"I increasingly look on prescriptiveness as one of the worst of all evils ... I now look on the advise to just do 'what works for you and your group' as the most profound and important advice there is, and the most difficult to carry out."~ noisms, Monsters and Manuals
Where to start?
My dictionary describe prescriptive as an adjective. Judging from the options given, I think we can take noism's use of the word to mean, "relating to the imposition or enforcement of a rule or method. The urban dictionary produces the result, prescriptive relationship, as a,
"... relationship in which a person or people create a set of rules governing the relationship before the people involved ever get into said relationship. These rules are often set up to define the relationship involving someone who is not even in existence yet and therefore cannot give his or her input into the relationship agreement."
I love language. I love that we can goof with it, use the wrong words to describe what we mean and still be understood by the reader, yet be held account for those same words ~ right or wrong ~ under the law. Every word we write and all that we propose defines not only what we believe, but what we ourselves are as persons. Language is hard-nosed, it is clever and it tricks the mind into thinking what it wants the mind to think.
There's only one ... um, little glitch. That word "work." What is it doing there?
Whatever works for your group. Tricky word there. We can't possibly mean labor or toil or effort, as those things would require a method of some kind, a practical application of some proven sequence of, oh, I don't know, stuff that has already been proven to work. But hey, we're not putting up with anything prescriptive. That's EVIL, man. Screw that. Whatever "works" for my group certainly doesn't subscribe to tasks or things people have to do, or the sweat of my damn brow.
We must mean operates or functions ~ yeah, that's better. Whatever functions for your group, whatever drives the game and makes it happen, whatever carries out the effect of the game and produces results that ...
Wait. Wait a minute. I'm sorry, I'm confused about this "work" thing. I didn't make up the word; this isn't a strawman. I was told that I should do whatever "works" for my group.
What operation? What function? What?
Thing is about this particular bit of hokum ... the reason why some are angrily making the case about what a game should look like, what the assumption of play should be and what to avoid, is that we're not trying to make the readers feel good about themselves. Stated for the record, I don't care if any of you feel good. Feeling good is your problem, not mine; I'm not your enabler, I'm not your guru, I'm not here to prescribe what's evil and what isn't, I'm not concerned with what's honest or what's achieving satisfaction for everybody ... and I'm absolutely not spouting a lot of bullshit about how many rules of songwriting a particular 1960s Motown group employed (as noisms does on his post). I know a little something about Motown music and how it came about in the cultural 60s ~ and anyone who thinks the "prescriptiveness" of three black women singing in public in 1964 can be boiled down to how complicated the lyrics are is just an outrageously fatuous misinformed deluded pampered snowflake who seriously needs to educate himself. Prescriptives? Go be a black person in Detroit in 1964 and then come talk to me about living by prescriptives on your behaviour.
AND ... there is a lot more going on in that music than exists in that Horatio's philosophy. Rest assured, the Supremes were not just "doing whatever worked for them."
BUT ... We don't need to talk further about that now.
If I write something that says to you, dear reader, make your world this way, that is a prescriptive. So. What? Does that make you feel oppressed? Do you feel that your freedom to be yourself has been suddenly stripped away? Have you lost your identity? Do you feel violated and shamed, have your dreams been crushed, is your precious way of doing things in your world suddenly impossible, because a bad man on the internet explained an alternative? Oops, I mean an evil man.
When I write anything, I expect the reader to weigh the value of what I'm saying against a lifetime of experience and then to make a decision. Does that sound right? That's it. A little bit ago, when I suggested that Diana Ross and cohorts probably didn't slack their way into becoming music goddesses ... did that sound right to you, or wrong to you? Which? And when all is said and done, when the time comes for you to make up your mind whether or not I'm worth your reading again, based on your decision of my validity, guess how much I'm going to care if you think I'm wrong?
I'm not. I lived in the 1970s. I talked to people face-to-face about the music industry in the 1960s who explained what life was like for black people. Hell, some culture in Hollywood just made Green Book pic of the year ... if you're looking for another opinion about "prescriptive" lifestyles. I know what I know. When you want me to change my mind, you're going to have to sound like you know what you're talking about.
That is the trick. If I'm going to convince you, Reader, I better sound like I know what I'm talking about ... about music, about language, about Dungeons & Dragons. I have to ring true. That is ALL on me. If I don't cut it, if I fail ... that comes down to two kinds of people.
1) I am a good enough writer to convince you that I'm right.
2) I am not a good enough writer.
What can I do about that? Well, "doing what works for me" is going to faceplant, every time. Writing is not a "this is all about me" profession. Writers who ignore communicating with other people grow up to be very bad writers. If I'm going to ever touch base with anyone ~ if anyone is ever going to say to themselves upon reading me, "He's right" ~ then I'm going to have to damn well deal with some prescriptive rules about writing.
