reflection of yourself.

You have chosen a singularly unfortunate example.  Umberto Eco, a – uh oh – literary critic and semiotician, is on record as having written both Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum as semiotic allegories.  

Yeah, I knew that. And lots of people read it and said, "huh?" In Name of the Rose he at least had the good sense to put a decent story in it. So that you didn't need a degree in medieval history and semiotics to understand the thing. Later novels of his were more obscure. If you want to be obscure, that's fine. Maybe you'll win the Nobel Prize for Literature, like Jim Joyce. But probably you won't.

This is the sort of thing one discovers from deep study.  If all the reader knows is medieval history, the reader will say "huh?" as he or she turns the pages.

Which is to say that there are degrees of study; layers of a story, if the writer has troubled themselves to develop layers (like Eco) to it. Most writers don't. But if a writer does develop layers to his story, he ought to understand if not all of his readers descend through the various circles of his personal Inferno with him. The further he goes, the more he leaves behind, until all he has left is Judas, above his head in ice.

Look, ma, an obscure allegory. I'm special!;)

You're trying to discard analytical work on the grounds that it can't help gaming, and your primary argument is that meta-gaming doesn't help.  But if you really think that, you will find yourself in a small minority here.  After all, RPG theorizing is precisely the point in, let's say, the RPG Theory Forum.

No, my primary argument is not that meta-gaming doesn't help gaming; but that meta-meta gaming doesn't help gaming. Literary theory isn't meta-gaming. It's not talking about gaming; it's talk about talking about gaming.

Ultimately, I think you're trying to make an argument from authority.  You're trying to snow your readers into thinking that you are very knowledgeable.

As noted above: no. You're confusing a forceful statement of a belief with the presentation of that belief as the Word of God, or similar. The two aren't the same. Just assume every sentence has a silent suffix, "I think." I don't bother restating it all the time. Obviously it's what I think, or I wouldn't say it.

I'm as knowledgeable about literary theory as most around here commenting on this forum, and in any case, you don't have to be knowledgeable to smell baloney, and spot jargon used to obscure; which is what the bulk of literary theory is.

But I don't think it's reasonable to derail a theoretical thread about meaning by announcing that all theory about meaning is inherently worthless, as you know because you studied it at university.

I didn't say that. I said that literary theory had little or nothing to contribute to running or writing a game. I didn't say all theory about meaning is inherently worthless. Here's my theory on meaning: I mean what I say, and I say what I mean. Neither more nor less. Good enough?

[pete_darby]

No, my primary argument is not that meta-gaming doesn't help gaming; but that meta-meta gaming doesn't help gaming. Literary theory isn't meta-gaming. It's not talking about gaming; it's talk about talking about gaming.

Dude, that's what we're trying to do, talk about gaming by using these critical theories. That includes the meta gaming, looking at the whole thing as a social pastime. If we're analysing the meta-gaming too, you may call it meta-meta-gaming, or you may get all wacky and just call it analysis.

You, as far as I can tell, are talking about how useless these theories are for any damn thing. Fine, thanks for your comment, but you do know that it's looking like you're picking fights for the sake of picking, don't you?

Here's my theory on meaning: I mean what I say, and I say what I mean. Neither more nor less. Good enough?

Nice, concise, and manages to add nothing to any discourse on meaning. It's as if you've come into a debate on cookery, said "I cook food, and food's what I cook," and sat back smugly as if you've trumped any discussion on techniques, tastes and methods of cookery.

I also hope you don't mean that, as it would make role-playing very difficult, unless you never lapse into character identification or otherwise indulge in actor-stance. If when you say "I attack the orc with my broadsword," you really mean you, chefkyle, are attacking a fictional monster with a real broadsword, I'd be worried. Please consider that language is slipperier than you imply, and consider that those analyzing just this sort of communication may be acheiving something useful.

As for me, I'm finding the apllication of these theories on semiology, construction of meaning, and especially new developments in ritual theory, a damn sight more useful to the practice of playing RPG's than they are in the production, especially, of literature.

