Fiduciary responsibility (split)

[ejh]

Holy cow.  I never realized that 'james_west' wasn't 'James V. West.'  Big brainshift reading that.

I have a small and tangentially related response at my gaming blog, which references a post on this topic by Ben Lehmann in his blog.

http://esotericmurmurs.blogspot.com/2005/06/ben-and-james-on-what-gaming-does-to.html

Summary: I have noticed one bad thing gaming did to me, and it wasn't about stance, it was about assumptions about reality implicitly and unintentionally conveyed by sim rules.

[Ron Edwards]

The above was split from fiduciary responsibility?, a thread from four years ago. Ed, be more careful about resurrecting old threads.

Discussion may continue, of course.

Best,
Ron

[pete_darby]

[transposed from old thread when I made the same mistake]

Gah! Clipboard ate the old post!


Basically:

Competetiveness, okay in good social environment as encouragement to excellence, bad in attempt to crap on friends

Bad things about RPG's:

1. Tendency to be limited to adolescent fantasy versions of problems & problem solving (kill things & take their stuff)

2. Insular socially normalizing environment.

3. Wide range of tools for social bullying, from my guy to rules lawyering and all points between

4. Possible tendency for players (as opposed to GM's) in participationist games to become purely reactive in game, and experience anxiety when asked to become pro-active. Added to points 2 &3, may influence behaviour outside play.

Just playing devil's advocate here...

[contracycle]

Summary: I have noticed one bad thing gaming did to me, and it wasn't about stance, it was about assumptions about reality implicitly and unintentionally conveyed by sim rules.

I agree with this strongly.  Especially in the case of adolescents, who are at that very time probably using games like RPG to experiment with their understanding of how reality works, the model of reality presented by a game has to be considered quite carefully, I think.

I agree that this sorta conceit of simulationism can be dangerous in this way.  But I would hope that an increase in design notes accompanying texts would mitigate the problem.  If the designer can discuss directly with the players what the express intent was behind a given rule, then the players would probably be less likely to interpret it as a normative description of the actual world they inhabit.

I also think Sim games should be more focussed on What they explore, rather than just the nebulous "world".  If we understand that this game explores topic X and generally only refers to topic Y distantly, we can understand that the discussion of topic Y is not as developed and therefore not necessarily accurate.

Edit: I also think this phenomon has already seen some tacit recognition in the number of occassions we see adult players with children specifically introducing their children to RPG in the form of a mentor-lead activity.  I think this is a good thing, arguably a really excellent thing if it sort of reproduces an experience between parent and child that is educative but also equitable, lead but not authoritarian, and about doing rather than passively absorbing.  There is an aspect of parent-child RPG that I suspect is quite similar to taking kids on hunting trips and personally teaching them about weapons and the wilderness, if you see what I mean.

[Mike Holmes]

I disagree across the board.

I agree with John Kim's comments on the page that, in fact, RPGs are "play" and as such teaching tools as much as anything is. The idea that skills are not unambiguously good is poppycock, no matter what whatshername says. Given that we define what is good and bad, that shouldn't be surprising. And, yes, my skill with classical guitar actually did make my punk playing better. Believe it or not. I wasn't as good a punk player as a classical player, but I wouldn't have been able to play punk at all, had I not known the classical guitar, would I? RPGs include penalties for getting outside your field of knowledge, and so cover these things handily.

I find it ironic that my own game was used as "proof" that skills are not unambiguous goods. Despite the fact that I allow them to be used against characters, I do not conclude that we should all cut off our feet so that we never trip again.

I find it odd that this is the one thing that the authors can bring up as modeling that might distort people's visions of reality. I've been playing RPGs since I was nine years old, and I have no difficulty understanding that Alignments are a crap concept. And never did have any problem understanding it (it bothered me so along with other D&Disms, that I burnt my D&D books at the age of 13).

Next I'll be told that I don't value life enough because I've been trained that there are evil people, by learning to hate orcs. Oh, wait...what's that you say? This isn't about Mike Holmes? Well, then, please point out the damaged individuals.

The whole thing is preposterous. See yourself as damaged if you like. You know, I'm not the sort who rails against every cause as being about victimism. But this is just going out of one's way to discover that they've been victimized. Just play and have fun.

Mike

P.S. Oh, and by way of disclosure, yes, I am a card carrying member of the CAR-PGa.

