Quote from: Settembrini;232602No, sweetheart. Don´t blame it on me. Pretty please check out what STORY NOW! actually means.

I already have my little wienerschnitzel.  While it's poorly explained and nonsensical, reading it through the Settembrini filter makes it even less clear.  Your mistakes compound their mistakes.

Quote from: Settembrini;232602STORY = addressation of premise == "how low can you go?"-style dillemmata challenging petit-bourgeious North American morality.

I don't see anyone from the Forge arguing in this thread about how TV, Movies and Comics aren't "real" stories, and shouldn't be used as inspiration for RPGs, and that only classical literature is sufficient.

There's only you.

You have become that which you hate.  You are now a swine.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232665no big, i wasn't trying to pick a fight with you. it's just frustrating for me to see the same kind of behavior here that i see on "that other rpg site

There's a number of people here who may as well be card carrying members of that site.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232609It probably isn't from horror movies, which use images and ambient sounds to do those things, since you're presumably using good old language like the rest of the roleplaying hobby. So where do you think you learnt to describe things in language in compelling and interesting ways?

Do you honestly think that a roleplaying game, rather than the stories you write as background or to sum up the game, is more like a written piece of literature than it is like a performance (Radio, TV, Film, Theatre)?

If the experience at the table is more like a performance, wouldn't looking at what makes for successful performances be a good idea?

There's a lot you can learn from horror movies and how they're structured that would make for a more enjoyable experience at the table.  If your focus is writing background material and game fiction, then sure -- looking at literature is probably a better idea than looking at any of the performance arts.

Quote from: Engine;232672Exactly. [And I'm a pretty big PSE fan, as far as that goes.] And then similarly, it bothers me to see jgants [also a fan] saying you're nuts for liking the kind of game PSE likes. I mean, shit, isn't it possible both are fun for the people who find those things fun? Isn't it possible someone would find both things fun?

But as you say, it's the internet, and fighting's common. So's absolutism, or Onetruewayism, or hatred of BadWrongFun, or whatever jargon one chooses to use. I dislike objective-sounding criticism of what is an essentially subjective experience.

Sorry mate, this my maniac point (We all get one). I really do think that even with content that's goofy or action-oriented or whatever, we get more out of it with a proper understanding how we can use language to convey specific emotional effects, and how to develop a story so that the narrative development causes specific emotional and aesthetic effects and avoids others. I think we can only get those skills from reading literature and seeing how others have done those things effectively. Even light-hearted games benefit from this - check out Mel Helitzer's Comedy Writing Secrets for a simple non-fiction book on how to tell jokes, and how to structure stories and anecdotes to be humourous.

I'd also point out that while I'm suspicious of genre fiction, I'm not hostile to it. People are putting the words "classic literature" in my posts. I'm not. I'm talking about plain, well-written and interesting fiction whether genre or high-lit or whatever. The examples I give are from classic literature because it's what I'm most familiar with. You can just imagine the titles "Starship Troopers" or "the Cyberiad" or "Murder at La Rue Morgue" if you prefer that stuff (those are all books I love).

Quote from: droog;232468Haemlid actually was a PC on that occasion. One of my friends had dropped into town and I gave him the chr. But I'm sure there are many ways to make use of Hamlet in a game.

But what if the player decides they don't want revenge?  What if they decide they weren't particularly attached to their father, didn't really want the throne, and are more than happy to let their uncle take it.  Then the whole thing falls apart.

This is why I don't get using plots like Hamlet with PCs in the major roles.  You have no control over what the characters decide to do, and a plot like Hamlet is driven almost entirely by the protagonists actions.  You should never get Hamlet as the outcome unless both the GM and the player are consciously attempting to do Hamlet...but that doesn't seem like real gaming to me.

This is really the problem with all plot-driven gaming:  either the players are passive participants watching the action unfold (and in the worst case, unable to pull their eyes away), or you're hinging the whole plot on the assumption that players will do X, which is like pretty much asking them to do Y.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232673That's just because you're a stupe!

In aesthetics, the idea of sophisticating one's tastes is very important. Sophisticating one's taste means trying unfamiliar things and understanding why they are good or not, based not just on immediate impressions but through providing explanations and justifications why one favours or does not favour a particular thing.

so i'm a stupe, am i? well, have at you, sir! but seriously... i dig the pseudo-intellectual thing you have going on here. it reminds me a lot of my own literary criticism courses. i have fond memories of those courses. just one thing... "sophisticating" isn't a verb. you sound like a twat.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232673Most roleplayers, like most people, have pretty bad taste because we live in a culture that thinks that tastes are innate and completely obvious to the person with the taste. They aren't, as anyone who's looked into the matter in the last say, hundred years or so can tell you, and so I think we, both in the specific case of roleplaying and in the more general case of our society in general, should devote effort on both an individual and a public level to improving one another's tastes by the process outlined above.