You think someone telling you how to play D&D is hard? Why don't you deal with a lifetime of people who know better than you telling you how to write.
Now, if you're not moved by my position ... fair enough. I didn't do well enough. If you're out there trying to press your position ... hey, I'm going to judge you. I'm going to read it and I'm going to decide which it is for me. That's what all this blogging is about. You give your opinions, I give mine. You don't like mine, I like yours, I change my ideas and add to yours, you read it and change yours; we debate about it. We rattle each others cages. We kick and make noise. It's not evil.
It's purposeful.
You want to make an argument that "just do you" is the most profound and important advice there is?
Wow. Using my experience and intuition, I think maybe you should be re-evaluating your reasons for writing a blog at all.
Now just decide that I'm wrong about that and everything will be fine.
I have been in a writer's critique group since 2012. It's a very good group with a handful of people coming out of it with book deals. It has been invaluable to me as someone who wants to get better at writing. While what I have written is by no means popular, I do have the mindset of writing for other people, not myself. With regard to D&D, my critique group is my players, rather unfortunately. I have learned to incorporate what I know about my players and it has worked out well for my campaign for seven years continual. I can't imagine that what works well for me would not work well for others.
ReplyDelete"I now look on the advise to just do "what works for you and your group" as the most profound and important advice there is, and the most difficult to carry out." - noisms in the above blog post
ReplyDeleteExcept...that isn't advice. If I KNEW what "works" for me and my group, I wouldn't be seeking advice. In short, it is a platitude.
Who is this supposed to help?
Ultimately everything, including how to run a D&D game, has a set of guiding principles. It's an accepted fact that railroading a group is a bad thing. It's an accepted fact that forcing a high-level NPC into the party to solve everything is a bad thing. It's an accepted fact that a game going in the Monty Haul direction will be plagued with problems. Whatever hypothetical exceptions could be made serve more to prove than refute the rule. Getting into the nitty-gritty of mechanics, there's distinct reasons to use 2d6 instead of 1d12, or 1d20. Different decisions inform the direction of a game.
ReplyDelete(as a digression, this is what makes 5E my most hated edition, and a poorly designed game in my mind - while 3E at least appeals to a sub-set of "character builders" and 4E can be serviced into a skirmish-type game, 5E is a mash-up of its predecessors that does worse than any of them in any individual area!)
However...
There are a lot of "principles" out there for RPGs. There have been extensive discussions over the smallest decisions. "Complete" game systems are riddled with optional rules. Determining what to use often means multiple sessions of play, and a degree of work. Experimenting with new ideas also means work. Should this be guided by experience? Absolutely. Should you seek out advice from others? Ditto. But all of this is certainly "work" and it is unavoidably going to be influenced by your group (groups, over time). Understanding all of this doesn't detract from the value of commenting on one's own experience - it adds to it, since it means knowing not simply what rules were chosen, but also why, and with a critical eye towards how they worked out.
That's regarding the "what" of this topic. Regarding the "why": I don't suppose you think you're reading a little too deeply into noisms' intention? The impression you received was not the impression I received, nor the one most commenters seemed to; rather than a musing on an idea, this comes across as a response to a personal attack, while nothing points to it being one.
Perhaps, Rosenritter. I get rolling and the drum comes out so I can pound it.
ReplyDeletenoism is spouting nihilism; and he's wrapping himself in a virtuous cost made of a platitude to do it. I react to that the way I would if I saw a flatulent blowhard screaming from a podium that journalists are cretinous bastards because they don't report the facts the blowhard wants.
It's a personal attack TO ME. Anything that preaches that disseminating information about something is "prescriptive," then calls it evil, then makes an extended argument that simplicity and dull-mindedness is a virtue, using examples that are, in fact, the opposite of his argument ... yeah. That makes me pretty hot-headed.
By definition, no one on the internet talking about "a better way to play the game" is imposing or enforcing ANYTHING. noism's strawman is drivel. That's my why. And when I see this sort of drivel, I'm going to drag it into the light of day.
I appreciate you don't see the sense in that. I mean, what's the point, anyway? Only, I wrote a post just recently talking about the futility of it ~ and received the answer that hey, it's a good thing that we do that.
After I wrote the post, my partner asked me what it was about. I made a joke, telling her wryly, "Someone on the internet was wrong and I had to correct him."
To which she answered, "Just the one person?"
I can see your point. If I was coming at it from the perspective of 10 years writing on the topic, I imagine I'd take that sort of comment in a poorer manner. From an outsider, though, it comes across as a misunderstanding between two competent people on a complicated topic. But then again, that's part and parcel of internet discussions.
ReplyDeleteAs an outsider, it comes across as one competent writer falling by the wayside and his peer, an equally competent (if not better) writer, taking a stand and the former's foolishness.
ReplyDelete