And as for the implied argument that not aesthetic theory ever made anyone rich... tell that to the brit art practitioners. A whole movement almost entirely arising from art theory, the top practioners of whom are doing very well out of it indeed. But if you keep implying that commercial success is the only benchmark for assessing artistic merit... again, I think you're talking to the wrong crowd round here. Have a look at some of Ron's comments about the difference between the RPG market and the RPG hobby, the latter of which is, as I'm sure you know, still using products that were not "commercially succesful" in actual play long after they went out of print, while hundreds of high selling new RPG prodcuts are used only as reading material, not gaming material.

So, chefkyle, how do you assess the merit of a role playing session, or product if you prefer? It probably deserves a new thread, this one's too clogged already, imho.

Oh, and prefacing personal comments with "in my opinon" and "I think" is a nice way of separating opinion from verifiable fact. I find it very useful to stop me coming off even more pompous than I already do.

[Jonathan Walton]

Guys, this thread should have been closed a while ago.  What you're discussing has no relationship to the original topic.  Personally, I find it impossible to respond to Kyle because he refuses to ackowledge that other people might find meaning in something he considers to be worthless.  He thinks that's silly and that it should be immediately apparent to every enlightened individual that such things are worthless.  I don't think there's any way I can respond to that, since I'm obviously not one of the enlightened.

If you want to discuss the relative worth of incorperating other branches of theory or criticism into analysis of roleplaying, start a new thread.  Don't do it here.  Please.

[ChefKyle]

You, as far as I can tell, are talking about how useless these theories are for any damn thing. Fine, thanks for your comment, but you do know that it's looking like you're picking fights for the sake of picking, don't you?

It may look that way. If so, I apologise. All I mean to suggest is that there's a point beyond which analysis tells us nothing useful; that point is, like looking into the dark well, when you look so deeply, you see a reflection of yourself. Thus, excessively deep analysis of a text tells us more about the analyser than the text.

I wrote: "Here's my theory on meaning: I mean what I say, and I say what I mean. Neither more nor less. Good enough?"

Pete Darby retorted:

Nice, concise, and manages to add nothing to any discourse on meaning. It's as if you've come into a debate on cookery, said "I cook food, and food's what I cook," and sat back smugly as if you've trumped any discussion on techniques, tastes and methods of cookery.

I apologise, I expressed myself badly. When I said, I mean what I say and I say what I mean, I was referring to what I myself had written. Others had read into it more than I'd actually said. I was simply saying that you have to read a piece of writing carefully to ensure it says what you think it does.

Which is a difficult thing. In normal human face-to-face communication, we have many non-verbal cues. Context is all-important. If I write a story, and put,

Jim walked up to Bob, and said, "hey, you sonofabitch!"

then there's not enough information for the reader to determine if they're friends or mortal enemies. Now, when you read that line, you may have had a mental image of Jim raising his fist to Bob with anger in his eyes, or you may have had a mental image of Jim giving Bob a bear hug with a smile. The image that comes to your mind when you read that line says nothing about the line itself - it says something about you. Are you a person who hears violent words, and assumes physical violence will follow? Or are you a person who engages in macho insult-play with his friends? So, your reading of the meaning of that single line tells us more about you, than the writer, or the line.

Now, if I'm writing a story or saying something, is it my responsibility to express myself clearly (to put whether Jim smiles at Bob or not)? I think it is. If we were in Asia it would be different. When two people speak in the Occident, it's different to when two people speak in the Orient. In the Occident, the onus is on the speaker to make himself clear. In the Orient, the onus is on the listener to understand the other fellow. This is the reason that Occidentals often perceive Orientals as sly and sneaky, or occasionally as stupid (since they nod and say, "yes," even when they don't understand; "yes" doesn't mean, to them, "I understand," but "I am listening.") It's the reason that Orientals often perceive Occidentals as bluff and obnoxious.

This is the reason that Buddhist philosophy reads as vague and paradoxical to western readers, and European philosophy reads as dull and obvious to asian readers. The first assumes that the reader will be making a huge effort to understand; the second assumes that it's the writer's job to make it easy for the reader to understand what he's writing.

