Are we as cool as Shakespeare?

[Erling Rognli]

I’ll take the liberty of starting out by quoting Shakespeare. It seems kind of appropriate, although painfully arty.

“What's in a name?
That which we call a rose
by any other word would smell as sweet”

In a way I hoped this discussion wouldn't arise here at the Forge, because I think it is somewhat of a sidetrack. Then again, I suppose it is inevitable, and in its own way important. The thing is that we've been arguing a lot about this in the Scandinavian community, and I sincerely think the argument itself hasn't made our games much better.

Firstly I'd like to present a hypothetical problem. Where would this discussion be heading if someone claimed that Nar-motivated roleplaying is art, but roleplaying motivated by the other CAs are not? I am confident that a heated and emotional debate would ensue, with lots of rethorics of mass destruction being fielded and a quick moderator-intervention required. What does this tell us about the term Art? If art was a descriptive term, which identified certain qualitative differences between different forms of human creative activity, there is no reason that such a statement should anger anyone. After all, we all agree that there are qualitative differences between different forms of roleplaying. Instead, my little thought-experiment indicates that art is another kind of term entirely. Art is simultaneously a statement of absolute value and a semantic quagmire of horrific depths; hence its application is a recipe for heated debate.

When the term art enters the stage, people tend to forget the relative ontological stations of words and what they signify. The stuff comes first; the words get tacked on afterwards due to similarity and, sadly, the power-games of wicked people. Art makes people forget this, and they lose themselves in some platonic dream where Artness is an intrinsic trait in certain phenomena.
In my opinion, a better phrasing of the question presented in this thread would be: Does it make sense, and is it useful, to call roleplaying Art, and to attempt to understand it as an art form?

I think roleplaying (as in actual play) in the long run will benefit from not striving for being recognized as a form of art, and that Art is not a useful perspective for understanding it.

Art and roleplaying are simply not sufficiently similar. The creative output of roleplaying is indivisible from participation and contribution. Reading a transcript of roleplaying is not roleplaying. Recalling a session is not roleplaying. Preparing for roleplaying is not roleplaying. The point of roleplaying is experiencing the joy of doing it, and nobody can do that for you. Roleplaying does not communicate anything out of its creative process, it creates nothing apart from the effects it has on those involved, and it involves no intention of doing so. You do not roleplay to change the world, and if you do you’ve chosen the wrong means. Roleplaying is a personal and private affair; art is a personal and public one. Now, one could of course point out that every player is communicating with all the others, being each others audiences and artists, but that is a similarity on the definitional, not the qualitative level, and therefore it isn’t very relevant. Although I dislike the current state of affairs within the world of art, I do not think they will be changing anytime soon. Art as a term is decreasingly coming to mean what I think it should, being defined in self-referential terms, the art world being increasingly occupied with meta-art concerns – the artists and the art-academics disappearing in a professional feedback loop. I do not think that the term art will be reclaimed, but maybe another word will arise to take the place it is vacating; human activities that create beauty, meaning and understanding on a non-scientific level. For now I think we are better off trying to understand roleplaying as a special form of creative social activity, to which the Big Model is an important effort, and resting assured in that roleplaying is every bit as important and valuable as we find it to be.

-Erling

[Person]

Art and roleplaying are simply not sufficiently similar. The creative output of roleplaying is indivisible from participation and contribution. Reading a transcript of roleplaying is not roleplaying. Recalling a session is not roleplaying. Preparing for roleplaying is not roleplaying. The point of roleplaying is experiencing the joy of doing it, and nobody can do that for you. Roleplaying does not communicate anything out of its creative process, it creates nothing apart from the effects it has on those involved, and it involves no intention of doing so. You do not roleplay to change the world, and if you do you've chosen the wrong means.

That said, do you consider games themselves (that is, the text to which players refer, rather than the shared experience) to have potential to be considered art? They seem at least capable of fulfilling all the criteria you mention.

[lumpley]

Yikes! I agree with Erling. The important question to me isn't "is roleplaying Art?" or even "is it useful to call roleplaying Art?" but "are we participating in society?"

We've been handling it really well so far, I think. Let's not mess it up with "what is Art?"

-Vincent

[Nathaniel]

We've been handling it really well so far, I think. Let's not mess it up with "what is Art?"

I think the question is unavoidable.  Unless you know what art is how can you know if something is art of not?

If art is a level of philosophy whereby we express emotions, premises, themes, theories, social criticism etc. through a creative act (one of my favourite defintions of art) then RPGs (atleast those games that do so) are art.

I don't think we're going to be able to have a meaningful discussion of whether or not RPGs can even be art if we don't define art.

Back to Lurk Mode...

Nathaniel

[TonyLB]

Yeah, but Vincent wasn't asking whether RPGs are art.

He's asking whether RPGs can produce insights or entertainment that travel beyond the immediate group that created them.