[ejh]

Mike, I presented the "skill as unambiguous good" thing as an example of one small way in which games had contributed to a part of my own worldview that I later rejected.

I also said that the parts of games which are liable to reinforce dubious notions about reality were the parts which seemed least fantastical, least controversial; orc-killing and alignment obviously don't fall into these categories; the "skill as unambiguous good" thing and the "nature vs nurture" thing (to cite the concerns of myself and John Kim as examples) do qualify.

Arguing whether or not I am *right* to reject the notion of skill as unambiguous good, and using discussions of guitar playing to do so, is surely irrelevant.  Obviously people may disagree on the truth or importance of these things.  (I have a hard time getting myself worked up about John Kim's concerns about Nature vs. Nurture, for example, and I am sure that my Langer-dervied ideas about learning and competence as chimerical are controversial or ridiculous to many.)

I just wanted to present, as an isolated data point for people to make of what they will, one particular way that I felt that games may have had what I later came to consider a negative effect on me -- without making any particular claims as to how strong this was, compared to other influences or my own natural inclinations and character.  I can't really claim to know those things.  And of course one may disagree that it *was* a negative effect -- if one thinks that it is better to regard knowledge and competence, as most people do, as unambiguous goods, then if games did reinforce those things in me it was a positive contribution which I have now sadly lost.

It's fairly trivial in the long run and if I hadn't accidentally resurrected a thread and brought it to prominence on the Forge (by failing to notice the old timestamps), I wouldn't really expect much conversation about it.  My apologies for pressing your game into service against your own weltanschauung. :)  Quite unintentional.

But when understood properly -- "I came at one point in my life to believe things which violate the fundamental assumptions of certain sim rules, and therefore regretted that those rules might have helped reinforce those assumptions for part of my life" -- well, there's not much to disagree with, is there?  It's a subjective self-report.  That really happened, even if you find it foolish or nonsensical.

[John Kim]

I also said that the parts of games which are liable to reinforce dubious notions about reality were the parts which seemed least fantastical, least controversial; orc-killing and alignment obviously don't fall into these categories; the "skill as unambiguous good" thing and the "nature vs nurture" thing (to cite the concerns of myself and John Kim as examples) do qualify.

But when understood properly -- "I came at one point in my life to believe things which violate the fundamental assumptions of certain sim rules, and therefore regretted that those rules might have helped reinforce those assumptions for part of my life" -- well, there's not much to disagree with, is there?  It's a subjective self-report.  That really happened, even if you find it foolish or nonsensical.

Just to clarify here -- I mentioned the notion of nature/nurture because it is an important political issue, for example in debates over gender and race.  However, I strongly disagree that such simulation rules should be considered a "danger" or "problem" because they have real-world meaning.  

I consider real-world meaning to be a good thing, or at least a tool that can and should be used for good.  Sure, simulation rules can get reality wrong, but the people who write them are generally concerned over that and will fix them given a chance.  I might disagree with what they say, but I consider the "solution" of cutting out such information from RPGs to be a cure far worse than the disease.  Speaking personally, I like my RPGs to have such information.  For example, while I have many issues with the core GURPS system, I think GURPS as a whole has done a lot of good with its well-researched worldbooks that introduce players to other cultures and periods in history.

[contracycle]

Next I'll be told that I don't value life enough because I've been trained that there are evil people, by learning to hate orcs. Oh, wait...what's that you say? This isn't about Mike Holmes? Well, then, please point out the damaged individuals.

Been on RPG.net lately?  IMO the walking wounded are in full force.

I have remarked in other contexts that I have concerns about what I perceive to be an outright didacticism in adolescent gaming that is often tied directly to personal abuse: X is the way it is and you are stupid for thinking otherwise.  The game can then become a contest of one-upmanship based on spurious appeals to "reality", a phenomenon with which we are well familiar.

And this has polluted the broader aspects of the hobby by the persistent and ill-informed arguments over for example the "realism" of gender based strength modifiers or some other reactionary garbage.  Yes, RPG can be and is used to reinforce dogmas I consider utterly poisonous, and they are precisely, as was said in the original post, due to the necessarily implicit assumptions in sim.

[groundhog]

Cause or effect?

Do games with poor, questionable, or plain silly social statements attract those who are damaged mentally, emotionally, and socially? Do they cause the damage?