Not only should we be doing this for ethical reasons (the more sophisticated one's tastes, the better one's life), I think the unsophisticated tastes of most roleplayers are dragging specific game lines, and with them, the hobby, into the shitter.

most people have bad taste? based on whose standards? academicians? even harold "defender of the western canon" bloom wouldn't take the stance you have. umberto eco certainly wouldn't. a close reading will reveal worth in any printed text.

let's be absolutely clear here. i would whole-heartedly agree that broadening one's horizons is a fantastic idea. i would never tell someone not to try something new, whether it's a book, or an unfamiliar dish, or a different vacation getaway. trying new things is the only way we can grow. that said, you're going to have a pretty rough time convincing people that one set of tastes in anything is better than another. you seem like an educated guy, so i'll assume you picked up some latin at some point. there's an old quote that's relevant to this discussion: "de gustibus non disputandum est." you just can't argue taste.

@Jakolope:
It's not a problem. If they want to do something else, they do something else. How is that different from any other game? Beyond that, i have never seen a player turn away from a chance to get revenge, ever. I'm sure there are the 'turn the other cheek' players out there, and I'd certainly be willing to accommodate such a player, but ime, I'm more likely to game with a pink unicorn named Gumdrop Rainbowcock.

Quote from: Stuart;232681Do you honestly think that a roleplaying game, rather than the stories you write as background or to sum up the game, is more like a written piece of literature than it is like a performance (Radio, TV, Film, Theatre)?

If the experience at the table is more like a performance, wouldn't looking at what makes for successful performances be a good idea?

There's a lot you can learn from horror movies and how they're structured that would make for a more enjoyable experience at the table.  If your focus is writing background material and game fiction, then sure -- looking at literature is probably a better idea than looking at any of the performance arts.

I agree that looking at how successful performances work is useful. However, I consider the radio teleplay and improv theatre in that list far closer to the kinds of successful performances that go on in RPGs than TV or movies.

TV and movies, once again, use a lot of visual grammar and image-tools that simply don't exist in real life. The close-up for emphasis on a character's expression, the costume change, the ability to change locales, etc. Heck, the simple ability to have actors react to actual objects is tremendously important and almost totally unavailable at the table.

By contrast, radio teleplays and improv theatre are highly mediated by language, with radio teleplays obviously being so to a greater extent than improv theatre. Once again, it's that ability to use language to engage the listener, both in the content of the sentence and the form it takes, that is key. And you don't really get that from listening to radio teleplays because they're so ephemeral. It's text that's key to learning it, so that you can scrutinise the words and syntax at your leisure.

Quote from: gleichman;232678There's a number of people here who may as well be card carrying members of that site.

undoubtedly. i'm one of them as well. don't read too much into my post. rpg.net can be a lot of fun, and i don't have a beef with any specific poster or group of posters there. i just find that specific behavior grating. that's all.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232684Sorry mate, this my maniac point (We all get one).

Fair enough.

Quote from: Jackalope;232686But what if the player decides they don't want revenge?  What if they decide they weren't particularly attached to their father, didn't really want the throne, and are more than happy to let their uncle take it.  Then the whole thing falls apart.

No no! That's what makes it...uh, fall together! [Rise apart? I don't know.] I think that's what's supposed to be fun about it, and it looks to me like that's what they did: just took it and ran with it, not really being concerned about the original.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232692undoubtedly. i'm one of them as well. don't read too much into my post. rpg.net can be a lot of fun, and i don't have a beef with any specific poster or group of posters there. i just find that specific behavior grating. that's all.

It's a natural behavior. People want to say that what they do is good and wonderful and better than what the other guy is doing. Even if it's a hobby, it still have to have impact on 'real life'.

This one point IMO is the only thing that defines a "Swine", Pundits attempts to make it more complex than that only clouds it. And it's why he's also a Swine himself...

Quote from: oktoberguard;232687just one thing... "sophisticating" isn't a verb.

Actually, it is. Check it out in one of those fancy dictionary things. It'll sophisticate your knowledge of the English language.

Quotemost people have bad taste? based on whose standards? academicians? even harold "defender of the western canon" bloom wouldn't take the stance you have. umberto eco certainly wouldn't. a close reading will reveal worth in any printed text.