I'm not sure what my answer is on that... even his example that he can talk with his co-workers about how "As You Like It" was handled assumes a massive and hidden level of common ground between his co-workers and himself, most of it ground painfully into us in high school english classes.

For instance, he doesn't have to explain what a play is.  That doesn't hold true for RPGs.  If somebody is anything but totally ignorant it is so rare that we automatically label them "gamer" and decide that they are not part of the "larger society" that we're talking about.


EDIT:  I realized what was nagging me about Erling's argument that (to sum up, perhaps incorrectly) "The joy of roleplaying is in doing it, so an external audience is impossible".  Baseball.  Football.  Sports in general are clearly about the enjoyment and achievement of the people on the field, but they are also ripe for spectators to participate in that very enjoyment in a vicarious manner.

[Nathaniel]

Yeah, but Vincent wasn't asking whether RPGs are art.

From his first post:

"So, Forge people, is roleplaying an art form? Actual play, I mean: when we play, are we taking on those questions in any kind of a real, serious artistic way? "

He's not?

He's asking whether RPGs can produce insights or entertainment that travel beyond the immediate group that created them.

That could be part of the definition of art, don't you think?  Isn't that what art does?  I've had brilliant conversations with friends and relatives about themes explored during RPG sessions.  It helped that they were familiar with RPGs, but there were still discussions with people outside of the original game.  Just as people who are really familiar with literature, those really familiar with RPGs have a leg up on discussing it.  Those who are completely outside/ignorant of Role-playing games can still discuss it but only as much as someone can discuss a book they have never read (or someone who's completely illiterate).

For instance, he doesn't have to explain what a play is.  That doesn't hold true for RPGs.  If somebody is anything but totally ignorant it is so rare that we automatically label them "gamer" and decide that they are not part of the "larger society" that we're talking about.

I think the analogy to literacy holds.  Just because you try to discuss a novel with a person who can't read doesn't mean the novel isn't art.  Art doesn't have to be understood everyone to be art.

Nathan

[Nathaniel]

EDIT: I realized what was nagging me about Erling's argument that (to sum up, perhaps incorrectly) "The joy of roleplaying is in doing it, so an external audience is impossible".

Isn't it possible that an outside audience still might enjoy it?  Is it really "impossible?" or just not yet explored?  We can blur some lines between RPGs and Improv theatre if you like.  That might give us some insight into whether or not an outside audience might enjoy a comedic RPG.  ;)

Baseball. Football. Sports in general are clearly about the enjoyment and achievement of the people on the field, but they are also ripe for spectators to participate in that very enjoyment in a vicarious manner.

I don't see any reason why an RPG can't be the same way.  Just because it doesn't have that huge of a hollowing doesn't mean it couldn't.  Take for example, the "Replays" in Japan that apparently are popular enough that someone is publishing them.

Nathaniel

[lumpley]

Nathaniel, if I'm asking whether roleplaying is art, I'm also providing the definition, right in what you quoted. For purposes of this thread, you're doing art when you roleplay if you're taking on Shakespeare and Company's three questions in a serious way. "Serious" meaning "non-accidental," not "frowny."

-Vincent

[Nathaniel]

I think just as any visual or performance art can be *bad* and fail to address those three questions (which fits perfectly with the definition of art as a level of philosophy), so can an RPG.

Conversely, an RPG, like a visual or performance piece can succeed at asking those questions.  Infact, assuming someone is familiar enough with RPGs do want to observe, they can even be asked of non-participants.

I think that the distinction of to whom the questions are asked is important.  No piece of art requires that all of humanity be engaged by it.  Rather a subset of humanity is engaged by those questions.  The same holds true for an RPG.  Questions of meaning, morality and other premises are explored by humans in a creative act, either through the making of it or the observing of it (observing one another at the gaming table, or reading a "replay" after the fact).  

RPGs can fit the bill as "art" given the definition in the original post if they actually do involve meaningful integration of those questions into the lives of the participants and/or third party observers.

[ffilz]

I have watched people role play on occaision. Usually not a whole session though. On the other hand, I did watch a whole session as my introduction to RPGs. My friend got the original D&D Basic set for his birthday. I said who would want to play something with pen and paper and imagination only (no board, no scenery, no miniatures). After they quit for the night, I took the rule book and sat up all night reading it, and trying to understand it, and changing a couple rules. In the morning, I announced I was ready to run a game. I ran 2 or 3 complete games that weekend (it only took a few hours to get enough experience to exceed 3rd level afterall).

Of course I soon learned about using miniatures for combats (though these days I actually prefer counters). I'm very visual so I need the visual reference. I think what may have hooked me was the visual reference of the dungeon maps. Plus obviously it was a lot of fun. Oh, and as GM I didn't have to compete with the other players (my number one reason for not enjoying games).

