Cargos & Cults

[robotnik2004]

This is from an essay on early D&D by Ron Edwards at The Forge. He's talking about the ferment of late 1970s, early 1980s D&D—the way the "red box" and the "white box" and the AD&D hardcovers and Dragon magazine and Chainmail and Arduin's Grimoire all kind of fit together, but not quite. Ten year olds in rec rooms across the continent trying to decipher these terribly organized, yet bizarrely compelling, rulebooks to recreate just whatever it was those bong-hitting grognards in Lake Geneva were on to. (The larger point of the essay is that early D&D had a lot more variety than people remember.)

Rob MacDougall stated it best: we are talking about Cargo Cults. Everyone knew about "this new great game." Everyone had on hand a hodgepodge of several texts, which in retrospect seem to me to be almost archeological in their fragmentary, semi-compatible but not-quite, layered-in-time-of-publication nature. Also, although newly-available texts obviously modified local oral traditions, they also arose from them, generating a seething hotbed of how-to-play instructions in print in other locations. Everyone had to shape, socially and procedurally, just what the hell you did such that "role-playing" happened. How did you know it worked? What did you do it for? All of it, from Social Contract right down to Stance, had to be created in the faith that it worked "out there" somewhere, and somehow, some way, it was supposed to work here.

Looks like my membership in The Cult of Ron is assured. I hope this doesn't damage my membership in The Friends of Jeremiah. :)

Comments

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

That is so perfect. From the ages of 12 to 14, I was a devoted Cargo Cultist. 2nd Edition kind of changed that.

[krustukles.livejournal.com]

Now you get to use the Sean Davidson line: "I think I said it best when I said..."

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

I think I will use that line. (Yoink!)

"If this is anybody but Sean Davidson, you're stealing my bit!"

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

As always Ron oversimplifies immensely and needlessly in order to advance his agenda. Nothing happened in the 70s that doesn’t happen with every Geek fad. Star Trek? Buffy? Farscape? Zardoz? Each has their collectives doing strange hermeneutical kabalistic works in groups all across the country. The internet made it more obvious and opened it to a lot more people, and thus changed the dynamic. There is no going back to the small sealed communities with very few outlets to other groups (don’t you remember how amazing your first con was before the era of the internet?) But I think the same thing that drove those small groups is the same geek instinct that drives Slash fiction. A comparison I’d be lynched for over at the Forge.

And you'll just have to redeem yourself by bringing yourself and your wife over to our house for dinner in the next week.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

And you'll just have to redeem yourself by bringing yourself and your wife over to our house for dinner in the next week.

If I'd known that was the punishment, I would've joined the cult ages ago. Count us in; at the moment, I think pretty much any night next week works for us.

...

There was a Zardoz fan community???