Off the Wagon

[robotnik2004]

I've gone a couple of weeks without posting about RPGs, so I guess I can fall off the wagon now. Hell, I'm not even going to use LJ-cuts to spare the fainthearted. Watch me choke up your Friends pages with my geekiness! Moo ha ha ha haaa!

First, the following salvo from Ron Edwards, author of Sorcerer and Grand Moff Tarkin of the jargon-spouting indie gamers over at The Forge.

Why does role-playing culture not talk about its primary, defining activity? Oh, we talk about anticipating the experience, about buying and owning the games, and about playing them in the abstract, but rarely, if ever, about what we do while actually playing them—their content that we create. The literal act of role-playing is not a part of gamer culture, as we mainly discuss its trappings (the book, the system, industry gossip) rather than "what happened" during play.

Even when we do discuss the play itself, more often that not, the content is incoherent: "My guy did this, my guy did that," deep inhale, "and then he did this." Such talk may even turn into a litany of die rolls, punctuated by enthusiasm for what is, after all, a predictable outcome. ("And then, I got a 20!") If role-playing really were what it sounds like when described, it would be a worthless and pathetic thing.

This situation should change, if not in the overall culture, then at least in the experience of individuals. Role-playing is not perversion, we are not weird or fringe because we enjoy it, and frankly we should start behaving accordingly.

Comments, queries, cheers, jeers?

Comments

A Gamer's Manifesto.

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Ummm... it's a game. To pass time. To get together with some friends once in awhile and hang out.

Errrrrrr... it's a hobby. Gives me a chance to stretch my imagination, do some writing. Share my creativity with some friends while we eat pizza and have a few beers.

It's odd. I never hear folks who get together to shoot hoop, or have a few beers and shoot darts down at the pub, or get together and play poker-- dissect, analyze, and scrutinize the socio-ethnic-economic-anthropological reasons for their past-time. Even other 'minority hobby groups' don't feel the need to preach, debate, and wax poetic to justify their hobby. I never hear coin collectors rant in their blogs about "It's art! It's history! In a little baggie! Don't touch it! It's an uncirculated proof!" I've never had an old Italian man berate me for not understanding the sublime strategy and grace that goes into a game of bocce. I've never heard model airplane fliers get all misty talking about 'going where only angels dare tread.'

No, they just do whatever floats their particular boat because they think it is fun and they find it personally enriching.

Nope, only us role playing gamers seem to circle the wagons and open fire. We get our panties in a bunch and feel the need to explain our hobby, get others to try it. Maybe it's this pseudo-religious missionary zeal that causes Bible-thumpers to come down hard on gaming.

Play because its fun. Play because you want to hang out with some like-minded folks (I mean, being a gamer brings with it a boat load of other interests and a certain world view that you most likely share with your fellow gamers). Play because you like junk food. Play because you're out of shape and chasing after a ball is not your idea of fun. Play because it requires more brain power and creativity than playing a passive computer game. Play because it doesn't have the same linearity and general predictability of a board game. Just grab you dice bag, a character sheet, and just go play. And stop over-thinking it.

Here endeth the lesson. :)

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you make a very good point. You're absolutely right about the weird prickly defensiveness of our little hobby. But I don't think the guy I quoted was calling for more socio-ethnic-economic-anthropological pontificating about gaming, or about spreading the faith to outsiders. I think (and I could be totally wrong) he was just calling for gamers to talk more to each other about gaming. About what they like and what they don't like. About what makes it fun. And I actually think there's something to what he says.

I wouldn't be surprised if coin collectors talk all the time about what how best to take care of old coins, and bocce players talk about how to—hell, whatever it is bocce ball players do. Just talking about the activity itself, in a concrete and constructive way. I'm not talking about anything more abstract or jargon-laden than, say, the other post I just made about the UA game, and your response. Which was very helpful to me; thanks for it. ... Hey, maybe we just proved Ron Edwards wrong. :)

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Providing feedback on a session to make the camapign better and more enjoyable is always a good thing. But you run the risk of making it a debriefing in which a game is dissected, laid bare, and the hobby no longer becomes fun. It's homework. I've had that problem with the historical games I've run- they turn into research papers rather than fun little amusements. Which is why I like Adventure and Falkenstein so much... they throw me in a box, bang on the sides occassionally, and force me not to become the anal retentive, detail driven documentary producer I want to be.

