"Meaningful" RPGs?

[Jeremy Cole]

I think roleplaying continues to be held back by the fact that, born in a more materialist time, many of its authors equate money to success.  There is little art in most roleplay design exactly because respect seems to be attached to sales.  

The core of role-playing is participation.  When we play, we experience something that be recorded and transmitted to billions of people.  Rules themselves may be judged as a print product, but it the nature of play the rules produce that give the rules artistic merit.  If these sessions produce art, it is ephemeral.  This may be another restriction on the spread of the role-playing hobby.

I agree with you, I avoided the rules vs play thing because I was trying to really just concentrate on the comment in this thread about respect and meaning.  I really want to get at 'meaningful', artistic things, and respected things are not only 2 different things, they are very opposite things.

Perhaps you've hit the nail on the head for me though, precisely what is endearing to me in roleplay is that it a session is ephemeral, enjoyed in passing, entirely for its own sake.  When there is no other aim, no other ambition, it is art because it is useless.

Jeremy

[simon_hibbs]

I'd didn't think of "meaningful" as "having a message" but that's probably a better way to phrase it than I did.

I included Chess and Go because they are deep strategic (tactical?) games that seem (to me, anyway) to be taken seriously by the public at large. If you say "I play chess", (IMO, anyway) people think you're smart. If you say, "I play role-playing games" people seem to stratch their heads until you explain, "You know, like Dungeons and Dragons?" at which point you are safely in geek territory.

I think it's now pretty clear that by 'meaningfull' you mean something completely different from what I thought. Something more like 'populist', or 'mainstream'. On the other hand, I don't relay think of Chess or Go as being either of those, so I'm still a bit lost. 'Socialy acceptable' seems more on target.

I confess it's hard to contribute in an on-topic way when it's so hard to determine what the topic is.


Simon Hibbs

[Palaskar]

Wow, the thread didn't die. :-)

I think that for right now, the best or most interesting definition of "meaningful" here is "artistic" rather than "populist," as it's been throughly pointed out that although something populist may get you respect, it's usually not meaningful in the sense of being beautiful and lasting the centuries.

Just think of it as another form of being a writer, m'darling.

Thanks MK Snyder.

Along these lines, what sort of writing makes a good RPG? It seems to me that the creation of an interesting setting is the key here. Think of the universes of Babylon 5 or Farscape.

nipfipgip...dip wrote:

The core of role-playing is participation. When we play, we experience something that can't be recorded and transmitted to billions of people. Rules themselves may be judged as a print product, but it's the nature of play that the rules produce which gives the rules artistic merit. If these sessions produce art, it is ephemeral. This may be another restriction on the spread of the role-playing hobby.

The problem with universes in play is that they can be saddled with incomplete settings (B5's lack of ship-to-ship combat rules) or less-than-ideal systems (IMO, d20 was chosen for Farscape not because of its simulation of the show, but its wide audience.)

And of course, there's the Premise. How can you forget B5's "What do you want?" and "Who are you?" ;-)

So the key in "meanigful" RPG generation seems to me to include Premise, Setting, and System, with each complementing the others.