Sure it will. Most people aren't doing that kind of close reading, and their tastes do not naively prefigure complicated literary analysis that reveals hidden merit.

I'm trying to argue that one needs to build the necessary tool set to reappropriate crap, lest it appropriate you. To do that, one has to understand how these structures and systems work in the first place, both the complicated ones and the simple ones.

Edit: I also think that most people lack that tool set, and are born down by crap rather than really making much of it. Not everyone - just as there are many people with bad taste, there are many people with spontaneously good taste. But enough people that the born-down-by-crap crew is the more common of the two. My example is rpg.net's PbP and Tabletop Open forums, both of which are filled with garbage ideas that are unplayable, unoriginal, uninteresting and cliched. I would contend that they are like this because they have not sophisticated their tastes adequately.

Quotelet's be absolutely clear here. i would whole-heartedly agree that broadening one's horizons is a fantastic idea. i would never tell someone not to try something new, whether it's a book, or an unfamiliar dish, or a different vacation getaway. trying new things is the only way we can grow. that said, you're going to have a pretty rough time convincing people that one set of tastes in anything is better than another. you seem like an educated guy, so i'll assumed you picked up some latin at some point. there's an old quote that's relevant to this discussion: "de gustibus non disputandum est." you just can't argue taste.

I follow Gadamer on that point. While I'm sending you scurrying after books, you might as well read Truth and Method, the first chunk of which is devoted to showing that in fact, matters of taste are subject to rational debate (specifically through the mode of a hermeneutical interpretation).

Quote from: gleichman;232696It's a natural behavior. People want to say that what they do is good and wonderful and better than what the other guy is doing. Even if it's a hobby, it still have to have impact on 'real life'.

This one point IMO is the only thing that defines a "Swine", Pundits attempts to make it more complex than that only clouds it. And it's why he's also a Swine himself...

you are, of course, totally correct. i still hold out hope that someday people will get tired of arguing on hobby fora and stick to talking about the fun they're having and how to have more fun.

Quote from: oktoberguard;232665telling people they're bone-headed and their games suck because they're not drawing on the "complicated narrative structures of literary fiction" seems kinda stupid and pointless to me.

I would agree that seems to be a pretty pretentious argument. However, I must say that I would rather game under a GM whose bookshelf has books besides Forgotten Realms paperbacks and other gaming fiction. For that matter if I'm playing a superhero game with someone, they better have read those Lee/Ditko Spider-Man comics (and Lee/Kirby FF, of course). I wouldn't want to be railroaded through someones attempt to run King Lear, but it wouldn't be a bad starting premise for a game.

The qualities that make for good literature and good gaming might overlap some, but ultimately there are irreconcilable differences. You don't get to go back and do a second draft of your gaming session for one thing. Being well read is no guarantee that one will be a good GM either. One has to be a performer, a host, a referee, etc. It looks like people have already addressed some of this while I was typing, but yeah, old radio shows and improv theatre are as good of outside sources as books or movies for the sorts of skillsets one can draw on for gaming.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;232673In aesthetics, the idea of sophisticating one's tastes is very important. Sophisticating one's taste means trying unfamiliar things and understanding why they are good or not, based not just on immediate impressions but through providing explanations and justifications why one favours or does not favour a particular thing.

Most roleplayers, like most people, have pretty bad taste because we live in a culture that thinks that tastes are innate and completely obvious to the person with the taste. They aren't, as anyone who's looked into the matter in the last say, hundred years or so can tell you, and so I think we, both in the specific case of roleplaying and in the more general case of our society in general, should devote effort on both an individual and a public level to improving one another's tastes by the process outlined above.

Not only should we be doing this for ethical reasons (the more sophisticated one's tastes, the better one's life), I think the unsophisticated tastes of most roleplayers are dragging specific game lines, and with them, the hobby, into the shitter.

My paradigmatic example of this, once again, is Exalted turning from a game of heroic adventure with a variety of influences and ways to play it in the first edition into an anime action-adventure game in the second edition. Some  (James Skach) would probably say Tome of Battle did the same thing to D&D 3.5.

This isn't some hypothetical thing that might someday happen. We can see it going on right now in multiple games (there are more examples than the two I just pointed out, but they're the ones I'm most familiar with that fall under this issue).

QUOTED FOR TRUTH!!!!

This:  "we live in a culture that thinks that tastes are innate and completely obvious to the person with the taste" is one of the most frustrating things about living in this country.  Americans have no fucking taste at all.  A nation of philistines.