What is the text in rp theory?

[John Kim]

Well, let's limit our cases here a little bit.  We aren't trying to solve all of semiotics.  When we are talking about RPGs, there are a few cases which we are talking about:

1) Rules: This is the printed rules text, typically accessible to everyone.  There may also be formal but unwritten house rules -- I don't think they need a separate category (i.e. it doesn't change much if they are written down or not).  

2) Public Background

3) Private Background:  For the GM, this could include secret notes, a published adventure.  I would tend to include non-written stuff as well, if it is firmly conceived.  For RPG purposes, the difference between mental notes and written notes is minimal IMO.  Similarly, for the players, this would include personal conception of character.  Again, this might be written down or it might just be conceptualized.  

4) Shared Play

Now, #3 has a whole bunch of subcategories.  i.e. If there is a secret that a player told the GM, is that different than a secret known only to the player?  What if it is shared between two players?  What about if the GM has a secret that he has written down in his notes but hasn't told anyone else about yet.  Depending on the purpose, these might have to be mapped out, and indeed it might be interesting to see people's reactions to these distinctions.  

My main point is that we have a limited case and can discuss it in this context.

[pete_darby]

John:

Thanks for that: it clarifies that when we talk about "the text", we have to be darn careful about which one we're looking at, and the intertextual reltionship between the various texts we're interacting with.

You see, no matter how far you go down the post-structuralist route, we're still going down the route of focussing on the relationship of reader to text, the construction of an intertextual space by the reader, and the infamous death of the author. Which puts the relationship between these theories and RPG's in play in a bit of a bind, because we have far more in common with the author than the reader.

Now, we can certainly look at published RPG rules / background / scenarios / characters as a text in the current lit crit context, and I'm sure there's much interesting to be said about that, but equally, in Christopher Kubasik's metaphor, there's much to be said about the musical qualities of saxaphones that can inform the study of performance, but it cannot replace the study of music with the study of instruments.

Now, if someone can point me to where Derrida etc address the actions of an author rather than a reader, that may hold more gold for us than reader-text centred lit crit. I get the feeling that the absence of this in modern lit crit is perhaps why I'll get better ideas for a theory of roleplaying from Stephen King "On Writing" than Derrida "Of Grammatology."

I think where we fell down in a previous thread was to run with the assumption that the text in question in RPG's was a combination of John's 1 + 2, with a distinction between elements of 3 created prior to play, which is text in this context, and elements of 3 created or modified during play, which would be intertextual elements to be lumped in with 4.

Now, in the discussion so far, if all we're interested in, like most current lit critters, is the relationship of players as readers to the pre-existing game elements as text, and the creation of a coherent intertext, then current lit crit holds.

But, I submit, that's not what I'm interested in at all. I'm interested in the production of a text by action of co-operative creativity. What is being produced in play, the intertext of the previous paragraph, is the text to be analyzed for the purpose of producing as satisfying a text for the authors as possible. RPG's , to liberate a phrase, contribute to the death of the reader. The author strikes back?

Going back to the music analogy... the previous thread classified interactive or independent in relation to the text, which I think we've classified in this context as John's 1 +2 +(3), and denigrating the created elements of the intertext (3) + 4 as somehow of lower quality, or at least lower interest for the purposes of study. To my mind, that's like studying Jaz performance purely in terms of the written score and arrangement, and discarding the performance as secondary.

[Caldis]

Going back to the music analogy... the previous thread classified interactive or independent in relation to the text, which I think we've classified in this context as John's 1 +2 +(3), and denigrating the created elements of the intertext (3) + 4 as somehow of lower quality, or at least lower interest for the purposes of study. To my mind, that's like studying Jaz performance purely in terms of the written score and arrangement, and discarding the performance as secondary.

I dont think anyone stated that the created elements were secondary or of lower interest just that some players had a stronger desire to have 1, 2, and 3, as solid reference material.   Using the music analogy having a musical jam session can be great but even with accomplished musicians they arent likely to come up with the entire Beethoven's 9th symphony on their own.  They need the reference material.

