The peripheral community that is a f*cking pox on our hobby

[gleichman]

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.

I much prefer that, but find even what seems to be honest attempts filled with potholes.

The most serious one IME is the person who says they want to improve, but really only wants it either to work or for suggested improvement to in now way cast light upon the fact that either their goals or their method needs to change.

Things can blow up quickly when dealing with such people.

[Blackleaf]

TV and movies, once again, use a lot of visual grammar and image-tools that simply don't exist in real life.

Literature lacks a lot of the timing and verbal tools that are available at the table.  No reason to discard it entirely though.

When I was in school I knew a very pretentious Theatre Studies student who wore a button that said:
"Theatre is Life.
Cinema is Art.
Television is Furniture".  

Don't be that guy.

[Jackalope]

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.

You need a better dictionary.  Mine (dictionary.com) lists sophisticating as a verb form of sophisticate.

[oktoberguard]

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

i stand corrected. from the random house unabridged dictionary:

so·phis·ti·cate  
–noun 1. a sophisticated person.  
–adjective 2. sophisticated.  
–verb (used with object) 3. to make less natural, simple, or ingenuous; make worldly-wise.  
4. to alter; pervert: to sophisticate a meaning beyond recognition.  
–verb (used without object) 5. to use sophistry; quibble.

so yeah, this thread has become quite sophisticated.

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.



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).

and i'd refer you to eco's "a theory of semiotics" and "misreadings." as i don't see either of us changing each other's opinions any time soon, i suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on the proposition of objective worth (or lack thereof) of literature or tv or any other medium for communication.

is there a lot of stuff on rpg.net that seems (to me, at least) out of whack and almost if not totally unplayable? i'd agree with you there. where you lose me is when you suggest we need to resort to critical theory to unfuck our tastes to enjoy a "proper" role-playing game. either way, yours is an interesting perspective. you should put up some actual play posts. i'd be really interested to hear about how your games go.

[Jackalope]

@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.

You should try running a game for my group.  The only player in my group who would play along is the one most likely to have his character die on a bad roll, which is a great way of running a plot right off the rails.

I don't know, I've yet to see plot-driven play turn into anything toher than a nightmare of railroading.  And as I've said before, to Engine, my experience of DMs is the ones that talk up how deep and amazing the plots of their games are tend to be either boring as hell or utterly delusional.

[Pseudoephedrine]

TV can be OK, but I do consider it to be just about the most different medium from roleplaying that we ordinarily use. So I find the endless invasion of television into RPGs frustrating, pointless and annoying. TV is fine in its own domain.

Improv theatre strikes me as pretty useful skill set to have for roleplaying, but different than the skill set you get from reading. I don't see the two as incompatible in any way.

[oktoberguard]

You need a better dictionary.  Mine (dictionary.com) lists sophisticating as a verb form of sophisticate.

already fixed, friend. note to self: do not rely on memory when arguing on the internets, as you will appear to be a fool.

[Jackalope]

and i'd refer you to eco's "a theory of semiotics" and "misreadings." as i don't see either of us changing each other's opinions any time soon, i suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on the proposition of objective worth (or lack thereof) of literature or tv or any other medium for communication.

I just need to stop and have a little chuckle at the guy defending the futility of sophistication in aesthetics by pointing to critical essays by Umberto Eco.

[oktoberguard]

I just need to stop and have a little chuckle at the guy defending the futility of sophistication in aesthetics by pointing to critical essays by Umberto Eco.

hey man, i go where i'm led.

[Pseudoephedrine]

and i'd refer you to eco's "a theory of semiotics" and "misreadings." as i don't see either of us changing each other's opinions any time soon, i suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on the proposition of objective worth (or lack thereof) of literature or tv or any other medium for communication.

is there a lot of stuff on rpg.net that seems (to me, at least) out of whack and almost if not totally unplayable? i'd agree with you there. where you lose me is when you suggest we need to resort to critical theory to unfuck our tastes to enjoy a "proper" role-playing game. either way, yours is an interesting perspective. you should put up some actual play posts. i'd be really interested to hear about how your games go.

I already have two campaign records up, unfortunately both are incomplete (even though the campaigns are finished) but they should give you an idea:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=8427 is the first post from "The Dessinger Saga". It's written by my buddy Rob, not me, and it continues for about 21 posts or so. Unfortunately, when they ported it over from the old site design, it posted them all as separate topics without links between them, so it's a bit hard to read. I know for a fact that Rob has the rest of the campaign written up (almost completely, I think the last two or three sessions are missing) but won't post it unless blogs are brought back.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=6783 is our campaign previous to that, which didn't have a name, but I affectionately referred to as "Iron Heroes for Bad People" because we played a bunch of unstable maniacs. The summaries end the session before the main PC driver, Victor Geiste, died in a bullshit sidequest.

