This is a spinoff of my now-regretably named "why the angst" thread (regrettably because the word "angst" triggered all the wrong meanings). That thread was trying to analyze why it is that game designers, and most GMs, are incapable of portraying more sophisticated concepts and emotions in their games, than the most basic infantile expressions, often even more basic than the sort of junk you find on television.
I'm not saying that this is the only reason, but I suspect ONE of the reasons is that far too many geeks these days think that being "educated" and "reading a lot of books" are the same thing.
In reality, they aren't.
In reality, if you spend your whole life reading nothing but Harlequin romances, then even if you've read tens of thousands of them, you really aren't going to be a very educated person, or capable of making work that portrays very sophisticated concepts.
And, unlike what some geeks seem to believe, your average fantasy/scifi novel or comic book is no more sophisticated than your average harlequin romance.
Whether its Fabio on the cover, or Drrzt Do'Urden, or Wolverine, reading tons and tons of crap isn't going to make you a good writer or a good game designer or a good GM.
I'm suspecting that the reason that so many games and campaigns are so deeply infantile in their emotional quotient is because if your highest level of reading material is the latest Robert Jordan novel, you're only going to be capable of doing work of your own that is inferior to Robert Jordan.
I had a friend once who was desperate to become a sci-fi author, he had given me one of his novels to critique, and after reading it, and noting a little bit of raw talent, I took him aside and asked him what it was he read as inspiration. He listed all kinds of sci-fi books, mostly heavy militaristic sci fi a la David Drake.
My response to him was that if he really wanted to become a good sci-fi author, the very first thing he needs to do is to stop reading sci fi novels. To stop reading David Drake, and start reading Hemmingway, or Herodotus, or the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. And pointing out to him that most of the guys who were truly good sci-fi authors spent a hell of a lot of their time reading and learning about all kinds of things OTHER than sci-fi. Zelazny wasn't a great sci-fi author because he read Asimov; he was a great sci-fi author because he'd read books on zen, and books on fencing, and he'd read Mark Twain, and besides all that because he'd actually gone out and DONE shit. He'd travelled, he'd had wierd relationships, etc etc.
Which gets to my other point: a GM who hasn't actually done fuck all with his life is going to be a pretty piss-poor GM, and a game designer who hasn't done fuck all with his life is going to be incapable of writing anything interesting.
Note that I'm not saying that a straightforward, low-Emotion dungeon crawl is in any way bad. I love that shit, and all of you know it. I'm definitely not suggesting that games need to deal with sophisticated themes to be good. What I'm talking about is games that ATTEMPT to deal with more sophisticated themes, and fail miserably.
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