Now, I'm an Occidental, living in the West, writing for a Western audience, here on this message board. I don't expect to find anyone from Beijing or Dehli or Ulan Baator. Thus, I try to write clearly, and express my meaning well. Of course I don't do this perfectly, but I do make that effort.

To say, "I mean what I say, and I say what I mean," is simply the epitome of the western method of communication.

It's for these reasons that I have the perspective that a piece of writing shouldn't need deep analysis to understand it. It should be plain to a person reading it. Of course a piece of writing may have layers of meaning. The Diary of Anne Frank gains meaning if you've read of the conditions of Auschwitz, where she ended up. But it shouldn't be necessary to know everything before reading a text. If there are layers of meaning, then the first layer, at least, ought to be transparent to an average reader of your target audience.

For this reason, because of my western cultural background, when I write, I try to say everything I mean, and to mean everything I say. You don't have to get a shovel and push aside the dross of jargon to get at my meaning; you don't have to dig deep into thousands of years of history or decades of dialectic and praxis and paradigm. I will tell you if Jim and Bob are friends or mortal enemies. I won't be deliberately vague about it, or throw in pretentious latinisms to obscure the fact that all I'm talking about is one guy being friends or enemies with another.

None of this in any way precludes roleplaying, etc.

As for me, I'm finding the apllication of these theories on semiology, construction of meaning, and especially new developments in ritual theory, a damn sight more useful to the practice of playing RPG's than they are in the production, especially, of literature.

That's good, then. I shall be very interested to see what sort of RPG comes out of such theory. I have never seen an RPG developed out of such a theory, which then went on to be published and played at all. If you can manage it, I'll be very interested to see the results. Many games have no theory at all behind them, not even a theory of good binding for the cover.

And as for the implied argument that not aesthetic theory ever made anyone rich...

That wasn't what I said at all. "Implied argument" - I don't imply arguments. In fact, a major criticism of me here on this thread has been of my direct style, my bold statements. My arguments are explicit, not implicit.

I didn't say aesthetic theory never made anyone rich. I said that I didn't know of any published writer, aside from academic literary theorists who had attributed the quality of their writing to literary theory. And the academic literary theorists rarely produce anything read outside their field.

But if you keep implying that commercial success is the only benchmark for assessing artistic merit...

That would be stupid. I would then have to say that Jackie Collins and Tom Clancy are among the best writers in human history, which is obviously untrue. And noted above, that was not my implication at all.

There's not a direct correlation between the size of your audience and the quality of your writing. However, if nobody wants to read what you write, then that's not a hopeful sign about the quality of your writing.

Of course there are "target audiences." Every ten days I write a 6,000 word or more newspaper for a play by email strategic wargame. Thirty to forty people read it, and they think it's brilliant. But outside that target audience, perhaps only another five or six people are interested in it, former players, GM of other games, etc.

Now, I'm not going to print that up and try to hawk it to Penguin Classics. They wouldn't be interested. I realise the limitations of my writing. I realise that for a piece of writing to have wider appeal, it would have to be different to my newspaper. So long as I'm happy with that small audience, that's fine, why should I change my style? Likewise, so long as the academic literary theorist is happy with his audience of his doctoral students, and a few other academic literary theorists who'll tear his theory to shreds in favour of their own, that's fine, why should he change his style?

It's "quality", but is it widely read? I've assumed - rightly or wrongly - that the ultimate aim of rpg theory is to understand what makes a "good" rpg, to help us produce one. To produce one according to our target audience.

Any piece of writing I count a success if it is popular amidst your target audience. Not "high quality", but "a success."

If you aim to produce a hack'n'slash game and hand me something like Ars Magica, I would say that that's a quality game, but it is not going to be a success. You've failed to reach your target audience of hack'n'slashers.

Similarly, if you aim to produce a game which involves deep thinking, understanding of the medieval world, and high standards of character portrayal, and you hand me FATAL, well, that's definitely not a quality game, and you have also failed in your aim. If your aim in writing FATAL was to express your deep hatred of womankind, and share it with your adolescent friends, then you have succeeded in your aim.