I think as much as anything, people who will believe things like skin color having a correlation to intellegence or gender circumscribing available skills in real life are drawn to games that make such statements. They aren't being taught these things by the games. They are being taught these things by their families, friends, and neighbors. Unfortunately maybe their schools play a part. The games might reinforce some antisocial falsehoods the players already hold, but I doubt very seriously they start someone down those damaged paths.

[Marco]

Next I'll be told that I don't value life enough because I've been trained that there are evil people, by learning to hate orcs. Oh, wait...what's that you say? This isn't about Mike Holmes? Well, then, please point out the damaged individuals.

Been on RPG.net lately?  IMO the walking wounded are in full force.

Everyone is someone else's "damaged." You and me included. Thinking someone is stupid because they think differently from you and appealing to "reality" is more common in political debates than gaming.

-Marco

[Mike Holmes]

What Christopher and Marco said. Worse, this is like the whole TV causes violence debate. Well, maybe it does. Does that put the blame on the TV producers, however, or on the public who demand such TV? We can go around and around about this. But it seems to me that the only viable solution is for people to consider their gaming material critically.

The only other solution is censorship. Is that what we want?

In this way, RPGs are no different than any other medium.

Mike

[Ben Lehman]

Worse, this is like the whole TV causes violence debate.

Okay.

The rest of this stuff can be put down to opinion, but this statement is blatantly untrue.

There is a key difference between people protesting violence in video games and TV and people saying "Hey, let's look at how RPGs effect the lives of their players."  The difference is that no one, not a single god-damn person in this entire god-damn conversation over the course of four god-damn years, has called for censorship of any form at all.

It would be great if everyone who said "You can't take responsibility for your creativity!  That would be censorship!" took a long, hard look at where that idea is coming from, 'cause it ain't coming from me, or James, or Ed, or anyone else.

Y'all can write whatever games you want to write, and play whatever games you want to play.  Neither I nor anyone else is going to stop you by force.  If you're my friend, and I think that you are hurting yourself or other people, I would try to stop you, but that's it.

There are people in the world whose lives are negatively effected by their RPG play.  This is a given!  This is true about nearly everything, and I don't have a problem saying it.  Looking critically at our designs and trying to increase the positive effects (with which, I hope, we are all familiar) and maybe even decrease the negative effects is not an attack on you, your games, or anyone else.  Self-criticism and self-analysis are the only means to self-improvement, and if the "saying we could do something right means that you're saying we've done something wrong" message keeps going around, we're never going to get anywhere on this front at all.

I assume we are all interested in the same thing, here -- making and playing better games.  I simply cannot believe that looking at that from the direction of social context is necessarily wrong, bad, or censorious.

yrs--
--Ben

[Walt Freitag]

But it seems to me that the only viable solution is for people to consider their gaming material critically.

Self-criticism and self-analysis are the only means to self-improvement...

Why so much heat from so little friction? I don't see a whole lot of disagreement between your positions.

- Walt

[pete_darby]

The first  problem I have with suggesting that folks regard the content or effects of their games is that thing I mentioned in passing: that game groups are an insular, normalising environment with plenty of tools for bullying or punishing deviant opinions within the group.

In other words, they tend to reinforce the majority opinion of the group in a constant feedback loop. This is not, without great effort, condusive to critical appraisal of the effects of the group on the attitudes, etc of the members.

The second problem I have is that, inside such a group, suggesting everyone takes care to think about the implications and consequences of their playing could well be just another way of squashing dissenting voices and normalising the values of the group.

Finally, worrying about content and consequences while in the act of creation is the best way to generate creative block known to man.

Well, that was incendiary, wasn't it? The solution... I don't know. I have some ideas, but they're not as well formed as the above paranoia.

[Mike Holmes]

I assume we are all interested in the same thing, here -- making and playing better games. I simply cannot believe that looking at that from the direction of social context is necessarily wrong, bad, or censorious.

Here we are discussing it, Ben. Give me an example of somebody damaged by RPGs, and how it happened, and how it was the fault of the RPG and not the humans playing. How the game could have been improved such that the players would have been less harmed.

If you're just saying that RPGs can be constructed to teach, or better the players, I'm all for that idea. In that case we merely have a different view of what "damaged" means. If indulging in a bit of pointless entertainment is "damage," because I could have used the time more constructively, well, then color me damaged. But it's not what I'd call a reasonable definition of harm in any way. More importantly, nothing that needs fixing.

Mike