Would I watch D&D on TV? I could see watching a recognized master. At Origins, I did actually spend some time watching Jonathan Tweet run D&D.

Frank

[Jonathan Walton]

For me, roleplaying is about creating an experience for yourself and a group of people that you want to share it with.  In this way, it reminds me of reading a good book aloud to a group of people (a tradition that we started at my college as "Storytime").  It's intrinsically personal and performance-based and based in the desire to communicate an experience with others.

There are plenty of groups like Shakespeare & Co who view their medium as essentially about communicating and discussing.  Shenandoah Shakespeare Express is similar, as is Bread & Puppets (though they're more interested in political discussions at the expense of others).  Personally, I view roleplaying in this way, as an opportunity to address, discuss, and communicate my own views on parts of the human experience that I find especially interesting and rewarding.  Honestly, I think you can tell in a person's writing or by watching them roleplay whether they view things in a similar fashion.  It's about whether, in general, they're consistantly appealing to higher ideals than simply whatever would be the most fun for themselves at any given moment.

We can certainly walk away from reading a great game or playing in a great session or even playing in a not-so-great session with another player who really "got it"... changed and touched in a way that Shakespeare has been doing to people (or, really, people have been using Shakespeare to do to each other) for hundreds of years.  I think, recently, I've wanted to step back from my demand that roleplaying "be art" and instead just think of roleplaying as a medium for whatever message you're interested in sharing, even if the answer is "no message."  This allows people who want to see roleplaying as art to have their way, while still making space for other points of view.

That said, what does Shakespeare have that roleplaying doesn't have?  Not a lot actually.  I many ways, I think online MMORGs are kind of the Shakespeare of roleplaying.  It's a fairly accessible medium that everyone can understand pretty quickly.  It enables people to get their feet wet in roleplaying and serves as an entry point for new players (arguablely), and also allows roleplaying to happen for a massive audience at the same time.  This is the audience that Rune and Everquest (the pen and paper RPGs) were trying to lure in.  Then again, I don't think most MMORGs have the kinds of high ideals that Shakespeare did, and they aren't normally intrested in addressing the big questions of existence (there is, however, Skotos' Castle Marrach, which I quite enjoyed my brief time in), but that could, concievably, happen at some point.

Then again, I think one of the neat things about roleplaying as a medium is that is seems to be more effective with a certain size group, though this obviously varies a bit with specific people, games, and play styles.

[Christopher Weeks]

He's asking whether RPGs can produce insights or entertainment that travel beyond the immediate group that created them.

That's too simple, though.  Ron and others hold up the Actual Play forum as the jewel of the Forge.  I think it's clear from our collective experience that insights and entertainment are both on regular offer there.  Doesn't that satisfy this question?

Chris

[eef]

So:  How to communicate what goes on in an RPG session to others?

I think reading raw transcripts of RPG sessions would bore me to tears.  If RPG-inspired fiction was the way, then we'd all be pointing at the Dragonlance novels.

What might work, and I think this is interesting enough that I've talked myself into getting a group together to try this, is to have each character keep a running journal of the campaign, then edit _that_ together into a publishable novel.

[Ben Lehman]

So:  How to communicate what goes on in an RPG session to others?

I think reading raw transcripts of RPG sessions would bore me to tears.  If RPG-inspired fiction was the way, then we'd all be pointing at the Dragonlance novels.

What might work, and I think this is interesting enough that I've talked myself into getting a group together to try this, is to have each character keep a running journal of the campaign, then edit _that_ together into a publishable novel.

BL>  Well, the Japanese seem to like exactly the raw transcripts but, more importantly, I ought to as why you think this is important?  I mean, it's not like movies are validated by their novelizations, or plays are validated by their movie forms.  Taking an artform out of its proper context generally causes it to suck.  Why should that be different with RPGs?  So therefore, it seems to me that the best way to tell a person about the contents of an RPG is to play it with them.

yrs--
--Ben

[ffilz]

There is some value to an edited transcript. I feel like I would be bored by reading a raw transcript.

But watching a game, now that's another story. And of course part of the art is the performance (and RPGs are a performance, even if the GM and players don't get up and dance around - just as much as a book reading is a performance). In fact, to me, the performance aspects are a lot of what is worth watching of other games. How does the GM handle pacing? How does he handle NPC voices? How does he convey mood? There's also a lot to be learned in how the players implement the mechanics. Watching a game where the players roll their attacks before they are called on can be an eyeopener to how to improve the pacing (not only does the combat run quicker, even if sometimes a player has to abandon their roll because they misunderstood a circumstance, but the players are more fully engaged since they have something to do while the previous player relates his results).

And you can learn more by watching sometimes than by playing (that's also one reason I enjoy watching people play a board game - since you are detached, you can watch what everyone is doing, and so long as you don't smirk etc. to blow someone's bluff, many players will show you their hand [and some will even point out their next play]).

Frank