I've always hated the high-brow, low-brow, middle-brow bullshit.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityThe very foundational question of that game, "How far blah blah blah...," emerges from the background of a specifically postwar North-American, ballpark libertarian obsession with bourgeois subjectivity and the adequate realization thereof in face of an adversarial world (known to us--but not to its proponents--as consumer capitalism) that marks it as dated humanism circa 1955.

In short, kitsch.

Aha! There is meat in this sandwich!

While I share your political stance with regard to the ideological underpinnings of Sorcerer's Weltanschaung, I am of the opinion that such an analysis could trivially be extended to most roleplaying games. The petit-bourgeois doctrine that Dungeons and Dragons (or Traveller)runs on, for example.

Quote from: droogThe petit-bourgeois doctrine that Dungeons and Dragons (or Traveller)runs on, for example.

And here's where you're completely wrong.

Thanatos: of course you hate it.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityAnd here's where you're completely wrong.

I must ask you to defend your assertion, Professor.

Quote from: J ArcaneSo you wind up with Primetime Adventures, a game about emulating crappy network TV.

I intend to examine Primetime Adventures in due course, Professor Arcane.

Quote from: droogI must ask you to defend your assertion, Professor.

[R. Edwards]You pay tuition for that.[/R. Edwards]

I'm on vacation, droog!

Special pleading! I am irritated by your lack of commitment to this faculty's standards, Professor!

Quote from: Pierce InverarityThanatos: of course you hate it.

It's my school of philosophy, I guess.

QuoteThe petit-bourgeois doctrine that Dungeons and Dragons (or Traveller)runs on, for example.

First: Traveller and D&D run on totally different doctrines.

In recent D&D, the only thing hardcoded into the game is achievement principle. Power through several forms of codified achievement.

Whereas in Traveller, there´s only Power. How you get it, doesn´t matter.

For the actual game, these are the only ideological things hardcoded into the game. Everything else is totally open.

See, the Kitsch in Sorcerer is the question it asks. And the fact that it asks a question at all. To be interested in this question is tacky in itself. (= :rolleyes:)

Traveller doesn´t ask questions.
D&D isn´t longing for an answer, either.

They just are.

And they are not kleinbürgerlich, you can run their Universes in any political direction you want. Actual play in itself is kleinbürgelich in sofar as every emotionally safe leisure activity at dinner tables is. The act of playing RPGs is as petit-bourgeois as playing Settlers of Catan is. But that doesn´t help us in any way.

The D&D character is a striving, upwardly-mobile exploiter of his own labour. He invests profit back into his personal capital in order to build the capacity of his business to weather crises and continue to grow. Definitely the principle of small business and the aspirational middle classes.

In Traveller, the small business rules are even encoded. Buy cheap, sell dear.

QuoteThe D&D character is a striving, upwardly-mobile exploiter of his own labour. He invests profit back into his personal capital in order to build the capacity of his business to weather crises and continue to grow. Definitely the principle of small business and the aspirational middle classes.

In Traveller, the small business rules are even encoded. Buy cheap, sell dear.

There´s much more encoded into Traveller. Might makes right, and doesn´t care for your profit.

That´s just an example, but your ignorance of actual Trav and D&D play shows a lot here.

Homework:

Review Adventure 1 the Kinunir, and show us the petit-bourgeois part.
Review expedition to the barrier peaks, and show us small time business model.

Keep also in mind, that you are confusing terms here: The Kleinbürger is not engaging in buying and selling. The petit-bourgeois is engaged in emulating the real bourgeois and nobility, all the while keeping his emotions and passions at the most average levels he can. Upward mobility is totally not petit-bourgeois, they want to stay where they are, and want to be told how great it is that they aren´t working-class or worse any more.

Power in Traveller, even more than D&D, comes from wealth. Might requires credits.

I think that our difference in terms may be due to different backgrounds: curse these interdisciplinary seminars.


[And re The Kinunir etc, Professor Settembrini, I am pointing at structure while you are pointing at individual rivets.]

QuoteMight requires credits.

...and it doesn´t matter in Traveller, where they come from. Nearly all Trav adventuring is about avoiding real work, and getting money in different ways, often illegal.

And the structure of the Kinunir, is a fractal embodiement of all Traveller campaign structures.

Again, the most improtant thing:

Traveller doesn´t ask questions.
Adventure games don´t ask questions.

Droog, your analysis operates at the level of content. That's Zhdanovist Marxism of the show trials period. Crude, crude, crude.

A true political critique, as we all know, operates at the level of form, of the structure that produces any and all content to begin with. In certain games that structure is called Nar, and as we also know it produces sci-fi, modern horror and chivalric content with equal (= equally tacky and petty bourgeois) ease.

Re. actual play being petty bourgeois, I hate acknowledging this, needless to say. But all I can muster as defense is to point out, with D. Diederichsen, that what's left today of the grande bourgeoisie of yesteryear is nothing but table manners anyway.

So, actual play is petty bourgeois insofar as nearly everything is... with the exception, mind you, of Bohemian subcultures, dandyism and all the rest of it--but for now, that's limited to pop music circles.

That said, as a Deleuzean I shouldn't have introduced Marxist terminology in the first place. I suck. I want to call RPGs "lines of flight"--like Vietnam vets culture (A Thousand Plateaux). But that's much harder to argue, so I'm not actually doing it.

Speaking of show trials, there may come a time where we need to scrutinize comrade Settembrini's statements for evidence of Gamist deviancy.