There's a distinction to be made between quality and success. I don't mean commercial success, I mean, "widely read in your target audience." You've no obligation to have a target audience of "the whole world" (Jackie Collins, Tom Clancy), your target audience may be much smaller, like mine in my pbem. That's fine.

Now, when developing your game, and the theory behind it, you're going to keep in mind that target audience, yeah? So, for the target audience of FATAL, I need to research more rude names for "penis." For the target audience of Ars Magica, I need to research common myths and legends of the middle ages, to understand how the medieval peasant, noble, and clergy viewed the world. One kind of research helps one game, another kind helps another.

So, for each different kind of game, with each different target audience, there is a different kind of research and theory on which it's based. The question is: what kind of game do you expect to arise from literary theory or analysis?

Have a look at some of Ron's comments about the difference between the RPG market and the RPG hobby, the latter of which is, as I'm sure you know, still using products that were not "commercially succesful" in actual play long after they went out of print, while hundreds of high selling new RPG prodcuts are used only as reading material, not gaming material.

I'm well aware of that. I know plenty of GMs with piles of books they never intend to use; still more with books they'd love to use, but have never had the chance to. This is simply a factor of an over-serviced market. Supply is greater than demand. There's more games out there than there are gamers to play them.

So, chefkyle, how do you assess the merit of a role playing session, or product if you prefer?

Quite simple. As noted above, if it's popular with your target audience, then it's a success, and has merit for you. In other words, if you hit what you aimed at, good for you. The important thing is, what is the writer aiming at?

Oh, and prefacing personal comments with "in my opinon" and "I think" is a nice way of separating opinion from verifiable fact. I find it very useful to stop me coming off even more pompous than I already do.

Again, this is a matter of reading into a person's writing implicit meaning, when they only intend explicit meaning. What you're saying is, "if I wrote like this, what would I mean?" But the first step in any literary analysis is not to imagine what you would mean by the other person's words, but to imagine what the other person means by their words. To put yourself in his shoes, rather than compare your shoes to his, and try to pretend they're the same shoes, really.

But to return to the cental point: a bunch of guys sitting around reliving their real lives, and having to do the same things again, it isn't a Game, it isn't a Simulation, because both of those have choices, and randomisation of results. It's a Narrative. It's only got one of the three basic elements of a roleplaying game; so it's not a roleplaying game, it's just a bunch of guys sitting around talking about their lives. It doesn't matter how you analyse their words; it's still not a roleplaying game.

[ChefKyle]

Guys, this thread should have been closed a while ago.  

Why? Because someone disagrees with its premise? Because it drifts on to topics outside the original theme? Both of those are normal parts of conversation, and any message board is just another kind of conversation.

Personally, I find it impossible to respond to Kyle because he refuses to ackowledge that other people might find meaning in something he considers to be worthless.

When did I say that? I said they might find meaning in it, but that I couldn't see how that meaning would be productive of a good piece of writing. I said that such a discussion of semiotics would be intellectual masturbation - enjoyable, certainly, but not productive. In this, I am assuming that the whole point of theory, of RPG theory, is to lead to good practice, whether that "practice" be writing and publishing an RPG, or playing/running one.

He thinks that's silly and that it should be immediately apparent to every enlightened individual that such things are worthless.  I don't think there's any way I can respond to that, since I'm obviously not one of the enlightened.

Which is just another way of saying that "Kyle is stupid." I don';t haver to have a degree in English Literature to read that meaning in your words. It may be that I am a doofus. Educate me away from my ignorance. I may be stupid, and still be right. The biggest fool in the world can run around yelling at the top of his voice that the sun will rise tomorrow; that won't make it dark in the morning. I may be very intelligent, and still be wrong. In either case, I invite you to educate me, and tell me why I'm wrong.

I never said anyone was stupid. That has no bearing on the truth of their words, which is all that concerns me. I said that I could not see the value of excessive use of modern literary theory in relation to the development of a publishable roleplaying game.