They have their strengths and their weaknesses, both as games and as write-ups, and they don't explicitly deal with the themes we've been talking about, but they give a fair idea of the variety of games I'm a PC in (there are no write-ups of the games I've run for these guys, unfortunately).

[David R]

TV can be OK, but I do consider it to be just about the most different medium from roleplaying that we ordinarily use. So I find the endless invasion of television into RPGs frustrating, pointless and annoying. TV is fine in its own domain.

Really ? The structure of most genre shows translates very well to roleplaying campaigns.

Regards,
David R

[oktoberguard]

I already have two campaign records up, unfortunately both are incomplete (even though the campaigns are finished) but they should give you an idea:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=6783 is our campaign previous to that, which didn't have a name, but I affectionately referred to as "Iron Heroes for Bad People" because we played a bunch of unstable maniacs. The summaries end the session before the main PC driver, Victor Geiste, died in a bullshit sidequest.

They have their strengths and their weaknesses, both as games and as write-ups, and they don't explicitly deal with the themes we've been talking about, but they give a fair idea of the variety of games I'm a PC in (there are no write-ups of the games I've run for these guys, unfortunately).

the "iron heroes for bad people" thread is pretty badass nevetheless. definitely post something next time you run a game, though. i'd like to check it out.

[Blackleaf]

TV can be OK, but I do consider it to be just about the most different medium from roleplaying that we ordinarily use. So I find the endless invasion of television into RPGs frustrating, pointless and annoying. TV is fine in its own domain.

Improv theatre strikes me as pretty useful skill set to have for roleplaying, but different than the skill set you get from reading. I don't see the two as incompatible in any way.

I've studied, acted and directed for Theatre (including improv), Film and TV.  There's a lot of overlap between the mediums, and people usually overstate the differences between Film and TV in particular.  Usually when they're being pretentious. Since most TV is shot on film or digital these days it's mostly how you frame up shots (changing with HDTV) and the length of stories you can tell (2-hour one-shot vs 1-hour series).  Most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference if they visited the set for a TV show or a movie.  The people who write for movies are often the same ones who write for TV as well.

All things considered, I think that a better skill to develop than improv acting is public speaking.

[Engine]

I don't know, I've yet to see plot-driven play turn into anything toher than a nightmare of railroading.  And as I've said before, to Engine, my experience of DMs is the ones that talk up how deep and amazing the plots of their games are tend to be either boring as hell or utterly delusional.

And as I've said, you're always welcome at our table! Of course, I guess if you really want to get into the plot, you've got to "see" more than one "episode."

I've thought a lot about it since you and I've discussed this, and I can totally see how what you're talking about could happen: the GM has this story in mind, and then sets out the initial premise for his players, and suddenly they start going in every which way, nowhere near the path he had in mind, and so he's got to shove them back on the path.

No, if you're going to make a plot-driven game work, you've got to involve the players from day one, and you've got to manipulate the circumstances of character generation, and you've probably got to be very, very flexible in the story that eventually gets told. I think if the GM just makes up a story in his head, and thinks the players will naturally walk down this path, he's probably going to make a terrible abomination of a game. I think plot-driven games can work [well, I know they can], but I agree there's a billion ways for them to not-work, too.

[jgants]

I think perhaps the error in this case is the presumption that anyone who doesn't want what you want is insane. Some people want something more complex than "go here, fight this, get stuff, win!" There are people - many of them, one presumes - who want something more complex than I do, but I don't think they're mad, I just think they enjoy something other than I do. The notion that "different" must mean "deficient" is one I'd like to see stamped out.

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?

I guess I didn't lay on the sarcasm thick enough.  It was meant as a mocking joke, not a declaration of badwrongfun war.

I was trying to go out of my way (like picking really dull books that were not really what he was talking about) to mock pseudo's "classic literature is the only true narrative structure" nonsense.  I don't literally believe anyone who tries to play Great Expectations: The RPG is mentally ill (though they clearly have a different definition of fun than I do).

Next time I'll just repeat my old joke about writing my story game, "Remains of the End - The RPG of Romantic Merchant-Ivory Intrigue".  I don't think anyone ever took that seriously (even if I did get offers to buy it).