The RPG Hobby is more like Literature than like Technology

I had wanted to title this, "Cthulhu, Pirate Radio, and the Right of Exclusion," but if I did that the first ten replies would be complaints that I had titled it misleadingly.



The RPG Hobby, as presently constituted, cannot exclude criminal perverts, nor can it exclude ideological agitators who pursue a Gramscian strategy of corrupting one institution after another without getting arrested for obvious anti-social conduct.

The RPG Hobby is not like American amateur radio, which can license use of a technology, monitor the airwaves for unauthorized users, and send police and FCC agents to investigate possible violations.  However, the RPG Hobby *does* resemble American amateur radio in that its grognards were excessively proud to be part of an elite, and so crippled recruitment.  Both RPGs and American amateur radio are suffering from entirely preventable recruitment crises.

The RPG Hobby resembles the "Cthulhu Mythos" that arose from several sources.  H.P.Lovecraft was the most prominent, R.E.Howard was an irreplaceable but a less prolific contributor.  However, Cthulhoid stories are an easily imitated idea.  Even if Lovecraft had copyrighted Cthulhu, and had vigorously prosecuted his competitors, there would have been hundreds of fans writing Fthulgu and Gthulcu stories, simply out of sheer geekiness.  Reverse engineering a machine takes considerable capital; reverse engineering a story takes negligible resources.

Technologies are sometimes fan-regulated.  In America, the government went to the "ham radio" grognards for guidance, and the "hams" said they wanted strict regulation, to keep the rabble out.  For years, potential recruits were forced to run a technologically unnecessary gauntlet of Morse code memorization.  This was very effective for making existing "hams" feel pride in their accomplishment.  It was less effective at upholding radio in the face of technologies that required less skill, such as web browsers.

Literature *can* be and *is* censored, as long as it exists in the world of publishers, editors, and distributors.  The Gramscian movement -- notably Marcusians -- have been adept at shocking the bourgeoisie by quietly deploying big money to bankroll politically correct shock art.  However, big money afford physical travel, legal support for changes of venue, publicity, grants to bribe museums, etc. Ordinary artists are less competent at avoiding censorship -- and so a vast mass of would-be artists conform to the unwritten law of Gramscian political correctness.

The recent Carcosa game and Maid game have been distributed as PDF files.  (Possibly they had other distribution methods, but they definitely exist as PDF files.)  So long as information can get to am electronic format and is considered interesting enough for an initial download, it will survive.  It is cheaper to download something shocking and to forget about it than to delete it.  Later on, someone who had downloaded information will re-upload it merely to interest others, without implying approval or deep interest.  

Thus a chain of ten Western schoolboys who are moderately curious about how to make pipe bombs will pass on a book about pipe bombs from PirateShip to AnarchoServer to FreeBooksOrg until that book finally finds its way to an actual Third World bomb maker who has the materials and the cause, and just needs a good recipe.  In the same way, the shock value of perverse sex will get a book downloaded and passed around until it finds its way to someone who takes a deep, obsessive interest in the particular perversions detailed within.

It is all very well for existing gamers to say that they will exclude the perverts.  If the Maid RPG were being circulated for profit, in print, in brick-and-mortar stores, no doubt Pundit could organize a parade of Freemasons to solemnly march into the bookstore, point out the offending passage, and terrify the bookseller with the prospect of lost profits.  That is not going to happen.  Perhaps Pundit will be able to keep Maid and Carcosa off the dealers' tables at local conventions, but it's more likely that Pundit won't have a local convention to regulate.  In fact, Pundit's hobby will  be more threatened by the advanced ages of his octogenarian players than by the bad reputation of Carcosa and Maid.

However, as the Chosen People of Gaming, the Old School Dungeon Crawlers, slide inexorably into old age, their weaker brethren are dancing around the Golden Calf of Collecting-Books-But-Not-Playing.  This false idol has its Cthulhoid tentacles in every genre, from Braunstein to Shadowrun to Exalted.  In fact, it even imperils hex-map wargames and ordinary boardgames.  The fact is that many games were sold on the basis of curiosity.  After it had been sold, the buyer would be curious enough to play it at least once.  After that initial play, the buyer would probably play it several more times, to pretend his money was well spent, even if he thought it sucked.  In those several play sessions, the game had chances to win new players.

Previously, the cult of Collecting-Books-But-Not-Playing required a cash layout for a physical product.  It overlapped with obsessive comic-book collectors. Now, the cult is dominated by gawkers who want to look at game once before they forget about it forever.  The curiosity that once sold product has been mostly exterminated.

Copyright infringers currently have extremely effective social networks.  Tabletop RPGamers do not.  TRPGamers have used the Internet to communicate, but they don't seem to be generating commitment, group identification, and activism.  Perhaps the slight technical effort required to infringe a copyright means that "pirate" social networks bond more tightly and get less wrapped up in personalities and group politics.

TRPGamers are a smart bunch.  I presume that they can get their social networks at least up to the effectiveness level of copyright infringers.  If they can't, I don't think TRPGs will survive the perverts, much less the competition from electronic games.