However not everyone likes the structure of classical music or in the case of rpg's the confines of restrictive source material.  They prefer the jam session where new things are created on the fly.

[pete_darby]

Hmm... I see orchestral recital has having the same relationship to Jazz as acting does to role-playing: both examples are that of the interpretation of an existent text (orchestra & acting) as opposed to the creation of a new text (Jazz & RPG's), albeit the latter may include existing textual objects to a greater or lesser degree.

But I'll accept I may have been projecting other folks treatment of textual object created in play, but it certainly seemed that they were being treated as being as of a lesser order than the pre-existing textual elements. Which, to my poor addled mind, seemed a product of an attempt to classify role-playing as the act of interpretation of, or interaction with, a pre-existing text (i.e. reading), whereas I see it as the act of creation of a new text, often, but not necessarily, incorporating existing textual objects (i.e. writing). Hence why I prefer to raid theories of the creation of texts, not the interpretation of them, to improve or classify RP.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

For whatever it's worth, my current thinking on the matter is 100% in line with Pete's.

Best,
Ron

[Jonathan Walton]

Interestingly, my "Fine Art" article for this week touches on a few of these issues.  Should be up sometime today or tomorrow.

There is something fundamentally different about the relationship between texts and performance in roleplaying, something very different from the relationship between musical notation and performing music, something unlike the relationship between scripts and theatrical performance.

In some ways, the relationship runs parallel to the relationship between literature and creative writing, or music theory/canon and the process of writing music.  Once can decide to write a detective novel or a minimalist string quartet, just as one can choose to play a cyberpunk game or Trollbabe.  Roleplaying isn't done according to some record of how the work should be performed (though there might be similarities with heavily-Illusionist games based on pre-written adventures), but the body of roleplaying work serves to guide/inform play and provide context.

Just my take, at the moment.

[Eero Tuovinen]

In some ways, the relationship runs parallel to the relationship between literature and creative writing, or music theory/canon and the process of writing music.  Once can decide to write a detective novel or a minimalist string quartet, just as one can choose to play a cyberpunk game or Trollbabe.  Roleplaying isn't done according to some record of how the work should be performed (though there might be similarities with heavily-Illusionist games based on pre-written adventures), but the body of roleplaying work serves to guide/inform play and provide context.

Hmm... Risto Ravela (Itse on these forums) actually wrote something about this in the new Alterations (our roleplaying fanzine in Helsinki). His take was that there is a specific and special reason for theory being important to roleplaying: unlike music, you cannot learn roleplaying by listening to the great masters of the art. There's no way to record the experience, and thusly we actually have only theory. There might be a difference in how it's represented, but all writing about roleplaying, rules and all, are actually just theory, essential to how we transfer the culture. You can be a great musician without learning chord theory or whatever, but no roleplayer can get to play with Gary Gygax, Ron Edwards and all the classics, and thus learn from example. He has to take the theoretical writings of those people (their rules texts) and try to convert them into something similar.

[pete_darby]

I don't know, Eero, I can feel this slipping away again... the fact is, you can learn the technical ability to write music from books of theory, but what I think you can't learn is the craft of creating good music. In fact, a study of great composers will only, ultimately, teach you how they wrote music, which can only inform your own learning of the craft of writing music... which can only be learnt by writing music, IMHO.

As role-players, we're in a bind in that we've got very few theoretical or didactic works on the basics of roleplaying, and the texts of good play are ephemeral by their very nature. It's like we're presenting musicians with a few motifs, a couple of snatches of melody, and some instruments, and expecting everyone to just "pick it up as they go along," assuming they'll either be led by an experienced improviser, or that the creation of music is natural, and that folks who can't do it right away "just don't get it."

But this is massively drifting from the subject of the rp text. Seeing as it looks like the last four posts are singing from the same hymn sheet, unless soemone's got a counterpoint, we're just in a mutual admiration society here.