That being said, having watched the Teddie Roosevelt doc last night has made me want to run somekind of turn of the century rootin' tootin' epic... :)

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

It's because what happened during play is going to sound as ridiculous to outsiders as "My guy got a d20 and did a triple crit to the swack-iron dragon." To non-roleplayers, comments like "My character helped foment a rebellion against Evil Overlord Van Hoose and restored the good king to his throne" are just as weird as "I went an entire session without taking a scratch."

So why bother to change our vocabulary to suit outsiders? What we say is jargon, pretty much, and understandable only to ourselves, but we're really no worse than, oh, a basketball player who says, "I was skyin' today--I posterized that one guy."

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, but I don't think the above quote is really about how gamers talk to non-gamers. The argument here, as I see it, is that gamers don't talk enough to each other about the actual content of gaming. We swap war stories, sure, but how often do we talk in a concrete way about how our game sessions actually go, or about what distinguishes good gaming sessions from bad ones?

Everyone else's mileage may vary, of course. That's kind of why I threw that quote out there: to see what reactions it would provoke.

[krustukles.livejournal.com]

In other words, gamer discourse is focused on the form, not the content. It reads like a little kid's story: and then this happened, then this happened, then this happened... It's the difference between novels which are entirely action focused:

"Dirk Steele spat the cigarette from his KFC-encrusted lips. He drew his .45 from its holster. He shot the bad guy. The end."

And novels which allow for an inner narrative:

"Dirk Steele had mother issues. He shot the bad guy. The action filled him with a sense of ennui, and the smell of the gunpowder reminded him of taking tea with Auntie Madge in Prague. The end."

Is this a deliberate aesthetic choice, so that gamers can distance themselves from their personal connection to characters and events which, let's face it, we've all thought about as if they were real people and happenings? Is it that RPG-ers tend as a group to be form-oriented? *puzzle*

---Cleopatra Jones

Re:

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Sshhh! I'm trying to convince these guys that talking seriously about gaming isn't fruity academic handwavery. If a women's studies PhD (even a cute one) gets on here talking about "discourse," they'll all spook and run for sure. :)

[krustukles.livejournal.com]

Ruh roh, pay no mind to the foofy Euro-discourse pansiness, everyone. I have throat punched the offending light-in-the-loafers academic who got at the computer in my absence.

Suddenly...

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Psst... [whispers] it's OK. I think this page has scrolled off everybody's Friends list by now. We can talk academicky.

You're right about form and content, though there are certainly RPGs that try to bring in the interior life of the characters - and in so doing "mechanize" that interior life in an interesting way - Sanity points, Humanity meters, and so forth - I wonder how many gamers there are that have projected these mechanics onto their own psyche (the way we say "SAN loss!" from time to time). But the discourse (hee) that's really rare is, strangely, that which acknowledges the artifice of the whole game process. RPGers (post 1990s anyway) do talk about Dirk Steele's mother issues. What they don't talk about (much) is, um, the relationship between the form of the gaming session and the content of the game: What the GM had planned and what he made up on the spot. Why the players ignored clue X and went to clue Y. Why player A was fiddling with the Playstation while player B was working out Dirk Steele's mother issues, but both A and B were rapt with attention while C took tea with Madge in Prague.

Lots more one could say about this, but I think I hear somebody coming...

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

The problem I havewith folks like Edwards is they think geing a game is not enough. Gameplay is an important part of being human. Game playing is primal (ask any ethnographer) and I feel that what some of the people in the orbit of the Forge are trying to do is take a little of the game away and make it some sort of art. Which is foolish. Different human endeavors for different purposes.

Similar problems I had with the chess circuit.

I also have problems that too many of the people over at the Forge don't actually play the games they want to theorize so much about.

A pox on all their houses.